"He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." Benjamin Franklin
The preeminent internet publisher of literature, reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge.H/T to Amy Ridenour.
This piece is about the recent revision of the obesity problem in the country. The CDC revised its figures about deaths caused by obesity, but it's not just the CDC who uses this effective tactic. Check out Luik's piece and ask yourself what other interest groups use the same method of operation.In Washington the search for truth is a creative process. First, you create a premise. Next you create a statistic to back it up. Then you create an audience by repeating it over and over again, until the media pick it up. That's when you know that you've done it.
Done what?"
Created a fact!
Yesterday's NPR apology stated: "We have a correction [that] concerns a conversation we aired on April 5 about denunciations of the judiciary by certain conservatives in the wake of the Terry Schiavo case. After noting that a U.S. senator had explicitly linked violence against judges to judicial activism, we then turned to a critique of a book by Mark Levin, called Men in Black. We want to make clear that Mr. Levin's book does not discuss either violence against judges or the Terry Schiavo case, and we regret any error or confusion that resulted from our story that day."
To which Levin responded:
"While I accept NPR's apology and correction, its broadcast was illustrative of a smear campaign launched by the Left to try to silence my criticism of judicial activism. I continue to challenge those who support government by judiciary to debate this issue on the merits."
The radio-talkcrocy is the medium which preceded and paved the way for the freewheeling internet and blogosphere."Radio-talkcrocy"...I think it works!
The radio-talkcrocy, although made up of countless conservative talk shows, is a virtual synonym for talk radio's godfather, Rush Limbaugh.
'Air America' was never able to achieve radio-talkcrocy status.
You know I hate Drama Kings or Queens, but I am asking for your prayers today and for the foreseeable future. On Friday afternoon, I learned that I have joined the ever-growing group of American women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. As so many breast cancer patients will tell you, it all came as a total shock. I am blessed to be surrounded by people who love me--my family, a wonderful fiance (if he thinks he's going to get out of marrying me because of this little blib, he's sadly mistaken!), my friends, and my church. I am absolutely blown away by how helpful and kind everyone has been--including total strangers who have experienced the same rollercoaster of emotions. The sisterhood of breast cancer survivors is inspiring. I am truly blessed. On Tuesday I will have an operation and within a few days will know more about the future. I am hopeful for a bright future and a "normal" life (well, scratch the "normal" part). Anyway, people have gone through much worse, and I know I'll obliterate this. I am thanking you in advance for your prayers. You are my family. And remember, I'll be back sooner than you think.One of the obvious perks of being a popular national figure is the vast support available from those who are eager to offer their thoughts and comforting condolences and prayers. To be sure, when battling a life threatening disease, like cancer, the more support one can garner, the easier that battle is going to be.
THE POWER OF PRAYER AND LAURA UPDATE: Laura's breast cancer surgery yesterday "couldn't have gone better," in the words of her surgeon Dr. Katherine Alley. Initial sentinel node testing done during surgery showed no signs of cancer involvement in the lymph nodes, and we all hope that this good news is confirmed by more in-depth tissue testing done over the next 48 hours. "The outpouring of love and concern coast-to-coast in prayer, emails, telephone calls has left me feeling more blessed than I can possibly convey," said Laura Thursday morning from home. "I really don't know what I did to deserve such kindness but I will gladly wrap myself in it," she chuckled. "It's weird but getting cancer has made me feel more blessed than I ever felt before, and I will do everything I can to return the generosity 100-fold when I am feeling a bit better." According to Laura and her friends who were there throughout, the entire staff at the Surburban Hospital Outpatient Medical Center in Bethesda, MD was amazing. Absolutely top-notch! According to one of Laura's friends, as she was being taken into surgery, she joked about whether the hospital was running a "two-for-one" surgery special--"a lumpectomy and a lift together--20 percent off!"Never underestimate the power of prayer!
What do you think about an urban school district that, in the first three months of school, had 19 reports of weapons confiscated and 42 assaults by Kids. That’s awful, you say.Ron goes on to cite a Time Magazine piece covering unruly gradeschoolers:
What a shame, you say. Yes it is. But that’s not the half of it: That was in kindergarten and first grade.
Claudia Wallace, writing in Time magazine, reported this from Philadelphia. It would be terrible if this were the case in only one city. It is not. According to some authorities, violence among kids is getting a younger and younger face. At first, it was high schools that had to have special schools for disruptive youngsters. Then it was the intermediate schools. Now it is elementary schools that have to have special schools for unmanageable kids. Something terrible is happening to our youngest kids.When kids can't get love and positive attention at home, they will often seek a very poor substitute for it elsewhere:
I could give you all the statistics. I could give you examples of bad kids that would curl your hair. But I am not sure you would grasp the significance of what I am saying. Claudia Wallace cited a an example of a three year old who took a fork and stabbed another child in the forehead. At one school in Fort Worth, a youngster was asked to put a toy away. The kid began to scream. She was told to calm down, but then knocked over a desk, kicked it, dumped out the contents of all the drawers. And then things began to really get bad. Still shrieking, she stood up and began throwing books at her terrified classmate who had to be ushered to safety.
No one who is associated with the problem doubts for a moment that something really bad is going on. Why is it happening? What is causing this?
An experienced elementary school administrator in Miami, Karen Bentley, said something piercingly simple: “Kids aren’t getting enough lap time.”
Those words leaped off the page at me, because they pulled together a broad range of impressions about troubled youth. Kids aren’t getting enough lap time. One teacher says simply that a lack of socialization at home is responsible for the wild behavior. What we are getting is a kid whose body is six years old, but has the emotional response of a three year old. “Imagine a child with the terrible twos in a six year old body,” he said.
It is true that aggressive behavior in children is absolutely linked to the violence in movies and on television. But that is only a part of the story, and not the most important part at that. Children are dying for a simple lack of lap time. Their lives are being ruined because they grow up without learning how to love and be loved.
They were good kids from good families, but there was a common thread that ran through all the interviews. The kids were starving for attention and affection. Their upwardly mobile parents were often divorced, always busy, always neglecting the emotional needs of their children.If you've got kids or observe what's going on in schools and society in general, you'll appreciate this piece. Please be sure to check the entire essay.
One girl I will never forget, spoke to the interviewer: “Sex sucks,” she said, “It’s just something for the guys.” She was expressing something reflected in interviews with other girls as well. She was the one who put it succinctly. Then why do the girls do it? That’s easy enough. They do it for the attention, for the touching, for the love. At least something they think is like love. These kids had managed to get into their teens before their lives started to come apart. Hearing their stories, I don’t know how they made it that far.
Have you ever noticed two people you really don’t like very much holding hands? Maybe putting their arm around each other and leaning affectionately on the shoulder. Have you ever been surprised to learn that someone you don’t even like is lovable to someone else, that there is something lovable in that person that has completely eluded you?
What is it about love? I suppose evolutionary theory would connect it to sex, but if there is one thing that was clear to me in watching the Lost Children of Rockdale County, it was this: love and sex are two entirely different things. Sex does not explain love. It may explain initial attraction or it may not, but it does not explain love.
The best way to understand the brouhaha over the Republican plan to invoke the constitutional option to prohibit Senate filibusters to thwart judicial nominations is that Democrats are very poor losers, but Republicans are even poorer winners -- so far.
First, let's get some indisputable facts out on the table. DeLay has been the most effective majority leader of either party in the last half century. Even with the razor-thin margins he has had to work with, when was the last time he lost a vote? His understanding of the intricacies of redistricting is legendary. The only person I know who came close was Rep. John Burton, a liberal Democrat from California whose groundbreaking use of computerized gerrymandering in the 1970s was considered clever and praiseworthy by many of the same voices who condemn DeLay for the same talents. And on a personal note, DeLay is an honorable, compassionate human being who does not deserve the current treatment he gets from much of the media.Be sure to read the entire piece. It's revelatory.
• You use more than three words when ordering your Starbuck’s,Courtesy of the seldom opinionated, always soft-spoken, Doug Giles. Be sure to read the rest of his column. Always a good read.
• You’re still into rollerblading,
• You put on cologne to go to the gym,
• You have an Armani Exchange or Banana Republic credit card,
• You Tivo Sex in the City and/or Will and Grace,
• You watch Friends with a note pad,
• You have panic attacks (look, either have a real heart attack or cut the crap. That feeling you’re feeling is not death; it’s called responsibility and most everybody feels it. So … suck it up, drink a Guinness and get a life),
• You shave any part of your body except your face or skull,
• You buy your shampoo at a salon instead of a grocery store,
• You take more than two, that’s two, minutes to fix your hair,
• You think Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell, and Orlando Bloom are really, really good actors,
• You think you have a feminine side to get in touch with, and/or
• You must have Evian and only Evian for hydration (Hey, thongmeister. What’s Evian spelled backwards? That’s what you are).
South Park has a sharp anti-political-correctness edge, for starters. Consider season nine's hilarious – and disturbing – opening episode. The boys' gay teacher, Mr. Garrison, decides to get a sex change. The procedure is shown, graphically, to be a horrific self-mutilation, which is already a brave bit of truth-telling in an era of "transgender rights." But you've never seen anything on television like what follows.Pretty strong stuff, huh? Can you imagine some hapless conservative talk show host getting away with that?
Mr. Garrison, now a "woman," mistakenly thinks he's pregnant – and that makes him very happy because he can rush off to get an abortion, and so prove that he's a real woman. Here's the key exchange, at a Planned Parenthood center:
Garrison: Hello, doctor. Looks like I need an abortion.
Doctor: An abortion?
Garrison: Yeah, I've got one growing inside of me. Now are you gonna scramble its brains or just vacuum it out?
The doctor then tells Mr. Garrison that he can't have an abortion because he can't get pregnant: His sex change is ultimately cosmetic. Mr. Garrison is crestfallen: "You mean I'll never know what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out?" The doctor responds: "Nnn ... that's right."
Mr. Stone and his fellow thirtysomething colleague, Trey Parker, portray both abortion and sex-change operations in ways Robert Bork would endorse wholeheartedly – but do so in one of the most offensively vulgar half-hours in television history. Now that's subversive.
South Park regularly mocks left-wing celebrities who feel entitled to tell everyone how the world should run. In one notorious parody, made during the 2000 Florida recount, blowhard Rosie O'Donnell comes to the town of South Park to intervene in a kindergarten election dispute involving her nephew.
Mr. Garrison, now showing some good sense, tees off on her: "People like you preach tolerance and open-mindedness all the time, but when it comes to middle America, you think we're all evil and stupid country yokels who need your political enlightenment. Just because you're on TV doesn't mean you know [expletive] about the government."
In a recent interview, Mr. Parker expanded on just how much he and Mr. Stone loathed meddling celebrities. "People in the entertainment industry are by and large whore-chasing, drug-addicted [expletive]," he said. "But they still believe they're better than the guy in Wyoming who really loves his wife and takes care of his kids and is a good, outstanding, wholesome person. Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they're the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be."
Herewith a few truths about Tom DeLay, the embattled GOP Majority Leader in The House of Representatives.Stein updated this piece on Friday, April 15th. Read it here.
1.) Tom DeLay is morally probably the highest level public servant I have ever met. With virtually no political gain to be had from so doing, he has been the most enthusiastic supporter of Israel in the U.S. Congress. He has stood with Israel against terrorism and international anti-Semitism without reservation or fear. This is a man with more moral decency in his little finger than his detractors have in their whole bodies.
2.) The attack against him in the Texas courts are an outrageous -- but sadly emblematic -- Democrat attempt to use the judicial system to defeat the electoral process. The DA who is tormenting him is the same one who made up an indictment of Kay Bailey Hutchison out of whole cloth to try to reverse the results of a solid electoral victory by the Republican party in Texas.
If this kind of deviltry works, we can expect local Democrat district attorneys to routinely indict any Republican who is successfully turning out the electorate for the Republican Party. No elected official, no bureaucrat, is more unaccountable than an out of control, hatchet job prosecutor, and this is just what we are seeing at work against Tom DeLay.
3.) The very fact that the Mainstream Media are so desperately struggling to smear Tom DeLay is proof positive of what a good job he is doing at leveling the electoral playing field.
4.) If we throw him to the wolves, we are betraying a dear friend of the party, and a good man -- and allowing a vicious dirty trick through the judicial system to subvert the Constitution.
5.) Tom DeLay's comments about a judiciary that sanctioned the torture murder of Terri Schiavo and how it has to be brought to account was a brave and entirely sensible approach to an issue that dismays and frightens many Americans. His comments are yet another sign of what a fine patriot this man is.
6.) He has been there for us, and we need to be there for him.
For decades the United Nations has been critical of the United States. Not only critical, but downright antagonistic. Now President Bush has appointed a U.N. Ambassador who has been critical of the United Nations. Democrats don't like it. So ... a quick review. The United Nations slams the United States and Democrats remain silent. A U.S. diplomat criticizes the United Nations and Democrats go nuts. Would someone please explain this to me?
MINNEAPOLIS — Sen. Hillary Clinton was introduced by a Senate colleague to the state Democratic Party here as "the next great president of the United States" — and did nothing to deny it as she skewered the GOP.
"We are headed to a brave, new world of extremism, and we need to make clear we're not going there," she told a sellout crowd of 2,000 who paid $100 a head to see her. "We stand against their radical, reactionary right-wing agenda."
Clinton sounded every bit the stumping presidential contender as she slammed the Republicans for driving up the national debt, wrecking overseas alliances and leading the nation on a domestic path "well outside the mainstream."
She lambasted Republican members of Congress as "extras in the movie 'I Robot' " who "mindlessly rubberstamp the agenda of this administration" and want to do "little more than fund the military and build some highways."
And she scolded President Bush for flaunting a "prideful unilateralism" in the war on terrorism and warned the commander-in-chief that the United States "cannot direct the rest of the world to follow our orders merely because we said so."
Even the print versions of her rants are shrill. I have difficulty reading her speeches, much less listening to them. I can't even imagine a state of the union screech, er, speech.
Winston Churchill once said, “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the master, and fling him about to the public.” (Quoted in Winston Churchill: His Wit and Wisdom, Hyperion Books, p. 135)
Over the several years that I have written this column, I have effectively written the equivalent of a book or two, and I can attest that it does become your master and tyrant after a while.
The task of wowing one’s audience with brilliance week after week is daunting and not always successful, but it is fortunate that the focus of my efforts is a very special Book brimming with pearls. Those pearls lay hidden, awaiting someone to pry them free, but when one uses the Bible as a base, there is solace in knowing that the pearls really are in there somewhere.
The grain of sand that forms the pearl sometimes comes from the irritations in life, and so it has been with this column. It might seem like I am writing to you, but in reality I am writing to myself and reflecting on something that I need to learn.
And so it is with this week’s column. Not long ago I was studying Matthew 25, which contains three parables. It was the last two that caught my attention: the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. I was surprised to see that both parables teach the same lesson, a lesson I sorely need.
Some people have lots of talents to invest and some have just one or two. More is required of those who have more, but if you have only one talent God doesn’t expect you to produce ten with it. He expects you to do with what you have. Jesus honored a woman for the small kindness of anointing his head because “she had done what she could” (Mark 14:1-9), and the master would have honored him with one talent – if he hade “done what he could.” As it turned out, he did nothing with his talent and was roundly condemned for it.
Many of us have trouble finding this one talent in our lives, but sometimes what we consider the lesser gifts are of greater importance God. That’s the lesson of the sheep and goats, the parable that follows the one about the talents. In that parable, those who were admitted into the kingdom (the sheep) gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothing to the naked. They visited those who were ill and went to those who were in prison. But as we read the story, it is evident that these sheep did not see what they were doing as great things. They were, in a sense, given one talent, but they did what they could with it, and for that they were honored.
The other group (the goats) had the same opportunities for service, the same talent, as it were, but rather than investing that talent for the good of all, they buried it. They let the opportunities of the moment pass, and for that they were condemned.
As I mentioned earlier, the lessons I discuss in this column are ones that I am trying to learn. Where is the thirst that I can quench or the hunger that I can satisfy? Where are the hurts that I can heal or the souls who need the comforting? Most of us do not have the five talents to fill a stadium with God-seekers or have our voices carried on the radio waves. But there is a neighbor next door, or a child in the next room, or a spouse in the easy chair whom we can anoint with oil. There are people all around us who need our one little talent even if we in our own minds diminish its value. We must do what we can do, and for that we will be honored.
Lenny Cacchio
Half of the Vatican's income is from the Vatican gift shop.(note to self; open a gift shop)
Sandy Berger, the top Clinton national- security official and erstwhile close adviser to Sen. John Kerry, has finally confessed what he spent nearly a year heatedly denying: that he intentionally smuggled classified documents from the National Archives and deliberately destroyed them.Shame on the Justice Department for this. Shame on whoever is responsible for allowing this to happen. It only indicates the vast influence the Clintonistas continue to wield within the Bush administration (note to self: upon election to the highest office in the land, fire everyone from the previous administration as opposed to 'making nice with them').
In pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count Friday for which he'll get a slap-on-the-wrist $10,000 fine and lose his security clearance for three years (but probably not his law license) Berger admits to secreting the documents in his suit jacket.
Then, once he got them home, he cut them to pieces with a pair of scissors.
So much for the "honest mistake" Berger last year maintained he'd committed.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday that as a justice she considers foreign laws - not just U.S. laws and its Constitution - in forming her legal opinions.In case you're keeping score, it seems that the judiciary is winning.
Ginsburg said criticisms of relying too heavily on world opinion "should not lead us to abandon the effort to learn what we can from the experience and good thinking foreign sources may convey." "The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification," Ginsburg added in remarks to the members of the 99 year-old American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C.
"For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment." (Exodus 12:12)
Before Israel came out of Egypt, God brought a series of plagues upon the Egyptian people. Most scholars believe that the plagues were God's systematic rebuttal of the gods of Egypt, for each plague showed their impotence and even destroyed the objects of worship.
The Nile, the giver of life to the nation, was the greatest of the gods, and it was the first to be cursed. Frogs were the symbol of fruitfulness of offspring, and God cursed the land by an overabundance of them.
The plague of flies was a repudiation of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. Moses initiated the plague of boils by sprinkling ashes, which was a repudiation of the god Typhon, whom the Egyptians tried to appease by burnt human sacrifice. And the locusts revealed that the god Serapis was powerless to stop the infestation that he was responsible to prevent.
And when there as darkness of the land for three days, Ra was shown to be nothing when compared to the great Yahweh.
We have our own false gods today to whom we pay our homage. It has been said that in order to get the attention of an American, simply kick him in the pocketbook. . We worship the goddess named Fortune because we hold wealth and possessions as a measure of success.
We worship the god named Status, for we crave position and the adulation of others.
We worship a goddess called Liberty (whom we should really call Libertine), and in the name of that god claim the right to do whatever we please with no regard for consequences.
We sacrifice babies on the altar of Erotica, claiming freedom of choice but only in matters from the waist down.
We bow at the altar of Narcissus, where self-made men worship their creator.
Your god is what you think about most of the time. Your god is the one you trust for deliverance, sustenance, and meaning in life. As we enter this Passover season, we should think long and hard about the gods we worship. The true God systematically removed the objects of Egyptian worship until all were forced to acknowledge the One who is supreme. Will God be forced to remove from us our false gods before we finally and completely turn to him?
Lenny Cacchio
