She’s in charge of the oversight???

Please click on the following link and procede to approximately 1:54:12 and 1:48:20 to access the clips aired on my show today.

God Bless!
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/10/30/WJE/R/24874/Friday+October+30.aspx

Please take a moment to listen to my closing segment about an example of the heros among us…

God Bless

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change document

Global Climate Scam website: exposing the truth about global warming hysteria

Where is the mainstream media reporting giving accurate information of the magnatude of the Americans who marched on 9/12/2009 on Washington D.C.???

“We The People” Who are we? Who are you? What are you willing to do? Are you doing all that you can do? We better get busy. We all better get busy!!!

A California judge today tentatively scheduled a trial for Jan. 26, 2010, for a case that challenges Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president based on questions over his qualifications under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

* I was born in one country, raised in another. My father was born in another country. I was not his only child. He fathered Several children with numerous women.
* I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me. My mother died at an early age from cancer.
* Later in life, questions arose over my real name.
* My birth records were sketchy and no one was able to produce a legitimate, reliable birth certificate.
* I grew up practicing one faith but converted to Christianity, as it was widely accepted in my country, but I practiced non-traditional beliefs & didn’t follow Christianity, except in the public eye under scrutiny.
* I worked and lived among lower-class people as a young adult, disguising myself as someone who really cared about them.
* That was before I decided it was time to get serious about my life and I embarked on a new career.
* I wrote a book about my struggles growing up. It was clear to those who read my memoirs that I had difficulties accepting that My father abandoned me as a child.
* I became active in local politics in my 30’s then with help behind the scenes, I literally burst onto the scene as a candidate for national office in my 40s. They said I had a golden tongue and could talk anyone into anything. That reinforced my conceit.
* I had a virtually non-existent resume, little work history, and no experience in leading a single organization. Yet I was a powerful speaker and citizens were drawn to me as though I were a magnet and they were small roofing tacks.
* I drew incredibly large crowds during my public appearances. This bolstered my ego.
* At first, my political campaign focused on my country’s foreign policy…… I was very critical of my country in the last war and seized every opportunity to bash my country.
* But what launched my rise to national prominence were my views on the country’s economy. I pretended to have a really good plan on how we could do better and every poor person would be fed & housed or free.
* I knew which group was responsible for getting us into this mess. It was the free market, banks & corporations. I decided to start making citizens hate them and if they were envious of others who did well, the plan was clinched tight.
* I called mine “A People’s Campaign” and that sounded good to all people.
* I was the surprise candidate because I emerged from outside the traditional path of politics & was able to gain widespread> popular support.
* I knew that, if I merely offered the people ‘hope’ ,together we could change our country and the world.
* So, I started to make my speeches sound like they were on behalf of the downtrodden, poor, ignorant to include “persecuted minorities” like the Jews. My true views were not widely known & I needed to keep them unknown, until after I became my nation’s leader.
* I had to carefully guard reality, as anybody could have easily found out what I really believed, if they had simply read my Writings and examined those people I associated with.
* I’m glad they didn’t. Then I became the most powerful man in the world. And the world learned the truth.

Who am I?

ADOLF HITLER
WHO WERE YOU THINKING OF?

H.R. 3200 To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Read it and weep.

Lt. Brian Brennan was severely wounded in Iraq and faced unbeatable odds but, as David Martin reports, he made a remarkable recovery with a little help from a special Cherokee word.

Home town return

This fall, from September 23 – November 1, our community will be one of more than 200 cities in the United States and internationally joining together for the largest and longest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history — the 40 Days for Life campaign.

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, veterans, peace officers, and firefighters who will fulfill the oath we swore to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God.

Click and explore this link to see why our Canadian friends cross the border for health care. Do you want to wait?

Meaghan giving us a Norwich tour before the rook ceremony

Meaghan and some of her new rook mates

A final look after we said our final goodbye

A sea of over 500 new cadets assembled after the final family goodbye

Meaghan with a beaming smile amongst her fellow 3rd Company 1st Platoon cadets

A listener to my show sent me the following announcement:

“Citizens of the Southern Tier of Western New York are having a Health Care Town Hall Meeting with or without Brian Higgins. He’s been invited to come. His office said that he is not available. So if he won’t hold a town meeting, we will take the town meeting to him. We’ll record the questions, comments and remarks and send them to him personally. With or without Congressman Brian Higgins, a Health Care Town Hall Meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 26, at 7 PM at the Lakewood American Legion located on 174 Chautauqua Avenue in Lakewood.”

Click and read:

“I Wish”

Dennis I wish you Godspeed as you embark on this path on your life’s journey…

I hope I have conveyed to you over the years what a privilege it has been to be your dad…

I hope I have shown you enough love so that you don’t have to think about how much you mean to your mom and I, I hope you just know…

Remember when you are in your toughest moments it is usually when you find out the most about yourself and the meaning of those who depend upon you….

Remember at your loneliest moments we are all here just one thought away…

I hope you know how proud I am of you, how proud I am to be your dad. From infancy, diapers and bottles, to playing catch, to watching all of your games over the years… I have watched you overcome adversity and it has truly been a pleasure watching you blossom from that cute disheveled thick blonde haired kid with coke bottle thick lenses and a patched left eye to the tall respectful humorous yet humble blue eyed young man on the verge of his life…

I hope you can look at loneliness as something that will help you to fully appreciate every breath spent with those most important to you…

I hope that as your Dad I have shown you enough discipline to help you stay on the road as you navigate your future. Beware of shortcuts. That usually results in your driving off the road, where it is always more difficult to drive, and that usually takes you to where you don’t want to be. The right decision is usually the hard one and ironically somehow always proves to be the best one in the long run…

Never be afraid of hard work, discipline and going the extra mile. Remember you can have fun not doing anything at all, or, you can have fun working hard your whole life. It is simply an attitude choice. Have fun preparing your feast… No one ever has fun preparing a famine. In the end we always reap what we sew…

Remember all things important in life are gifts… When you usually think of gifts you think of things given to you. These gifts are different… They must be earned by what you give…

To be faithful you must first be faithful in God and in yourself… To be respected you must first respect…
To be given responsibility you must first be responsible…
To be successful at life you must first be successful in your own life…
To be loved you must first be able to open your heart and love that special person with all of your heart….
Our ultimate gift has been you, your sister and brothers….
I hope that we have prepared you for the meaningful gifts God has in store for your life…

I hope I have shown you the meaning of sacrifice so that you know that all we have done over the years has been a labor of love for our family and that it truly has been fun…

May God always keep you safe…
May He always help guide your decisions…
And may He always keep you out of harms way….

“Semper Fidelis” Dennis, Always Faithful…

Semper Fi.

Dad

Congratulations to our son Pfc Dennis Weppner II on his completion of 13 weeks of Marine Corps Boot Camp!!! Semper Fi

By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
August is THE crucial month! While the senators and representatives are home in their districts, let’s give them a barrage of attacks on Obama’s proposals to deform our health system! Even as public opinion has turned against the plan, he still has 60 votes in the Senate and an ample margin in the House to pass it. Unless we unleash a FIRESTORM of public outrage, the bill will pass! And your own personal health care will never be the same.
Here’s how to fight it:
1. Arm Yourself With the Facts: Read Chapter 4 in Catastrophe, “Obama’s Health Care Catastrophe,” which details how Obamacare will destroy American health care and explains what has happened in Canada!

2. Help Air a Powerful TV Ad — Donate Money!: The League of American Voters is running an advertisement Dick wrote in the swing states with key senators. Give them as much as you can to run these ads.
See the New TV Ad Dick Says Can Defeat Obama’s Health Care Takeover — Go Here Now.
Donate today via credit card or send checks.
Time is of the essence.
We need to run these ads this month!
3. E-mail Your Friends, Family and Associates: We need a massive outpouring of public opinion. E-mail your Christmas card list, your colleagues from the office, your friends, and your family. Give them the facts about health care and Obama’s dangerous proposals. Think particularly of anyone you know in the following states (where the key Senators live):
a. Maine (Sen. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe)
b. New York (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand)
c. Virginia (Sen. Mark Warner and Jim Webb)
d. Indiana (Sen. Evan Bayh)
e. Ohio (Sen. John Voinovich)
f. North Carolina (Sen. Kay Hagan)
g. Florida (Sen. Mel Martinez)
h. Louisiana (Sen. Mary Landrieu)
i. Arkansas (Sen. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln)
j. Nebraska (Sen. Ben Nelson)
k. South Dakota (Sen. Tim Johnson)
l. Iowa (Sen. Chuck Grassley)
m. North Dakota (Sen. Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan)
n. Montana (Sen. Max Baucus and Jon Tester)
o. Wyoming (Sen. Michael Enzi)
4. Write or Call Your Senators and Representatives: Then sit down and write (by hand if possible) a letter to each of your senators and your member of Congress.
Simply address the letter to:
Your Senator or Congressman:
U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington DC 20510 (Senate) or 20515 (House)
Sending a letter by snail mail is much more effective than by e-mail.
They haven’t really caught up with the 21st century in Washington. So buy a real live postage stamp and mail your letters directly. Use the info from Catastrophe in your letter. Explain how your personal health care and that of our family will be adversely affected.
Even if your senator or representative is a liberal Democrat or a Republican, write then anyway. It can influence the atmosphere in Washington. Senators and members of congress talk and the more mail they get, the more public opinion weighs on them all. Even the ultra-liberals.
You can call Congress at (202) 224-3121.
Believe us. It works. Write today!

St. Louis County police arrested six people, including a Post-Dispatch reporter, during a demonstration Thursday evening outside a forum on aging called by U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis.

by Scott Atlas

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America’s health care system should be considered.

Scott W. Atlas, M.D., is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center. A version of this article appeared previously in the February 18, 2009, Washington Times.

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

PRESIDENT Obama promises that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our health-care system. That’s untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.
Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these “qualified plans.” If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year “grace period” to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you’ll have less time.
And as soon as anything changes in your contract — such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year — you’ll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).
When you file your taxes, if you can’t prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars — as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size — and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).
It’s one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone’s consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.
Nowhere does the legislation say how much health plans will cost, but a family of four is eligible for some government assistance until their household income reaches $88,000 (House bill, p. 137). If you earn more than that, you’ll have to pay the cost no matter how high it goes.
The price tag for this legislation is a whopping $1.04 trillion to $1.6 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimates). Half of the tab comes from tax increases on individuals earning $280,000 or more, and these new taxes will double in 2012 unless savings exceed predicted costs (House bill, p. 199). The rest of the cost is paid for by cutting seniors’ health benefits under Medicare.
There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.
One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?
Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured. The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance.
They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.
Congress should pursue less radical ways to cover the uninsured. We have too much to lose with this legislation.
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York. betsy@hospitalinfection.org

We had the opportunity to meet Admiral Gary Roughhead Chief Naval Officer of the United States Navy at the Change of Command Ceremony onboard the USS Harry S Truman (CVN 75) nuclear powered aircraft carrier at Norfolk Naval Base in Norfolk, Va. on 24 July 2009.

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America’s health care system should be considered. Click to the link.

Arab Festival 2009: Sharia in the US

The 8 cap-and-tax Republican turncoats again are:

Reminder: The two Republicans who didn’t vote: Jeff Flake (AZ) and John Sullivan (OK).

By Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Mr. Obama’s theories are undeniably refuted by historical fact and therefore his projections are unreliable and even dangerous. There is overwhelming evidence that his health care plan will result in a fiscal and medical care disaster. More important, his plan would result in a wider unconstitutional expansion of government control over our lives. We must demand real solutions, not the trading of unsustainable benefits for votes, the loss of our liberty, and greater dependence for our medical care — not on those trained in the healing arts — but on government and professional politicians.

Killed in action the week before, the body of Sergeant First Class John C. Beale was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City , Georgia , just south of Atlanta , on June 11, 2009 . The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough , Georgia . A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time.

Please watch this amazing tribute to one of our fallen heroes. Just this past week I did a devotion about the song Taps. It was written by a young Confederate soldier who was actually found by his Union Father. Upon hearing the moans of a soldier, the father braved the gunfire and tried to “rescue” the fallen man, not knowing whether it was a Union soldier or a Confederate soldier. Unfortunately the young man didn’t make it. It wasn’t until daylight the next day that he realized that this was his son who had gone South to study music and had joined the Confederate Army. When asked if he could honor his son at his funeral, he was given permission to have one musician play the notes that were found in the pocket of the young man. His father chose a bugler to play the song. The rest is history……At the end of this video you will hear the haunting melody of Taps…..Karen
Killed in action the week before, the body of *Staff Sergeant First Class John C. Beale* was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City , Georgia , just south of Atlanta , on June 11, 2009. The Henry County Police Department escorted the procession to the funeral home in McDonough , Georgia . A simple notice in local papers indicated the road route to be taken and the approximate time. This was filmed during the procession by a State Trooper.

James David Manning, PhD discusses Senator Demint’s statements and outlines the life of Barack Hussein Obama:

James David Manning, PhD says everyone is out to get whitey. This message comes from The Manning Report on Wednesday, 15 July 2009:

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
________________________________________
IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

________________________________________
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”
What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.
With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.
The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.
Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.
It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

PRESIDENT Obama promises that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it,” even after he reforms our health-care system. That’s untrue. The bills now before Congress would force you to switch to a managed-care plan with limits on your access to specialists and tests.
Two main bills are being rushed through Congress with the goal of combining them into a finished product by August. Under either, a new government bureaucracy will select health plans that it considers in your best interest, and you will have to enroll in one of these “qualified plans.” If you now get your plan through work, your employer has a five-year “grace period” to switch you into a qualified plan. If you buy your own insurance, you’ll have less time.
And as soon as anything changes in your contract — such as a change in copays or deductibles, which many insurers change every year — you’ll have to move into a qualified plan instead (House bill, p. 16-17).
When you file your taxes, if you can’t prove to the IRS that you are in a qualified plan, you’ll be fined thousands of dollars — as much as the average cost of a health plan for your family size — and then automatically enrolled in a randomly selected plan (House bill, p. 167-168).
It’s one thing to require that people getting government assistance tolerate managed care, but the legislation limits you to a managed-care plan even if you and your employer are footing the bill (Senate bill, p. 57-58). The goal is to reduce everyone’s consumption of health care and to ensure that people have the same health-care experience, regardless of ability to pay.
Nowhere does the legislation say how much health plans will cost, but a family of four is eligible for some government assistance until their household income reaches $88,000 (House bill, p. 137). If you earn more than that, you’ll have to pay the cost no matter how high it goes.
The price tag for this legislation is a whopping $1.04 trillion to $1.6 trillion (Congressional Budget Office estimates). Half of the tab comes from tax increases on individuals earning $280,000 or more, and these new taxes will double in 2012 unless savings exceed predicted costs (House bill, p. 199). The rest of the cost is paid for by cutting seniors’ health benefits under Medicare.
There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.
One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?
Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured. The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance.
They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.
Congress should pursue less radical ways to cover the uninsured. We have too much to lose with this legislation.
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York. betsy@hospitalinfection.org

Thank you to all who have served in the military and their families for the selfless sacrifice to duty, honor and country. For America has been forged since its’ inception with your blood, sweat and tears. I pray for all current and past Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard men and women. Thank you for your service. Thank you for our freedom.

God Bless,

Kathy

Click to listen the my Memorial Day Weekend Show

“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.” Barack Obama

History Unfolding
Anonymous
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money.
Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed-down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving.
Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?)
We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) – the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth..
It is potentially 1929 x ten… And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No?
Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure.
Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning..
As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the “savior” was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing.
What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.
And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did – regularly.
And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand – the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think.
Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,
How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media – did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and …. . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It’s all there in the history books.
So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker.
He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.
Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..
I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

What kind of patriot are you???

Glenn explains AIG and why the bonuses were not the REAL problem:
The 912 Project

Hi Everyone
The Tea Party/Tax Revolt will be Sat, March 28, at 2:00 at the Terminus at the waterfront. (see attachments, and/or go to Albanysinsanity.com)

It is time for a headcount and so far this looks like it will be big.
We will get a big crowd there and it will send a message that we are at
the end of our rope and it is time for citizen action against this unruly
government, and inform Sheldon Silver and Malcom Smith that they do not run this state. We the People do; and it is time for them to realize this and listen to us. All elected officials have been invited by letters and/or emails. So far Ghris Lee, Jane Corwin, Dale Volker, Bob Reynolds, John Mills, Sheldon Silver have “previous committments”.
(as well as 2 others my husband deleted by mistake) Senator Maziarz and Betty Jean Grant will be there. Antoine Thompson said he
would be there or send a rep. I have not yet heard from anyone else.
The media has also been contacted. Bring signs. Bring a copy of your tax bill. If possible, we will burn them or just plain tear them up and throw them in the trash. We are also open to other ideas (within reason, please).

Please respond to RusThompson@roadrunner.com or Ellie Corcoran1@roadrunner.com Please pass this on, post flyers, and tell everyone you know.

It is time to tell Albany, enough is enough!

Thank you and looking forward to seeing you there.

Rus and Ellie<

A message from Nancy Pelosi:

What an outrageous inappropriate insane sick use of our America. Be prepared to vomit. Unbelievable.Here is the website that shows Stimulus Pork by State

March 03, 2009
By Mary L. Davenport, MD
The largest generational cohort in American history, the Baby Boomers, will be the first Americans to be denied available effective life-saving treatments for reasons of cost. The seeds for this mass liquidation have already been planted.
Imagine that it is 2016, and you are a 65 year old boomer. You have been admitted to your local community hospital with malaise, fatigue, vomiting and cloudy mental status. You have had blood pressure problems and diabetes for a few years, and have just been diagnosed with renal failure. As you drift in and out of consciousness, you are vaguely aware your old family practice physician, who had taken care of you for 20 years, is not around. A religious man, he quietly retired from medical practice in 2014, after the full force of the Obama administration‘s removal of conscience protection for physicians in February, 2009, came into effect.

Dr. Davenport is an obstetrician/gynecologist in private practice in El Sobrante, California.

This financial crisis is forcing tough decisions. There is a possibility that they may have to lay off Andre….

Mission Statement
This website is a place for you and other like-minded Americans looking for direction in taking back the control of our country. It is also a place to find information that will assist you in navigating the rough waters we face in the days, weeks and months ahead.

12 Values
Honesty
Reverence
Hope
Thrift
Humility
Charity
Sincerity
Moderation
Hard Work
Courage
Personal Responsibility
Gratitude

by Robert A. Hall

I’ll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

Yes, I’m damn tired. But I’m also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I’m not going to get to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate.

$ 100…

$ 10,000…

$1 MILLION…

$100 MILLION…

$1 BILLION…

$1 TRILLION…

$3 TRILLION…

We still have hope!!!

I’ve been thinking very deeply this week about the divisions in our country; the struggle between individual strengths and weaknesses and freedom to fulfill potential, and the mentality that there are just some people that can’t ever take care of themselves because they are not smart enough, and they should have the right to reproduce at will and not have to worry about paying for anything.

That really is what it is. Some people think that 50% of Americans can never take care of themselves and I am not talking about those who have disabilities that prevent them from being able to work, or people like my grandmother or Trent Lockridge who need to be taken care of in the twilight of their years, but I know people who have significant mental limitations and they hold down fulltime jobs, or despite being physically very challenged they show up to work on time.

To me it is coming down to two basic groups; the responsible and the irresponsible and income has absolutely nothing to do with which group you’re in. It actually greatly depends not on the circumstances of birth; not which neighborhood or family you are born into, but truly whether the adult who gave birth to you loved you and did everything humanly possible for you and sacrificed for you to make sure you were safe so that you knew you were loved and believed in you; that you lived with an adult who lived a life of gratefulness and hard work and inspired you to do the same, the latter being very important. And guess what? Every job is important.

I’ve been thinking about how you can be a patriot, someone who loves their country, enjoys all of the freedoms we have here, but that very same person can be un-American. Like Dave from Lockport. It’s payback time! He doesn’t have the same things that I have and he’s angry and it’s time to take my stuff away so I can’t live any better than him.

The problem with that thinking is the bar for what someone should and shouldn’t have is not stationary but very subjective. Barrack Obama doesn’t think your thermostat should be able to be set at 72 because there are people in the world that don’t have heat. It is un-American to set your bar of how little you should have based on what people in other countries don’t have. The Revolutionary War was fought and won so that colonists would NOT be subjected to that kind of living. Remember they could only have what the King allowed them to have. Those that didn’t want to rule their own destiny, who wanted to continue to live under the rule of the King, they went to Canada after the war was lost for them

It is un-American to want the government to take care of you. It is un-American to want someone else to make less than you just because you don’t make as much. That’s Hugo Chavez and if you really want to live like that you should go live there. But don’t think for one minute that you can have the lifestyle you want the government to provide for you and still have a prosperous country due to the prosperity of those who work hard and have to provide it for you.

They will not coexist.

It is un-American to look at your own lot in life and not understand that it was your own doing. Nobody put you where you have ended up. You’ve made choices and have gotten there due to those choices. The one thing about America though is that you have the freedom at any time to pick yourself up and make better choices and if you really work hard, really hard at changing your future, your future will change.

I think some people hate where they are so much and don’t want to look in the mirror and are looking for someone to blame and pointing a finger at people who made different choices is much easier than trying to change yourself and your future by sacrifice and hard work every single day.

Last week I got a call from a farmer who said he didn’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. That’s not the call I made to Rush but that’s what he heard. I am so very blessed and thank God everyday, multiple times, for those blessings.

My call to Rush was that we work this hard to get ahead. The farmer kept talking and I tried to ask him a question but he was angry so I couldn’t get it in. I wanted to agree with him that price fixing his product, milk, is why he does not make what he should and if he can’t make a decent living being a diary farmer then he should do something else. Farming is a tremendous amount of work, but at the end of the day if you can’t pay your bills then you must do something else. The problem is most farmers love what they do; wouldn’t want to do anything else. Isn’t America wonderful! But it is very scary when we pit one group of hardworking Americans against another. My comment to Rush was that if we were all going to be equalized, which is what the President’s plan is, then we are not going to work that hard. The reason we work that hard, for that many hours a day, is so that we can afford nice things.

Take away our ability to do that and you’ve taken away our motivation. And you know what? Not everyone who works hard reaches the ability to afford everything they want, but everyone has a shot at it. It’s like the wrapping paper sale at the middle schools. The top prize for the person who sells the most is a three hundred dollar IPOD. Out of seven or eight hundred students, fifty motivated students will go out and sell hundreds of rolls of wrapping paper with the hope that they’ll be the one to win it. A little girl showing up at the door is probably going to sell more because people love cute little girls with ponytails. She’ll probably sell more than my 6’4” eighth grader, but he might be a great salesperson. They both have a shot at the IPOD depending on how hard they work and how many hours they want to sell. In fact the success of the fundraiser depends on how great those top prizes are and how much those prizes can motivate those who want the prize. Let’s say you tell everyone in the school that this year you’ve decided to do away with the prizes because some of the kids were upset they didn’t win anything and the kids that didn’t sell any felt left out but you still wanted them to go out and sell because the money is being used for a very good cause. Nobody would go sell wrapping paper.

It is un-American in thinking that there shouldn’t be reward for hard work. So you can say you love your country, that you’re patriotic and be un-American.

I sat next to a woman at a basketball game and we started talking. I am reading a book called History’s 100 Greatest Hits. I finished Hannibal Barca and am on Julius Caesar. I need to know why things happened before us. I don’t have a lot of faith that we are going to make it. This is a first for me. I guess we have to wait and see what the people’s response will be. If we stay asleep and apathetic we’re through. So I was talking to this woman and she said that lately she found herself praying that if we are coming to an end she just asked that her whole family could be taken together. She didn’t want to leave her kids here to try and survive what was coming. I asked her what her friends thought and she said, “I have tried talking to them but they really just don’t want to think about any negative stuff. They just want to get up and live their life and not think about bad things.”

That won’t work people. Bad stuff is happening and if we are not critically thinking about what is going on we are on deep trouble. You should all be talking about this.

Ask yourself what kind of country you want for your children. What kind of opportunity do you want for your kids? We are at a deficit because we are the adults that are not doing the right things for our kids. Our parents made out budgets and lived by them because their parents lived through the depression. Their fathers were lucky enough to survive World War II. Their parents did whatever it took to provide for their families even if it meant going deep into the coal mines for 14 hours a day. The men took pride in being able to put shoes on their kid’s feet and the women took pride in raising nice children.

We’re leaving our marriages in record numbers because we just aren’t that happy. We’re not getting married and having kids anyway because we really want to. That’s just wrong. We’re out dating trying to find our new soul mates and not home for our kids; all selfish stuff. Not cooking nice dinners for them because we don’t get home until five or six o’clock and we’re tired from our busy day. So how do we teach them to sacrifice if we won’t?

We are heading down the wrong side of the hill. We climbed Mount Everest after the Great Depression and it seems we got to the peak and fell backwards. The men who beat imperialist Japan and Adolf Hitler became The Greatest Generation because of their great sacrifice and grit on the field of battle but now we don’t seem to want to do anything like that and our freedom is being threatened from within and without.

We will either rise to the challenge of defending our freedoms or we won’t. Barack Obama has sixteen months before we can stop him by voting in some checks and balances on his power, but that might be too late if we don’t rise up and have our voices be heard.

In sixteen months the Democrat controlled Congress and the Democrat controlled Senate and the Democrat controlled White House could spend so much that our money is worthless here and abroad. Wealth will not only be wiped out but the ability to work hard and get it back will be gone forever and the people that sit back in increasing numbers and let the government take care of them will lose any drive to work and will raise children who don’t know what that is. And we will be Argentina. We will be doomed. We must not let that happen

God Bless

Kathy Weppner

This link was sent to me. It is important for you to remember while listening and watching that these young men are our sons and daughters. They are our young heroes enduring this for us. They have stepped up to the challenge of fighting terror; fighting evil. Most of us could not do this. Pray for all of them and remember them in your hearts every day.

God Bless!!!

My call to Rush Limbaugh on February 28, 2009

How inflation turned a rising power into a pauper.

Anyone not alarmed by the state of the U.S. economy is not paying attention. As our Dear Leader begins his term, the theory of very big government has the support of an alarmingly broad political consensus. Despite the obvious dangers—devastating inflation and the ruin of the dollar—the United States seems pledged to a debt-funded spending spree of gargantuan proportions.
In opposing this trend, critics face the problem that the perils to which they point sound very theoretical and abstract. Perhaps Zimbabwe prints its currency in multi-trillion units, but that’s a singularly backward African dictatorship: the situation has nothing to do with us. Yet an example closer to home might be more instructive. Unlike Zimbabwe, this story involves a flourishing Western country with a large middle class that nevertheless managed to spend its way into banana-republic status by means very similar to those now being proposed in Washington.
The country in question is Argentina, and even mentioning the name might initially make any comparison seem tenuous. The United States is a superpower with a huge economy. Argentina is a political and economic joke, a global weakling legendary for endemic economic crises. Between them and us, surely, a great gulf is fixed. Yet Argentina did not always have its present meager status, nor did its poverty result from some inherent Latin American affinity for crisis and corruption. A century ago, Argentina was one of the world’s emerging powers, seemingly destined to outpace all but the greatest imperial states. Today it is … Argentina. A national decline on that scale did not just happen: it was the result of decades of struggle and systematic endeavor, led by the nation’s elite. As the nation’s greatest writer, Jorge Luis Borges, once remarked, only generations of statesmanship could have prevented Argentina from becoming a world power.
For Americans, the Argentine experience offers multiple warnings, not just about how dreadfully things can go wrong but how a nation can reach a point of no return. Not only did Argentina squander its many blessings, it created a situation from which the society could never recover. Argentines still suffer from the blunders and hubris of their grandparents without any serious likelihood that even their most strenuous efforts will make a difference. A nation can get into such a situation easily enough, but getting out is a different matter. A corrupted economy can’t be cured without being wiped out and started over.
It is hard, looking at the basket case Argentina has become, to imagine what an economic powerhouse the country was before World War II. From the 1880s, Argentina was, alongside the U.S. itself, a prime destination for European migrants. Buenos Aires was one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas, in a select club that included London, Paris, Berlin, and New York City. Argentina benefited mightily from foreign investment, which it used wisely to create a strong infrastructure and an excellent system of free mass education. It had the largest and most prosperous middle class in Latin America. When World War I began, Argentina was the world’s tenth wealthiest nation.
Right up to the 1940s, American and European economists struggled to explain the glaring contrast between booming Argentina and slothful Australia. As many studies pointed out, both countries had begun at a roughly similar point, as agricultural producers dependent on fickle world markets. Yet Australia remained stuck in colonial status while Argentina made the great leap forward to the status of an advanced nation with an expanding industrial base and sophisticated commerce.
So what happened? Certainly the country was hit hard by the depression of the 1930s, but so were other advanced nations that ultimately recovered, and Argentina profited from intense wartime demand for primary products.
The country was killed by political decisions, and the primary culprit was Juan Perón. He dominated political life through the 1940s and ruled officially as president from 1946 to 1955, returning briefly in the 1970s. Although he did not begin the process, he completed the transformation of Argentine government so that the state became both an object of plunder and an instrument for plunder.
Perón came from a fascist and corporatist mindset, which became more aggressively populist under the influence of his second wife Eva. They aimed their rhetoric against the nation’s rich, a designation that was swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated. To equalize the supposed struggle between the rich and the dispossessed, the Peróns exalted the liberating role of the state. The bureaucracy swelled alarmingly as nationalization brought key sectors of the economy under official control. Government bought loyalty through a massive program of social spending while fostering the growth of labor unions, which became intimate allies of the governing party. Argentina came to be the most unionized nation in Latin America. Perón also ended any pretense of the independence of the judiciary, purging and intimidating judges about whom he had any doubts and replacing them with minions.
The Peronist model—a New Deal on steroids—evolved into an effective clientelism, in which party overlords and labor bosses ruled through a mixture of corruption and violence. Clientelism, in effect, means the annexation of state resources for the benefit of political parties and private networks. Right now, both the word and the concept are not terribly familiar to Americans, but this is one Latin American export that they may soon need to get used to.
As high taxes and economic mismanagement took their toll, the Peróns blamed the disasters on class enemies at home and imperialism abroad, but the regime could not survive the loss of the venerated Eva. After attempting briefly to swing back to the center, Juan Perón was overthrown and driven into Spanish exile. Later governments tried varying strategies to reclaim Argentina’s lost splendors and some enjoyed success, but Perón’s curse endured. Even when his party was driven underground, its traditions remained: demagogic populism, a perception of the state as a device for enriching supporters and punishing foes, and a contempt for economic realities. Utopian mass movements inspired by Peronist ideas and charisma segued easily into the far-left upsurge of the 1960s, when Argentina gave birth to some of the world’s most dangerous terrorist and guerrilla movements. By 1976, the military intervened to stave off the imminent collapse of the state and launched the notorious Dirty War that killed thousands.
Since 1976, Argentine economic policies have lurched from catastrophe to catastrophe. The military junta borrowed enormously with no serious thought about consequences, and the structures of Argentine society made it impossible to tell how funds were being invested. Foreign debt exploded, the deficit boomed, and inflation approached 100 percent a year. Economic meltdown had disastrous political consequences. By 1982, like many other dictatorships through history, the Argentine junta tried to solve its domestic problems by turning to foreign military adventures. And like other regimes, they found that their control over military affairs was about as weak as their command of the economy. Military defeat in the Falkland Islands destroyed the junta. By 1983, a civilian president was in power once more. But nothing could stop the nosedive. Inflation reached 672 percent by 1985 and 3,080 percent by 1989. The disaster provoked capital flight and the collapse of investor confidence, not to mention the annihilation of middle-class savings. In the words on one observer, José Ignacio García Hamilton, the nation became “an international beggar with the highest per capita debt in the world.”
Another civilian president, Carlos Menem, took office in 1989, and despite his Peronist loyalties he initially tried to restore sanity through a program of privatization and deregulation. But events soon proved that Menem was only following a familiar pattern whereby a new regime would speak the language of reform and moderation for a couple of years before facing a showdown with the underlying realities of Argentine society. Menem could not overcome the overwhelming inertia within the country, the juggernaut pressures toward the growth of the state, to bureaucratization and regulation, and the destruction of private initiative and free enterprise. Between 1991 and 1999, Argentine public debt burgeoned from 34 percent of GDP to 52 percent. During the same decade, government public debt more than doubled as a percentage of GDP. These burdens stifled private investment so that productive sectors of the economy languished.
Economic disaster led inevitably to a collapse of social confidence and the evaporation of loyalty to the state. The more heavily the country was taxed and regulated, the more Argentines took their transactions off the books, creating a black economy on par with that of the old Soviet Union. In terms of paying their taxes, Argentines are about as faithful as the Italians to whom most have blood ties. Tax evasion became a national sport, second only to soccer in the Argentine consciousness, and provided another stumbling block to fiscal integrity. The collapse of respect for authority also extended to the law: courts are presumed to operate according to bribes and political pressure.
Systematic corruption has had horrifying implications for national security. After all, once you establish the idea that the state is for sale, there is no reason not to offer its services to foreign buyers. One spectacular example of such outsourcing occurred in 1994, when Islamist terrorists blew up a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85. The investigation of the massacre was thoroughly bungled, reportedly because the Iranian government paid Menem $10 million. It is trivial to list the many other allegations of corruption and embezzlement surrounding Menem: what else is politics for, if not to enrich yourself and your clients?
In 2001-02, Argentine fortunes reached depths hitherto unplumbed. A debt-fueled crisis provoked a run on the currency, leading the government to freeze virtually all private bank accounts for 12 months. At the end of 2001, the country defaulted on its foreign debt of $142 billion, the largest such failure in history. With the economy in ruins, almost 60 percent of Argentines were living below the poverty line. Street violence became so intense that the president was forced to flee his palace by helicopter.
Since 2002, yet another new government has presided over an illusory economic boom before being manhandled by the ugly ghosts of Juan and Evita. Those specters were on hand to whisper their excellent advice to a new generation: if you face a crisis caused by excessive government spending, borrowing, and regulation, what else do you do except push even harder to spend, borrow, and regulate? Over the past two years, new taxes and price freezes have again crippled the economy, bringing power blackouts and forced cuts in production. Public debt stands at 56 percent of GDP, and inflation runs 20 percent. Last October, the government seized $29 billion in private pension funds, hammering the final nail in the coffin of the old middle classes. Judging by credit default swap spreads on government debt, the smart money is now betting heavily on another official default before mid-year. The Argentine economy may not actually be dead yet, but it has plenty of ill-wishers trying hard to finish it off.
We all know that deficits drive inflation, which can destroy a society. Less obvious is the political dimension of such a national suicide. Debts and deficits must be understood in the context of the populism that commonly entices governments to abandon economic restraint. No less political are the probable consequences of such a course: authoritarianism, public violence, and militarism.
The road to economic hell is paved with excellent intentions—a desire to save troubled industries, relieve poverty, and bolster communities that support the present government. But the higher the spending and the deeper the deficits, the worse the effects on productive enterprise and the heavier the penalty placed on thrift and enterprise. As matters deteriorate, governments have a natural tendency to divert blame onto some unpopular group, which comes to be labeled in terms of class, income, or race. With society so polarized, the party in power can dismiss any criticism as the selfish whining of the privileged and concentrate on the serious business of diverting state resources to its own followers.
Quite rapidly, “progressive” economic reforms subvert and then destroy savings and property, eliminating any effective opposition to the regime. Soon, too—if the Perón precedent is anything to go by—the regime organizes its long march through the organs of power, conquering the courts, the bureaucracy, the schools, and the media. Hyper-deficits bring hyperinflation, and only for the briefest moment can they coexist with any kind of democratic order.
Could it happen here? The U.S. certainly has very different political traditions from Argentina and more barriers to a populist-driven rape of the economy. On the other hand, events in some regions would make Juan Perón smile wistfully. California runs on particularly high taxes, uncontrollable deficits, and overregulation with a vastly swollen bureaucracy while the hegemonic power of organized labor prevents any reform. Thankfully, the state has no power to devalue its currency, still less to freeze bank accounts or seize pension funds, and businesses can still relocate elsewhere. But in its social values and progressive assumptions, California is close to the Democratic mainstream, which now intends to impose its ideas on the nation as a whole. And at over 60 percent of GDP, U.S. public debt is already higher than Argentina’s.
When honest money perishes, the society goes with it. We can’t say we weren’t warned.__________________________________________
Philip Jenkins is the author of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com

I had a few requests for the last segment of the Valentines Day Show.

The three books mentioned by Coach Mike Masters of Cross Training Football are The Pyramid of Success by John Wooden, Season of Life by Jeffrey Mark, and Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy.
If you would like to contact Coach Master he can be reached at
Coach Masters
Cross Training Football
P.O. Box 64
Tonawanda , NY 14150

To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country.
However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.

First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a Back Story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You’ve seen my home at last years Christmas party. I’m sure; all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.

However, what you don’t see is the BACK STORY :

I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70’s. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don’t. There is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden — the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations… you never realize the Back Story and the sacrifices I’ve made.

Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed decades of my life for.

Yes, business ownership has is benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds.

Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 23 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.

The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy.

Here is what many of you don’t understand … to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep.
So where am I going with all this?

It’s quite simple.

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem any more.

Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about….

Signed, THE BOSS

Join Bob The Vet and me at The Carousel Clothing and collectibles, 6094 Main Street, Williamsville from 1-3 PM on Sunday December 7th. You can purchase a Christmas ornament designed by Carole Culhane to honor our military. Every branch as well as a purple heart and Gold Star can be personalized with all proceeds going to help with Bob’s mission to help our wounded warriors. See you there.

Please click comments@whitehouse.gov and e-mail President Bush right now and just say “pardon RAMOS and COMPEAN” Please do it for Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean whose future depends on us. It is time to step up for these the two border patrol agents who shot a low-life drug smuggler in the butt and how those agents wound up with long jail sentences while the drug smuggler was given total immunity and a promise of a few million bucks down the road.

e-mail: comments@whitehouse.gov
Write: White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Phone: 202-456-1111

Click on the arrow below to listen to the closing segment of todays show.

God Bless

Click on the Youtube link below to view the beautiful tribute to Eliot by his father.

By Tom Adkins

Look at my fellow conservatives! There they go, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I’m virtually euphoric. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not thrilled with America’s flirtation with neo socialism. But there’s a massive silver lining in those magical clouds that lofted Barak Obama to the Presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America: The Era of White Guilt is over.

This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn’t give a fluff about skin color, and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively worked with America-hating domestic terrorists. Wow! Some resume! Yet they made Barak Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov 4th, 2008, white guilt is dead.

For over a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 60s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution. But if a black man can become President, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barak Obama absolutely destroys the entire validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.

So today, I’m feeling a little “uppity,” if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is now exactly ZERO. And it’s time to clean house. No more Reverend Wright’s “God Damn America,” Al Sharpton’s Church of Perpetual Victimization, or Jesse Jackson’s rainbow racism. Cornell West? You’re a fraud. Go home. All those “black studies” programs that taught kids to hate whitey? You must now thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.

Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. Maxine Waters? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. Go ahead. I’m waiting.

Gangsta rappers? Start praising America. Begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. And please…no more ebonics. Speak English, and who knows where you might end up? Oh, yeah…pull up your pants. Your underwear is showing. You look stupid.

To those Eurosnots who forged entire careers hating America? I’m still waiting for the first black French President.

And let me offer an equal opportunity whupping. I’ve always despised lazy white people. Now, I can talk smack about lazy black people. You’re poor because you quit school, did drugs, had three kids with three different fathers, and refuse to work. So when you plop your Colt 45-swilling, Oprah watchin’ butt on the couch and complain “Da Man is keepin’ me down,” allow me to inform you: Da Man is now black. You have no excuses.

No more quotas. No more handouts. No more stealing my money because someone’s great-great-great-great grandparents suffered actual pain and misery at the hands of people I have no relation to, and personally revile.

It’s time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid 60s ideas. Drag it over there, by wife swapping, next to dope-smoking. Plenty of room right between free love and cop-killing. Careful…don’t trip on streaking. There ya go, don’t be gentle. Just dump it. Wash your hands. It’s filthy.

In fact, Obama’s ascension created a gargantuan irony. How can you sell class envy and American unfairness when you and your black wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and got elected President? How unfair is that??? Now, Like a delicious O’Henry tale, Obama’s spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by it’s own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama’s election has validated American conservatism!

So, listen carefully…Wham!!!
That’s the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. White guilt is dead and buried.

However, despite my glee, there’s apparently one small, rabid bastion of American racism remaining. Black Americans voted 96% for Barak Obama. Hmmm. In a color-blind world, shouldn’t that be 50-50? Tonight, every black person should ask forgiveness for their apparent racism and prejudice towards white people. Maybe it’s time to start spreading the guilt around.

Tom Adkins is the publisher of CommonConservative.com

Click on the arrow below and read my closing show segment from November 8, 2008…

Crabby Old Man
What do you see nurses?…. What do you see?
What are you thinking….. When you’re looking at me?
A crabby old man, …. Not very wise,
Uncertain of habit ……. With faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food……. And makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice….. ‘I do wish you’d try!’

Who seems not to notice …. The things that you do.
And forever is losing …. A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not……. Lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding …. The long day to fill?

Is that what you’re thinking? …. Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse…… You’re not looking at me.

I’ll tell you who I am… As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding…… As I eat at your will

I’m a small child of Ten… With a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters… Who love one another

A young boy of Sixteen…. With wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now…. A lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty… My heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows… That I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now … I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide … And a secure happy home.

A man of Thirty …. My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other … With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons…. Have grown and are gone,
But my woman’s beside me… To see I don’t mourn.

At Fifty, once more, …. Babies play’ round my knee,
Again, we know children … My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me …. My wife is now dead.
I look at the future … I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing… Young of their own.
And I think of the years… And the love that I’ve known.
I’m now an old man……… And nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age…. Look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles… Grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone…….. Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass… A young guy still dwells,
And now and again ……. My battered heart swells.

I remember the joys… I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living… Life over again.

I think of the years… All too few… Gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact… That nothing can last.

So open your eyes, people …. Open and see…
Not a crabby old man. Look closer…. See….ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within…. We will all, one day, be there, too!

The best and most beautiful things of this world can’t be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart.

Remember when you pass a man in a nursing home he may have been one of the heroes that stormed the beaches in France to liberate the World from Adolf Hitler. He may have been on that death march. He may have been held in the Hanoi Hilton and tortured daily….
If you see someone with a WWII hat or Korean or Vietnam hat on …… Stop and shake their hand and say thank you. They gave us what we currently have and they gave us their freedom from bad dreams and night sweats and their futures so that we could have a life without those bad dreams and night sweats. We should appreciate them. We have lived in the freedom that they have provided for us. They are the greatest generation because they lived their life, when they came back, and knew that there was indeed evil that had to be fought and they did it.

I inherited that freedom and although my dad served in the Army and went to Korea I personally have not had to do anything. And although I have other relatives who have served… I personally have not had to do anything. I do not feel guilty about that and no one wants you or I to feel guilty about that but we should feel so thankful that there are people strong enough to serve.
The least we, who have not had to sacrifice ANYTHING, the least we can do is be grateful to those who have. That is so small and you will be surprised at how little our veterans expect. A thank you is really it. A nation’s gratitude. Really a small price to pay.

And it costs us nothing. Better yet, say thank you in front of your kids or grand kids. And they’ll ask you why you did that and you can tell them. Be assured they are not getting the teaching and training in their schools and we parents have abdicated the forming of their minds to the public schools.

The important things they’re being taught? … to use reusable bags at the grocery store to save the earth. Like that is going to save them when they face evil. Not a chance. They are being taught to recycle … a good idea that they can see at home. They are doing entire units on it now…in school. Soon we’ll have recycle teachers and it will be a whole class with its’ own state regents curriculum with made up technical scientific sounding names that the teacher will have a PHD in and we’ll have to call them doctors of recycling…or Doctors of waste management and they’ll have advanced degrees in Scientific Hybrids of Interdisciplinary Trash Tracking…that turns into an appropriate acronym….

Our silly people in this beautiful wonderful free society paid for with the blood of a million individuals….. freedoms protected today by amazing volunteers who risk their lives for us.

1/2 man 1/2/ boy

The average age of the military man is 19 years. He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country. He never really cared much for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father’s, but he has never collected unemployment either.

He’s a recent High School graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away. He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and a 155mm howitzer.

He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk. He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it in less time in the dark. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.

He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.

He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.

He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.

He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry.

He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.

If you’re thirsty, he’ll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He’ll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.

He can save your life – or take it, because that is his job.

He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all.

He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime.

He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.

He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to ’square-away ‘ those around him who haven’t bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.

In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful.

Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years.

He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding. Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

And now we even have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to War when our nation calls us to do so.

As you go to bed tonight, picture this. . . A short lull, a little shade and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.

Don’t let Veteran’s Day go by without saying thank you to someone.

God Bless

She remembered the marble being delivered. She was given her first communion by Father Baker, was confirmed by him, and was the first graduating class from his school. Her father ran an A & P and Father Baker would come in looking for vegetable donations for his boys.

She learned to drive on a model T and described how hard it was to crank the car to life in a field where she would practice her driving. She saw the invention of the television, cell phone, computer and the first man on the moon. She remembered the men coming home from World War One that had been hit by mustard gas. She lost relatives in World War Two and her three brothers, George, Doug and Tom came back from that war after defeating Hitler. She lived through the Korean War, Vietnam, Persian Gulf and I’m happy to report she wasn’t aware that we were attacked on 9/11.

When she was four years old a start up car company came to life …. General Motors… the steel industry was born…. She lived through yellow fever, influenza…the inventions of sulfa… penicillin…the polio vaccine and the polio epidemic and the cotton gin and the airplane… saw the Hoover Dam built… social security and the welfare state. She was 6 when 33 women were arrested for picketing Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. They won that right for us. How disappointed they would be in all of us women who don’t take the time today to use that right.

She saw the crash of the stock market and the Great Depression… learned to save her pennies and made lemonade as often as life threw her lemons. That was what people of her generation did.

Her and my grandfather used to drive to the Bemus Point Dance Hall and take the Ferry to Crystal Beech to dance.

She had two daughters and was a widow by the time she was 58. She loved her family. She helped my mom whenever she asked for it and my mom always knew she would come if she was called. Sometimes she just showed up and my mom wondered how she knew. My mom told me she was like an angel.

Every summer she would can dill pickles and my brother would secret away a private stock to his black safe so his jar would be the last in the house. She had a room in her house that I would stay in when I slept over and she would always let me go through her jewelry and try it all on. She paid attention to me when I was there and loved to hear me play the organ.

They had a cottage on Lake Ontario and the Pinochle games were legendary and ran late into the evening where we would all cram into bunk beds, couches and floor spaces to be together.

For a girl from Lackawanna she went many places Spain, Portugal, Ireland, England… many times, France , Germany, Luxemburg, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, through the panama canal, Jamaica, Venezuela, turkey, Greece, prince Edward island, Mexico… and took many cruises…. she was always planning her next great adventure. When she could no longer travel she would tell you all about her past trips and somehow tie it in to the current conversation.

My grandmother always told me I was a lot like her… my mom said that too. She loved how spirited I was and feisty… she was too.

She moved from a ranch house to an apartment and then another apartment and then another…I think she thought she was nearing the end of her life. People only lived to 65…. 70 if they were really lucky…

Then on to assisted living and finally a nursing home, then another. In the end she was down to very few earthly possessions. But we were all around her. Family is what mattered most and she was the head of a beautiful one and we were all there for her like she was for us.

Over the last few years I often questioned God’s plan for her because she had no quality of life that I could see. The last year she often didn’t know who anyone was and wasn’t getting good care. My mom would leave the nursing home crying and come home not knowing what to do and knowing she couldn’t do anything except schedule another useless meeting with administrators.

She just wanted to scoop her up and bring her home. But she couldn’t. Then one day she woke up and knew she had to bring her mother home to die.

She couldn’t die alone. She didn’t know if she could do that or not but called Hospice. It was so easy. Death was something that they are experts at; peaceful and painless death. It was the greatest gift God could have given our family. It was like a wake… but everyone came into town and held her hand and visited and then said goodbye. By Monday, we couldn’t believe she was still alive. She hadn’t had anything to eat in a very long time and couldn’t swallow water….. but her heart kept beating.

I guess when you live to be 96 you have good parts. Then Tuesday came and went. My son Pat didn’t want her to die on his birthday and I prayed on that one. Thursday morning the Kathleen Drexel candle that my parents always have burning was out and they checked on her and she had just passed. When I got there she was still warm and she looked so peaceful.

My mom had loved her and cared for her until her last breath. All of my children had said their goodbyes and had seen how families are supposed to be connected. How families are supposed to love everyone… no matter how “useful” society may deem them. A phone call would never have been OK and would have left a much different legacy than the one we have in our hearts now. I’ve learned so many things over the last week.

I’ve learned that God’s timing is always perfect. Not always convenient. That gifts from Him come in many different forms… sometimes it is a look, a stranger who helps you, kindness offered out of the blue, sometimes it is the time He gives you to wrap up any loose strings in your heart.

I’ve learned that one of the best things we can give our children is their faith. My mom says that is the one thing she is so thankful to her mother for. Her faith. My mother multiplied that so many times and gave it to me. My grandmother’s love for my mother now lives on in my children.

I learned that you don’t have to have two people talking to have a conversation. Gram and I had many and she just listened. I have to try to remember that when people are trying to talk to me. Listen more…. talk less…. that will be hard.

You take nothing with you when you leave… my dad’s famous quote…”Katy… I’ve never seen a Brink’s truck at a funeral” is so true, but you can leave so much behind in the people that you love. That is truly where you live on, in the hearts of others. You can also leave behind chaos and sadness, turmoil and heartache, and it really is an individual choice as to what you leave behind. No excuses… your choice.

People will, most likely, when they talk about you not remember what jobs you held, what you wore, what you purchased, or what kind of house you lived in. They will remember how you made them feel when they were around you. How you looked at them. Things you said and things you didn’t.

Leave a legacy of love when you leave this world and you will have left it a much better place. You will have left people who will carry that love to the next generation and it will multiply over and over and over…. What a tremendous world we’ll have.

Our country is crumbling right now. It crumbled before and people like my grandmother had nothing and built our country back up. They made it. They raised good children who loved their country and worked hard and had large families and lived moral lives. The question is can we refocus. Can we get back to what is really important … each other… our families…. and do without all of the material things? We are headed for a financial meltdown…… another crash…it’s happening now. We need to rise up to meet the challenges like my grandmother’s generation did. 42% of our debt is owned by foreign countries and we will try to go in deeper to get out without pain. Not possible. We owe it to her…to their lives of determination not to let this country be ruined.

God Bless

This is an outstanding testimony from Tony Snow,
President Bush’s Press Secretary, and his fight with cancer.
Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow
announced that he had colon cancer in 2005.
Following surgery and chemo-therapy,
Snow joined the Bush Administration in April, 2006, as press secretary.
Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007,
Snow, 51, a husband and father of three,
announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen,
leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy.
Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 3,
but has resigned since, ‘for economic reasons,’
and to pursue ‘other interests.’
It needs no intro . it speaks for itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘Blessings arrive in unexpected packages,
- in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases
- and there are millions in America today -
find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality
while trying to fathom God’s will.
Although it would be the height of presumption
to declare with confidence ‘What It All Means,’
Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn’t spend too much time
trying to answer the ‘why’ questions:
Why me?
Why must people suffer?
Why can’t someone else get sick?
We can’t answer such things,
and the questions themselves
often are designed more to express our anguish
than to solicit an answer.

I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care.
It is what it is, a plain and indisputable fact.
Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly,
great and stunning truths began to take shape.
Our maladies define a central feature of our existence:
We are fallen.
We are imperfect.
Our bodies give out.

But, despite this, – or because of it, -
God offers the possibility of salvation and grace.
We don’t know how the narrative of our lives will end,
but we get to choose how to use the interval
between now
and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

Second, we need to get past the anxiety.
The mere thought of dying
can send adrenaline flooding through your system.
A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you.
Your heart thumps; your head swims.
You think of nothingness and swoon.
You fear partings;
you worry about the impact on family and friends.
You fidget and get nowhere.

To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death,
but into life – and that the journey continues
after we have finished our days on this earth.
We accept this on faith,
but that faith is nourished by a conviction
that stirs even within many non-believing hearts
- an institution that the gift of life, once given,
cannot be taken away.
Those who have been stricken
enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight
with their might, main, and faith
to live fully, richly, exuberantly
- no matter how their days may be numbered.

Third, we can open our eyes and hearts.
God relishes surprise.
We want lives of simple, predictable ease,
– smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, -
but God likes to go off-road.
He provokes us with twists and turns.
He places us in predicaments
that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension
- and yet don’t.
By His love and grace, we persevere.
The challenges that make our hearts leap
and stomachs churn
invariably strengthen our faith
and grant measures of wisdom and joy
we would not experience otherwise.

‘You Have Been Called’.
Picture yourself in a hospital bed.
The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away.
A doctor stands at your feet,
a loved one holds your hand at the side.
‘It’s cancer,’ the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God
and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa.
‘Dear God, make it all go away.
Make everything simpler.’
But another voice whispers: ‘You have been called.’
Your quandary has drawn you closer to God,
closer to those you love,
closer to the issues that matter,
- and has dragged into insignificance
the banal concerns
that occupy our ‘normal time.’

There’s another kind of response,
although usually short-lived,
an inexplicable shudder of excitement
as if a clarifying moment of calamity
has swept away everything trivial and tiny,
and placed before us
the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
things change.
You discover that Christianity
is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft.
Faith may be the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution.
The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks,
reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies.
Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world
and contemplating trips
to what must have seemed the antipodes ( Spain ),
shaking the dust from his sandals,
worrying not about the morrow,
but only about the moment.

There’s nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue,
- for it is through selflessness and service
that God wrings from our bodies and spirits
the most we ever could give,
the most we ever could offer,
and the most we ever could do.

Finally, we can let love change everything.
When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion,
he grieved not for himself,
but for us.
He cried for Jerusalem before entering the Holy City ..
From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness,
and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.

We get repeated chances
to learn that life is not about us,
that we acquired purpose and satisfaction
by sharing in God’s love for others.
Sickness gets us part way there.
It reminds us of our limitations and dependence.
But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy.
A minister friend of mine observes
that people suffering grave afflictions
often acquire the faith of two people,
while loved ones accept the burden
of two peoples’ worries and fears.

‘Learning How to Live’.
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God’s arms,
not with resignation, but with peace and hope.
In so doing, they have taught us not how to die,
but how to live.
They have emulated Christ
by transmitting the power and authority of live.

I sat by my best friend’s bedside a few years ago
as a wasting cancer took him away.
He kept at his table a worn Bible
and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.
A shattering grief disabled his family,
many of his old friends, and at least one priest.
Here was an humble and very good guy,
someone who apologized when he winced with pain
because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable.
He restrained his equanimity and good humor
literally until his last conscious moment.
‘I’m going to try to beat [this cancer],’
he told me several months before he died.
‘But if I don’t, I’ll see you on the other side.’

His gift was to remind everyone around him
that even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow,
he does promise us eternity
- filled with life and love we cannot comprehend,
and that one can, in the throes of sickness,
point the rest of us toward timeless truths
that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose:
Do we believe, or do we not?
Will we be bold enough to love,
daring enough to serve,
humble enough to submit,
and strong enough
to acknowledge our limitations?
Can we surrender our concern
in things that don’t matter
so that we might devote our remaining days
to things that do?

When our faith flags, He throws reminders in our way.
Think of the prayer warriors in our midst.
They change things,
and those of us
who have been on the receiving end
of their petitions and intercessions
know it.
It is hard to describe,
but there are times
when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,
and you feel a surge of the Spirit.
Somehow you just know:
Others have chosen,
when talking to the Author of all creation,
to lift us up,
- to speak of us!

This is love of a very special order.
But so is the ability to sit back
and appreciate the wonder of every created thing.
The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid,
every happiness more luminous and intense.
We may not know how our contest with sickness will end,
but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.

What is man that Thou are mindful of him?
We don’t know much, but we know this:
No matter where we are,
no matter what we do,
no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects,
each and every one of us who believe each and every day,
lies in the same safe and impregnable place,
in the hollow of God’s hand.’

T. Snow

Information on the Gradasil vaccine from the Judicial Watch website:

Judicial Watch Investigates Side-Effects of HPV Vaccine
Judicial Watch Special Report: Examining the FDA’s HPV Vaccine Records – June 30, 2008
Examining the FDA’s HPV Vaccine Records – Appendices – June 30, 2008
Vaccine Adverse Effects Report System (VAERS) cumulative deaths report – June 30, 2008

Whether you are thinking about buying or selling give Eva Christ a call at Realty USA. She is committed to making you “Fabulously happy!” . Make sure you tell her Kathy sent you.

Press Release May 3, 2008

Buffalo, NY

Contact:
Patrick W. Welch, PhD
716.445.0465

Armed Forces Week

The Armed Forces Week Committee is pleased to announce the opening ceremonies for the 48th Annual celebration of Western New York Armed Forces Week.

This year the US Navy is the host service for the annual tribute to the men and women who serve our nation in the military branches; US Army, US Marine Corps, US Navy, US Air Force and the US Coast Guard. As our nation continues to deploy our military to over 130 countries, these men and women who volunteer to protect our nation and all we stand for deserve all the recognition we can offer.

WHEN: Sunday May 4, 2008

WHERE: Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park
One Naval Park Cove
Buffalo, NY 14202

TIME: 12:45 PM

FREE Admission and the public is invited

How they vote in the United Nations can be found on this link.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT SYNOPSIS OF ISLAM AND HOW IT WORKS.

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components.
The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called ‘religious rights.’

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to ‘the reasonable’ Muslim demands for their ‘religious rights,’ they also get the other components under the table. Here’s how it works (percentages source
CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone.
In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States — Muslim 1.0%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1%-2%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street
gangs:

Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. (United States).

France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — Muslim 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad &Tobago — Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris — car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam — Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ — the Islamic House of Peace — there’s supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan — Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim 100%
Somalia — Muslim 100%
Yemen — Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

‘Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. — Leon Uris, ‘The Haj’

It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France, the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity.
Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond’s book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat…

Her hair was up in a pony tail,
her favorite dress tied with a bow.
Today was Daddy’s Day at school,
and she couldn’t wait to go.

But her mommy tried to tell her,
that she probably should stay home
Why the kids might not understand,
if she went to school alone.

But she was not afraid;
she knew just what to say.
What to tell her classmates
of why he wasn’t there today.

But still her mother worried,
for her to face this day alone.
And that was why once again,
she tried to keep her daughter home..

But the little girl went to school
eager to tell them all.
About a dad she never sees
a dad who never calls.

There were daddies along the wall in back,
for everyone to meet.
Children squirming impatiently,
anxious in their seats

One by one the teacher called
a student from the class.
To introduce their daddy,
as seconds slowly passed.

At last the teacher called her name,
every child turned to stare.
Each of them was searching,
a man who wasn’t there.

‘Where’s her daddy at?’
She heard a boy call out.
‘She probably doesn’t have one,’
another student dared to shout.

And from somewhere near the back,
she heard a daddy say,
‘Looks like another deadbeat dad,
too busy to waste his day.’

The words did not offend her,
as she smiled up at her Mom.
And looked back at her teacher,
who told her to go on.

And with hands behind her back,
slowly she began to speak.
And out from the mouth of a child,
came words incredibly unique.

‘My Daddy couldn’t be here,
because he lives so far away.
But I know he wishes he could be,
since this is such a special day.

And though you cannot meet him,
I wanted you to know.
All about my daddy,
and how much he loves me so.

He loved to tell me stories
he taught me to ride my bike.
He surprised me with pink roses,
and taught me to fly a kite.

We used to share fudge sundaes,
and ice cream in a cone.
And though you cannot see him.
I’m not standing here alone.

‘Cause my daddy’s always with me,
even though we are apart
I know because he told me,
he’ll forever be in my heart’

With that, her little hand reached up,
and lay across her chest.
Feeling her own heartbeat,
beneath her favorite dress.

And from somewhere there in the crowd of dads,
her mother stood in tears.
Proudly watching her daughter,
who was wise beyond her years.

For she stood up for the love
of a man not in her life.
Doing what was best for her,
doing what was right.

And when she dropped her hand back down,
staring straight into the crowd.
She finished with a voice so soft,
but its message clear and loud.

‘I love my daddy very much,
he’s my shining star.
And if he could, he’d be here,
but heaven’s just too far.

You see he is a Marine
and died just this past year
When a roadside bomb hit his convoy
and taught Americans to fear.

But sometimes when I close my eyes,
it’s like he never went away.’
And then she closed her eyes,
and saw him there that day.

And to her mother’s amazement,
she witnessed with surprise.
A room full of daddies and children,
all starting to close their eyes.

Who knows what they saw before them,
who knows what they felt inside.
Perhaps for merely a second,
they saw him at her side.

‘I know you’re with me Daddy,’
to the silence she called out.
And what happened next made believers,
of those once filled with doubt.

Not one in that room could explain it,
for each of their eyes had been closed.
But there on the desk beside her,
was a fragrant long-stemmed pink rose.

And a child was blessed, if only for a moment, by the love of her shining star.
And given the gift of believing,
that heaven is never too far.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them… Take the time… to live and love. Until eternity.

God bless

There must be many children in the same boat as this little girl, thanks to our servicemen and their families for the sacrifice they are making to keep our country Free.

When you visit this site you can enter your address and a map will pop up with your house as a small icon of a house. There will be red, blue and green dots surrounding your entire neighborhood. When you click on these dots a picture of a criminal will appear with his or her home address and the description of the crime he or she has committed.

Please pass this on to everyone!!!

Here are some of the groups and sites mentioned on the show today.

Recreate 68
United for Peace and Justice
Progressive Democrats of America
Democratic Socialists of America
new Students for a Democratic Society
Committees for Correspondence
Code Pink
Unconventional Action

New Alliance Of Democrats Spreads Funding

Discover the Networks

The Liars March for Tyranny and Oppression: Commie Claws are Coming to Town

PROTEST WARRIER

Exposing America’s Enemies: the ‘Social Justice Seeking’ Communist Left- May 06, 2006

AAU Girls Basketball Tryouts

17 years old and under

Saturday April 26th 2-4 pm
&
Monday April 28th 7-9 pm

Cardinal O’Hara High School
39 O’Hara Road
Tonawanda, NY 14150

U.S. Civil Rights Commission
April 4, 2008
Washington, DC

Illegal Immigration: The Impact on Wages and Employment of Black Workers

Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.
Emeritus Professor of Labor Economics
Cornell University
(Please click on the above website for more on Vernon Briggs, Jr. and his extensive background)

Overall Perspective

Before addressing the specific issue of illegal immigration and its economic effects on black Americans, the broad subject needs to be placed in perspective. No issue has affected the economic well-being of African Americans more that the phenomenon of immigration and its related policy manifestations. Immigration defined the entry experience of the ancestors of most the nation’s contemporary black American community (as slaves who were brought as involuntary immigrants); it placed them disproportionately in the states that today comprise the “South”( at no point in American history has less than half the black population ever lived outside the South); it disproportionately tied them for centuries to the rural sector of the southern economy where they were linked with the regions vast agricultural economy (the black migration out of the South did not begin until after 1915 when the mass immigration of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries from Europe and Asia were cut off by war from 1914-1918 and by restrictive legislation from 1921-1965); and, with the accidental revival of mass immigration in the years since 1965 that has continued to this day, immigration has served largely to marginalize the imperative to address squarely and affirmatively the legacy of the denial of equal economic opportunity that had resulted from the previous centuries of slavery and segregation which the civil rights movement and legislation of the 1960s sought to redress. In this post-1965 era of mass immigration, no racial or ethnic group has benefited less or been harmed more than the nation’s African American community.

From 1965 to 2007, the foreign-born population of the United States has soared from 8.4 million persons to 39.3 million persons (from being 4.4 percent of the nation’s population to being 12.7 percent). As for origin of this current wave of mass immigration, only 2.5 percent of the nation’s foreign born population in 2000 (when the last Census were conducted) were from Africa [whereas 51 percent were from Latin America (including Mexico and Central America); 25.5 percent were from Asia; and 15.3 percent were from
Europe; and the residual from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific Islands]. Indeed, by 2004, the surge in immigration led to the replacement for the first time in the nation’s history of black Americans as the nation’s largest minority group by Hispanics who now hold that distinction. Although black Americans were 13.5 percent of the nation’s native –born population, they were only 7.8 percent of the foreign-born population in 2000. Hispanics, on the other hand, were only 8.5 percent of the native-born population while being 45.2 percent of the foreign-born population.

Illegal Immigration and the Low Wage Labor Market

A major explanation for the rapid growth of the nation’s post-1965 immigrant population has been – and continues to be – illegal immigration. It is estimated that there are ll.3 million illegal immigrants in the country as of 2007 (plus another 1.1 million persons who are believed to be undercounted in the published estimates). This means that about 30 percent of the total foreign-born population are illegal immigrants. When one recalls that there have been seven amnesties given by Congress since 1986 that have legalized the status of over 6 million former illegal immigrants, it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude that upwards of half the current foreign-born population of the country entered in violation of the nation’s immigration laws.

The most distinguishing characteristic of the illegal immigrant population is their paucity of human capital. It is currently estimated that 57 percent of the adult illegal immigrant population have not completed high school while an additional 24 percent have only a high school diploma. Thus, less than 19 percent of the illegal immigrant adult population have more than a high school education as of 2007. Since most illegal immigrants come from some of the world’s poorest nation’s, the quality of the education received is likely to be poor as well which means that the low levels of educational attainment are only part of the story.

Because of the low levels of human capital and the fact that they often lack adequate English-speaking skills, the vast majority of illegal immigrant workers are employed in low skilled occupations. Even those few with higher skills are often forced to work in the low skilled sector because their illegal status means that they often cannot use their credentials to get better jobs. Thus, the estimated 7.4 million illegal immigrant workers (who are about one-third of the total foreign-born labor force) compete for jobs and income with the other 43 million adult members of the low skilled labor force who are legally entitled to work in the civilian labor force (i.e., native born workers and the remainder of the foreign-born work force who are naturalized citizens, permanent resident aliens, and non-immigrants with visa authorizations to work) in 2007.

In part due to the large supply of workers who comprise the low skilled labor force of the United States and in part due to the fact that higher skilled workers can (and often do) also work in this low skilled sector when they cannot find jobs for their talents, the low skilled labor market always has the highest level of unemployment of any of the segments of the U.S. labor force for whom educational attainment is measured. In February 2008, for instance, the national unemployment rate was 4.8 percent but the unemployment rate for adults (over 25 years old) without a high school diploma was 7.3 percent. Low skilled adults also often must compete with youth who seek employment in large sectors of the unskilled labor market. Youths usually lose in this competition for jobs as employers typically prefer adults who are more dependent on the labor market for their income than are young people. The unemployment rate for youth16-19 years old was 16.8 percent and for young adults 20-24 years old was 8.9 percent in February, 2008.

Black Employment in the Low Skilled Labor Market

Of the 50 million low skilled adults (those 25 years of age and over) in the civilian labor force in 2007, black Americans accounted for about 5.6 million of such workers (or about 10 percent of the total). These black American workers, however, had the highest unemployment rates of any of the four racial and ethnic groups for which the data was collected. Black American adult workers without a high school diploma had an unemployment rate of 12.0 percent and those with only a high school diploma had an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent in 2007. These 5.6 million low skilled black workers accounted for one-third of the entire black labor force of slightly over 17 million workers.

Black youth (16-19 years old) also had the highest unemployment rate of any of the racial groups for whom data is collected. Their unemployment rate for February 2008 was an astounding 31.7 percent. These data are, of course, only for those still actively seeking employment and who are not institutionalized. They do not include those who have been discouraged from seeking employment because they feel it would not be worthwhile even to try to find a job under these conditions of high unemployment among their peers. Nor do they include any of the more than one million black youth and adults who are incarcerated in the nation’s penal system (often because on the inability to find regular employment).

Clearly, black American workers who are poorly skilled have the greatest difficulty finding jobs of all such workers similarly situated in the U.S. labor force.

Illegal Immigration and Black Workers

Illegal immigrant workers tend to concentrate in labor markets that have high concentrations of legal immigrants and citizens (native born and naturalized who are from similar ethnic and racial backgrounds). It is more difficult for authorities to identify them under these circumstances and they can rely on networks of friends and family members as well as other employers and community assistance organizations composed of members of their same backgrounds to find employment. As a consequence, there is a tendency for illegal immigrants to cluster in metropolitan areas (especially central cities) or in rural areas that already have concentrations of persons from similar backgrounds.

Black workers also tend to be concentrated in metropolitan areas – especially in central cities. The only rural labor markets where black Americans are of significant number are in the Southeastern states – a legacy of the slavery heritage of yesteryear.

Thus, it is not everywhere that there is likely to be significant competition between low skilled black workers and illegal immigrant workers but there are ample circumstances where there is – such as the large metropolitan labor markets of Los Angles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and Washington-Baltimore. Moreover, some of the fastest growing immigrant concentrations are now taking place in the urban and rural labor markets of the states of the Southeast– such as Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia which never before were significant immigrant receiving states in previous eras of mass immigration. Indeed, about 26 percent of the nation’s foreign-born population are now found in the states of the South – the highest percentage ever for this region. There is mounting evidence that many of these new immigrants in this region are illegal immigrants.

Because most illegal immigrants overwhelmingly seek work in the low skilled labor market and because the black American labor force is so disproportionately concentrated in this same low wage sector, there is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in this sector of the labor market. Given the inordinately high unemployment rates for low skilled black workers (the highest for all racial and ethnic groups for whom data is collected), it is obvious that the major looser in this competition are low skilled black workers. This is not surprising, since if employers have an opportunity to hire illegal immigrant workers, they will always give them preference over legal workers of any race or ethnic background. This is because illegal immigrant workers view low skilled jobs in the American economy as being highly preferable to the job opportunities in their homelands that they have left. A job that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.15 an hour (some states and localities have even higher minimum wages) is often several times higher than the daily wage they could earn in their homelands, if they could get a job at all. Even the worst working conditions in the United States are typically better than what many have experienced before they came to this country. Illegal immigrants, therefore, are often grateful to receive these low wages and they will do whatever it takes to get these jobs (even if it means living in crowded and substandard living conditions and working under harsh and dangerous conditions). It is also easier for some employers to exploit illegal immigrant workers by paying them less than the minimum wage and not paying them overtime wages because they are fearful of revealing their vulnerable status if they were to complain. Citizen workers know that paying the minimum wages means that the employer values your work at the lowest level that he/she can legally pay. Furthermore, citizen workers expect labor and safety laws to be enforced because they believe they have legal rights to job protections. It is not that citizen workers will not do the work that illegal immigrants are willing to do. Rather, it is that citizens often will not do the work for the same pay and under the same working conditions as will illegal immigrants – nor should they.

It is not that employers are evil in their willingness to give preference to illegal immigrants. It is that they are pragmatic in their decision making. Illegal immigrants are available because the federal government has chosen to do little to monitor the work sites of the nation. Seldom are any penalties placed on employers who violate the ban against hiring illegal immigrants working even though it has existed since1986. Moreover, because of this self-imposed impotence by the federal government, employers who try to follow the law are penalized because they must compete with employers who violate the law and benefit by paying lower wages and providing cheaper working conditions that are more profitable to these employer but hazardous to the illegal workers. The status quo, therefore, is a perversity of justice. Law breakers are rewarded while law abiders are punished.

Economists long ago have realized that there is no way to prove or to measure the job displacement of citizens by illegal immigrants. This is because when immigrants (including the large illegal immigrant component) move into a local labor market, citizens tend to move out. Mass immigration has affected the internal migration patterns of citizen workers. As they leave the area or as they dropout of the labor market because they cannot find jobs, immigrants move in to claim the jobs But there is no way to measure the loss since many of the victims are no longer in the local labor market.

As for wage suppression, all studies show that the large infusion of immigrants has depressed the wages of low skilled workers. It is the illegal immigrant component of the immigration flow that has most certainly caused the most damage but there is no way to isolate their singular harm. But even these studies most likely underestimate the true adverse impact because there is a floor on legal wages set by minimum wage laws that do not allow the market to set the actual wage level. What is known is that wages in the low wage labor market have tended to stagnate for some time. It is not just that the availability of massive numbers of illegal immigrants depress wages, it is the fact that their shear numbers keep wages from rising over time and that is the real harm experienced by citizen workers in the low skilled labor market.

What is apparent is that the unemployment rates in the low skilled labor market are the highest in the entire national labor force. This means that the low skilled labor market is
in a surplus condition. Willing workers are available at existing wage rates. By definition, therefore, illegal immigrants who are overwhelmingly present in that same labor market sector adversely affect the economic opportunities of legal citizen workers because the illegal workers are preferred workers. No group pays a higher penalty for this unfair competition than do low skilled black Americans given their inordinately high unemployment levels

The willingness of policy makers to tolerate the presence of illegal immigrants in the nation’s labor force exposes a seamy side of the nation’s collective consciousness. Illegal immigrants – who themselves are often exploited even though they may not think so —are allowed to cause harm in the form of unemployment and depressed wages to the most vulnerable workers in the American work force. The continued reluctance by our national government to get illegal immigrants out of the labor force– and to keep them out–by enforcing the existing sanctions at the work site against employers of illegal immigrants is itself a massive violation of the civil rights of all low skilled workers in the United States and of low skilled black American workers in particular. Illegal immigrants have no right to work in the United States. In fact, they have no right to even be in the country. Enforcing our nation’s labor laws – including the protection of the legal labor force from the presence of illegal immigrant workers – is the civil rights issue of this generation of American workers.

It is time, therefore, to make our immigration laws credible. The way to do this is to adhere to the findings of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by the late Barbara Jordan who boldly stated what should be the goal of public policy: “The credibility of immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick: people who should get in, do get in; people who should not get in, are kept out; and people who are judged deportable, are required to leave.”

No one would benefit more by the adherence to that standard than would low skilled black American workers and their families.

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? – William J. Bennett – in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997
One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me:
“Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.
Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.
I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.
“Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.
“Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed
Let me expand on this old soldier’s excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids’ schools.
But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid’s school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep’s only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.”
Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.
Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?
Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.
Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.
There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.
Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.
Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, “Let’s roll,” which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers – athletes, business people and parents. — from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.
There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. – Edmund Burke
Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.
If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.
For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.
I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, “I will never be caught without my gun in church.” I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy’s body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?”
Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for “heads to roll” if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids’ school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.
Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, “Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?”
It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.
Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn’t bring your gun, you didn’t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.
Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: “…denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn’t so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling.”
Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.
And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself…
“Baa.”
This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone? ‘Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or vacuuming, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible. I’m the invisible Mom.

Some days I am only a pair of hands: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I’m a clock to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to ask, ‘What number is the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’ I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. Going, going, gone!

One night, a group of us were celebrating the return of a friend from England. I was sitting there, looking around at the others who were all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when my friend turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package and said, ‘I brought you this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: ‘…with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.’

In reading the book, I discovered four life-changing truths:

* No one can say who built the great cathedrals- we have no record of their names.

* These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.

* They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

* The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

When I finished the book, I felt the missing piece fall into place. I heard God whisper, ‘I see you. I see what you do every day, even when no one else does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn, no cupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.’

I don’t want my child to tell the friend she’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving dinner that her Mom gets up at 5 in the morning, bakes pies, hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table. I just want her to want to come home. If there is anything more for her to say to her friend, I want her to add ‘you’re going to love it here.’

We are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. One day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world because of invisible women.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee…
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else—the small stuff. ‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

‘Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.’

REMINDER….all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies tomorrow and you will start to receive sales calls.
….YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS!

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:
888-382-1222.It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time It blocks your number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
It take about 20 seconds.

Immanuel Lutheran Church
93 Pine Street (behind Viddler’s)
East Aurora, NY
11:30 – ?
$ 3.50 for lunch

Bob Kunkel will speak at 12:45 PM
Quilts will be on display, bound for Walter Reed. Meet local artist Carole Culhane and Kathy Weppner.

All proceeds to help Bob Kunkle and his mission to help our injured Vets at Walter Reed and Brooks Memorial Medical Center.

For those of you who would like to purchase a military ornament for yourself or someone at Walter Reed or off the Gold Star list please go to www.justmeart.com. All proceeds will go to help “Bob the Vet” with his travels to WRAMC and Brooks Army Medical Center.

We all must be responsible and vote with our eyes wide open to the truth.

These links offer an opportunity to explore important information. I stay away from blogs because when I am seeking facts I don’t want opinions. Find the facts then form your own opinions on who you want leading our country.

Obama’s Pastor’s Uplifting Christmas Sermon

The Religious Cancer of Racism

The Peculiar Theology of Black Liberation

In Search of a Black Christianity

Obama’s Mentor’s Mentor

Theology’s Great Sin:
Silence In The Face Of White Supremacy

Malcolm and Martin: Still Teachers of Resistance

PBS: James Cone Part 1 & 2

Some views at Obama’s church are controversial

Funny Hillary political cartoon

Uncle Jay explains Hubris

A wonderful listener found a website where he signed up to adopt two soldiers. He will be writing to them and sending care packages . This is a wonderful idea. Here is the link;

Just wanted to tell you about it because I know you often cover or say very supportive things re: the troops on your show, and are likely to be asked for ways people can help.”

Brigitte Gabriel has a website everyone should visit.

Some of the members of the Bike Path Rapist Task Force have organized a fund raiser for Dennis Delano due to his being suspended without pay.

Please come out and show your support for this true Buffalo Hero!!!

Date: Sunday March 9th
Time: 5 – 8 PM
Location: Level Nightclub
75 West Chippewa Street
Buffalo, New York 14202

Door Charge: $20.00/person

All food is being donated by Louis Billiteer from Chef’s Restaurant.

Lynn Dejac and I will be official greeters at the door.

We’d like to send a loud and clear message to Frank Clark, H. McCarthy
Gibson, Mayor Brown and anyone else that doesn’t want to the truth to come
out. We want to see 500 people there. We can do that!

If you are Buffalo Sabres players or Buffalo Bills players and wouldn’t mind
stopping by on Sunday if you could let me know that would be great! Please
e-mail me at Kathy @ wben.com and we will make sure we get that word out and
we could attract even more people.

For those of you who would like to contact Dennis Delano he can be reached
at papabuddy2@aol.com

I have a correction to make from my show on 2/16/2008. Lynn Dejac grew up six doors down from the bar that her mother purchased. The bar was not purchased until after Lynn, who was the youngest in her family, turned 18 years old. Lynn managed the bar for her mother as an adult. Her mother worked as a switchboard operator while Lynn was growing up.

If you want to know what the public thinks of our military watch this link to the Marine Corp Silent Drill Team.

For those of you who missed the show on mold and my interview with Dr. Croft you can now access it on the following site. Go to this site and click on radio & video and it is the first interview. I hope this helps.

Our Lady of Pompeii School Open House

School Address:
129 Laverack Avenue
Lancaster, New York 14086
Phone Number: 716.684.4664

Any of you that have children who are out on the roads at night driving should sit down and go over this website with them. It is the story, in pictures of a drunk driving accident.

The response to the show on toxic mold has been tremendous. One of the absolutes is that if you are chronically sick with something that the doctors cannot seem to diagnose you should look into the possibility of mold exposure. Click on the page to link to the three stages of illness associated with toxic mold exposure as taken from the Journal of Environmental Biology 23(3) 301-320 (2002), an article entitled “Clinical confirmation of trichothecene mycotoxicosis in patient urine”. I have not included the entire article but included the stages of illness.

Dr. William Croft was my guest and is a pathologist in Madison, Wisconsin. He is a world renown expert on toxic mold and the pathology of disease it causes. He mentioned that he has developed strips that you can lay down on the floor of your home or workplace for a short period of time and send to him for analysis. He will be able to tell if mold is present and what kind. He also mentioned he is able to do urinalysis as well as analyzing a white t-shirt that is worn. Airborne mold sticks to your clothing. You actually take it home with you!

Visit this link to view Dr. Crofts website

Dr. Croft can be reached at doccroft@hotmail.com or you can contact him at 608-274-1618 from Tuesday to Friday and Monday call 715-757-3756.

Other websites od interest:

The Nation’s Indoor Environment – Toxic Mold website

This site chronicles the mold problem at Liberty Middle School in Liberty, New York

I would appreciate any feedback on your searches.

Ken Metzger will be conducting book signings at the following places for his book The Potter’s Perfect Piece. It is a beautiful children’s book about how God shapes your life and makes you perfect with His love!

Feb. 9th Borders on Walden Ave 2-4 pm

Mar 15th Crossroads Books on Goodrich Rd in Clarence 1-3 pm

Mar 30th Barnes and Noble on Niagara Falls Blvd in Amherst 1-3 pm

Apr 5th Barnes & Noble on Transit Rd in Clarence 11:30(story time) and noon -2 pm

This information is gathered from the many listeners who e-mailed after the show. My heart went out to my last caller who truly wanted guidelines for his 13 year old. Here are some of the suggestions for information. As I mentioned on the show the book by Meg Meeker, Strong Father’s Strong Daughters is an excellent book. A listener Tammy recommended the CD series To Have And To Hold by Richard Wheeler. Many listeners recommended the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris as well as various publications by Doug Phillips.

Putting much thought into how you want your child to value themselves and KNOWING they are too young to do many of the things that society is promoting them to do, I think is key. Making some of the decisions for them until they are old enough to act responsibly for themselves is important. Protect your children from bad things that can happen when there is no supervision. There is NO downside to this! Don’t think that responding to that “little voice inside” telling you to parent is just not with the times. Your parenting voice should be listened to and acted on.

Many of the books come from a religious perspective. If you are not religious read them anyway you might get some good ideas; things you hadn’t thought of.

Most importantly pray with and for your children. Ask God to be with them and help them to make good choices on their life’s journey.

God Bless

Kathy

This Sunday, January 13th at 10:30 a.m. on the steps of the New York Public Library, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, I urge you to attend a bi partisan news conference by New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman where they will announce legislation designed to protect journalists, author and publishers s from lawsuits filed outside the U.S. by foreign nationals seeking to muzzle the First Amendment rights of American citizens, particular those reporting on terrorism and its financiers.

The two lawmakers, Ehrenfeld, and members of the bar, will warn that without this legislation, the contents of the New York Public Library could be subject to assault by off shore nationals seeking to silence public debate in America. Your participation would add enormously to this effort and underscore the gravity of the threat.

Here is a new foundation for families that have babies born prematurely.

Please review this letter that is a funny example of how our kids can drive us to drink!!!

Please read about the newly discovered atomic element.

Marine Corp Drill Team at the Denver Nuggets game…

Follow this link to the piece I read about the principal. You can print it up and read of its’ origin.

Please follow this link and view home video footage of the 9/11 attack of the World Trade Center…

Once a Part of the Problem, Now Messenger of the Cure

Reading his testimony will give you a new understanding of the depths of God’s love for us all.

This is the letter I read on air. Many requests have come in for it.
A copy of this letter was sent to me by Terry Crowe’s sister. Lt. Col. Terrence K. Crowe, 44, of Buffalo, N.Y., died June 7, 2007 in Tal Afar, Iraq, when his unit was attacked by enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Crowe was assigned to the Army Reserve’s 10th Battalion, 98th Regiment, 4th Brigade, 98th Division, Lodi, N.J. You can do a search for the Battle of Tal Afar and read about these brave men and women.

‘In the Name of God the Compassionate and Merciful To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tal Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.

NAJIM ABDULLAHABID AL-JIBOURI, Mayor of Tal Afar, Iraq

Just a question from me: If not us then who?

God Bless
Kathy

Please click on the link to read about “A Soldier’s Silent Night” poem author Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt and the story behind the recording by Father Ted Berndt. Merry Christmas to our heroes past and present.
God Bless

“A Soldier’s Silent Night”
Click Here To Listen

T’was the night before Christmas
He lived all alone,
in a one bedroom house
made of plaster and stone.

One look at my watch,
I knew he was right.
Merry Christmas my friend,
May God bless you this night.

Sgt. Eddie Jeffers was killed in Iraq on September 19, 2007. He was 23.

Hope Rides Alone
by Sgt. Eddie Jeffers, USA (Iraq)
01 February 2007

I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others.

Sergeant Eddie Jeffers is a US Army Infantryman serving in Ramadi, Iraq.

Below is the uncut version. I had to edit the beginning due to time constraints “on air” but felt I should leave the uncut version for posting so you could get to know Terry McGuire a little. He is an outstanding person and typical of the men and women who serve all of us today.

May God bless them as He has blessed our country with their service…

Veteran’s Day Speech – VA Hospital, Buffalo, NY – 11 November 2007

The first Congress that convened after the adoption of the Constitution requested of the President that the people of the United States observe a day of thanksgiving and prayer:

That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.

This resolution was opposed by some as an infringement on the authority of the states: “It is a business with which Congress has nothing to do; it is a religious matter, and as such is proscribed to us.”(1) Nevertheless, the resolution was adopted. Washington then issued a proclamation setting aside November 26, 1789, as a national day of thanksgiving, calling everyone to “unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech him to pardon our national and other
transgressions.”(2) Washington called for days of prayer and thanksgiving on January 1 and February 19, 1795.

(1) Quoted in Anson Phelps Stokes and Leo Pfeffer, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 87.

(2) Quoted in Stokes and Pfeffer, Church and State in the United States, 87.

I know I needed this reminder since Sears isn’t always my first choice. Amazing when you think of how long the war has lasted and they haven’t withdrawn from their commitment. Could we each buy at least one thing at Sears this year?

How does Sears treat its employees who are called up for military duty? By law, they are required to hold their jobs open and available, but nothing more. Usually, people take a big pay cut and lose benefits as a result of being called up.

Sears is voluntarily paying the difference in salaries and maintaining all benefits, including medical insurance and bonus programs, for all called up reservist employees for up to two years.

I submit that Sears is an exemplary corporate citizen and should be recognized for its contribution. I suggest we all shop at Sears, and be sure to find a manager to tell them why we are there so the company gets the positive reinforcement it well deserves.

Pass it on.

Decided to check this before I sent it forward. So I sent the following e-mail to the Sears Customer Service Department:

I received this e-mail and I would like to know if it is true. If it is, the Internet may have just become one very good source of advertisement for your company. I know I would go out of my way to buy products from Sears instead of another store for a like item, even if it’s cheaper at that store.

This is their answer to my e-mail:

Dear Customer:

Bill Thorn
Sears Customer Care
webcenter@sears.com
1-800-349-4358

Please pass this on to all your friends. Sears needs to be recognized for
this outstanding contribution and we need to show! them as Americans, we do
appreciate what they are doing for our military!!!

It’s Verified ! By Snopes.com at:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/sears.asp (shows the entire
article)

1. Wake Up !!
Decide to have a good day.
“This is the day the Lord hath made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Psalms 118:24

2. Dress up!!
The best way to dress up is to put on a smile.
A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
“The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.
Man looks at outward appearance,
but the Lord looks at the heart.”
I Samuel 16:7

3. Shut Up!!
Say nice things and learn to listen.
God gave us two ears and one mouth,
so He must have meant for us to do twice as much listening as talking.
“He who guards his lips guards his soul.”
Proverbs 13:3

4. Stand Up!!
. . . for what you believe in.
Stand for something or you will fall for anything.
“Let us not be weary in doing good; for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good…”
Galatians 6:9-10

5. Look Up !!
. . . to the Lord.
“I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me”.
Philippians 4:13

6. Reach Up !!
. . for something higher.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not unto your own understanding.
In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

7. Lift Up !!
. . . your Prayers.
“Do not worry about anything; instead
PRAY ABOUT EVERYTHING.”
Philippians 4:6

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring, and a sunrise every morning.
Whenever you want to talk, He’ll listen.
He could live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart.
What about the Christmas gift He sent you in Bethlehem; not to mention that Friday at Calvary.
Face it, He’s crazy about you.

God answers Knee-Mail!

Many times I receive these type of e-mails only to find out they are made up. This one is true. I read it on-air because I believe that no matter what job you do in your life you have the opportunity to do something wonderful for someone. This postal worker was a VERY special person. We need more like her/him.

God Bless

This is one of the kindest things I’ve ever experienced. I have no way to know who sent it, but there is a kind soul working in the dead letter office of the US postal service.

Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:

Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. I really miss her. Love, Meredith.

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, “To Meredith” in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, “When a Pet Dies.” Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:

Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away.
Abbey isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by.

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. By the way, I am wherever there is love.
Love, God

Are you or someone you know thinking about getting pregnant? The study, “Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction (EAGeR),” is currently looking for women who are interested in trying to become pregnant. This study is designed specifically for women who have had a pregnancy loss at some time in the past – the goal is to try to improve the chances of these women becoming pregnant again and maintaining a healthy pregnancy.

If you or someone you know would like to learn more about this important study, additional information may be obtained by contacting us at (716)829-2975 x660 or spm-eager@buffalo.edu.

We greatly appreciate your help!

To find out where terrorist incidents have and are happening click on this
link. It is current and updated constantly.

While you watch this think about the way these young soldiers were treated upon their return. Make a committment that it will NEVER happen again!

A great Hillary site….it will make you feel like you could actually do something. At least you will be informed.

Spend a few minutes on this website. It is all about the soldiers who
fought for this country in Vietnam. They must never be forgotten and if
you haven’t already done so, be thanked!

For those of you who are facing cancer or have a loved one with cancer and would like to correspond with Ken Metzger he can be contacted at Kenmetz222@yahoo.com

Please follow this link if you are interested in the childrens book that he has written entitled “The Potter’s Perfect Piece”

The Wedding Gift
by Melody Lee

The gift table was piled high with bright packages. Everything looked dazzling, except one bedraggled gift. Between the fancy gift bags overflowing with brilliantly colored tissue paper and the curly ribbons wrapped around shiny packages sat one misshapen box.
The paper, once sporting pure white roses, was grimy with fingerprints and wrinkled from the numerous times it had been unwrapped and rewrapped. It even looked as though it had been stomped on once or twice. On the gift tag several names were written then crossed out, and finally the name of the groom was scrawled over the others.

Inside, the present, once beautiful and pure, lay soiled, torn and broken.

Who would so carelessly place this gift upon the table waiting for the groom to open?

It Wasn’t Always This Way
Once, the gift had been perfect. Too beautiful and precious to be purchased with money, designed to not only attract the husband but also to cement the marriage, making the two one. The Father had placed one perfect gift into the hands of the bride to give to her beloved on their wedding day. He warned her to guard the gift well and not open it until He introduced her to her beloved, until He put His blessing on their wedding.

But the need to be loved, the pressure to fit in, the fear of losing out, caused the bride to open the gift and offer it to the first boy who showered her with attention. It’ll be OK, she thought. I’ll marry this one someday anyway.

But they grew apart, he moved on, she grew sad, the gift was torn, and when the next chance for a little happiness came along, she opened up the gift again and offered it. It was easier this time: The tape didn’t hold so well, the ribbon was already loose, but once again the couple grew apart, and now the gift was stained. Because of its use, the gift lost value to the bride-to-be, and she pulled it out whenever she needed diversion or to fill the empty space, and each time it grew more worn and lost more luster.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She told herself all people opened their gifts before marriage. She rationalized that it was the only way to attract a man. And though the gift brought her attention, it didn’t bring the love she desired.

After having her heart broken several times, she finally thought back on what the Father had told her. At that point, she put the gift aside and waited. One day she met her beloved, and he was everything she hoped.

What a Gift!
“I have a perfect gift for you,” he told her. “My Father gave it to me to save for our wedding night. I long to open it for you now, but it will be worth the wait.”

The bride hid her tears while he spoke, but she went weeping before her Father with her stained and battered gift.

“I’m so sorry, Father, that I gave the gift away before You chose my groom. Can You give me a new one? I don’t want to give my groom this broken gift.”

The Father smiled sadly and took the gift in His hands.

“I had a reason for my warning, but I want you to know that I will always love you. I can make you whole again, my child, but I cannot make the gift whole again. I will touch his eyes to see your gift as good, but the patches and stains will still remain.”

And so the bride put her crumpled gift on the wedding table, trusting the Father would help her husband find her gift as perfect as the one she would receive.

Our Crumpled World
We live in a society that pushes sexuality at every turn. The clothes we wear, advertisements, movies, songs and television all glorify sex as a normal part of dating. But that isn’t the way the Lord intended it to be used. He tells us to flee sexual immorality for a reason. (See 2 Corinthians 6:18.)

God gave us our sexuality to use as a wonderful wedding present to bless our marriages. When we live outside of His plan for sex we find ourselves reaping the consequences. Sometimes we’re lucky to walk away with only a broken heart and a lower self-worth; other times we become hardened or callous toward men.

You probably know more than a dozen young women who are raising children on their own, because they didn’t wait for the man God chose for them. Although your friends may never tell you, you also probably know more than a dozen young women who are reaping the physical effects of sexually transmitted infections, infertility or even life-threatening diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis C.

If you’ve made a pledge of purity, keep it!

If you made the mistake of giving up your wedding gift before your wedding night, know that God doesn’t take away the consequences of your sin, but He’s willing to make you whole again. He’ll give you a virgin heart and help you flee from temptation. God is the giver of everything good. We have to trust that He’ll make it worth the wait.

But What About . . .
If you’ve been forced to give up your virginity, know that God doesn’t hold that against you! Seek help from a professional Christian counselor or an adult in your church for the hurts that you’ve suffered and let God use them to heal you.

To get information about the Sensory Integration Conference contact Diana Henry at www.ateachabout.com or locally, Dr. Jan Tona at tona@buffalo.edu

I challenge each and every one of you to be part of the change you want to see in the world. Let’s start locally. We are fortunate we do not have to become a “minute man” and take up muskets. All we have to do is take ten minutes and vote!! Tuesday is Primary Day. On Primary Day you have a choice of the endorsed candidates, those who decide to run for themselves, or a combination of them. Saturday I had on on my radio show Dr. Satish Mohan, Supervisor of Amherst, that won his primary by 300 votes, Mary Travers-Murphy, Supervisor of Orchard Park, Steve Walters, Supervisor of Hamburg, and Kathy Balus, Supervisor of Sardinia. All four of these supervisors have been sandbagged, publicly slandered, denied access to public information and the party political operatives are trying to ensure that these types of reformers are never elected again. I asked each of these supervisors for their picks of who they would like to see sitting on their boards and here they are:

AMHERST: Republicans have three choices for the Town Board. Supervisor Dr. Satish Mohan asks that you give your votes to Dr. Barry Weinstein, Roy Wixson and Mark Klyczek. I support these three men as they are all men filled with integrity and will serve us well. He also asks for your support for Russ Stoll. You can Google any of these men to find out more about them.

ORCHARD PARK: Independence Party members have an opportunity to write in Deborah Yeomans and Anne Marie McManus. Both of these women have the backing of Mary Travers- Murphy. In a write in you must spell the name correctly AND it must be legible. Good luck!!! Petition to ballot is grass roots at its’ best!

HAMBURG: residents will have an opportunity to vote for Tom Best and Kevin Smardz in the general election in November. There is not a primary for these candidates. These are the two men that Supervisor Steve Walters would like to see elected. Please VOTE!!!!

SARDINIA: Democrats will have the opportunity to vote in the primary on Tuesday. Supervisor Kathy Balus asks that you cast a vote for Chuck Tobin and Norm Uhteg.

You the people elected these supervisors because you knew that the system was rigged against the little guy, taxes are out of control in New York State and locally and you wanted to see if this one vote, a vote for the non politician, could make a difference. It has! Orchard Park has gotten rid of an illegal practice that the government was partaking in, Amherst has a new highway contract with a single carrier for their insurance saving us $50,000 per month as well as an inequitable assessment process halted to be revised, Hamburg practices are being reviewed much to the chagrin of entrenched politicians and a new newspaper in Sardinia to get out the real news instead of the twisted news. DON’T ABANDON THESE SUPERVISORS NOW!!!!

For those of you that are Christian, Fred sent me this youtube link.
Reminded me of what it is all about! Thanks Fred!

Please send a card and forward, as you see appropriate, to those in your vet organizations, churches, local schools and scouts, relatives, etc. who would be willing to send a respectful card or message to these young heroes.
As they recover, they may be released from hospital and Brooke will forward mail.

Please send the letters to:

ATTN: (soldiers rank and name) (UNIT NOT NEEDED)
Brooke Army Medical Center, BLDG 3600
3851 Roger Brooke Drive
Ft. Sam Houston, TX 78234

Here is a list of our soldiers currently at BAMC:

Alpha Company:
CPL Atchley, Joshua B.
PFC Dunn, Michael A.
SSG Fradera, Michael A.
PFC Johnson, Benjamin L.
SSG Kirby, John R.
PFC Looney, Andrew R.
CPL Pellechia, Anthony D.
PFC Thompson, Leland R.

Bravo Company:
SSG Beaumont, Brian M.
PFC Butler, Zachary W.
PFC Edwards, Drew A.

Charlie Company:
PFC Crookston, Duncan C.
SPC Mixson, Joseph C .

Headquarters:
SPC Poulsen, Billy C.
PFC Todhunter, Andrew N.
SPC Wold, Joshua P.

Please contact President George W. Bush and ask him to commute the sentences of the wrongly imprisoned border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

Contacting the White House:

E-Mail:
Please send your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov. Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message. For further up-to-date information on Presidential initiatives, current events, and topics of interest to you, please continue to use the White House website.

The Andrews sisters had more top ten hits than Elvis or the Beatles with 1,800 songs recorded and 90 million records sold!

Running July 25th through August 11th at Musicalfare Theatre on the campus of Daemen College on Main Street in Amherst between Harlem and Getzville Roads. Reserve tickets today by calling 839-8540. Visa, Mastercard and checks are accepted and parking is free. Find out more by going to musicalfare.com.

To All:

The Federal Government is going to hire 193,000 employees in the near future. This article from the Washington Post details what is happening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070901849.html?referrer=emailarticle

We need to get the word out to all of our returning military personnel who may want to continue working for the Feds. This should be viewed as part of our Employment, Training & Business Opportunities Program (ETaBO).

Pass the word to all you know. Thank You.

Patrick W. Welch, Ph. D.
President – Chapter 77
Vietnam Veterans of America
VVA New York State Council – Membership Chairman
VVA Region 2 – Alternate Director
VVA National – Vice Chairman Government Affairs Committee
VVA National – Member Public Affairs Committee

www.vva77.org

REMEMBER: “If you do NOTHING, then someday when you need the Veterans Administration, NOTHING is just what you may get.”

Patrick W. Welch
Veterans Advocate

This week’s thought: “It is never too late to become what you might have been.” — George Eliot

Looking for Quite a Few Good Men and Women
By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; Page D04

Uncle Sam, the nation’s largest employer, is gearing up for a hiring binge.
Over the next two years, federal agencies expect to hire nearly 193,000 new workers in almost every occupational field, according to a report from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that urges young Americans to consider careers in government.
More than 83,000 of the jobs are expected to be filled at Defense and Homeland Security as part of the continuing effort to secure the nation from terrorism.
Agencies also will be hiring in medicine and public health, accounting and auditing, engineering, science, computers, program management and administration.
“The most striking feature to me is the breadth of need,” said Max Stier, president of the partnership. “You aren’t seeing three, four or five agencies projecting hiring needs; it is across the board.”
The hiring is being driven by the impending retirements of thousands of federal employees and by the intensified homeland security efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the report said. Nearly one-third of the 1.6 million full-time members of the federal workforce are expected to retire or resign in the next five years, with large numbers of baby boomers departing, to create staffing shortages.
The baby-boom retirements come at a time when the nation’s labor pool is growing at a slower pace than in previous decades. While immigrants will fill a larger share of the nation’s jobs, a significant number of them will not be available for federal service because almost all government jobs require citizenship.
Federal agencies “are not going to be fishing alone” in the national labor pool, Stier said. “They are going to be facing competition from the private sector for the best talent.”
As in recent years, the government will be recruiting from the ranks of college graduates and workers who are seeking a mid-career change. More than half of federal employees work in professional, management and business-related occupations, compared with 29 percent in the private sector, according to the report.
To compile the hiring projections, the Partnership for Public Service surveyed 34 federal agencies and used employment data collected by the Office of Personnel Management and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report summarizes hiring plans through September 2009 for what agencies call “mission critical” jobs. It does not include data from intelligence agencies such as the CIA.
According to the report, agencies intend to do much of their hiring in security, protection, compliance and enforcement, hoping to fill 62,863 such positions. Occupations include criminal investigator, inspector, police officer, prison guard, airport screener, customs and Border Patrol officer, immigration agent and intelligence analyst.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to hire more than 15,000 Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents and 22,000 airport screeners in the next three years. The department also is trying to fill more than 100 vacant political and senior executive slots.Defense, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission plan to fill 3,670 intelligence analyst positions and are looking for people with proficiency in certain foreign languages.
In medicine and public health, the government expects to bring aboard 35,350 new hires. According to the report, the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to hire more than 28,000 employees through 2009 to staff its network of hospitals.
Accountants, auditors, budget analysts and contracting specialists also will be in demand, the report said. The Defense Department projects that it will hire 6,841 contracting specialists, and the Internal Revenue Service plans to hire 4,600 tax examiners.
Engineers of all types will be sought by the departments of Defense, Transportation and Energy and NASA and the NRC. The Pentagon estimates that it will hire 7,652 engineers.
The threat of bioterrorism is driving demand for scientists. The Agriculture Department projects hiring 2,462 employees in biological sciences.
Other agencies with big hiring plans include the Federal Aviation Administration (more than 4,300 controllers), the Patent and Trademark Office (more than 1,500 patent examiners) and the State Department (nearly 2,000 to handle increased demand for passports and visas), the report said.Stephen Barr’s e-mail address is barrs@washpost.com.

Presentation at Neo conference, Stockholm, Sweden, 11 May 2007:

First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.

By liberalism I mean the commitment to a free society, founded above all on the separation of secular government from religious worship — from which follow the concepts of equal respect for all people, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the rule of law.

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle.

Liberalism is the creed of modernity. The driving force behind the Islamic jihad is the fight against liberalism and modernity. All the iconic conflicts — Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Chechnya, Sudan —are secondary to the fundamental aim of the jihad to prevent liberalism and modernity from destroying Islam.

The founding ideologue of modern Islamism, Syed Qutb, made clear in his writings that at the core of the salafi interpretation of Islam was opposition to the separation of religion and temporal power that resulted in liberalism and democracy. His governing impulse was the fear that the instinct for liberty was so powerful it would spread to and infiltrate the Muslim mind unless it was checked by the most repressive possible form of Islam.

The Big and Little Satans themselves, America and Israel, are proxies for liberalism and modernity. That’s why Islamism says they must be destroyed. Qutb famously went to America and concluded from seeing men and women dancing at a church hop that America was one giant brothel. And much of the bitter hostility to the Jews who started returning to Palestine in the 1920s was because the women wore shorts and were sexually free.

The Islamist goal is to destroy the virus of freedom and modernity before it infects the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam. That is the core of the profound threat it poses to the west, a threat mounted through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover.

This cultural takeover, or the aim to Islamise the west, was explicitly laid out in a programme of subversion for Europe by the Wahabbi Muslim Brotherhood almost 30 years ago. In 1978, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference sponsored a seminar in London which said Muslim communities in western countries must establish autonomous institutions with help from Muslim states, and lobby the host country to grant Muslims recognition as a separate religious community as a step towards eventual political domination.

In Britain in 1980, a book called ‘The Islamic Movement in the West’ by Khuram Murad advocated an ‘organised struggle to change the existing society into an Islamic society…and make Islam…supreme and dominant especially in the socio-political spheres…’ A Muslim Brotherhood document seized in Switzerland in 2001, known as ‘The Project’, outlined a twelve-point strategy to ‘establish an Islamic government on earth’. And the Brotherhood has now set up an intricate network of bodies across Europe to put all this into action.

Many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to this; indeed Muslims are the most numerous victims of the jihad. That’s why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at the same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.

But many in the west do deny it. They ignore the clear evidence of the goal of Islamising the west. They choose to believe instead that the reason for Islamist terror lies in the wrongs the west has done to the Islamic world —Iraq or Palestine, discrimination or Islamophobia. Indeed, even to speak in this way is to invite the deadly label of Islamophobia — a term invented to shut down legitimate and vital debate about Islamism. Far from defending core liberal values that are thus singled out for destruction, such people thus side with or appease those who attack them. So Europe — bastion of free speech — attacked those newspapers which published and re-published the Mohammed cartoons. And liberals committed to human rights march on the streets of London, behind banners saying Free Iraq and Free Palestine, shoulder to shoulder with Islamists who believe in death to gays.

Why is a liberal society so reluctant to defend its own most cherished values of freedom and tolerance? The answer, I suggest, lies both in the intrinsic nature of liberalism — and also in what I would call our dominant culture of corrupted liberalism, in which true liberal values have actually been turned on their heads.

Corruption of liberal values

Our corrupted liberal culture has torn up the key precepts of liberalism so that it no longer knows what they are, let alone stands ready to defend them to the death. Authentic liberalism was a doctrine of social progress based on maximising the good in people’s behaviour and minimising the bad. It thus depended upon making moral distinctions between good and bad.

But these distinctions have been destroyed by a combination of hyper-individualism —which grew out of liberalism — and a form of cultural Marxism whose agenda is to destroy liberal values. Between them, these trends tore up the concepts of objectivity, authority and the Judeo-Christian moral codes underpinning western values and substituted emotion, subjectivity, and moral and cultural relativism.

All lifestyles were now deemed to have equal status. Social or moral norms were intolerable because by definition they excluded by those who lay outside them. So normative values were replaced by those of groups hitherto deemed to lie outside them. Such self-designated ‘victim’ groups became unchallengeable: they could now do no wrong, while the dominant culture could do no right. And ‘universal’ human rights law became the judicial weapon for minorities to overturn the values of the dominant culture.

Under the banner of liberal values, this actually destroyed the core precept of liberalism — the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies. Instead, feelings and emotion became most important. The particulars of a culture were deemed hurtful and thus illegitimate because by definition they divided one culture from another. The nation, rooted as it is in the particulars of history, religion, law, language and tradition, became seen as the cause of all the ills of the world from prejudice to war. And the culture of a nation had to be replaced by multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism

Many people think multiculturalism just means showing respect and tolerance to other cultures and faiths. If that were so, it should be unarguable. We should all support respect and tolerance. But that’s not what multiculturalism is at all. It holds that all minority values must have equal status to those of the majority. Any attempt to uphold majority values over minorities is a form of prejudice. That turns minorities into a cultural battering ram to destroy the very idea of being a majority culture at all. And so, since no culture can assert itself over any other, liberalism cannot assert itself as a dominant cultural force. Instead society must fragment into a kaleidoscope of equal — and opposing —values, and liberal values must give way to their opposite.

That is what happened over the Mohammed cartoons. Freedom of expression is a key liberal precept. But under multiculturalism, that cannot trump a minority faith which holds that to publish these images is to give offence. So the minority wins over the liberal majority value, and Europeans decry not the violence and intimidation, the kidnappings, riots and murder which followed the publication of the cartoons but the offence to minority religious feelings that was given in publishing them.

Multiculturalism has produced furthermore two particularly lethal effects. First, it has left all immigrants abandoned, and none more lethally so than young Muslims. For if there is no longer an overarching culture, there is nothing into which minorities can integrate. Many young Muslims in Britain, stranded between the backward Asian village culture of their parents and the drug, alcohol and sex-saturated decadence that passes for western civilisation, are filled with disgust and self-disgust. They are then given, in our multicultural schools and wider culture, absolutely nothing to educate them about or fill them with respect and affection for the western society of which they are citizens.

Indeed, worse than that our schools fail to teach them historical truths. If they were taught the truth about, say, the crusades, slavery or the history of Israel and the Arabs — truths they will never have heard —this might make a huge difference to their attitudes. Instead, their heads are filled with distorted anti-western and anti-British propaganda which only reinforces the lies they are told in the Arab and Muslim world, deepens their feelings of grievance and resentment towards the west and further inflames their hatred of Americans and Jews. They are thus intensely vulnerable to the predatory jihadis recruiting in youth clubs, in prisons and on campus, who promise them self-respect and a purpose to life based on holy war.

Second, and worse still, multiculturalism has reversed the notions of truth and lies, victim and victimiser. Since minorities can do no wrong, they cannot be held responsible for acts such as suicide bombings which must instead be the fault of their victims. This key confusion, which has caused intellectual and moral paralysis in the west, plays directly into the pathological Muslim victim culture which makes dialogue impossible. Because so many Muslims genuinely believe they are under attack by the west, which is a giant conspiracy to destroy Islam. So they perceive their own aggression as legitimate self-defence, and the west’s defence as aggression.

This fundamental untruth has created a dialogue of the demented. Because instead of treating it as the mad discourse that it is and refusing to play along with it, Britain regards it as an extension of its own multicultural, minority rights doctrine which routinely reverses victim and aggressor. So the untruths driving the terror are merely deepened – particularly since the left, which controls British and European culture, demonises America and Israel. So the central Islamist perception of the Big and Little Satan, America and Israel, is echoed in mainstream British discourse where anti-Americanism is rampant and Israel is well on the way to being delegitimised altogether. This acts as an echo chamber for Muslim prejudice, reinforcing it and fuelling the sense of paranoia and victimisation. And it has also released the virus of Judeophobia, with claims of a world Jewish conspiracy that are a re-run of the medieval blood libels leading to rising numbers of physical attacks on Jews. Our debased liberalism thus negates the power of reason, the key characteristic of liberal thinking, promotes murderous prejudice and weakens the west in its defence against Islamism by paving the way for its distortions and twisted thinking to take even deeper root.

What are the limits of tolerance?

People say, however, that the only alternative to multiculturalism is intolerance of minority faiths and cultures. This is completely wrong. It is a false antithesis; and it betrays a profound confusion between multiculturalism, which is fundamentally illiberal, and pluralism, which is the essence of a liberal society. Pluralism allows for many different groupings but, unlike multiculturalism, does not try to impose one uniform status on all of them. It allows a thousand flowers to bloom, with minorities forming communities of faith, ethnicity or culture within a society — but under the overarching umbrella of a national identity to whose core values everyone signs up. It is only by having that overarching set of common values — monogamy, freedom of conscience, equal rights for women, freedom of expression —that a society coheres as a common project. And a liberal society is no exception. If a liberal society doesn’t accept a hierarchy of values, that there are core principles which are non-negotiable and to which everyone must sign up, then by definition it can no longer remain a liberal society but must fragment into a kind of Balkanised tribalism in which the strongest groups win through intimidation or force.

A liberal, tolerant society — which is what Britain once was — welcomes and respects minorities within the overarching framework of British values. These provide a set of cultural norms from which groupings can deviate in their own private space, provided they do not conflict with the core precepts of our society. This is the basis of tolerance — and it has a quid pro quo. Ever since the Enlightenment the deal has been that, while the state makes no demands upon minorities practising their faith and culture in the private sphere, minorities in turn make no demands that the state must either adopt their own practices or turn a blind eye where the conflict is fundamental. Minorities do their own thing, but where their values conflict with the bedrock values of majority culture – freedom of speech, monogamy, women’s rights – they must give way.

Most minorities accept this. Many Muslims accept it, and manage to reconcile their faith with acknowledging that sharia law must give way to English law and values. But a third to a half of British Muslims want to live in Britain under sharia law, even though its precepts —such as polygamy, the subordination of women or the death penalty for apostates or gays —are totally inimical to western society. And multiculturalism gives them the muscle to insist that their practices must become mainstream.

This confusion over liberalism and its multicultural antithesis is paralysing our ability to defend our way of life — and also defend those Muslims who need our protection from the Islamist threat to their liberty. In Britain, it has surfaced in controversies over the veil. In one legal case, the courts ruled that a 16 year old pupil had a ‘human right’ to wear the full length jilbab to school, even though the head teacher had banned it on the basis that it would cause other girls at the school to be intimidated and coerced into wearing it and signing up to extremism. And indeed the pupil herself was clearly being manipulated by Islamist groups. This ruling was eventually overturned. More recently, a huge debate erupted over whether Muslim women should be entitled to wear the face-concealing niqab veil in public situations such as consulting a member of Parliament, appearing as a witness in court or teaching children in class. Many thought they should not, and were promptly denounced for religious intolerance. It took Muslims themselves to point out to these muddled multiculturalists that wearing such veils was not a religious requirement at all but a wholly political act, designed to keep women servile, to intimidate the public and to recruit yet more to extremism.

What should be done, and isn’t being done

In the fight to defend the west, true liberals should face down the mind-twisting manipulation and say this: that Muslims are welcome and deserve respect for their way of life, but on the same terms as everyone else. There can be no discrimination, after all, as even multiculturalists must agree. And these are the terms laid down for everyone since the Enlightenment: that minorities are welcome to form communities of faith or culture, but they must accept that where there is a conflict with the host culture, the minority gives way. If they do not accept this but insist that the host society must change to accommodate their values, then they are by definition not moderate but extremists; not citizens but colonisers; not Muslims seeking religious freedom but Islamists seeking to destroy freedom.

And for Islamists there is no room in a liberal society. True liberals never thought they had a duty to accommodate fascism. True liberals always fought it. So must we do with religious fascism. Liberalism separates the religious from the secular; so we too must separate Muslim conscience, which we should respect, from Islamist conquest, which we must resist.

In the fight for liberalism, we must not give an inch. We must defend our society in two ways, negative and positive. On the negative side, we must stop Islamists recruiting to extremism and terrorism in our countries. On the positive side, we must staunchly reassert our own values. But we are actually doing neither of these things.

In Britain, despite some welcome success in stopping terror plots, we are doing virtually nothing to stop Islamists recruiting in the mosques, in prisons, in youth clubs and on campus. Last January, an undercover TV documentary revealed that certain prominent ‘moderate’ mosques were advocating the murder of homosexuals, the beating of women and hatred of Christians and Jews. Nothing is being done to address this.

Despite the Prime Minister’s promise to outlaw the radical group Hizb ut Tahrir (which believes that Britain should be an Islamic state), the Government refuses to do so. Yet this group is telling countless British Muslims that it’s their duty to wage holy war, and that Muslims have a duty ‘to be prepared to launch attacks on Britain from within’.

As for our values, far from reasserting them they are going down like ninepins. While our universities refuse to act against Islamists on campus on the grounds of freedom of expression, Leeds university cancelled a proposed lecture on the links between the Nazis and Islamic antisemitism after protests by two Muslim students. And after students at Cambridge university published a magazine satirising religion and which published one of the images from the Mohammed cartoons, they were disciplined by the university, threatened with prosecution by the police and forced to apologise to Muslims, Christians —and Jews, who hadn’t even been mentioned.

Above all, Britain must not allow the encroachment of sharia. Yet it is paving the way for sharia. There are now areas of the country under the informal parallel jurisdiction of sharia law. A blind eye has been turned to honour killings, forced marriage and polygamy – now polygamous men settling in Britain are even receiving welfare benefits for their multiple wives. We have sharia-compliant mortgages; our tax authorities are considering recognising polygamy for inheritance tax purposes; and the government is encouraging London to become the global hub of Islamic banking, despite the fact that such arrangements will force those who make use of them to conform to sharia law.

The problem is that we seem to suffer from the innate weakness of liberalism while failing to benefit from its strengths. Those strengths lie in its claim to universalism, its governing belief that liberty and equality are the inalienable rights of human beings everywhere. But we don’t uphold this because multiculturalism tells us it’s wrong to impose our standards on those who don’t share them.

At the same time, we have the innate weakness of liberalism in spades. We see everything through the prism of the profound liberal delusion that the world is governed by reason and that all people have goodwill. This means that liberals cannot grasp that some of the things that divide people are insuperable barriers and are not susceptible to reason. They cannot acknowledge the transcendent and irreducible nature of religious fanaticism. They think instead that everything is subject to negotiation and compromise. So their instinct is to reach out to Islamists to reason with them, to draw the poison of this extremism by giving it rewards and inducements that will play to the fanatic’s self-interest and turn him into a pillar of western society. That is why liberals do appeasement; and Britain, the cradle of liberalism, does it better than anyone else.

Liberals also think they are superior in intelligence to everyone else. So they don’t understand that the Islamists are actually playing them for suckers, exploiting the intrinsic weakness of a liberal society they correctly assess as decadent: no longer prepared to fight for its values because it no longer even knows what they are.

What we are living through in the west is nothing short of a repudiation of the Enlightenment, a repudiation of reason; and its substitution by irrationality, obscurantism, bigotry and clerical totalitarianism — all facilitated by our so-called ‘liberal’ society, and all in the name of ‘human rights’. Western liberalism now embraces its Islamist mortal enemies and attacks its American and Israeli allies in the fight to defend civilisation.

We are giving the Islamists the message that we are theirs for the taking. This is how liberalism may disappear up its own backside.

Call Senator Clinton at 854-9725 and Senator Schumer at 846-4111 to express your outrage at legalizing 20 million people and the chain migration that is in this bill. The estimates are at 40 million people. If people truly want to be reunited with their families they can go home!

Veterans Appreciation Dinner
June 20th
5-6pm social 6pm dinner
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church & School
4169 Church Road
Lockport
RSVP 433-9013

Everyone should visit this site. They are accounts of soldiers and the battles they were in during the Vietnam War. We should all remember that the people writing these were 18, 19 & 20 year olds. It is amazing what strength they had. Spend a couple hours here and visit often to make sure we NEVER treat our young soldiers coming back from war with anything less that gratitude, opportunity (jobs) and the support they need.

A baby asked God, “They tell me you are sending me to earth tomorrow, but how am I going to live there being so small and helpless?”

God said, “Your angel will be waiting for you and will take care of you.”

The child further inquired, “but tell me, here in heaven I don’t have to do anything but sing and smile to be happy.”

God said, “Your angel will sing for you and will also smile for you. And you will feel your angel’s love and be very happy.”

Again the child asked, “And how am I going to be able to understand when people talk to me if I don’t know the language?”

God said, “Your angel will tell you the most beautiful and sweet words you will ever hear, and with much patience and care, your angel will teach you how to speak.”

“And what am I going to do when I want to talk to you?”

God said, “Your angel will place your hands together and will teach you how to pray.”

“Who will protect me?”

God said, “Your angel will defend you even if it means risking its life.”

“But I will always be sad because I will not see you anymore.”

God said, “Your angel will always talk to you about Me and will teach you the way to come back to Me, even though I will always be next to you.”

At that moment there was much peace in Heaven, but voices from Earth could be heard and the child hurriedly asked, “God, if I am to leave now, please tell me my angel’s name.”

God said, “You will simply call her, “Mom.”

Peace and Love in Christ,
Beckey

1 Timothy
4 Neither to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questionings, rather than a dispensation of God which is in faith; so do I now.
5 But the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.

For those of you who are interested in Joe Barrett’s research into the ice boom and the effects it has had on our lakes and rivers, here are links to Joe Barrett’s letters to Ferc.

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=11283863

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=11284474

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=11283579

You can e-mail Joe at email = jbbiceboom@yahoo.com

Kathy Skipper’s Book is finally here! A Rose Is God’s Autograph is a must read that shows you how your faith can grow in the grieving process. The story of her son little Mark Skipper is filled with beauty, grace and love.

Some people are blessed with very long lives. Some babies die before they can take a breath in this world. Still others have a life that is cut very short like Mark. This book reaffirmed to me that life can have profound meaning no matter how short if we open our eyes and hearts to the love of God.

Please attend her book signing at Life Resources located on Niagara Falls Blvd. on April 7 at 1 PM.

I would love your feedback.

Want to shave your head for a great cause… See if you have what it takes to support these courageous kids!!! Please attend this event at the GameZone in North Tonawanda on March 25, 2007 from 4-7 PM. Hope to see you there!!!

Thank you to everyone that blesses my life with these wonderful messages.
It is such a pleasure to be able to share them with you.

The Daffodil Principle

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mother, you must
come to see the daffodils before they are over.” I wanted to go, but it
was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead “I will come next
Tuesday”, I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and
reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn’s house I
was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly
hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

“Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds
and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these
children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly and said, “We drive in this all the time,
Mother.” “Well, you won’t get me back on the road until it clears, and
then I’m heading for home!” I assured her.

“But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks,”
Carolyn said. “I’ll drive. I’m used to this.”

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, “please turn around.” “It’s all right,
Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this
experience.”

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I
saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand
lettered sign with an arrow that read, “Daffodil Garden.” We got out
of the car, each took a child’s hand, and I followed Carolyn down the
path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me
lay the most glorious sight.

It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured
it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were
planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of
deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and
butter yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted in large
groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own
unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

“Who did this?” I asked Carolyn. “Just one woman,” Carolyn answered.
“She lives on the property. That’s her home.” Carolyn pointed to a
well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all
that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. “Answers to the Questions I Know You
Are Asking”, was the headline. The first answer was a simple one.
“50,000 bulbs,” it read. The second answer was, “One at a time, by one
woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain.” The third answer was,
“Began in 1958.”

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this
woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had
begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an
obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this
unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day
at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence,
beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is
one of the
greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a
time–often just one baby-step at time–and learning to love the doing,
learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces
of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can
accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world …

“It makes me sad in a way,” I admitted to Carolyn. “What might I have
accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty
years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all
those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way.
“Start tomorrow,” she said.

She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the lost hours of
yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of
a cause for regret is to only ask, “How can I put this to use today?”

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting…..

Until your car or home is paid off
Until you get a new car or home
Until your kids leave the house
Until you go back to school
Until you finish school
Until you clean the house
Until you organize the garage
Until you clean off your desk
Until you lose 10 lbs.
Until you gain 10 lbs.
Until you get married
Until you get a divorce
Until you have kids
Until the kids go to school
Until you retire
Until summer
Until spring
Until winter
Until fall
Until you die…

There is no better time than right now to be happy.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
So work like you don’t need money.
Love like you’ve never been hurt, and, Dance like no one’s watching.

If you want to brighten someone’s day, pass this on to someone
special.

I just did!

Wishing you a beautiful, daffodil day!

Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never
begin.

~anonymous

Excerpts from a Dog’s diary

8:00 am – Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am – A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am – A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am – Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm – Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm – Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 pm – Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm – Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 pm – Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm – Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm – Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

Excerpts from a Cat’s daily diary

Day 683 of my captivity:
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.
They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed
hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations
perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my
strength.
The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt
to disgust them, I once again vomit on the floor.
Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet.
I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly
demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made
condescending comments about what a “good little hunter” I am.
The audacity!
There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed
in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear
the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due
to the power of “allergies.” I must learn what this means, and how to use
it to my advantage.

Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my
tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this
again tomorrow – but at the top of the stairs.
I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches.
The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released, and seems to
be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded!
The bird has to be an informant. I observe him communicate with the
guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have
arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe… for now.

I forgot to mention this on the show today. This will be a great event!!!!

Bing’s Restaurant and
Joseph P. Lang Memorial Foundation
“ Putting Kids First”

Presents

The First Annual St. Josephs Table

All proceeds to benefit the

Eggertsville Youth and Community Center

Sunday March 11, 2007

3:00 pm and 6:30 pm

Independent Health Youth & Community Center

5005 Sheridan Drive, Amherst New York 14221

$20 per person, prepaid tickets only

Includes:
Lentil Soup
Frittata
Fried Smelts
Caesar Salad
Sorbet
Pasta Consardi
Baked Fish and Sautéed Greens
Homemade Italian Desserts and Coffee
Saint Josephs Bread
Wine available for purchase during dinner

For more information, call 633-6773

Make Checks payable to: Amherst Youth Foundation

Your entire donation is tax deductible

As Joe would say

“You got that money you owe me? Why don’t you buy a couple tickets?
And give the kid a break”

If you want to call the White House and express your opinion about the conviction and incarceration of Ignacio “Nacho” Ramos and Jose Compean call 202-456-1111. The website referred to on my show today is http://agentramos.blogspot.com/
These men and their families need our prayers and action.

The Bike Path Rapist Task Force is asking for your cooperation. Dennis Delano and many of the great people investigating all of the crimes that may have been committed by alleged rapist and killer Altemio Sanchez want your help and information. There is now doubt about the conviction of Anthony Capozzi who was convicted of two Delaware Park rapes in the early 1980’s. There is a striking resemblance between these two and both are the same height. It is completely understandable that a mistake in identification was made at the time considering how traumatized these victims were. Dennis Delano would like any e-mails that may pertain to Anthony Capozzi to be sent to him at MrD341@aol.com. Of course all communication will be kept confidential.

The Truth About Hillary by Edward Klein ‘”She’s the most unbelievable actress I have ever met,” said a woman who worked on Hillary’s Senate campaign. “I remember one time at a Women’s Leadership Forum event in New York, thirty of us sat around Hillary, talking about politics. And she said, ‘You know, I love this organization, not just because we sit around and talk about politics, but because of the bonds of friendship forming around us.” The way she said it, people were riveted by her performance. But I had gotten to know her, and I could tell she didn’t mean it. She has this unbelievable ability to be a liar. She is soulless.”’

The Truth About Hillary p. 13

“She was a mother, but she wasn’t maternal.
She was a wife, but she had no wifely instincts.
She said she was passionately in love with her husband, but many of her closest friends and aides were lesbians.
She inspired fierce loyalty among her followers, but she cheated and lied at the drop of a hat.
She was a liberal who promised to use her power to help the weak and disenfranchised, but she acted more like a misanthrope who distrusted people and avoided their company.
For years she denied she had any plans to run for president, yet she had always harbored the grandiose dream of succeeding her husband in the White House, and creating an empire of her own.
In short, everything about Hillary was ambiguous; everything she stood for she stood for the opposite. She seemed to lack the innate knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, and the obligation to tell the truth.”

Here are some of the items to help soldiers who have lost an upper limb. These can be purchased and dropped off at WBEN with my name on them and I will get them to Bob and they will be delivered on the next trip to Walter Reed.
Thank you for everything you do!
God Bless
Kathy Weppner

• Under Armor Sling Backpacks (available on-line at www.UnderArmor.com)
• Zip neck ties (you’ll have to Google search this item, it’s fairly new)

• One handed can openers (available at Sharper Image)

• The book “Living One Handed In A Two Handed World” by Tommye K. Mayor

• The book “Blood Brothers” by Michael Weisskopf

• One handed tooth flossers

• Electric toothbrushes

• Dr. Grip pens

• Easy to manage wallets from www.harrietcarter.com, the item number is C5911

• There are letter openers that are short and rectangular that I think are helpful for one-handed letter opening. I haven’t tried to find them on-line, but I found one at The Dollar Store

• One handed cutting boards, Ez-Dine

• Heart felt letters of thanks

Dear Family and Friends,

Thanks.

Dick Hoyt has pushed his disabled son Rick Eighty-five times in 26.2 miles marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars-all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much-except save his life. This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was born brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. “He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.” “Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.” Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.” That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. “No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?” How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time’? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.” And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sits in the chair and I push him once.”
(Condensed for Sport Illustrated Article by Rick Reilly)

I want to thank Assemblyman Jim Hayes for giving us a few minutes of his time on Saturday. The fact that we are 227 billion dollars in debt and the State “Budget” calls for over 11 billion dollars of borrowing this year is devastating to anyone who cares about New York.

It is fitting that as we approach tax time that Joe Bannister joined us from California. He was a Criminal Investigator with the IRS for 5 ½ years. His story is a fascinating one and I strongly encourage everyone to read about his journey. His entire story can be found at givemeliberty.org that is the website for the We The People Foundation. This organization, lead by Bob Schultz is well worth looking in to. Another site that was mentioned was freedomtofacism.com. The book I am currently reading is entitled CrackingTheCode by Peter Eric Hendrickson. The advice that Joe Bannister gave is that we all need to read and know what the constitution says, so that if we are ever called to sit on a jury involving the IRS, we can be educated jurors.

Last week a caller commented on how much more efficient the Medicare program is administered than private insurance. Whenever anyone claims that government does something more efficiently than the private sector be suspicious! There are two great reports that are interesting and can be found at http://www.heartland.org/pdf/32923a.pdf and http://www.heartland.org/pdf/32924b.pdf on the Heartland Institute website.

I want to thank Cheryl Lepsch from Jammies for GI’s for being a guest on my show. Her unrelenting quest to help returning and injured soldiers with WHATEVER they need is amazing. I received an e-mail right after the show from a man who said he was going to open his wallet wide and wanted her phone number. For anyone who is able to pick up electric razors, portable DVD players for soldiers limited to their beds or break away pants she can arrange for them to be picked up. Call her at 695-6867. We will make sure that our troops get them. She has a way for everyone to help. Please go to facesforfundraising.com for an opportunity to purchase a 16 x 20 poster of the American Flag that is made up of faces colored by all of you. They cost $25.00.

I also want to thank Lenny Roberto from Primary Challenge for being a guest. Primary Challenge is looking for voters who will spend fifteen hours per year to help pick and endorse candidates. Have you ever gone into the voting booth and wished there were better candidates to choose from? This is how you can help. You can call Lenny Roberto at 683-3484 or 207-7138 or go to primarychallenge.org. All they need is your name, address and political affiliation. Primary Challenge needs good democrats and republicans to step up and be part of the solution.
The topic for the show was our worsening economy and the unions that must recognize signs that companies are going to fail if major changes aren’t made. In a March 1, 2006 Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey McCracken the Jobs Banks are detailed. “Since 1990, GM’s union payroll including former subsidiary Delphi Corp. has fallen to about 137,000 from 358,000.” This is a huge decline and caught in this decline are scores of workers who sit in rooms called “rubber rooms” where they do nothing all day. This is not their fault; it is in their contracts. “GM employees constitute slightly more than half of the 14,700 auto workers in the Jobs Bank. In second place with 3,600 Jobs Bank workers is auto parts maker Delphi.” This total number is expected to rise to 17,000 next year. Detroit will trim 60,000 more jobs this year. There is not way GM will be in existence in five years unless the Jobs Bank is completely eliminated and costs are brought down so the company is profitable. People who sit in these rooms cost the employer between 100,000 and 130,000 (wages and benefits). I asked the listeners why the unions don’t seem to get it. Greg from Grand Island is the head of his union and was a great caller. He gets it and helps his union members understand that if they don’t work really hard and help to make the company profitable none of them will have jobs. A retired GM employee called and added to the history of these jobs banks.
If ALL workers don’t understand that a company must be profitable or will cease to exist this community is in for a very big fall.

On Saturday I had the pleasure of having Dr. Satish Mohan on Straight Talk. I was happy to hear there is a buyer for our waste pellets and we will be earning $200,000 per year starting this year. Longevity Pay was brought to light and it was disclosed that if you work for the Town of Amherst for ten years you get a $2,000 birthday check. It goes up from there and we have people who get a $7,000 check on their birthdays! Unbelievable! Who thought this was OK to put in a contract? How do we get it out?

When Dr. Ben Chavez was my guest Ken Hamilton called in regarding a new charter school opening in Niagara County called the Niagara Charter School and I told him I would post his website. Sorry Ken!!! I forgot! I had an ADD moment. Here it is www.niagaracharter.org There are still six opportunities to get information. You can’t expect your children to value education if you don’t. You have choices and the choices you make for them will impact the rest of their lives.

I wanted to thank Dr. Ben Chavez for taking the time to spend an hour on the air with us to discuss how the education system must serve kids. He truly is one of America’s top educators. The response to him was very positive. I hope we have some teachers apply to teach at his high school and come back and start some schools here with this same philosophy. Our children deserve no less. You can go to American Indian Public Charter School at AIPCS.org

Here are some of the points Dr. Chavis made:

• He pays students at the end of the year for perfect attendance ($50.00 for sixth, $75.00 for seventh, $100.00 for eighth and $150.00 for perfect attendance all three years). He says that when you are dirt poor money motivates. He has a 99.6% attendance rate. If students don’t show up he goes and gets them.
• Increasing dollars into education is not the answer. The district has an eight percent pass rate on state exams and his school is over 80%. His school gets $6,000 per child.
• He pays his teachers well ($42,000 to start) and pays himself $30,000. He recruits his teachers like a coach recruits athletes and only the best are hired.
• When kids fail it is the principal’s fault. If an athlete was not doing well you wouldn’t call his or her parent in and blame it on them. You would call the coach in charge of the athletics. Schools are in charge of academics and are completely responsible for success in that area.
• “Look, I was dirt poor growing up in Arizona. Dirt poor. My dad used to burn my wrists with cigarettes when I was bad. I used to watch him beat my mom all the time. So now I have a Ph.D. Nobody’s going to tell me that being poor or picked on is an excuse to fail. I didn’t.” Being poor has nothing to do with academic success
• Last year their school made a profit which was reinvested in the program. Last year all the students went to Washington D.C. and the year before Mexico City. “I run this school like a business. We don’t waste money around here. Our textbooks are the finest available in the state.”
• He has been approved to open a high school in June.

I also want to make sure everyone knows that I really do not intend to poison the opossum. It upset some of you. I was just speaking on the behalf of the surviving members of the rabbit’s family; it is extensive. Witnessing the death and subsequent digestion of the little hopper upset me. We will make every effort to embrace the opossum. We now think the hawk was really a large owl. I will have someone look at the tape and let you know.

I want to thank David Marchetti, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of GYN/OB and Gynecologic Oncology, SUNY at Buffalo for taking the time to discuss Ovarian Cancer and the recent article “Intraperitoneal Cisplatin and Paclitaxel in Ovarian Cancer”. It is important for all women to be aware of this serious disease. We all must be vigilant of the signs, symptoms and risk factors for Ovarian Cancer. We must be compliant with seeking healthcare from the available expert medical providers to strive for the earliest possible diagnosis of this deadliest of Gynecologic Cancers.

The warning signs of cancer of the ovary include:
· Discomfort in the pelvic region
· Indigestion, gas, or bloating that can’t be explained
· Abnormal vaginal bleeding
· Abdominal pressure or discomfort
· Urinary frequency, constipation or diarrhea
· Unusual fatigue
· Unexplained weight loss or gain
· Shortness of breath
Many cases of cancer of the ovary often are hard to detect until it is in an advanced stage.

Some factors may increase a woman’s risk:
· Had no children
· Have not used birth control pills
· Have a family history of the disease
· Have had breast cancer
· Have a family history of breast cancer
· Age (women older than 60 years have the highest risk)
· Changes in certain genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2)

If this cancer is found and treated early, the cure rate is good. Patients whose cancer has not spread outside the ovary have an 80–95% chance of living 5 years or longer after treatment. There is no sure way to screen for cancer of the ovary. Your doctor may be able to feel a cyst on one or both ovaries during your annual pelvic exam. Very few of these cysts will prove to be cancer. All should be checked for future growth.

Some factors may decrease a woman’s risk for ovarian cancer:
· Have used birth control pills
· Have had tubal sterilization
· Have had a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus)
· Have had at least one child and have breastfed
Certain women who are at high risk for ovarian cancer may reduce their risk by having an oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries).

Remember that you need to be proactive about your own health. Take action if you have noted any signs or symptoms, especially if persistent. Consult a healthcare professional preferably your gynecologist or a gynecologic oncologist. Experts recommend a pelvic/rectal exam, transvaginal sonogram, and a CA 125 blood test. Pap tests rarely detect ovarian cancer.

For further information please refer to the following links:
Ovarian Cancer National Alliance
Ovarian Cancer Alliance of WNY, Inc.
American Cancer Society

I want to take a minute and say Happy Valentine’s Day to my husband. You have been such a blessing to my life. I find you staring at me sometimes and will look at you and say “What?” And you say to me, after 27 years, “I can’t believe how beautiful you are….really beautiful!” You don’t know what that does to me. It makes me feel so loved…Thank you for that. When I screw up…. or forget something… you are the first to tell me not to worry about it. When I backed out of the driveway right into your car and woke you to tell you… you asked “Is anyone hurt?” I said no and you replied “Don’t worry about it.” I really love you for that. You slept on the floor of a hanger in an airplane museum last night with a dozen boy scouts… I really love you for that… You hunt for music for my show… Thank you… You have always trusted my instincts with the kids and their schooling …. I love you for that…
You are easy going… Thank you… Sometimes I’m not… You don’t mind when I haven’t had time to straighten up the house… You know that eventually it gets done… Thank you for that… Thank you for all of the laundry you do and the dishes you do and the way you love our kids…
Thank you for taking such good care of your patients…The kids are watching every time you leave quickly and go to the hospital and they are watching when your beeper goes off and you’re on the phone… They see the way you care for others… Thank you for being such a great example to them… Our sons will become beautiful men because of you… And our daughter will be searching high and low for someone to measure up to you…
For every time you bring me a cup of tea or buy a paper for me or call just to say hello…. Thank you so much… I never thought when we got married that I would love you so much…

And I hope for all of you out there that might think that the relationship that you are in is not perfect… I hope you realize that none of them are… But there are so many everyday things that you can look at and see as a blessing… It is so much easier to learn to love the person you’re with than try to leave and tear apart a family and look for someone perfect. There is no such a person.

Happy Valentines Day Dennis. Thank you for being who you are…

Jammies for GI’s has united with Faces for Fundraising to create an American Flag Mosiac made from creative self portraits drawn by different people like you and me! Up close you will be able to see the creative portraits; from a distance it blends together to form the appearance of the American Flag. You do not need to be an artist to participate, just relax and get creative. The first deadline is March 2, 2006. Get involved and support this worthy cause. Jammies for GI’s has done so much to support our injured and rehabilitating troops by providing them with many items and clothing to help make their revovery and transition a little easier.

New York State Assemblyman Mark Schroeder and the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy are sponsoring a Health Fair on February 11, 2006 from 9 AM to 1 PM at Trocaire College. At least 20 counselors will be available to help Medicare beneficiaries pick a plan and answer questions about Medicare’s New Prescription Drug Benefit Plan (Medicare Part D) and the New York State sponsored plan EPIC. So if you have not yet chosen a prescription drug program or if you know someone who needs to (i.e. parent or grandparent) please take advantage of this opportunity.

I want to thank everyone who called the show. I wasn’t sure whether people would talk about this. I also want to thank Gus. He has lived his life with courage and strength.

A couple of callers had important points I wanted to pass along. One caller who had a long term relationship with a girl who was sexually abused and the abuse ended at the age of six noted when they started living together she suffered extreme bouts of depression. This pain never can be erased. It affects every aspect of a person. We need to incarcerate pedophiles forever. The goal must be to protect society’s most vulnerable population.

Another caller, an elementary school principal from a Buffalo Public School, said they make the mandatory reports and parent’s come after them. The end result is that nothing gets done. Children are not removed from dangerous homes. Sadly he is right. We have a mammoth bureaucracy in place that is employing adults! I spoke with a CPS worker here in Buffalo and “Taking a child away from a parent is so traumatic that it is a last resort; we really try to work with the parent”. This must stop! The ordinary citizen is the child’s only hope and we must begin to act.

Perhaps the most striking call was at the end of the program. He had found out that four of his children had been sexually abused by an older sibling that had moved back into the house. His advice is excellent and I am going to heed it. I think you should too. Sit down with your children and tell them that sometimes adults get children to do things that they shouldn’t do and it makes kids feel ashamed or guilty. Tell them that you will promise them two things: that you will forgive them for whatever they have done no matter what it is and that you will protect them from the person that did it no matter what it takes; they will never be hurt by that person again. He recommended missingchildren.com as a website that offers a pamphlet for law enforcement officials to use when interacting with a child who may have been abused. I am going to order one today and you should too.

The final thought I want to convey is to never ignore your gut instinct. If you think something is not right it probably isn’t. Make a call. You should also visit the CNN.com website and watch the story about an ordinary hero; Tracy Dean. This could be any of us. Know your children well enough to know when something has changed. Keep your eyes open in all of your activities and you may be able to rescue a child.

Please see my listing of important Keep All Children Safe Links:

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
MissingChildren.Com
National Sex Offender Alert Registry
NYS Child Abuse Hotline
KlaasKids Foundation
Shelly Schratz, Amherst Town Council
Megan’s Law Call for Action
America’s Most Wanted

The following is the letter sent to Heather Groll, Special Assistant to the Superintendent for Community Relations for the Buffalo School District.  It included the ideas callers had regarding an “Alternative School” being proposed for the Buffalo Public Schools:

Dear Heather,

            As promised the following is a list of the suggestions from my callers.  I have to tell you that we are all rooting for your students.  In order for Buffalo to make a comeback we need all of these bright, beautiful students to be a part of the economic prosperity that has been non-existent in this region.  The district should be proud of the three Lafayette High School students that were on my show. They were smart, articulate and had optimism for their future. They are a credit to their families and their school.

What should be part of an “Alternative School”?

• Strong JROTC program which would be optional for students but recommended.
• Intake testing in reading and Central Auditory Processing.
• Testing for non-verbal learning disorders.
• Vision testing.
• Required conflict resolution training.
• Sports & Music.
• 4^th grade start.
• One on one tutoring.
• After school activities.
• Master Level Social Workers to coordinate parent/guardians, doctors, clergy, therapists and any other person that could assist in the child’s progress.
• Parent/guardian intake interviews that should be done monthly.
• Positive behavior modification training for all teachers so that punishment can be minimal.
• Vocational training options.
• A boot camp/shock camp for high school students who did not have early intervention.
• Partner with companies that students can field trip to for observation of jobs in the community.

 What kind of teachers does this school need?

• Military background for all administrators.  The point was made that we have many military coming back from Iraq that would be excellent.
• Uniforms for teachers and students. One of the Lafayette girls remarked that kids will be targeted if they don’t have the latest fashion jeans.
• Proven success in the classroom as far as scores on exams (State & Federal).
• National searches for teachers with experience in special education and tough learners.
• Year to year contracts; they can’t come back if their student and parent ratings are not passing.
• No tenure.
• Secure building with metal detectors.

I had great callers for this show. Many of them had backgrounds in the area they called about.  Everyone is concerned about the kids, their safety and ability to have the opportunity to succeed. No one wants the dangerous kids babysat at a cost to the taxpayers of over $15,000 per year. They need to be learning and taught by professionals who are trained and paid to teach.  We can either spend money on the troubled kids when they are young and hopefully save a few of them or we run the risk of housing them later at a cost of $30,000 per year in a jail.  One of the things I closed the show with is the fact that these kids are powerless.  Adults have the power; kids do not.  We, the adults need to fix this or their failure will be forever on our shoulders.

Tell Dr. Williams we support him and his efforts!

                                                                        Kathy Weppner

                                                                        StraightTalk

                                                                        WBEN-930-AM