The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation’s greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.
“Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity,” said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. “When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children.” Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that “no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”
Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.
A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn’t receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.
Mr. McCain could have mentioned EdisonLearning, a private company that took over 20 of Philadelphia’s 45 lowest performing district schools in 2002 to create a new management model for public schools. The most recent state test-score data show that student performance at Philadelphia public schools managed by Edison and other outside providers has improved by nearly twice the amount as the schools run by the district.
The number of students performing at grade level or higher in reading at the schools managed by private providers increased by 6.1% overall compared to 3.3% in district-managed schools. In math, the results for Edison and other outside managers was 4.6% and 6.0%, respectively, compared to 3.1% in the district-run schools.
The state of California just announced that one in three students in the Los Angeles public school system drops out before graduating. Among black and Latino students in L.A. district schools, the numbers are 42% and 30%. In the past five years, the number of dropouts has grown by more than 80%. The number of high school graduates has gone up only 9%.
The silver linings in these dismal clouds are L.A.’s charter high schools. Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News last week, Caprice Young, who heads the California Charter Schools Association, noted that “every charter high school in Los Angeles Unified last year reported a dropout rate significantly lower than not only the school district’s average, but the state’s as well.”
On recent evidence, the Democrat Party’s policy on these alternatives is simply massive opposition. Congressional Democrats have refused to reauthorize the D.C. voucher program and are threatening to kill it. Last month, Philadelphia’s school reform commission voted to seize six schools from outside managers, including four from Edison. In L.A., local school board members oppose the expansion of charters even though seven in 10 charters in the district outperform their neighborhood peers.
It’s well known that the force calling the Democratic tune here is the teachers unions. Earlier this month, Senator Obama accepted the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. Speaking recently before the American Federation of Teachers, he described the alternative efforts as “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.”
Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, “although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don’t need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the “kids at the bottom.”
A visitor to Mr. Obama’s Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren’t waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When the day arrives that these two candidates face off, we hope Senator McCain comes prepared to press his opponent hard on change, hope and choice in the schools.
Faith MUST come before knowledge. Character must come before knowledge. To educate a man beyond his character is to produce an educated fool. To educate a man who lacks faith in God is to produce an educated heathen. The public school system produces educated heathen fools. Young children who should be taught about God are instead brainwashed with evolution and worldly philosophies. Oh! but you say, “Parents are supposed to teach their children about faith and character.” That’s like saying that you should push and pull at the same time. The arguments presented by the advocates of public education are as senseless and lame as is their educational system. No child, I don’t care how good a home they come from, is going to develop properly in a heathen learning environment! You can’t teach a child at home that God created all people, and then expect that child to go learn from some heathen teacher that we all evolved from a lower life-form of life, without there being confusion and spiritual conflict. It is difficult on a child’s mind to live in a Christian home, and then have to attend a godless learning prison like the public school system.
The public school system hasn’t failed; the culture has failed. Students don’t learn because they don’t want to or they fail to see a reward. Every one of those “failed” inner city schools graduates students who go on to college and do well. You can’t expect a school system to replace the values it finds all around it. Besides we need people to do the work that Mexicans won’t.
………oh, old man price, did you post this one JUST for me?
A correction to this screed: there is no “Democrat Party”. The party that will take the White House in 2009 is the Democratic party.
I was there at the AFT Convention when Senator Obama spoke of the “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.” Moving community school money to the private/parochial sector has always been a goal of the right with NCLB.
Squeal all you WANT about this “choice” crap, it isn’t going to change a thing. The basic problem is poverty, not the schools.
Every able-bodied male, beginning at the age of sixteen, should be required to keep an automatic rifle and be trained to properly operate the weapon. This Militia service would teach the young men discipline, Nationalism, and respect towards Authority. Their militia service should continue (for the defense of our Nation) until their 55th birthday.
2.) Incentives for mothers to leave the workforce;
Mothers in the workforce is a fundamentally bad idea. The primary duty of a wife and mother is to care for her children and manage the household. As such, it would be greatly beneficial for the State to provide monetary/tax incentives, by whatever means necessary, to encourage mothers to leave behind the workforce and return to their proper place.
3.) Restructuring of the public educational system;
The public education system must be torn down and rebuilt from the ground upward. First and foremost, the primary role of public schools should be to prepare young men for the workforce, and the young women for marriage and motherhood. Secondly, the school must instill discipline, morality, and National pride into every child. Teachers who hate America (or teachers who hate men, for that matter) must be fired and properly replaced. Funding should be dramatically cut, in order to encourage schools to “get back to basics.” Math, Science (including Intelligent Design), Bible, English are the essentials for both sexes. For the young ladies, home ec ought to be an additional requirement for graduation; whereas gun safety would be a prerequisite for the young men. Any further education is the responsibility of parents.
Big change for welfarist Sweden: School choice
By MALIN RISING – 4 days ago
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?
It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.
“I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice,” said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. “You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people.”
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2008) — In a new study published in the online-open access journal PLoS ONE, Per Christiansen at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, reports the finding that the evolution of skull and mandible shape in sabercats and modern cats were governed by different selective forces, and the two groups evolved very different adaptations to killing.
The cat family comprises some of the most specialised carnivores in the history of mammals, all exclusively eating flesh. The cat family consists of two major sub-groups: the feline cats (including all modern species) and the sabertoothed cats (which are all extinct). Skeletons from the two groups look broadly similar, but their skulls are often remarkably different, and suggest that members of the two groups underwent radically different adaptations to predation during the course of evolution.
The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, DC over the Fourth of July weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as “Gay marriage causes Global Warming only because we are so hot!”, “Hate is not a family value,” “The ‘Christian Right’ is neither,” and “Gay Rights are civil rights.”
The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions which now become the NEA’s official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.
NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a “single-payer health care plan” (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps “to change activities that contribute to global climate change.”
The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans, or public support of any kind to non-public schools. The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language (even though this is supported by more than 80 percent of Americans).
The NEA opposes homeschooling unless kids are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar homeschooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools (even though their parents pay school taxes, too).
The NEA wants many additional (job-creating) services and programs to be provided by public schools such as early childhood education (i.e., baby-sitting for pre-schoolers). NEA resolutions call for “programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight,” and for “mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.”
NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as “the right to reproductive freedom” (i.e., abortion on demand); “comparable worth” (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology rather than the free market); full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women’s Educational Equity Act; and “the use of non-sexist language” (i.e., censoring out all masculine words such as husband and father).
The NEA even urges its affiliates to work for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was declared dead by the U.S. Supreme Court 26 years ago.
The influence of the gay lobby is pervasive in dozens of NEA resolutions adopted by 2008 convention delegates. Diversity is the code word used for pro-gay indoctrination in the classroom.
The NEA’s Diversity resolution makes clear that this means teaching about “sexual orientation” and “gender identification,” words that are repeated in dozens of resolutions. The NEA demands that “diversity-based curricula” even be imposed on preschoolers.
NEA convention delegates were invited to an Open Hearing by the SOGI Committee in Room 149A on July 1. In case you don’t know, SOGI stands for Sexual Orientation Gender Identification.
The NEA urges its members to offer “diverse role models” by the “hiring and promotion of diverse education employees in our public schools.” The NEA puts “domestic partnerships, civil unions, and marriage” on an equal footing.
The NEA wants every child (i.e., regardless of age) to have “direct and confidential access (i.e., without notification to parents) to comprehensive health (i.e., including learning how to use condoms for premarital sex), social, and psychological programs and services.”
The NEA wants public schools to take over the physical and mental care of students through school clinics that provide services, diagnosis, treatment, family-planning counseling, and access to birth control methods “with instruction in their use.” Family planning clinics are called on to “provide intensive counseling.”
The NEA wants all sex education courses, textbooks, curricula, instructional materials and activities to include indoctrination about sexual orientation and gender identification plus warnings about homophobia.
The NEA is very generous with taxpayers’ money spent on illegal aliens. The NEA not only favors amnesty for illegal alien students, but also in-state college tuition and financial aid to illegal alien college students.
The NEA is strong for “multicultural education,” which the resolution makes clear does not mean studying facts about different countries and cultures. It means “the process of incorporating the values” and influencing “behavior” toward the NEA’s version of “the common good,” such as “reducing homophobia.”
Of course, the NEA supports “global education” to teach “interdependency in sharing the world’s resources.” It’s also no surprise that the NEA adamantly opposes any requirement that schools “schedule a moment of silence.”
Will parents be silent about the radical goals of their children’s teachers?
Poverty is a mask for the real problem Apo. A breakdown in culture including single parents, and parents who don’t give a turd is the real problem you are after. Government can’t fix that.
Plenty of kids grow up in poverty and still get a good education. I did. It takes good teachers and good parents. There are plenty of good public schools. And there are plenty of really lousy public schools full of teachers who have no stake in their community.
All people want is a choice. And the poor inner city areas are the place most needing and deserving of choice.
I went through high school with cockroaches climbing in my mouth whilst I slept. I never slept well back then. We stayed well below the “poverty line” all my childhood. I went to college (with no Pell grants, just my loans), now I’m a design engineer with a fine home and a good truck. My kid’s don’t have roaches in their cereal box. And they don’t want for anything they NEED. Anyone who wants to, can get themselves outta crappy lives. Myself, I vowed never to live like that again.
Apophis is the failure and his kind, the kind entrenched in the public school agenda of protecting themselves as more important than helping and teaching kids, are the reason public schools fail in comparison to private schools.
His agenda of self interest makes me sick.
The Queen of Snark on the MSM blackout of John Edwards and his Love Child.
“Which brings up a fascinating legal question: Would it be admissible for Edwards to channel the very love child at issue during such a proceeding? Reminiscent of his performances in medical malpractice cases, he could say: She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you, she’s saying: “John Edwards ain’t my daddy!” ”
To refresh your memory - HERE is my ORIGINAL posting from 7/24
“Anon1
Posted July 24, 2008 at 8:50 am | Permalink
Nathaniel,
In response to YOUR response to me from two days ago (sorry, I have been sick in bed with food poisoning for two days so I haven’t been up to responding) - i HAVE requested that ALL posters who want to argue AGW STOP - I believe it was about a week and a half ago.
Besides which, all I asked was that GMC stop goading Chas so that we could have adult conversation on the blog without having to be interrupted by their back and forth screaming and yelling.
I am not the blog conscience. I simply asked GMC to be polite and drop the subject after five days because I was tired of the damn ranting. I am sorry you think that simply because I asked him as an adult to please stop, since he obviously wasn’t getting anywhere and was only succeeding in annoying more people, that somehow that translates into me defending Chas and attacking everyone else. I asked GMC because I realized that he would likely listen, whereas Chas would not. It’s as simple as that. And yes, in your little rant about everyone attacking YOU and defending anyone that you disagree with, you made several direct references to my earlier request for GMC to stop. I merely pointed out that I don’t appreciate being painted with that broad brush that you are wielding, and you managed to miss the entire point of my post yet again, by complaining about why don’t I ask cosmos to stop? It isn’t all about you, first of all, and secondly, I have. I have asked all posters on AGW to stop, including Cosmos, Sol, and others (I believe that was a day your father actually didn’t post) to just agree that they disagree and quit shoving both sides down our throats - which notice HAS NOT HAPPENED - by ANYONE. But that completely had nothing to do with anything that I posted anyways.
Thanks. I can quite clearly see now that if I don’t agree with you 100% I am not welcome to post on this blog.”
HERE is YOUR response to THAT posting:
“Nathaniel
Posted July 24, 2008 at 12:10 pm | Permalink
Anon1,
Where did I ever say you were not welcome to post on this blog?
Most of your post seemed pretty reasonable, but you had to finish it with that?”
PLEASE NOTE: I never said you SAID I was not welcome to post on this blog. In fact, the statement you tried to use yesterday to back up your assertion that I said that
“Although he told me I was going too far by stating that if I disagree with him I am apparently not welcome to post…”
If you READ that sentence, I mean REALLY READ it- that sentence DOES NOT SAY I SAID THAT YOU SAID I WAS NOT WELCOME TO POST HERE. That sentence says that YOU SAID I WENT TO FAR BY SAYING (myself) that I was not welcome to post here. Which is what my original post implied - based on the fact that YOU lambasted me for asking someone else to stop postings which were guaranteed to cause a fight and somehow that was picking on you and your friends and defending other posters. I never once disagreed with your position, nor did I direct a post to you until you brought my post up in conversation basically complaining about it. From that behavior and further personal attack, I inferred that if I immediately did not jump on board what YOU thought was right, I shouldn’t bother to post becuase heaven forbid I should have a differing opinion from you.
BTW - every post I have seen where you have referenced Linda in the last week has been either a) prior to her posting anything on the blog at all or b) pulling her in to a conversation she has had nothing to do with. Whatever your personal vendetta against a person, if you don’t want people to call you on your behavior, maybe you shouldn’t do it. You keep saying you are the better man, yet you don’t act like it. You behave like a high school freshman who isn’t getting enough attention from the girl he likes so he keeps picking on her. I have purposely avoided political conversations on this blog because I see how quickly they degenerate - and you as much as any other poster here (and there are many, and yes, it’s pretty much equally divided on the sides) are as guilty of causing that as anyone else.
It would be much better for the children and everyone else concerned if bitter, middle aged unfulfilled men found someplace other than the school system to hide while they spewed forth with their daily hate speech.
Apophis is little more than a cowardly middle level union hack and that’s all he’ll ever be.
Here in Wichita it isn’t the teachers, it’s the multiple levels above the teachers who get in their way and make their job more difficult. In fact, we should be doubly thankful our teachers are able to overcome these handicaps to the extent they do!
Remember when Martin Libart who had been in charge of facilities for many years was promoted to interim superintendent when Brooks left for his New Mexico job? Let’s look at a few things to do with that.
1. Martin Libhart had been in charge of facilities for many years. That would be the same facilities which we’re told are crumbling and in ill repair. In fact, we need a big bunch of $350 million to build, repair, upgrade, maintain what wasn’t done under Mr. Libhart’s watch.
2. When this man who didn’t do the job he was charged with was promoted, the school board said it was because he was most familiar with the bond issue AND there were adequate people to handle the educational areas that his experience and qualifications didn’t meet.
So, we don’t really need a top guy ’cause there are adequate people already in place to handle those duties. Seems we only need someone to direct the effort of getting more money from the taxpayers.
3. Multiple layers of administration — some probably qualified, some aren’t, but they all are very expensive. Among these layers are several hundred who are hidden in every budget as teachers. Because they are teachers — certified as such, paid as such. But they don’t have a single teaching requirement! No students. Nary a contribution to the education of our students!
4. And catering to one specific skill set in order to please the masters at the aircraft plants our school board and administration want to train more aircraft workers with more of our money! It isn’t enough that we pay big county taxes for a new WATC to train workers for the aircraft plants, now they want our public schools to do more of the same with more of our tax dollars.
Don’t be fooled by the words technical education — that isn’t what the school leadership is planning to provide. They are planning to appease the masters of aircraft and turn out students who are only suitable for employment in one industry. That’s not (or shouldn’t be!) the goal of public schools.
And, did you pay careful enough attention to hear that the items taken out of the bond issue proposal — the swimming pools, the tracks and tennis courts, etc. — would be able to go ahead because they would have adequate money to do those projects as soon as everything else was paid with bond issue proceeds? They plan to have their cake and eat it too! And you know who suffers? Our children. Taxpayers. Neither our children nor taxpayers get value.
You need to study the national agenda of the NEA and try to figure out how any of their agenda items would benefit the educational goals and achievement of our children.
Government schools. Union hacks. Bitter middle aged men like Apophis getting up every day and working toward his own self centered goals.
The NEA exists to protect substandard government employees like Apophis, children be damned.
Where is John Edwards?
I thought JE would come swinging (or suing) about baby mama allegations.
Sleeping around with a dying wife? I’ll bet this will get the woman vote.
The NEA supports liberal politicians that send their kids to private schools while trapping inner city children in the travesty known as ‘public education’.
As a former member of the NEA I am ashamed of them. The NEA protects child molesters against the word of upstanding teachers, believe me I know. Many members do send their own kids to private school, I do.
With all of Edward’s obvious resume enhancers, how did we get stuck with a candidate that only has a three point jumper for qualification to be president?
It is amazing how many teachers opt out o membership in the NEA when they have a choice. It’s also amazing how many teachers sacrifice and struggle to enter their children in private schools.
That should be a clue as to the failure of the NEA and the public school system.
From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.
They identified five characteristics shared by virtually all fundamentalisms. The fundamentalists’ agenda starts with insistence that their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God—and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right—must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini’s Iran, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.
The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and it’s vulgarly simple: Men are on top. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and homemakers.
A third item follows from the others. (Indeed each part of the fundamentalist agenda is necessarily interlocked, and needs every other part to survive.) Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this picture and these rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, fundamentalists must control education by controlling textbooks and teaching styles, deciding what may and may not be taught.
“With all of Edward’s obvious resume enhancers, how did we get stuck with a candidate that only has a three point jumper for qualification to be president?”
I don’t know, why did Republicans vote twice for a mentally retarded, dry drunk with a string of failed businesses who only got to his position thanks to affirmative action because he’s a Bush and inherited his money?
My Mom taught middles school math for 26 years. She retired in the early 80’s and pursued a different career. The problems she faced were the kids and the parents.
The parent’s refused to accept that Little Johnny was a butt-hole and lazy. All control was removed from the teachers by the administration for fear of litigation.
Parents are different than they used to be. Education is not the pillar of family life it once was. Government can’t fix that. Laws can’t fix that. Only people can. Kick your neighbor/family member/friends in the pants if they don’t hold education supreme in their kid’s life.
Unions are for the weak and lazy. Those who can not fight their own fights. When they start issuing political agendas, their time has passed. Political agendas have no place in the leadership of school systems.
“I don’t know, why did Republicans vote twice for a mentally retarded, dry drunk with a string of failed businesses who only got to his position thanks to affirmative action because he’s a Bush and inherited his money?”
Obvoius answr, MP!
The other choices were Algore, only qualification to be president was that he was a butt-boy for Clinton for eight years and Lurch, only qualification for president was. . . hell, I don’t know, Algore didn’t want it any more?
The mainstream media really seem to imagine they can prevent Americans from knowing information by refusing to mention it in newspapers or on TV.
For those few Americans without an Internet connection and to whom I have not faxed the National Enquirer stories: Evidence is accumulating that John Edwards is right — there really are “two Americas.” There’s one where men cheat on their cancer-stricken wives and one where men do not cheat on their cancer-stricken wives.
To put it another way, it would appear that ambulances aren’t the only things John Edwards has been chasing lately.
Last year, the National Enquirer broke the story about New-Age divorcee Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, telling friends she was having an affair with Edwards and that she was pregnant with his “love child.”
Who knew that “my father was a mill worker” could be such a great pickup line? In his defense, Edwards had to do something to kill time between giving $50,000 speeches on poverty.
I guess the Enquirer is lucky Edwards isn’t a trial lawyer! A sleazy carnival sideshow trial lawyer wouldn’t even need to start channeling unborn children before a jury — as Edwards did in the junk-science cases that made him a multimillionaire — to win a defamation case if these charges are false. The “love child” allegation could be easily disproved by DNA testing.
Which brings up a fascinating legal question: Would it be admissible for Edwards to channel the very love child at issue during such a proceeding? Reminiscent of his performances in medical malpractice cases, he could say: She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you, she’s saying: “John Edwards ain’t my daddy!”
When the National Enquirer story first broke last year, the Edwards campaign denied that Edwards was the father, pawning the affair off on an apparently very loyal Edwards campaign official, Andrew Young. Like Edwards, Young was married with children, but also like Edwards, Young is a Democrat, so it was possible.
Except that, not only has Young’s wife not left him, but she was perfectly copacetic with her husband’s mistress moving into their gated community for the duration of her pregnancy, and even joining her, Andrew and the kids for dinner.
Back on Earth, that doesn’t happen. The Edwards campaign better start looking at its backup plan of claiming Nathan Lane is the father.
It also didn’t smack of innocence that the Edwards campaign stripped Hunter’s videos from the Edwards Web site when the story broke.
Soon after Edwards met Hunter in a bar in New York, the Edwards campaign began paying her more than $100,000 to make “hip” videos of him for the campaign Web site. Unfortunately, Edwards’ hair stylists ate up most of the budget.
As Herculean a task as it would be to make John Edwards look hip, the videos can’t be worse for the campaign than the Edwards staffer who said of the Catholic church’s position on birth control: “What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?” So why did they take down Hunter’s videos?
With the MSM still pretending the Internet doesn’t exist, last week the Enquirer staked out the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles after receiving a tip that Edwards would be going there to visit Hunter and the love child, who reportedly has her mother’s eyes and her father’s dramatic flair in front of a jury.
According to the Enquirer, Edwards entered Hunter’s hotel room around 9:45 p.m. and left at 2:40 in the morning. Seeing reporters as he left Hunter’s room, Edwards sprinted to a hotel bathroom and blockaded himself in until hotel security came to rescue him. Even more suspicious, while Edwards was barricaded in the bathroom, no one reported hearing sounds of a blow dryer.
When asked about the Enquirer story at a press conference a few days later, Edwards looked as flustered as Rep. Robert Wexler did after being asked if he really lives with his mother-in-law in Florida while running for office in that district.
First Edwards pretended to be unfamiliar with the story, a preposterous pose even if the story were false. Then Edwards dropped eye contact and said: “That’s tabloid trash. They’re full of lies. I’m here to talk about helping people.” He couldn’t have looked more guilty if he had broken into a cold sweat and lit a cigarette. Britney Spears has responded more credibly to questions about tabloid stories.
Meanwhile, the only way consumers of the old media might ascertain that Edwards is embroiled in some sort of scandal is that, starting last Thursday, his name was summarily dropped from lists of possible vice presidential candidates.
If only Republican Larry Craig had been in the bathroom, the MSM might have covered it.
COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER
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“The other choices were Algore, only qualification to be president was that he was a butt-boy for Clinton for eight years and Lurch, only qualification for president was. . . hell, I don’t know, Algore didn’t want it any more?”
Oh, the guy who was VP for the President who lead us through numerous years of prosperity where our economy had a surplus, great job growth, low unemployment, etc.? The same Gore who had years of experience in the House and Senate since 1977 and was a Harvard graduate?
Yeah, can’t have an intelligent guy with years of experience in office. Nah, elect a coke addled frat boy who likes to pretend he’s a rancher by clearing brush on his estate (Gore actually worked as a cattle rancher and tobacco farmer).
Well, your hero blew that surplus and increased the national debt from 5 trillion to 9 trillion and leaves his last year with a nearly $800 billion budget deficit.
The Patriot Pastors’ Electoral War Against the
‘Hordes of Hell’
Texas: “Patriot Pastors” for Perry
While all eyes are on Ohio and Blackwell’s “Patriot Pastors”-infused governor’s race, a similar story is unfolding in Texas, a state that is “seeing an evolution in the religious right’s tactics. Today more and more conservative pastors are using their pulpits to press a hard-right political agenda,” as the Texas Freedom Network reports.[26]
Texas is home to a pioneer of pulpit-based politics, Rick Scarborough, the former minister of First Baptist Church in Pearland and a long-time ally of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Scarborough’s efforts to “mobilize” pastors in politics go back at least as far as 1996, when he ran an ultraconservative-insurgency campaign for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. (He lost.) In his book that year, Enough Is Enough, Scarborough described his success in creating a local political machine around his church, strongly urging his congregants to run for office at all levels: “At this writing, three members of our church serve on the city council. . . Four of our members serve on the school board. The city manager is a member of our church. The police chief is a member of our church. The assistant district attorney of Brazoria County is a member of our church. . .”[27]
And in 2000, his political organization Vision America put together a conference of Religious Right heavyweights to “figure out how to compensate for the waning influence of the Christian Coalition in electoral politics,” as the National Journal reported. The group’s director, a Christian Coalition veteran, described the difference between the organizations as a new emphasis on mobilizing pastors to lead their congregations to the polls by concentrating on core social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and pornography.[28]
By 2004, Scarborough created his own network of “Patriot Pastors” to lead evangelicals to the polls for the 2004 election, and expanded it to at least 5,000 by the time Texas voters ratified a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2005. “One of my goals in life is to give the Republican Party courage,” he told The Washington Post during the debate over the “nuclear option” to push through Bush’s extremist judicial nominees.[29] At the same time, Scarborough’s Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration worked in Washington to push Bush’s judicial nominees, organizing a conference timed around the death of Terri Schiavo at which DeLay urged the impeachment of judges, and other speakers suggested execution.[30]
“For it seems to me that the only moral collapse comparable to what is happening in America today that has ever taken place is that which occurred in Germany in the 1920s through the 1940s.”
— Rev. Laurence White,
Texas Restoration Project
Chris Hooten, 34, of Greers Ferry, is recovering from a gunshot wound to his abdomen after a scuffle around 10:15 p.m. Friday. He reportedly entered a home without permission, fought and choked the homeowner, and was shot in the process.
Just as we suspected, the adjustments are now coming out and showing a different story than the one bush has tried to keep from being exposed. He will still work hard to keep the full impact from being known until he gets out of Dodge.
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U.S. Recession May Have Begun in Last Quarter of 2007
The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.
But no one needs to be concerned about the haves and the have mores. bush has taken care of them!
—–
Exxon posts record $11.68 billion profit
Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.
That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second.
That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007.
“The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speak right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.” (Isaiah 32:5-8 KJV)
“They are about to nominate a man with an ego larger than lurch’s and a brain smaller than the goracle!”
You have something against Harvard grads? Never mind that McCain finished near the bottom of his class. Perhaps it’s just your racism showing up again.
Nope, he loves liberals, you aren’t a liberal and the Bible says you are vile and wicked. Don’t let your ego and small brain get in the way of the truth of the Bible.
“Where do you get any of that garbage from that verse?”
The words come from the Bible and the Bible says that fools like you will blaspheme against God and commit vile acts. You have proven that again. The Bible says you should repent and strive to do liberal things because being liberal is being noble. However, you are wicked and probably grounded forever in your wicked, conservative ways because you hate God and the truth of the Bible.
“No where did that verse call me a fool nor anything else you just said.”
Vile and fool are interchangeable in the Bible if you knew anything about the Bible. It’s too bad you’ve hardened your heart against God and keep yourself from studying it. Well, I could listen to your blasphemy and God hatred all day but I have liberal (interchangeable with noble) things to do. Just do the world a favor and keep you, and your false god Satan’s, wicked deeds to yourself. Think of the children you could be condemning with your conservative notions.
I did! I read every word. I hadn’t known he was so funny before today’s cheer leading. My tummy ached from laughing. He may be in the wrong career. Maybe he is fishing for a job doing PR for his idol, Rush. Sure did a good job of mocking his usual stance of “values.” Is everyone into satire nowadays?
Police Raid Berwyn Heights Mayor’s Home, Kill His 2 Dogs
Calvo said he came home early from work Tuesday. While walking the dogs, Calvo said, he noticed several black sport-utility vehicles and a woman parked in a car down the street.
“I figured someone was having a party,” he recalled.
It was the police. They were watching, waiting for someone to bring the package into the house.
As Calvo returned to the house, he said, he spotted the large package that his mother-in-law had told a deliveryman to leave on the porch. He placed it on a buffet table near the front door and went upstairs to change.
“I brought it inside because I figured it was something we’d gotten for the garden,” he said.
Moments later, just after he had undressed, Calvo said, he heard his mother-in-law scream that someone was coming toward the house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw officers in SWAT gear running across the lawn.
“I heard a loud crash and then ‘bang, bang, bang,’ ” he said, recalling the sounds of the police shooting the dogs. “I hit the floor.”
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.
I understand they have a job to do, but it didn’t have to go like that,” Calvo said. He said the police could have knocked on his door and asked him about the package. “I’ve never done drugs in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that I am so adamantly opposed to them.”
Police said yesterday that, when they seized the package during the raid, it was unopened.
Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy said county police and the Sheriff’s Office had not notified his department of the raid. He said town police could have conducted the search without a SWAT team.
“You can’t tell me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn’t have been able to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his confidence and enter the residence,” Murphy said. “It would not have been a necessity to shoot and kill this man’s dogs.”
G-Dave - we don’t agree on much, but we agree on that. Often, when police have these toys, they feel the need to use them - too often, and too aggressively. There is a time and place for the SWAT team, but using them to execute routine warrants is snot the case.
We don’t know what info the cops had here, of course, which may have caused them to believe a SWAT entrance was justified. Maybe, if we knew that, it was justified (though a little cooperation with the local jurisdiction would have gone a long way, I bet). There may be a lot more to this story, in the end.
But there is not doubt, to me at least, that the excessive use of SWAT tactics by police is a problem. It needs to be dialed down.
Personally, I don’t like police, on a routine basis, being dressed in anything like “paramilitary” dress, or carrying excessive weaponry. I want police to be part of the communities they serve, and the more militarized the police become, the more there is an “us vs. them” mindset that takes over not only in the public, but in the police as well. That mindset serves no one well.
Sol, thanks. My hiatus from here has been the direct result of being very busy, both professionally and personally, including going to Maine in May for our younger daughter’s graduation from college.
I remember in Topeka a few years ago the police thought it would be cool to do a no knock raid dressed in black camo, and the homeowner put a couple rounds into the skull of one of the cops, and got aquitted on self defense grounds. GMC didnt the BC sheriff a couple of weeks ago call out the swat for a guy who did nothing other than have a gun in his home?
VT! Welcome back! I wish I could tell you we are a well-behaved, well-adjusted, and happy community, but alas, it wasn’t before, and it still isn’t. Each side still tries to pigeonhole and tar the other. Labeling and nasty names, on both sides, reign supreme, with each side justifying what they do by charging “oh yea, what about . . . ”
‘Tis sad.
Glad to have another member of the bar back here to bounce ideas off of. Of course, you may become completely disgusted, and wish you had stayed away . . .
My garden is next to the sea wall in the corner of my yard, next to the lake. Yesterday I found huge cucumber growing down the sea wall hidden from view when I was in the garden.
Three pounds, five ounces! Today I found another one, not as big, two pounds nine ounces!
Nathaniel
Posted July 31, 2008 at 10:20 am | Permalink
Maggotpunk,
God “loves” everyone. You don’t need to try to find a verse in the Bible to cherry pick to try and prove that.
*****
Right, MP.
According to Nathan, God loves everyone so much, He will consign you to hell in everlasting damnation if you don’t accept Christ as your personal savior.
Sammy is happy as can be. Eating more, not digging since I blocked that spot. Jumps about 6-8 feet when he launches off the deck. Also climbs the wood pile to look over the fence. Next thing I know he will be climbing the fence.
I think it is the right of the media to investigate this story. Edwards should have to answer questions about it.
And if you agree he should, like Coulter and the CONs do, then Bush should have answer questions on
1. did he ever use cocaine?
2. did he allow people to rot in prison as Governor for crimes that he himself committed (like drug use)?
3. did he get his unmarried girlfriend pregnant and then help her get an abortion in Texas when it was illegal?
4. why did he not report his stock selling on insider-information when he worked for Harkin Energy and made a quick 80,000 dollars?
5. why did he lie about the US “finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” when his own security anaylists were telling him the “mobile labs” were not for WMD?
6. how can he justify stopping the recount in Florida in which legal ballots were never counted?
7. who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and why weren’t they fired as the President vowed?
*****
That’s just a short list.
Ann Coulter’s right. The media not only won’t investigate, they won’t even ask the man questions about these important matters.
Heck…you should know by now that the only things capn ‘moves on’ about are things like Clinton/Monica; Whitewater; perjury under oath; etc., etc., etc. Only things like that are ‘old news’ according to capn.
If the world really offered to those who work hard opportunity to advance like it used to, we wouldn’t have these problems.
What the kids are growing up seeing is their good parents working their tail ends off and can’t get ahead. And then they see their parent’s boss treat the parents like dogcrap and drive away in a Mercedes.
Republican values create more and more problems and they like to blame liberals, but if their policies worked, they would have worked by now. They do not work for anyone but themselves. Which is why in the end, we move forward with liberal policies.
I think RW&B would feel right at home in Afghanistan. I hope to GOD he’s single with no children.
Grateful Dave…you obviously know not about the relationship between city officials and the police departments. There is NO WAY I would trust a police department to investigate their own city officials. No way. You can’t even get them to give them a traffic ticket here. I even watched the son of a City Attorney get into his car and drive off, obviously drunk as a skunk, right in front of a police officer. I asked the officer why he did nothing….and he said there was NO WAY he’d open that can of worms.
The worst part is..the kid knew it too. He walked right up to that officer and smiled before driving off.
MOBILE, Ala. - A judge denied bond Thursday for a part-time evangelist charged with murder in the death of his wife, a mother of eight whose body was kept in a freezer for at least three years.
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Arletha Hopkins, 36, apparently was killed in 2004, but the cause of death remains under investigation, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich said.
Anthony Hopkins, 37, was returned to jail after a brief court appearance. Hopkins did not speak during the hearing and his trial attorney will be appointed later.
The father of the six youngest children, Hopkins also is charged with rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest in a related case involving a female relative who is pregnant with his baby, authorities said. Her disclosure of that sexual abuse led police to find the body in the freezer Monday.
This has any relationship to his “fundie” status, how, exactly? He probably wears blue jeans, too, or “wife-beater” undershirts. Or maybe that the trash was picked up on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays. Or that she pissed him off on a full moon. Or perhaps that he drove a Ford, rather than a Chevy. Any, or all, of those imagined factors is just as likely.
Or, more likely, you have no idea about any causal relationship at all. What a surprise.
“Porter said he first met Anthony Hopkins in 1998. Like many others in their church community he was convinced Hopkins was a man of God, with a special gift of prophecy.
“We respected him, because he was one that the scripture calls a prophet. He was one that things he spoke, it came to past.”"
According to the search warrant, a sexual affair involving Anthony Hopkins and one of his eight children had been going on for eight years. In the warrant, one of Hopkins’ daughters says on or around November 4, 2004, her mother, Arletha Hopkins, caught her dad sexually abusing her in a bathroom at their home. The daughter says that lead to an argument, and the next morning her father asked her to help hide her mom’s body in a freezer.
A prophet of God no less raping his child and murdering his wife. Oh well, we are supposed to respect his religious beliefs and allow his to rape and murder since he’s a prophet of god and the Bible says rape and murder is acceptable. If you godless heathens had morals, and understood that rape and murder are godly, moral acts, then you wouldn’t be complaining.
As Maggotpunk well knows, anyone can call themselves a Christian. Doesn’t make it so. But this guy could have been. What is not said is that the described guy could not have been more in Satan’s hands. (Yes, I believe that Satan is real.)
It is not all that uncommon for Satan to focus extraordinary efforts on bringing down someone who is making progress for God’s Kingdom. I don’t know whether that is the case in this situation. But that is why the Bible’s instructs us to guard our minds and our thought life.
All I can say is that this Anthony Hopkis character sure had an unfortunate name - keeping his wife in the refrig and all - seems all to Hannibal Lector like to me… :)
10 And he said unto me, “Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.
11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”
12 “And behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be.
According to this early First Century writing, it was not necessary for any to change what they already were, for the End was coming soon….
AND, flying in the face of Paul’s writings on Grace, this writer believed that one’s actions either saved, or damned them…
Perhaps that is one reason Luther argued against including Revelation in the Books of the Bible… Oh, would that Luther would have won his argument!!
A Reno County, KS court found Sarah Farley, now 17, guilty on two counts of engaging in sexual activity before age 16, and dismissed a third count. The crimes resulted in a concealed pregnancy and the birth of a girl, Baby Jane, whose tiny body was later found abandoned and dead in a backyard. Officials have no proof that Baby Jane was born alive, just that she was never treated with care, respect, or human dignity.
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The big spenders in the Sedgwick County primary are the district judge candidates, as it should be, reflecting their importance, or notoriety, in the pending criminal justice to be meted out to the Kansas abortion industry.
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“I felt that the abortion was like being raped again. Only this time, it was much worse because I had consented to the assault.”
. . . Nicole Cooley, who was raped by a trusted friend as a young military officer, author of “Into the Light: Rape, Abortion and the Truth that Set Me Free”
- - -
“The state will not cover life-prolonging treatment unless there is a better than a 5% chance the patient will live for 5 or more years.”
. . . from letters sent from the Oregon government-managed health plan to terminal patients, offering to pay for assisted suicide instead of treatment
[This will give you an idea of how Democrats intend to save money in implementing their plans for socialized medicine.]
Oh come on Chas. We all know that the council of Nicea didn’t tell christians anything that they didn’t allready know. They all somehow knew what was the Bible and what wasn’t. They all somehow knew was Christianity was supposed to be and what it wasn’t supposed to be.
1. Forget the fact that the literacy rate was under 12%.
2. Forget the fact that there were several sects of Christianity at the time: Appollinarians, Gnostics, Helenistics etc.
And don’t go giving us none of that Aramaic bull. Everyone knows that Jesus spoke GREEK. You gotta understand the Greek if you want to know what the Bible means.
You’re one of those “Amateur Bible Readers” aint ya Chas?
Nice try… Jesus spoke Aramaic… Council of Nicea didnt argue the Canon that much… not nearly as much aas they argued about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father AND the Son (still not accepted by Orthodoxy)… and other matters…
Luther DID however, argue that Revelation and James should be removed from the list of New Testament “Scripture” and instead be included as Addendums following the Letter of Jude.
Now, maybe we can get somewhere and find out who did what. ;-)
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Ruling: White House Aides Not Immune From Congressional Subpoenas
A federal court ruled today that top White House aides are not immune from congressional subpoenas, a decision that is likely to reignite the investigation into politicization at the Justice Department.
But the most important thing to remember is that four main religions are engaged in a holy war against Christianity. The number one religion, The Abortion Charismatics.The abortion religion in truth has as its foundation the worshipping of anti-submission to men. These death Stalinists use accusations of oppression as their guardian while marching on, putting the sword to the enemy, the trespassing fetus. Conversly, The Bible advises us to choose life and states that those who side with death are with the devil.
Religion number two, The Orthodox Homosexuals. The homosexual hit squad, they worship immoral sex and preach its acceptance with a formidable vigger. The religion of orgasms, just as long as you partake with someone of the same gender.
Religion number three, The Pentecostal Environmentalists. They worship myths and have as their god mother nature. This includes the global warming cash cow. They worship animals, the same animals God instructed us to subdue in Genesis. They worship the earth, the same earth God advises us in the Bible not to love due to the fact that it is fallen and ruled by Satan.
And the forth religion, The United Church of Envy. The religion of envy has as its decree welfare, social programs of all kinds, and higher taxes. It wishes to crucify anyone who is successful. The wealth of others is condemned. They fiercely seek conversion, not conversion of souls…conversion of other people?s money - to themselves. This faction is represented by Poverty Pastors from all status levels in society.
The Mega Church of Liberalism houses all these religions. They are extremely tolerant of any religion so long as its not that of the true God. Their enemy is not Satan as in Christianity, but their common enemy is in fact Christ. Hence the unity among the various religions.There strategy is to incrementally replace Christianity with their false gods and religions of idolatry. At the same time they are attempting to diminish the credibility of God of the Bible and of Christianity.
All right RNB. Let’s grab our guns and go to the Unitarian Church here in Wichita. They allow them heathen, liberal, wiccan, druid, buddhist, types to take communion.
According to new statistics released today from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), premature babies accounted for a growing proportion of infant deaths. When linked with previous studies that have shown that abortion increases a woman’s chance of having a baby prematurely, the conclusion is that women who have had abortions are more likely to bear children who die as infants or suffer from severe health issues.
Well, DUHHH, over 2 decades of studies have proved that abortion is a major risk factor for later premature birth, driving up the number of annual premature births as more and more women of childbearing age have been scarred by abortionist quacks.
More than a half million babies are born premature (less than 37 weeks gestation) each year and those who survive face the risk of life long health consequences, such as breathing and feeding problems, cerebral palsy, and learning problems. Mortality rates for infants born even a few weeks early, or “late preterm” (between 34 weeks of gestation) were three times those for full-term infants.
One third of very preterm births (before 32 weeks) are caused by the mother’s prior abortion.
The black race, targeted by the abortion industry for population reduction, has suffered an abortion rate and consequently a premature birth rate 3 times higher.
See news page http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08073009.html
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s top advisers cannot ignore subpoenas issued by Congress, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a case that involves the firings of several United States attorneys but has much wider constitutional implications for all three branches of government.
“The executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law,” Judge John D. Bates ruled in United States District Court here.
“Hey, George! WTF! I thought you said we were above the law!!”
The thought occurs to me that metal detectors at the entrances to buildings, and schools, and other places, would keep out unwanted guns from ALL sources….
Compared to the cost of human life, rather inexpensive…
I don’t believe your anti-choice source’s conclusions…..
“Nearly 50 percent of all premature births have no known cause.
While the underlying cause(s) of preterm birth are not well known, the 3 known risk factors for preterm labor most consistently identified by experts are:
Multifetal pregnancy (e.g., twins, triplets);
A woman’s past history of preterm delivery;
Some uterine and/or cervical abnormalities.
Other possible risk factors may include:
High blood pressure, diabetes, clotting disorders, obesity, or other chronic health problems in the mother;
Certain infections during pregnancy;
Cigarette smoking, alcohol use, or illicit drug use during pregnancy.”
Although there was a statistically significant decreased incidence of gestational hypertension in pregnancies in women with a previous history of abortion (4.9%) as compared to women without such a history (5.6%) (aOR: .85 [95% CI: .77-.93], p<0.05), 2, 3 or more abortions were not associated with a decreased risk of gestational hypertension, calling into question the clinical significance of the effect of abortion.
This is rare…I agree with BOTH Chas and DavidB.. rwnb is a racist moron. He wraps his racism in some weird biblical reference to legitimize them, which makes it even more bizarre.
The idea that this sickness is satire passed some time ago…he is the type of nut that would hurt other people in ‘the name of religion’….
217 Comments
The Greatest Scandal
The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation’s greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.
“Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity,” said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. “When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children.” Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that “no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”
Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.
A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn’t receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.
Mr. McCain could have mentioned EdisonLearning, a private company that took over 20 of Philadelphia’s 45 lowest performing district schools in 2002 to create a new management model for public schools. The most recent state test-score data show that student performance at Philadelphia public schools managed by Edison and other outside providers has improved by nearly twice the amount as the schools run by the district.
The number of students performing at grade level or higher in reading at the schools managed by private providers increased by 6.1% overall compared to 3.3% in district-managed schools. In math, the results for Edison and other outside managers was 4.6% and 6.0%, respectively, compared to 3.1% in the district-run schools.
The state of California just announced that one in three students in the Los Angeles public school system drops out before graduating. Among black and Latino students in L.A. district schools, the numbers are 42% and 30%. In the past five years, the number of dropouts has grown by more than 80%. The number of high school graduates has gone up only 9%.
The silver linings in these dismal clouds are L.A.’s charter high schools. Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News last week, Caprice Young, who heads the California Charter Schools Association, noted that “every charter high school in Los Angeles Unified last year reported a dropout rate significantly lower than not only the school district’s average, but the state’s as well.”
On recent evidence, the Democrat Party’s policy on these alternatives is simply massive opposition. Congressional Democrats have refused to reauthorize the D.C. voucher program and are threatening to kill it. Last month, Philadelphia’s school reform commission voted to seize six schools from outside managers, including four from Edison. In L.A., local school board members oppose the expansion of charters even though seven in 10 charters in the district outperform their neighborhood peers.
It’s well known that the force calling the Democratic tune here is the teachers unions. Earlier this month, Senator Obama accepted the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. Speaking recently before the American Federation of Teachers, he described the alternative efforts as “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.”
Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, “although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don’t need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the “kids at the bottom.”
A visitor to Mr. Obama’s Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren’t waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When the day arrives that these two candidates face off, we hope Senator McCain comes prepared to press his opponent hard on change, hope and choice in the schools.
Source
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720068489088381.html
Faith MUST come before knowledge. Character must come before knowledge. To educate a man beyond his character is to produce an educated fool. To educate a man who lacks faith in God is to produce an educated heathen. The public school system produces educated heathen fools. Young children who should be taught about God are instead brainwashed with evolution and worldly philosophies. Oh! but you say, “Parents are supposed to teach their children about faith and character.” That’s like saying that you should push and pull at the same time. The arguments presented by the advocates of public education are as senseless and lame as is their educational system. No child, I don’t care how good a home they come from, is going to develop properly in a heathen learning environment! You can’t teach a child at home that God created all people, and then expect that child to go learn from some heathen teacher that we all evolved from a lower life-form of life, without there being confusion and spiritual conflict. It is difficult on a child’s mind to live in a Christian home, and then have to attend a godless learning prison like the public school system.
The public school system hasn’t failed; the culture has failed. Students don’t learn because they don’t want to or they fail to see a reward. Every one of those “failed” inner city schools graduates students who go on to college and do well. You can’t expect a school system to replace the values it finds all around it. Besides we need people to do the work that Mexicans won’t.
………oh, old man price, did you post this one JUST for me?
A correction to this screed: there is no “Democrat Party”. The party that will take the White House in 2009 is the Democratic party.
I was there at the AFT Convention when Senator Obama spoke of the “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.” Moving community school money to the private/parochial sector has always been a goal of the right with NCLB.
Squeal all you WANT about this “choice” crap, it isn’t going to change a thing. The basic problem is poverty, not the schools.
Deal with the poverty issues first.
My solutions include (but are not limited to):
1.) Mandatory National Service;
Every able-bodied male, beginning at the age of sixteen, should be required to keep an automatic rifle and be trained to properly operate the weapon. This Militia service would teach the young men discipline, Nationalism, and respect towards Authority. Their militia service should continue (for the defense of our Nation) until their 55th birthday.
2.) Incentives for mothers to leave the workforce;
Mothers in the workforce is a fundamentally bad idea. The primary duty of a wife and mother is to care for her children and manage the household. As such, it would be greatly beneficial for the State to provide monetary/tax incentives, by whatever means necessary, to encourage mothers to leave behind the workforce and return to their proper place.
3.) Restructuring of the public educational system;
The public education system must be torn down and rebuilt from the ground upward. First and foremost, the primary role of public schools should be to prepare young men for the workforce, and the young women for marriage and motherhood. Secondly, the school must instill discipline, morality, and National pride into every child. Teachers who hate America (or teachers who hate men, for that matter) must be fired and properly replaced. Funding should be dramatically cut, in order to encourage schools to “get back to basics.” Math, Science (including Intelligent Design), Bible, English are the essentials for both sexes. For the young ladies, home ec ought to be an additional requirement for graduation; whereas gun safety would be a prerequisite for the young men. Any further education is the responsibility of parents.
Sheesh RW&B, I hear Carmina Burana playing…
RedW&B: To expand your #1 above, we could call your proposed militia of young people, “Bush Youth.”
#
Pleefer
Posted July 31, 2008 at 7:16 am | Permalink
Sheesh RW&B, I hear Carmina Burana playing…
=========================
Hey, it works for those devil inspired movies. :)
hey rwb.,…do you have air conditioning in your cave? Comments like:
“The primary duty of a wife and mother is to care for her children and manage the household”
demonstrate you are stuck in the dark ages…
Apephis (just for you)
Big change for welfarist Sweden: School choice
By MALIN RISING – 4 days ago
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?
It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.
“I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice,” said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. “You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hDaQaADtPvKsuTDtRw1nJh5cTFAQD925K8800
=]
……….nice there hecky, but this isn’t Sweden. Do tell us all, what is the poverty rate in Sweden?
I’m out of here to work in my classroom. Yes, I’m going in AGAIN to get ready a full week before I have to report.
Here you go Pfeefer, some music to snap your fingers to while reading RWNB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Eya3_IqOQ
Evolution Of Skull And Mandible Shape In Cats
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2008) — In a new study published in the online-open access journal PLoS ONE, Per Christiansen at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, reports the finding that the evolution of skull and mandible shape in sabercats and modern cats were governed by different selective forces, and the two groups evolved very different adaptations to killing.
The cat family comprises some of the most specialised carnivores in the history of mammals, all exclusively eating flesh. The cat family consists of two major sub-groups: the feline cats (including all modern species) and the sabertoothed cats (which are all extinct). Skeletons from the two groups look broadly similar, but their skulls are often remarkably different, and suggest that members of the two groups underwent radically different adaptations to predation during the course of evolution.
More at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080729234258.htm
Thanks! Carl Orff for breakfast!
The NEA Spells Out Its Policies
by Phyllis Schlafly July 30, 2008
The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, DC over the Fourth of July weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as “Gay marriage causes Global Warming only because we are so hot!”, “Hate is not a family value,” “The ‘Christian Right’ is neither,” and “Gay Rights are civil rights.”
The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions which now become the NEA’s official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.
NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a “single-payer health care plan” (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps “to change activities that contribute to global climate change.”
The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans, or public support of any kind to non-public schools. The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language (even though this is supported by more than 80 percent of Americans).
The NEA opposes homeschooling unless kids are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar homeschooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools (even though their parents pay school taxes, too).
The NEA wants many additional (job-creating) services and programs to be provided by public schools such as early childhood education (i.e., baby-sitting for pre-schoolers). NEA resolutions call for “programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight,” and for “mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.”
NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as “the right to reproductive freedom” (i.e., abortion on demand); “comparable worth” (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology rather than the free market); full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women’s Educational Equity Act; and “the use of non-sexist language” (i.e., censoring out all masculine words such as husband and father).
The NEA even urges its affiliates to work for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was declared dead by the U.S. Supreme Court 26 years ago.
The influence of the gay lobby is pervasive in dozens of NEA resolutions adopted by 2008 convention delegates. Diversity is the code word used for pro-gay indoctrination in the classroom.
The NEA’s Diversity resolution makes clear that this means teaching about “sexual orientation” and “gender identification,” words that are repeated in dozens of resolutions. The NEA demands that “diversity-based curricula” even be imposed on preschoolers.
NEA convention delegates were invited to an Open Hearing by the SOGI Committee in Room 149A on July 1. In case you don’t know, SOGI stands for Sexual Orientation Gender Identification.
The NEA urges its members to offer “diverse role models” by the “hiring and promotion of diverse education employees in our public schools.” The NEA puts “domestic partnerships, civil unions, and marriage” on an equal footing.
The NEA wants every child (i.e., regardless of age) to have “direct and confidential access (i.e., without notification to parents) to comprehensive health (i.e., including learning how to use condoms for premarital sex), social, and psychological programs and services.”
The NEA wants public schools to take over the physical and mental care of students through school clinics that provide services, diagnosis, treatment, family-planning counseling, and access to birth control methods “with instruction in their use.” Family planning clinics are called on to “provide intensive counseling.”
The NEA wants all sex education courses, textbooks, curricula, instructional materials and activities to include indoctrination about sexual orientation and gender identification plus warnings about homophobia.
The NEA is very generous with taxpayers’ money spent on illegal aliens. The NEA not only favors amnesty for illegal alien students, but also in-state college tuition and financial aid to illegal alien college students.
The NEA is strong for “multicultural education,” which the resolution makes clear does not mean studying facts about different countries and cultures. It means “the process of incorporating the values” and influencing “behavior” toward the NEA’s version of “the common good,” such as “reducing homophobia.”
Of course, the NEA supports “global education” to teach “interdependency in sharing the world’s resources.” It’s also no surprise that the NEA adamantly opposes any requirement that schools “schedule a moment of silence.”
Will parents be silent about the radical goals of their children’s teachers?
Apophis
Poverty is a mask for the real problem Apo. A breakdown in culture including single parents, and parents who don’t give a turd is the real problem you are after. Government can’t fix that.
Plenty of kids grow up in poverty and still get a good education. I did. It takes good teachers and good parents. There are plenty of good public schools. And there are plenty of really lousy public schools full of teachers who have no stake in their community.
All people want is a choice. And the poor inner city areas are the place most needing and deserving of choice.
Yeah Heckler,
I went through high school with cockroaches climbing in my mouth whilst I slept. I never slept well back then. We stayed well below the “poverty line” all my childhood. I went to college (with no Pell grants, just my loans), now I’m a design engineer with a fine home and a good truck. My kid’s don’t have roaches in their cereal box. And they don’t want for anything they NEED. Anyone who wants to, can get themselves outta crappy lives. Myself, I vowed never to live like that again.
Apophis is the failure and his kind, the kind entrenched in the public school agenda of protecting themselves as more important than helping and teaching kids, are the reason public schools fail in comparison to private schools.
His agenda of self interest makes me sick.
The Queen of Snark on the MSM blackout of John Edwards and his Love Child.
“Which brings up a fascinating legal question: Would it be admissible for Edwards to channel the very love child at issue during such a proceeding? Reminiscent of his performances in medical malpractice cases, he could say: She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you, she’s saying: “John Edwards ain’t my daddy!” ”
http://www.anncoulter.com/
commence hateful name calling….now
Nathaniel,
To refresh your memory - HERE is my ORIGINAL posting from 7/24
“Anon1
Posted July 24, 2008 at 8:50 am | Permalink
Nathaniel,
In response to YOUR response to me from two days ago (sorry, I have been sick in bed with food poisoning for two days so I haven’t been up to responding) - i HAVE requested that ALL posters who want to argue AGW STOP - I believe it was about a week and a half ago.
Besides which, all I asked was that GMC stop goading Chas so that we could have adult conversation on the blog without having to be interrupted by their back and forth screaming and yelling.
I am not the blog conscience. I simply asked GMC to be polite and drop the subject after five days because I was tired of the damn ranting. I am sorry you think that simply because I asked him as an adult to please stop, since he obviously wasn’t getting anywhere and was only succeeding in annoying more people, that somehow that translates into me defending Chas and attacking everyone else. I asked GMC because I realized that he would likely listen, whereas Chas would not. It’s as simple as that. And yes, in your little rant about everyone attacking YOU and defending anyone that you disagree with, you made several direct references to my earlier request for GMC to stop. I merely pointed out that I don’t appreciate being painted with that broad brush that you are wielding, and you managed to miss the entire point of my post yet again, by complaining about why don’t I ask cosmos to stop? It isn’t all about you, first of all, and secondly, I have. I have asked all posters on AGW to stop, including Cosmos, Sol, and others (I believe that was a day your father actually didn’t post) to just agree that they disagree and quit shoving both sides down our throats - which notice HAS NOT HAPPENED - by ANYONE. But that completely had nothing to do with anything that I posted anyways.
Thanks. I can quite clearly see now that if I don’t agree with you 100% I am not welcome to post on this blog.”
HERE is YOUR response to THAT posting:
“Nathaniel
Posted July 24, 2008 at 12:10 pm | Permalink
Anon1,
Where did I ever say you were not welcome to post on this blog?
Most of your post seemed pretty reasonable, but you had to finish it with that?”
PLEASE NOTE: I never said you SAID I was not welcome to post on this blog. In fact, the statement you tried to use yesterday to back up your assertion that I said that
“Although he told me I was going too far by stating that if I disagree with him I am apparently not welcome to post…”
If you READ that sentence, I mean REALLY READ it- that sentence DOES NOT SAY I SAID THAT YOU SAID I WAS NOT WELCOME TO POST HERE. That sentence says that YOU SAID I WENT TO FAR BY SAYING (myself) that I was not welcome to post here. Which is what my original post implied - based on the fact that YOU lambasted me for asking someone else to stop postings which were guaranteed to cause a fight and somehow that was picking on you and your friends and defending other posters. I never once disagreed with your position, nor did I direct a post to you until you brought my post up in conversation basically complaining about it. From that behavior and further personal attack, I inferred that if I immediately did not jump on board what YOU thought was right, I shouldn’t bother to post becuase heaven forbid I should have a differing opinion from you.
BTW - every post I have seen where you have referenced Linda in the last week has been either a) prior to her posting anything on the blog at all or b) pulling her in to a conversation she has had nothing to do with. Whatever your personal vendetta against a person, if you don’t want people to call you on your behavior, maybe you shouldn’t do it. You keep saying you are the better man, yet you don’t act like it. You behave like a high school freshman who isn’t getting enough attention from the girl he likes so he keeps picking on her. I have purposely avoided political conversations on this blog because I see how quickly they degenerate - and you as much as any other poster here (and there are many, and yes, it’s pretty much equally divided on the sides) are as guilty of causing that as anyone else.
Right on Boxlock!
It would be much better for the children and everyone else concerned if bitter, middle aged unfulfilled men found someplace other than the school system to hide while they spewed forth with their daily hate speech.
Apophis is little more than a cowardly middle level union hack and that’s all he’ll ever be.
Here in Wichita it isn’t the teachers, it’s the multiple levels above the teachers who get in their way and make their job more difficult. In fact, we should be doubly thankful our teachers are able to overcome these handicaps to the extent they do!
Remember when Martin Libart who had been in charge of facilities for many years was promoted to interim superintendent when Brooks left for his New Mexico job? Let’s look at a few things to do with that.
1. Martin Libhart had been in charge of facilities for many years. That would be the same facilities which we’re told are crumbling and in ill repair. In fact, we need a big bunch of $350 million to build, repair, upgrade, maintain what wasn’t done under Mr. Libhart’s watch.
2. When this man who didn’t do the job he was charged with was promoted, the school board said it was because he was most familiar with the bond issue AND there were adequate people to handle the educational areas that his experience and qualifications didn’t meet.
So, we don’t really need a top guy ’cause there are adequate people already in place to handle those duties. Seems we only need someone to direct the effort of getting more money from the taxpayers.
3. Multiple layers of administration — some probably qualified, some aren’t, but they all are very expensive. Among these layers are several hundred who are hidden in every budget as teachers. Because they are teachers — certified as such, paid as such. But they don’t have a single teaching requirement! No students. Nary a contribution to the education of our students!
4. And catering to one specific skill set in order to please the masters at the aircraft plants our school board and administration want to train more aircraft workers with more of our money! It isn’t enough that we pay big county taxes for a new WATC to train workers for the aircraft plants, now they want our public schools to do more of the same with more of our tax dollars.
Don’t be fooled by the words technical education — that isn’t what the school leadership is planning to provide. They are planning to appease the masters of aircraft and turn out students who are only suitable for employment in one industry. That’s not (or shouldn’t be!) the goal of public schools.
And, did you pay careful enough attention to hear that the items taken out of the bond issue proposal — the swimming pools, the tracks and tennis courts, etc. — would be able to go ahead because they would have adequate money to do those projects as soon as everything else was paid with bond issue proceeds? They plan to have their cake and eat it too! And you know who suffers? Our children. Taxpayers. Neither our children nor taxpayers get value.
Linda,
You need to study the national agenda of the NEA and try to figure out how any of their agenda items would benefit the educational goals and achievement of our children.
Government schools. Union hacks. Bitter middle aged men like Apophis getting up every day and working toward his own self centered goals.
The NEA exists to protect substandard government employees like Apophis, children be damned.
Where is John Edwards?
I thought JE would come swinging (or suing) about baby mama allegations.
Sleeping around with a dying wife? I’ll bet this will get the woman vote.
The NEA supports liberal politicians that send their kids to private schools while trapping inner city children in the travesty known as ‘public education’.
Hacks like Apophis are the problem.
jjj,
Good hair, a little quiver in the lip on demand, being able to convince them he cares and to top it all off, proving that he is a ‘player’!
Everything needed to corner the liberal democrat woman vote!
I guess his ‘two Americas’ is really true! east coast, wife and family. . . west coast mistress and bastard love child.
. . .BUT, BUT, BUT, its only sex, everyone lies about it, it’s his private life. . . .
HEHEHEHEHE
As a former member of the NEA I am ashamed of them. The NEA protects child molesters against the word of upstanding teachers, believe me I know. Many members do send their own kids to private school, I do.
With all of Edward’s obvious resume enhancers, how did we get stuck with a candidate that only has a three point jumper for qualification to be president?
Good for you jjj!
It is amazing how many teachers opt out o membership in the NEA when they have a choice. It’s also amazing how many teachers sacrifice and struggle to enter their children in private schools.
That should be a clue as to the failure of the NEA and the public school system.
A snip about the fundy agenda
http://www.uuworld.org/2004/01/feature2.html
From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.
They identified five characteristics shared by virtually all fundamentalisms. The fundamentalists’ agenda starts with insistence that their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God—and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right—must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini’s Iran, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.
The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and it’s vulgarly simple: Men are on top. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and homemakers.
A third item follows from the others. (Indeed each part of the fundamentalist agenda is necessarily interlocked, and needs every other part to survive.) Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this picture and these rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, fundamentalists must control education by controlling textbooks and teaching styles, deciding what may and may not be taught.
“With all of Edward’s obvious resume enhancers, how did we get stuck with a candidate that only has a three point jumper for qualification to be president?”
I don’t know, why did Republicans vote twice for a mentally retarded, dry drunk with a string of failed businesses who only got to his position thanks to affirmative action because he’s a Bush and inherited his money?
My Mom taught middles school math for 26 years. She retired in the early 80’s and pursued a different career. The problems she faced were the kids and the parents.
The parent’s refused to accept that Little Johnny was a butt-hole and lazy. All control was removed from the teachers by the administration for fear of litigation.
Parents are different than they used to be. Education is not the pillar of family life it once was. Government can’t fix that. Laws can’t fix that. Only people can. Kick your neighbor/family member/friends in the pants if they don’t hold education supreme in their kid’s life.
Unions are for the weak and lazy. Those who can not fight their own fights. When they start issuing political agendas, their time has passed. Political agendas have no place in the leadership of school systems.
“I don’t know, why did Republicans vote twice for a mentally retarded, dry drunk with a string of failed businesses who only got to his position thanks to affirmative action because he’s a Bush and inherited his money?”
Obvoius answr, MP!
The other choices were Algore, only qualification to be president was that he was a butt-boy for Clinton for eight years and Lurch, only qualification for president was. . . hell, I don’t know, Algore didn’t want it any more?
A BABY DADDY FOR BOTH AMERICAS
July 30, 2008
The mainstream media really seem to imagine they can prevent Americans from knowing information by refusing to mention it in newspapers or on TV.
For those few Americans without an Internet connection and to whom I have not faxed the National Enquirer stories: Evidence is accumulating that John Edwards is right — there really are “two Americas.” There’s one where men cheat on their cancer-stricken wives and one where men do not cheat on their cancer-stricken wives.
To put it another way, it would appear that ambulances aren’t the only things John Edwards has been chasing lately.
Last year, the National Enquirer broke the story about New-Age divorcee Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, telling friends she was having an affair with Edwards and that she was pregnant with his “love child.”
Who knew that “my father was a mill worker” could be such a great pickup line? In his defense, Edwards had to do something to kill time between giving $50,000 speeches on poverty.
I guess the Enquirer is lucky Edwards isn’t a trial lawyer! A sleazy carnival sideshow trial lawyer wouldn’t even need to start channeling unborn children before a jury — as Edwards did in the junk-science cases that made him a multimillionaire — to win a defamation case if these charges are false. The “love child” allegation could be easily disproved by DNA testing.
Which brings up a fascinating legal question: Would it be admissible for Edwards to channel the very love child at issue during such a proceeding? Reminiscent of his performances in medical malpractice cases, he could say: She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now — I didn’t plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you, she’s saying: “John Edwards ain’t my daddy!”
When the National Enquirer story first broke last year, the Edwards campaign denied that Edwards was the father, pawning the affair off on an apparently very loyal Edwards campaign official, Andrew Young. Like Edwards, Young was married with children, but also like Edwards, Young is a Democrat, so it was possible.
Except that, not only has Young’s wife not left him, but she was perfectly copacetic with her husband’s mistress moving into their gated community for the duration of her pregnancy, and even joining her, Andrew and the kids for dinner.
Back on Earth, that doesn’t happen. The Edwards campaign better start looking at its backup plan of claiming Nathan Lane is the father.
It also didn’t smack of innocence that the Edwards campaign stripped Hunter’s videos from the Edwards Web site when the story broke.
Soon after Edwards met Hunter in a bar in New York, the Edwards campaign began paying her more than $100,000 to make “hip” videos of him for the campaign Web site. Unfortunately, Edwards’ hair stylists ate up most of the budget.
As Herculean a task as it would be to make John Edwards look hip, the videos can’t be worse for the campaign than the Edwards staffer who said of the Catholic church’s position on birth control: “What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?” So why did they take down Hunter’s videos?
With the MSM still pretending the Internet doesn’t exist, last week the Enquirer staked out the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles after receiving a tip that Edwards would be going there to visit Hunter and the love child, who reportedly has her mother’s eyes and her father’s dramatic flair in front of a jury.
According to the Enquirer, Edwards entered Hunter’s hotel room around 9:45 p.m. and left at 2:40 in the morning. Seeing reporters as he left Hunter’s room, Edwards sprinted to a hotel bathroom and blockaded himself in until hotel security came to rescue him. Even more suspicious, while Edwards was barricaded in the bathroom, no one reported hearing sounds of a blow dryer.
When asked about the Enquirer story at a press conference a few days later, Edwards looked as flustered as Rep. Robert Wexler did after being asked if he really lives with his mother-in-law in Florida while running for office in that district.
First Edwards pretended to be unfamiliar with the story, a preposterous pose even if the story were false. Then Edwards dropped eye contact and said: “That’s tabloid trash. They’re full of lies. I’m here to talk about helping people.” He couldn’t have looked more guilty if he had broken into a cold sweat and lit a cigarette. Britney Spears has responded more credibly to questions about tabloid stories.
Meanwhile, the only way consumers of the old media might ascertain that Edwards is embroiled in some sort of scandal is that, starting last Thursday, his name was summarily dropped from lists of possible vice presidential candidates.
If only Republican Larry Craig had been in the bathroom, the MSM might have covered it.
COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
“The other choices were Algore, only qualification to be president was that he was a butt-boy for Clinton for eight years and Lurch, only qualification for president was. . . hell, I don’t know, Algore didn’t want it any more?”
Oh, the guy who was VP for the President who lead us through numerous years of prosperity where our economy had a surplus, great job growth, low unemployment, etc.? The same Gore who had years of experience in the House and Senate since 1977 and was a Harvard graduate?
Yeah, can’t have an intelligent guy with years of experience in office. Nah, elect a coke addled frat boy who likes to pretend he’s a rancher by clearing brush on his estate (Gore actually worked as a cattle rancher and tobacco farmer).
Well, your hero blew that surplus and increased the national debt from 5 trillion to 9 trillion and leaves his last year with a nearly $800 billion budget deficit.
Good pick there Hank.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=21703
The Patriot Pastors’ Electoral War Against the
‘Hordes of Hell’
Texas: “Patriot Pastors” for Perry
While all eyes are on Ohio and Blackwell’s “Patriot Pastors”-infused governor’s race, a similar story is unfolding in Texas, a state that is “seeing an evolution in the religious right’s tactics. Today more and more conservative pastors are using their pulpits to press a hard-right political agenda,” as the Texas Freedom Network reports.[26]
Texas is home to a pioneer of pulpit-based politics, Rick Scarborough, the former minister of First Baptist Church in Pearland and a long-time ally of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Scarborough’s efforts to “mobilize” pastors in politics go back at least as far as 1996, when he ran an ultraconservative-insurgency campaign for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. (He lost.) In his book that year, Enough Is Enough, Scarborough described his success in creating a local political machine around his church, strongly urging his congregants to run for office at all levels: “At this writing, three members of our church serve on the city council. . . Four of our members serve on the school board. The city manager is a member of our church. The police chief is a member of our church. The assistant district attorney of Brazoria County is a member of our church. . .”[27]
And in 2000, his political organization Vision America put together a conference of Religious Right heavyweights to “figure out how to compensate for the waning influence of the Christian Coalition in electoral politics,” as the National Journal reported. The group’s director, a Christian Coalition veteran, described the difference between the organizations as a new emphasis on mobilizing pastors to lead their congregations to the polls by concentrating on core social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and pornography.[28]
By 2004, Scarborough created his own network of “Patriot Pastors” to lead evangelicals to the polls for the 2004 election, and expanded it to at least 5,000 by the time Texas voters ratified a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2005. “One of my goals in life is to give the Republican Party courage,” he told The Washington Post during the debate over the “nuclear option” to push through Bush’s extremist judicial nominees.[29] At the same time, Scarborough’s Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration worked in Washington to push Bush’s judicial nominees, organizing a conference timed around the death of Terri Schiavo at which DeLay urged the impeachment of judges, and other speakers suggested execution.[30]
“For it seems to me that the only moral collapse comparable to what is happening in America today that has ever taken place is that which occurred in Germany in the 1920s through the 1940s.”
— Rev. Laurence White,
Texas Restoration Project
Burglary suspect shot while choking homeowner
http://www.thesuntimes.com/articles/2008/07/30/news/news01.txt
Chris Hooten, 34, of Greers Ferry, is recovering from a gunshot wound to his abdomen after a scuffle around 10:15 p.m. Friday. He reportedly entered a home without permission, fought and choked the homeowner, and was shot in the process.
Just as we suspected, the adjustments are now coming out and showing a different story than the one bush has tried to keep from being exposed. He will still work hard to keep the full impact from being known until he gets out of Dodge.
——–
U.S. Recession May Have Begun in Last Quarter of 2007
The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axADxPkA6IA8&refer=home
Homeowner Guns Down MWC Burglary Suspect
http://www.koco.com/news/16914230/detail.html
MIDWEST CITY, Okla. — Authorities said a homeowner shot and killed a burglary suspect after a confrontation in a rural Midwest City neighborhood.
Police: Lowhill man chases ‘exterminators’ with knife, gun
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-lowhillincident0729-cn,0,1250041.story
A 78-year-old man used a kitchen knife and a shotgun to chase three men posing as exterminators from his Lowhill Township home, according to police.
But no one needs to be concerned about the haves and the have mores. bush has taken care of them!
—–
Exxon posts record $11.68 billion profit
Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.
That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second.
That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/31/news/companies/exxon_profits/?postversion=2008073109
Ah yes, those evil companies must be dealt with for being so successful!
God loves liberals, the Bible says so.
“The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speak right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.” (Isaiah 32:5-8 KJV)
Good pick there Hank.
Thanks, MP!
Interesting that you bring the Goracle’s grades into the discussion. In almost every comparison of grades and intelligence the ‘Decider’ wins!
Let’s see, the Goracle lost, the Lurch lost and what did the dems learn?
They are about to nominate a man with an ego larger than lurch’s and a brain smaller than the goracle!
Good luck with that pick!
“God loves liberals, the Bible says so.”
God loves us all, MP. Even you.
“They are about to nominate a man with an ego larger than lurch’s and a brain smaller than the goracle!”
You have something against Harvard grads? Never mind that McCain finished near the bottom of his class. Perhaps it’s just your racism showing up again.
“God loves us all, MP. Even you.”
Nope, he loves liberals, you aren’t a liberal and the Bible says you are vile and wicked. Don’t let your ego and small brain get in the way of the truth of the Bible.
Maggotpunk,
God “loves” everyone. You don’t need to try to find a verse in the Bible to cherry pick to try and prove that.
MAggotpunk,
Where do you get any of that garbage from that verse?
“Where do you get any of that garbage from that verse?”
The words come from the Bible and the Bible says that fools like you will blaspheme against God and commit vile acts. You have proven that again. The Bible says you should repent and strive to do liberal things because being liberal is being noble. However, you are wicked and probably grounded forever in your wicked, conservative ways because you hate God and the truth of the Bible.
Maggotpunk,
No where did that verse call me a fool nor anything else you just said.
Anybody read Values Boy today? I couldn’t. I had to go to the bathroom to vomit after I read the headline and the first graf.
Barf.
Dennis
“No where did that verse call me a fool nor anything else you just said.”
Vile and fool are interchangeable in the Bible if you knew anything about the Bible. It’s too bad you’ve hardened your heart against God and keep yourself from studying it. Well, I could listen to your blasphemy and God hatred all day but I have liberal (interchangeable with noble) things to do. Just do the world a favor and keep you, and your false god Satan’s, wicked deeds to yourself. Think of the children you could be condemning with your conservative notions.
I did! I read every word. I hadn’t known he was so funny before today’s cheer leading. My tummy ached from laughing. He may be in the wrong career. Maybe he is fishing for a job doing PR for his idol, Rush. Sure did a good job of mocking his usual stance of “values.” Is everyone into satire nowadays?
Maggotpunk,
Since we are talking about the words, this is how that first sentence reads:
“No longer shall the fool be called noble or the rogue called generous.”
I realize you are simply being ignorant on purpose so that you can act like this here, but that doesn’t change what the verse says and means.
Sorry. Have fun playing your little game, but that is all it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcScBdnEhY
hehehe,
I know what you did last night
This SWAT team BS has got to stop…
Police Raid Berwyn Heights Mayor’s Home, Kill His 2 Dogs
Calvo said he came home early from work Tuesday. While walking the dogs, Calvo said, he noticed several black sport-utility vehicles and a woman parked in a car down the street.
“I figured someone was having a party,” he recalled.
It was the police. They were watching, waiting for someone to bring the package into the house.
As Calvo returned to the house, he said, he spotted the large package that his mother-in-law had told a deliveryman to leave on the porch. He placed it on a buffet table near the front door and went upstairs to change.
“I brought it inside because I figured it was something we’d gotten for the garden,” he said.
Moments later, just after he had undressed, Calvo said, he heard his mother-in-law scream that someone was coming toward the house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw officers in SWAT gear running across the lawn.
“I heard a loud crash and then ‘bang, bang, bang,’ ” he said, recalling the sounds of the police shooting the dogs. “I hit the floor.”
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.
I understand they have a job to do, but it didn’t have to go like that,” Calvo said. He said the police could have knocked on his door and asked him about the package. “I’ve never done drugs in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that I am so adamantly opposed to them.”
Police said yesterday that, when they seized the package during the raid, it was unopened.
Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy said county police and the Sheriff’s Office had not notified his department of the raid. He said town police could have conducted the search without a SWAT team.
“You can’t tell me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn’t have been able to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his confidence and enter the residence,” Murphy said. “It would not have been a necessity to shoot and kill this man’s dogs.”
This exhibit goes to the mindset of the people surrounding Obama.
http://bp0.blogger.com/_qwNGaeCRkvY/SIlC-v5L4hI/AAAAAAAAAkY/sfUPsSkSCXs/s1600-h/leninobama.jpg
More Communist style propoganda.
Compare the two.
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w11/bredae/WEIRD%20STUFF/progress-poster-1.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w11/bredae/WEIRD%20STUFF/ccp01.jpg
G-Dave - we don’t agree on much, but we agree on that. Often, when police have these toys, they feel the need to use them - too often, and too aggressively. There is a time and place for the SWAT team, but using them to execute routine warrants is snot the case.
We don’t know what info the cops had here, of course, which may have caused them to believe a SWAT entrance was justified. Maybe, if we knew that, it was justified (though a little cooperation with the local jurisdiction would have gone a long way, I bet). There may be a lot more to this story, in the end.
But there is not doubt, to me at least, that the excessive use of SWAT tactics by police is a problem. It needs to be dialed down.
Personally, I don’t like police, on a routine basis, being dressed in anything like “paramilitary” dress, or carrying excessive weaponry. I want police to be part of the communities they serve, and the more militarized the police become, the more there is an “us vs. them” mindset that takes over not only in the public, but in the police as well. That mindset serves no one well.
Well said, GMC70, well said.
VT??? Is that you ?????
Yes, Sol, ’tis I.
Outstanding. Welcome back. Hope you and yours are well.
Sol, thanks. My hiatus from here has been the direct result of being very busy, both professionally and personally, including going to Maine in May for our younger daughter’s graduation from college.
I second that! Welcome back VT!
I remember in Topeka a few years ago the police thought it would be cool to do a no knock raid dressed in black camo, and the homeowner put a couple rounds into the skull of one of the cops, and got aquitted on self defense grounds. GMC didnt the BC sheriff a couple of weeks ago call out the swat for a guy who did nothing other than have a gun in his home?
Congrats to your daughter as well. Good on her!
Yeah, that’s it - the basis of World Socialist Domination is Graphics Arts Choices….
Twits galore.
VT - welcome back.
Hank - check this out:
http://www.kansas.com/news/story/479300.html
gmc - g-dave - well said both.
Pretty neat Ben!
How’s your new addition doing? Is he still prospecting in the back yard?
VT! Welcome back! I wish I could tell you we are a well-behaved, well-adjusted, and happy community, but alas, it wasn’t before, and it still isn’t. Each side still tries to pigeonhole and tar the other. Labeling and nasty names, on both sides, reign supreme, with each side justifying what they do by charging “oh yea, what about . . . ”
‘Tis sad.
Glad to have another member of the bar back here to bounce ideas off of. Of course, you may become completely disgusted, and wish you had stayed away . . .
On a lighter note,
My garden is next to the sea wall in the corner of my yard, next to the lake. Yesterday I found huge cucumber growing down the sea wall hidden from view when I was in the garden.
Three pounds, five ounces! Today I found another one, not as big, two pounds nine ounces!
Chilled cucumber soup anyone?
Nathaniel
Posted July 31, 2008 at 10:20 am | Permalink
Maggotpunk,
God “loves” everyone. You don’t need to try to find a verse in the Bible to cherry pick to try and prove that.
*****
Right, MP.
According to Nathan, God loves everyone so much, He will consign you to hell in everlasting damnation if you don’t accept Christ as your personal savior.
An odd kind of love, isn’t it?
Sounds closer to hate to me.
Sammy is happy as can be. Eating more, not digging since I blocked that spot. Jumps about 6-8 feet when he launches off the deck. Also climbs the wood pile to look over the fence. Next thing I know he will be climbing the fence.
Wow, for once I actually agree with Ann Coulter.
I think it is the right of the media to investigate this story. Edwards should have to answer questions about it.
And if you agree he should, like Coulter and the CONs do, then Bush should have answer questions on
1. did he ever use cocaine?
2. did he allow people to rot in prison as Governor for crimes that he himself committed (like drug use)?
3. did he get his unmarried girlfriend pregnant and then help her get an abortion in Texas when it was illegal?
4. why did he not report his stock selling on insider-information when he worked for Harkin Energy and made a quick 80,000 dollars?
5. why did he lie about the US “finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” when his own security anaylists were telling him the “mobile labs” were not for WMD?
6. how can he justify stopping the recount in Florida in which legal ballots were never counted?
7. who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and why weren’t they fired as the President vowed?
*****
That’s just a short list.
Ann Coulter’s right. The media not only won’t investigate, they won’t even ask the man questions about these important matters.
Capn
Move On.
Heck…you should know by now that the only things capn ‘moves on’ about are things like Clinton/Monica; Whitewater; perjury under oath; etc., etc., etc. Only things like that are ‘old news’ according to capn.
Cons,
Think about this,
We don’t know how to mind our own buisness, ‘cuz the world has to be just like us
Steppenwolf circa 1970
If the world really offered to those who work hard opportunity to advance like it used to, we wouldn’t have these problems.
What the kids are growing up seeing is their good parents working their tail ends off and can’t get ahead. And then they see their parent’s boss treat the parents like dogcrap and drive away in a Mercedes.
Republican values create more and more problems and they like to blame liberals, but if their policies worked, they would have worked by now. They do not work for anyone but themselves. Which is why in the end, we move forward with liberal policies.
I think RW&B would feel right at home in Afghanistan. I hope to GOD he’s single with no children.
Grateful Dave…you obviously know not about the relationship between city officials and the police departments. There is NO WAY I would trust a police department to investigate their own city officials. No way. You can’t even get them to give them a traffic ticket here. I even watched the son of a City Attorney get into his car and drive off, obviously drunk as a skunk, right in front of a police officer. I asked the officer why he did nothing….and he said there was NO WAY he’d open that can of worms.
The worst part is..the kid knew it too. He walked right up to that officer and smiled before driving off.
Another quote from the past
America,where are you now? Don’t you care about your sons and daughters(the ones dying in Iraq for shrubs war
Steppenwolf (John Kay) a man who escaped from E Berlin to freedom
Gotta love fundies:
MOBILE, Ala. - A judge denied bond Thursday for a part-time evangelist charged with murder in the death of his wife, a mother of eight whose body was kept in a freezer for at least three years.
ADVERTISEMENT
Arletha Hopkins, 36, apparently was killed in 2004, but the cause of death remains under investigation, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich said.
Anthony Hopkins, 37, was returned to jail after a brief court appearance. Hopkins did not speak during the hearing and his trial attorney will be appointed later.
The father of the six youngest children, Hopkins also is charged with rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest in a related case involving a female relative who is pregnant with his baby, authorities said. Her disclosure of that sexual abuse led police to find the body in the freezer Monday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_re_us/body_in_freezer
P-mom:
This has any relationship to his “fundie” status, how, exactly? He probably wears blue jeans, too, or “wife-beater” undershirts. Or maybe that the trash was picked up on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays. Or that she pissed him off on a full moon. Or perhaps that he drove a Ford, rather than a Chevy. Any, or all, of those imagined factors is just as likely.
Or, more likely, you have no idea about any causal relationship at all. What a surprise.
Didn’t think any of the sheeple would respond
Truhh,Aint’t it a bitch? Songs from 30 yrs ago sill ring tru. What the hell is wrong with us?
Sorry,washed my hands and cant do a thing with them
Political_mama,
Don’t worry, the guy accepted Jesus into his life and will be going to heaven.
Cheney wanted to dress SEALS up as Iranians and shoot at our own boats. This is whom we are dealing with, the REAL terrorists.
“Porter said he first met Anthony Hopkins in 1998. Like many others in their church community he was convinced Hopkins was a man of God, with a special gift of prophecy.
“We respected him, because he was one that the scripture calls a prophet. He was one that things he spoke, it came to past.”"
http://www.myfoxgulfcoast.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7100265&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
According to the search warrant, a sexual affair involving Anthony Hopkins and one of his eight children had been going on for eight years. In the warrant, one of Hopkins’ daughters says on or around November 4, 2004, her mother, Arletha Hopkins, caught her dad sexually abusing her in a bathroom at their home. The daughter says that lead to an argument, and the next morning her father asked her to help hide her mom’s body in a freezer.
http://www.wkrg.com/investigates/article/shocking_new_details_in_freezer_murder/16412/
A prophet of God no less raping his child and murdering his wife. Oh well, we are supposed to respect his religious beliefs and allow his to rape and murder since he’s a prophet of god and the Bible says rape and murder is acceptable. If you godless heathens had morals, and understood that rape and murder are godly, moral acts, then you wouldn’t be complaining.
“1. did he [G.W. Bush] ever use cocaine?”
Scott McClellen says in his book that Bush claimed during the 2000 campaign that he did not remember.
As Maggotpunk well knows, anyone can call themselves a Christian. Doesn’t make it so. But this guy could have been. What is not said is that the described guy could not have been more in Satan’s hands. (Yes, I believe that Satan is real.)
It is not all that uncommon for Satan to focus extraordinary efforts on bringing down someone who is making progress for God’s Kingdom. I don’t know whether that is the case in this situation. But that is why the Bible’s instructs us to guard our minds and our thought life.
Is that how Satan works Maggie?
All I can say is that this Anthony Hopkis character sure had an unfortunate name - keeping his wife in the refrig and all - seems all to Hannibal Lector like to me… :)
LOL thats right Steven — it sure does!!
From Revelation 22:
10 And he said unto me, “Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.
11 He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”
12 “And behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man according as his work shall be.
According to this early First Century writing, it was not necessary for any to change what they already were, for the End was coming soon….
AND, flying in the face of Paul’s writings on Grace, this writer believed that one’s actions either saved, or damned them…
Perhaps that is one reason Luther argued against including Revelation in the Books of the Bible… Oh, would that Luther would have won his argument!!
…and not by works lest any man could boast.
A Reno County, KS court found Sarah Farley, now 17, guilty on two counts of engaging in sexual activity before age 16, and dismissed a third count. The crimes resulted in a concealed pregnancy and the birth of a girl, Baby Jane, whose tiny body was later found abandoned and dead in a backyard. Officials have no proof that Baby Jane was born alive, just that she was never treated with care, respect, or human dignity.
- - -
The big spenders in the Sedgwick County primary are the district judge candidates, as it should be, reflecting their importance, or notoriety, in the pending criminal justice to be meted out to the Kansas abortion industry.
- - -
“I felt that the abortion was like being raped again. Only this time, it was much worse because I had consented to the assault.”
. . . Nicole Cooley, who was raped by a trusted friend as a young military officer, author of “Into the Light: Rape, Abortion and the Truth that Set Me Free”
- - -
“The state will not cover life-prolonging treatment unless there is a better than a 5% chance the patient will live for 5 or more years.”
. . . from letters sent from the Oregon government-managed health plan to terminal patients, offering to pay for assisted suicide instead of treatment
[This will give you an idea of how Democrats intend to save money in implementing their plans for socialized medicine.]
Oh come on Chas. We all know that the council of Nicea didn’t tell christians anything that they didn’t allready know. They all somehow knew what was the Bible and what wasn’t. They all somehow knew was Christianity was supposed to be and what it wasn’t supposed to be.
1. Forget the fact that the literacy rate was under 12%.
2. Forget the fact that there were several sects of Christianity at the time: Appollinarians, Gnostics, Helenistics etc.
And don’t go giving us none of that Aramaic bull. Everyone knows that Jesus spoke GREEK. You gotta understand the Greek if you want to know what the Bible means.
You’re one of those “Amateur Bible Readers” aint ya Chas?
I wanted to make sure I posted it before RNB did.
LOL VET… Got that out of your system now??
Nice try… Jesus spoke Aramaic… Council of Nicea didnt argue the Canon that much… not nearly as much aas they argued about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father AND the Son (still not accepted by Orthodoxy)… and other matters…
Luther DID however, argue that Revelation and James should be removed from the list of New Testament “Scripture” and instead be included as Addendums following the Letter of Jude.
Now, maybe we can get somewhere and find out who did what. ;-)
———
Ruling: White House Aides Not Immune From Congressional Subpoenas
A federal court ruled today that top White House aides are not immune from congressional subpoenas, a decision that is likely to reignite the investigation into politicization at the Justice Department.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5489519&page=1
Good post LLTVT.
But the most important thing to remember is that four main religions are engaged in a holy war against Christianity. The number one religion, The Abortion Charismatics.The abortion religion in truth has as its foundation the worshipping of anti-submission to men. These death Stalinists use accusations of oppression as their guardian while marching on, putting the sword to the enemy, the trespassing fetus. Conversly, The Bible advises us to choose life and states that those who side with death are with the devil.
Religion number two, The Orthodox Homosexuals. The homosexual hit squad, they worship immoral sex and preach its acceptance with a formidable vigger. The religion of orgasms, just as long as you partake with someone of the same gender.
Religion number three, The Pentecostal Environmentalists. They worship myths and have as their god mother nature. This includes the global warming cash cow. They worship animals, the same animals God instructed us to subdue in Genesis. They worship the earth, the same earth God advises us in the Bible not to love due to the fact that it is fallen and ruled by Satan.
And the forth religion, The United Church of Envy. The religion of envy has as its decree welfare, social programs of all kinds, and higher taxes. It wishes to crucify anyone who is successful. The wealth of others is condemned. They fiercely seek conversion, not conversion of souls…conversion of other people?s money - to themselves. This faction is represented by Poverty Pastors from all status levels in society.
The Mega Church of Liberalism houses all these religions. They are extremely tolerant of any religion so long as its not that of the true God. Their enemy is not Satan as in Christianity, but their common enemy is in fact Christ. Hence the unity among the various religions.There strategy is to incrementally replace Christianity with their false gods and religions of idolatry. At the same time they are attempting to diminish the credibility of God of the Bible and of Christianity.
I don’t know which is the funnier joke - LLTVET or RRNB. Thing is; while I know VET is being sarcastic I suspect that RWNB is serious!
All right RNB. Let’s grab our guns and go to the Unitarian Church here in Wichita. They allow them heathen, liberal, wiccan, druid, buddhist, types to take communion.
I am kidding of course.
Linda:
Two things: first, the ruling will surely be appealed.
Second: The subpoenas “run out” at the end of the Congressional session, likely November.
The second thing will make the first thing moot.
According to new statistics released today from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), premature babies accounted for a growing proportion of infant deaths. When linked with previous studies that have shown that abortion increases a woman’s chance of having a baby prematurely, the conclusion is that women who have had abortions are more likely to bear children who die as infants or suffer from severe health issues.
Well, DUHHH, over 2 decades of studies have proved that abortion is a major risk factor for later premature birth, driving up the number of annual premature births as more and more women of childbearing age have been scarred by abortionist quacks.
More than a half million babies are born premature (less than 37 weeks gestation) each year and those who survive face the risk of life long health consequences, such as breathing and feeding problems, cerebral palsy, and learning problems. Mortality rates for infants born even a few weeks early, or “late preterm” (between 34 weeks of gestation) were three times those for full-term infants.
One third of very preterm births (before 32 weeks) are caused by the mother’s prior abortion.
The black race, targeted by the abortion industry for population reduction, has suffered an abortion rate and consequently a premature birth rate 3 times higher.
See news page
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08073009.html
White House Aides Can Be Subpoenaed
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s top advisers cannot ignore subpoenas issued by Congress, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a case that involves the firings of several United States attorneys but has much wider constitutional implications for all three branches of government.
“The executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled Congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law,” Judge John D. Bates ruled in United States District Court here.
“Hey, George! WTF! I thought you said we were above the law!!”
Ummm VET, Unitarians dont do “communion” as most of us know it…
Well, in that case Chas. I will just go over there and colecock (SP?) one of them.
OK boys and girls…
Can you say: “Metal Detectors” ???
The thought occurs to me that metal detectors at the entrances to buildings, and schools, and other places, would keep out unwanted guns from ALL sources….
Compared to the cost of human life, rather inexpensive…
I don’t believe your anti-choice source’s conclusions…..
“Nearly 50 percent of all premature births have no known cause.
While the underlying cause(s) of preterm birth are not well known, the 3 known risk factors for preterm labor most consistently identified by experts are:
Multifetal pregnancy (e.g., twins, triplets);
A woman’s past history of preterm delivery;
Some uterine and/or cervical abnormalities.
Other possible risk factors may include:
High blood pressure, diabetes, clotting disorders, obesity, or other chronic health problems in the mother;
Certain infections during pregnancy;
Cigarette smoking, alcohol use, or illicit drug use during pregnancy.”
http://www.pregnancy.org/article.php?sid=1070
And the racial targeting!! What an outrageous lie. How can you live with yourself lying like that?
How about more and better funding for prenatal health care, instead of trying to force women into motherhood against their will…
A whole load of stupid gets dumped in here….
That might work VET LOL
And there were those who tried to imply that the radical “fringe” folks dont post on the Blog???
http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2008/07/open-thread-731-2/#comment-393463
Hmmmmmmmmm…. Thats about as Racist as it gets…
Another du fuss who won’t recognize a brother Christian in Senator Obama.
Lies Lies Lies Lies… Keep it up.
“God made the races and ordained some to take backseats to others”
Theocrat? Hell, You are a lying red-neck racist….
It’s “take the Lord’s name in ‘VAIN’” A vein is what you open in a warm tub when you realize what a terrible, awful, hurtful person you are..
On behalf of the above poster, I apologize for his the racist comments. He represents a small dying part of the community.
http://www.reproductivemedicine.com/toc/auto_abstract.php?id=21863
Although there was a statistically significant decreased incidence of gestational hypertension in pregnancies in women with a previous history of abortion (4.9%) as compared to women without such a history (5.6%) (aOR: .85 [95% CI: .77-.93], p<0.05), 2, 3 or more abortions were not associated with a decreased risk of gestational hypertension, calling into question the clinical significance of the effect of abortion.
This is rare…I agree with BOTH Chas and DavidB.. rwnb is a racist moron. He wraps his racism in some weird biblical reference to legitimize them, which makes it even more bizarre.
The idea that this sickness is satire passed some time ago…he is the type of nut that would hurt other people in ‘the name of religion’….