Remember Pearl Harbor, Remember 9/11

I am old enough I do remember Pearl Harbor and of course I remember 9/11.  We were traveling like we do in August and September, and were camped in one of the RV campgrounds in Yellowstone National Park.  I get up early and could just barely get the NPR station from West Yellowstone which is a town outside of the park.  So I heard it all in real time.  I knew at once we had been attacked, airliners don't just accidentally fly into buildings. I was listening when the second plane hit. I woke my husband, and then went to their RV and woke my sister and her husband. I told them we had been attacked.

Today MSNBC was running the whole mornings events at the exact moments they happened with no commercials.  I found it strange that such a liberal station was running it.

For years they would not even show the towers falling or pictures of the plane hitting the second building.

Why are they running this today on the 9th anniversary.  Is it because they want us aroused in anger and sadness? Is it because of the mosque? I wonder? I remember.

Bloggers on the Tax cheats and Deadbeats

Seems there is a run on the news of people who don't pay taxes:

Deadbeats Among Us

Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in overdue taxes at the end of last year, a sliver of the $1 billion owed by federal workers nationwide but one with potential political ramifications for members of Congress.

and there is this:

Still, those Congressional staffers are veritable pikers when compared to another group of deadbeats--Air Force Academy dropouts. A report obtained by Air Force Times shows that 130 former cadets owe the government an average of $107,000 for tuition (and other benefits) paid before they quit the "zoo." All resigned during their junior or senior years, before they graduated and could be commissioned as Air Force officers.

41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone
Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't work down in that former swamp.

Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.

The tax cheats blogs and articles were all linked back to the Washington Post article.
Now for the other scholarship scandal from the Congressional Black Caucus:
Another CBC scholarship scandal?  which leads us to this:

Sanford Bishop steered scholarships to family
Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) awarded three scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to his stepdaughter and wife’s niece between 2003 and 2005, according to records from the nonprofit group.

Read more.

A Right to Free Speech

Ace of Spades blog has a post on the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran. Well, maybe he still wants to but a lot of pressure is being put on him not to do it. Including the FBI. Read this:

Why Was The FBI Dropping By The Wannabe Koran Burners?

by DrewM

I think I've made it pretty clear I'm not a real big fan of the whole Koran burning thing. What I'm even less of a fan of is government coercion of legitimate, if abhorrent speech.

FBI agents visited Thursday with a minister of a small Florida church that plans to burn the Quran on Sept. 11, as public safety became a paramount concern and President Barack Obama added his voice to the chorus of opposition.

...The FBI spent about a half hour talking with Jones, but church spokesman Wayne Sapp would not disclose what they discussed. Agents leaving the church wouldn't talk to an Associated Press reporter.

Jones said earlier this week that agents have visited him twice since he announced his plans in July, the last visit about two weeks ago.

Now, I suppose it's possible Jones is caught up in something else unrelated to the Koran burning plans that has the legitimate interest of the FBI. However given the nature of this story and the unprecedented involvement of government officials in this matter (more in a minute on that), I think AG Holder and/or President Obama need to come out right away and make it clear that federal law enforcement officers are not being used to intimidate Jones.

[.........................................................]

I hope Congressman Daryl Issa adds this to his list of things to investigate come January of next year.

Until it's clear that the FBI was there on unrelated matters, I'm not giving this administration the benefit of the doubt.

Go here to read between the ellipses.

American Thinkser's Thomas Lifson on the raising of the boy - Barry Sotero

This is another of the ideas some of us have discussed since the man first came on the scene, he was all but an abandoned child and that is bound to have shaped his view of America and Americans.  He was not really raised in the way most Americans were, he does not seem to think in the same way most of us do.  Here in America he is alone in his world view in many ways. 

I have told people, including my liberal son, that I consider him still to be "little boy lost" trying to please. I have no doubt he went to Chicago to find a world he felt he could fit into, one where he felt at home.  Unfortunately he found a place the rest of Americans did not approve, the world of Chicago politicians, they have used him for their benefit.  The same is true of the socialists who befriended him and have taught him their ways.  They have used him.  I have no doubt he truly believes we need to spread the wealth. 

Okay, I have said all those things, now read how very well Thomas Lifson lays out the facts.

The Grudge: Barry Soetoro's Indonesian Expatriate Hell

Where did Barack Obama acquire the self-evident disdain he has for major corporations, especially oil companies, and for the striving classes who have made America prosperous and strong? Many conservatives have noted Barack Obama's class envy, expressed both in his and his bride's resentment over their education debts and desire to live large in the White House, and in his intent, expressed to Joe the Plumber, to "spread the wealth around."

Obama also has made it clear that he is no believer in American exceptionalism -- that we are no more different than Greeks who think Greece is special, or Britons who think that Britain is exceptional. And his commitment of billions to the International Monetary Fund for global income redistribution without any constitutional authorization bespeaks an attitude that America owes the world a share of its wealth -- that we do not deserve the prosperity we have enjoyed. He has in the past told us that we can't have houses as warm as we want, or cars as big as we prefer. We must make do with less so that others may enjoy some of the goodies, in effect.

A few very astute observers have noted Barack Obama's immersion in the anti-colonialist ideology championed by his father, Barack Obama, Sr. On these pages, L.E. Ikenga explained in 2009 how Obama's policies resemble those of post-colonial African elites, full of resentment for the wealth allegedly drained from their societies and anxious to remake them along egalitarian lines with the state (i.e., themselves) in charge of the readjustment.

Read the whole article as he gives the facts of Obama's boyhood of a child who was treated as an outsider, a lower caste than the American's working in Indonesia, his unhappiness with where he was, and his lifestyle.

Did you Remember the Military Burned Bibles in Afghanistan?

Well, I didn't either, but Right Truth has the story.

Remember When the U.S. Military Burned Bibles in Afghanistan? here in May 2009. The Bibles were confiscated by military chaplains at Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul and burned just in case any military person even thought about sharing the Gospel with a Muslim.

I wrote about it here in May 2009. The Bibles were confiscated by military chaplains at Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul and burned just in case any military person even thought about sharing the Gospel with a Muslim.

Bibles printed in Pashto and Dari, the languages of Afghans, sent to American Christian soldiers and chaplains by private donors, which under Army regulations, could legally be given as gifts to Afghan citizens during the soldiers' off-duty hours and could be useful to U.S. soldiers in learning the languages of their hosts -- were confiscated and burned by the U.S. Military.

Doug Patton writes:

So, what are American Christian believers to conclude about their president? Is he truly a reasonable leader willing to listen to all points of view and to "disagree without being disagreeable"? Or is he a defender of Muslims, atheists and a culture of death at the expense of Christians and of the Christian faith he claims to embrace? His actions, combined with his irrelevant religiosity, seem to indicate the latter.

Read the rest here.http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2010/09/remember-when-the-us-military-burned-bibles-in-afghanistan.html

Another Big Hit by Victor Davis Hanson

We have all been talking about this, but he says it so well. We've all thought this man, our president, has been given everything in his adult life. No questions asked.  So VDH comes out with such a good essay on it. This is from the middle of his essay.
‘Like a Dog’: The Origins of Barack Obama’s Petulance

Yet Obama’s petulance, I think, more likely derives from a certain surprise — leading to anger — that originates from novel and sudden demands for accountability. Quite simply, no one has dared question Obama before — much less press him for deeds to match his mellifluous words.

Did he really think he could talk his way through four years of the American presidency?

Apparently, he did, and apparently he was almost right — given that rhetoric and sophistry earned him the presidency in the first place. In what follows, I hold some empathy for Obama’s pique; you see in some sense those around him suddenly changed the rules, and what in the past had been habit and custom no longer quite applied.

A part-time visiting law professorship at the University of Chicago Law school rarely leads to a permanent tenure-track position, much less a tenured billet– and never without a body of published articles and books. In Obama’s case those protocols simply did not apply. He was not only offered whatever he wanted, but as Justice Kagan reminded us, Obama was courted by Harvard Law School as well.

Most candidates for state office do not sue to remove their opponents from the ballot. Obama petitioned (successfully) that most of them be disqualified in 1995. It is likewise rare for the sealed divorce records of a front-running primary rival to be mysteriously leaked, prompting a veritable uncontested nomination. But after Democratic rival Blair Hull imploded from such revelations, so did Obama’s general election Republican opponent Jack Ryan, who dropped out of the race after his divorce proceedings were eerily likewise exposed. Lightning does strike twice in the same place for the blessed Obama.
 
I know you will want to read it all.

The Debt Tsunami

A very intersting post by Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club.
Rich Man, Poor Man

Robert J.Cristiano believes that at least one financial tsunami “began long ago and very far out to sea” when public sector employees voted themselves wonderful compensation and benefits packages that now threaten to throttle the tax base. Or maybe it began more prosaically, the way an unpayable credit card debt starts, with Good Times. And it comes a-cropper when the cash flow slims down and the cardholder finds he can’t pay for all the dreams he purchased on installment.

Cristiano is referring to the Trillion Dollar gap between “between the $3.35 trillion in pension, health care and other retirement benefits states have promised their current and retired workers as of fiscal year 2008 and the $2.35 trillion they have on hand to pay for them … aided in part by campaign contributions from the unions to elect Democratic Party candidates and generous pay packages and retirement plans passed by those same politicians in return.” It is a Gap being closed by States which have no arithmetical alternative but to turn on the very people who were promised these benefits. With every state except Montana and South Dakota running projected budget deficits, governments like once city in California are simply hacking away furiously at their financial commitments.

One Orange County city has already taken bold steps to correct its $10 million deficit. It may be a model for other cities and states across the country. Internally, it has decided it will not replace any city worker that dies, retires, moves or quits. The city will simply out source the employment to an outside service company and eliminate healthcare requirements and unsustainable pensions. Building inspectors will be out sourced as will city plan checkers, librarians and meter maids. Only essential services like top executives and cops will remain on the city payroll. The city staff will eventually decrease from 220 to approximately 35 personnel.

It is perhaps telling that government at its minimum consists of “top executives” and cops. What Cristiano calls a “deconstruction” — the bankruptcy of governments — will affect millions of families. But preventing a “deconstruction” will be painful too. Greece, which epitomizes state bankruptcy, is already riven by tension caused by cutbacks aimed at keeping that country in a currency zone it cannot afford to be part of. A German economist warned that by avoiding the rational in pursuit of the politically irrational, Athens has only made things worse.

Read the rest here.

Mallard Fillmore Endures

Cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's strip has been a consistent voice of reason for years now. Any day of the week. His simple truths deserve much more play. Below is today's.

How long has the US been helping Muslim Groups?

This was posted Tuesday at Corruption Chronicles, a Judicial Watch blog but I just found it today. Have a look.

U.S. Helps Radical Muslim Groups Get Taxpayer Dollars

In its fervent crusade to befriend Muslims, the White House will host special workshops this week to provide members of radical Islamic groups with direct access to U.S. government funding, assistance and resources.

While this may sound surreal, it’s reality in the Obama Administration, which has embarked on a never-ending mission to befriend the enemy. Previous efforts include secret meetings between Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and extremist Arab and Muslim groups to discuss national security matters and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special order allowing the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties have for years banned them from the U.S.

As contemptible as those moves may seem, the latest effort is even more outrageous. Various government agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education and Health will participate in the White House seminars which were exposed by an independent nonprofit dedicated to monitoring the nation’s security.

The goal is to provide the leaders of groups associated with the parent organization of Hamas and Al Qaeda (Muslim Brotherhood) with tips on cutting through “red tape” when seeking U.S. government access or money. In all 20 national Muslim groups with ties to the global Islamist organization that preaches Jihad are scheduled to participate. Their mission is to obtain cash and other resources from Uncle Sam.

While the U.S. government has kept the event quiet, it was announced in a newsletter by a Saudi-funded group (Islamic Society of North America or ISNA) that was a co-conspirator in a federal terrorist funding case a few years ago. Featured in a Judicial Watch special report on Muslim charities that finance terrorism, ISNA is firmly committed to spreading the radical form of Islam, which is the driving force behind Jihad.

Now the Obama Administration is helping ISNA and its radical Islamic counterparts access American taxpayer resources as well as top government officials.

Go here to read the comments and discussion on this.

Flight 93 blogburst: 9/11 Ride to Stop the Crescent Mosque

This is from Alec Rawls at Error Theory:
Flight 93 on 9/11: Ride to Stop the Crescent Mosque

Anyone live within driving distance of Somerset Pennsylvania? It's a beautiful place to visit and a group of motorcyclists from Indianapolis is already going.

Tom Burnett Senior and Alec Rawls are buying full page color ads in the Somerset Daily American for both Friday the 10th and Saturday the 11th, so anyone who makes the trip will have a ready made protest sign waiting for them. Just buy a newspaper, tape the ad to a piece of cardboard, and let the massed national media know what side you are on.

That's right. With Laura Bush and Michelle Obama both attending, it's going to be a media circus, and a rare opportunity to force coverage of our issue. Just self-organize. Ad-holders will show a core of united opposition (and the media might even be forced to read our brief expose).

A PDF of the ad will be posted in another blogburst next week for anyone who wants to make signs ahead of time. There is also a set of small posters that were put together for a previous talk by Mr. Burnett. Just print with tiling to make the finished product as large or small as you want:

Board 1: The giant crescent
Board 2: It points to Mecca
Board 3: The gigantic Islamic sundial
Board 4: The 44 glass blocks

Petition to stop the Flight 93 memorial passes 10,000 signatures
Including a spate of dozen or so by 9/11 family members that feature some very strong comments. (See pages 198 and 199.)



It Points to Mecca video nearing 20,000 hits

Thanks to big fat repostings by Creeping Sharia and Atlas Shrugs. Thank You!


Here are parts 2, 3 and 4 (also worthy):






IF you haven't been to Shanksville before, there really is no lovelier place on earth than an open field in that sprawling Sherwood Forest that is Western Pennsylvania. Drink it in. There is something in the air at that patriots' grave.
To join our blogburst against the crescent mosque, just send your blog's url to caoilfhionn1@gmail.com.

Its Obama's Economy now - Are we lucky or what?

I was making a comment over at Neoneocon's and though, "why am I not posting that on my own blog?"
Neo was saying this,

"Yesterday on this comments thread there was a smattering of schadenfreude towards young people who voted for Obama and are now out of work.

A number of readers felt that the high rates of unemployment among the young is a case of just desserts: serves them right. And although I want a great many young people to learn the lesson that voting for a con man, an empty suit with little or no experience who makes beautiful promises that mean little or nothing, is a bad idea—and that they retain the information for decades to come, so it doesn’t happen again—there’s no joy in my heart about the rest of it.

So this is the comment I was writing and I do believe it to be true.

I am not blaming these young people. It is Obama’s economy now. I think if McCain had won and we had at least some say in Congress we might have turned it around. We certainly would not have government motors.But we would still have quite a few out of work because of the housing and banking bubble. And we as conservatives, Tea Partiers and President Bush would all be getting the blame.

You know that's true, we were profligate spenders.  Not to the nth degree as Obama has been but we ran up quite a bill.

Baldilocks on the Islamic slave trade

A Reminder of the Other Black Genocide

In 2008, I posted the following video via YouTube. It had been part of a series which exposed the truth about the Islamic Civilization with special emphasis on the horrors of the Tran-Saharan Slave Trade. My intent was to counter the exhortations of Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the like-minded who continue to excoriate America and the rest of Western Civilization for past sins against black African Slaves and Americans of African descent.

The owners of YouTube, however, have blocked the account of John Alembillah Azumah--the man interviewed in the series and the author of the book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue. One can guess that some people were offended by the series--a state of affairs which often occurs when the truth is told.

This particular copy of the video, entitled "Muslim Black Slavery - Islam Slave History of Black Africa," is now posted at MetaCafe by a third party.

Muslim Black Slavery - Islam Slave History of Black Africa - The best home videos are here

 
Go to Baldilocks to read much more on this.  MetaCafe has the narrative posted below the video if it will not play on your computer.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man

OOPSIE!!! It is unbelieveable how President Obama can get so much wrong. But the new rug in the oval office?  It seems the quote attributed to Martin Luther King was actually from someone else.  From the Washington Post opinion section of Sat. Sept. 4th:

Oval Office rug gets history wrong
by Jamie Stiehm

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he'd ask in a refrain, "How long? Not long." He would finish in a flourish: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

King made no secret of the author of this idea. As a Baptist preacher on the front lines of racial justice, he regarded Parker, a religious leader, as a kindred spirit.

But it seems that through the decades the true origin has been lost.  Read the rest of the story of the misquote here.  Apparently Parker was quoted by Lincoln also, and that too is written into the rug. It's good to know someone was paying attention.

Late Term Abortions

If you listen to a debate on late term abortions the pro abortion people always say how infrequent they are.  They also indicate how safe the modern  abortion is. This article surely indicates that is defintely not the case.  This is from the Houston Chronicle.

2 abortion Drs. ordered to stop after Md. injury
by Kasey Jones

BALTIMORE — Maryland health officials have ordered two doctors to stop performing abortions after a woman was critically injured during a procedure last month.

The state Board of Physicians ordered Dr. Steven Brigham to stop practicing medicine without a license in Maryland and suspended the license of Dr. Nicola Riley. Police raided one of Brigham's offices in Elkton looking for medical records, and found dozens of late-term fetuses in a freezer at a clinic.

Riley and Brigham brought an injured 18-year-old woman in a personal vehicle to Union Hospital in Elkton after a failed abortion Aug. 13, according to the board's orders. The woman was then taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she was found to have a uterine perforation.

A Hopkins doctor filed a complaint against Riley, and along with a general surgeon, repaired the injuries to the woman.

Brigham owns American Women's Services, which has offices in several states.

The 18-year-old woman initially went to an American Women's Services office in New Jersey and met with Brigham on Aug. 12, according to the order. She returned the next day and was given pills to induce contractions, and told to drive 60 miles to the Elkton facility where the abortion would be performed.

Several days later, the Elkton police department, acting on a warrant for the woman's medical record, found a freezer with about 35 late-term fetuses. Elkton police didn't immediately return a telephone message Friday night.

Brigham is licensed in New Jersey, but not Maryland. Riley has a license in Maryland, but "poses a threat to her patients' safety and well-being and thereby represents a danger to the public," according to the board's order.

The board said Riley lives in Utah and flew to Maryland to work at the clinic.

A third doctor, George Shepard Jr., also had his license suspended. He ordered medications for AWS' Maryland facilities and knowingly took part in an arrangement in which abortions started in one state and patients were told to drive across state lines for completion of the procedure, the board said.

Voicemails left with Riley at her office in Utah and Brigham's office in New Jersey were not immediately returned Friday night. A message left for Shepard's lawyer was not immediately returned.

This article pretty well proves the case thatabortion is a huge business and has the full support of  most of the liberals.

Pat Condell on Ground Zero mosque: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?"

Watch this video of a Brit outraged on our behalf.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/pat-condell-on-ground-zero-mosque-is-it-possible-to-be-astonished-but-not-surprised.html

Black Liberation Theology

A discussion at American Thinker. Read abstract and comments here:

Beck's 'Obsession' with Black Liberation Theology Thoroughly Justified
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

You know liberals are scared whenever they use the O-word -- "obsession" -- to smear a conservative's effectiveness in an important argument. So when the Los Angeles Times published an editorial yesterday by Tim Rutten called "Glenn Beck's Liberation Theology Obsession," I was quite intrigued.Since I spent a whole year studying James H. Cone's Black Liberation Theology in the context of Latin America's liberation theology developed within the Catholic Church, I was quite curious to see what an esteemed LA Times columnist had to say about Beck's so-called... (Read Full Article)

Why Textbooks Matter

We heard a  lot of the Texas school book selections.  Much of it by the liberal press.  In my opinion  the state board is trying to pull back from the most liberal textbooks, particularly in history, and social studies.  All textbooks are, shall I use the word "tainted", with a liberal slant.  Zombie has just posted a third part of a series called, Indoctrination Nation. Here are a couple of excerpts from today's essay.

While the media generally goes into hysterics every time the Texas State Board of Education meets, with commentators hurling mockery, outrage and vitriol at the board members, there is a total lack of interest when other states’ boards of education meet for the same purpose. Yet Texas is not the only state that influences the content of American schooling: a few other states also determine textbook standards that end up being used in other parts of the country. California, in particular, is also an important textbook market for publishers. Yet mysteriously, one never hears of any controversy erupting when the California State Board of Education meets to decide the content of textbooks used throughout the state and in many other school districts around the country which shun the Texas-approved textbooks.

.......the textbooks approved by the California State Board of Education are even more politicized than Texas textbooks, and more ideologically biased. So: Why does the media ignore what happens in California textbooks? Because the state’s bias goes the other way. California-approved social studies textbooks are politically correct in the extreme, with multiculturalism and “social justice” as the defining characteristics. The pressure groups and board members setting policy for California’s (and hence a substantial portion of America’s) textbooks exceed their Texan counterparts in their extremism, but since California pushes the “correct” kind of extremism, you never hear about it.

As pointed out in this article written by a textbook editor,

To make the list in California, books must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children. Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what will and won’t get past the blanding process of both the conservative and liberal watchdogs.

        More on this in a moment.

But first let’s look at another example cited in this essay by The American Textbook Council, illuminating what has happened to California’s (and the nation’s) curriculum in recent decades. If you’re young enough to have experienced this kind of schooling yourself, the example below will not be a surprise to you; but if you’re over a certain age, and haven’t been paying attention to changes in American education, you’ll scratch your head at some of the names in this textbook’s list of America’s greatest heroes:

Editors [at Houghton Mifflin] were put in the hands of revisionist historians, Islamist activists, and diversity counters. … Its eighth-grade history, Creating America, produced by Houghton Mifflin’s McDougal Littell imprint, … identifies ten representative American heroes:
Abigail Adams
Crispus Attucks
Andrew Jackson
Queen Liluokalanai
Abraham Lincoln
Juan Seguin
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
George Washington
Ida B. Wells
Zitkala-Sa

In fact this list is highly unrepresentative of American history. This “American history” cobbled together from “representative” national heroes conforms to multicultural ideology, but it fails. The continuing effort to make diversity along lines of gender and ethnicity into the essence of the national past comes up short and cheapens the narrative.

If you've read this far you know you need to read the rest, including Part I, and Part II.

Another of the things GB was talking about

The Anchoress has some wonderful people blogging for her while she heads to Rome.
Here is an excerpt from one of the posts on:

Vocation, Education, Digital Televisions: the Late Late Show
by Sally Thomas:

Back in the summer — it already seems like a hundred years ago — my teenager went to one of those college programs which promise the motivated high-school student an entire liberal-arts education distilled to a two-week elixir. She had a great time and came back talking about Flannery O’Connor, which I’d been trying to get her to do for, oh, ever or so.

One night over dinner with her twenty-six new best friends, the talk turned to the subject of what everyone wanted to be when he or she grew up. The girls, one by one, announced that they wanted to be lawyers. One girl said she wanted to go into politics, maybe. A few other girls thought they’d like to do some corporate kind of job.

At last my daughter’s turn came. “Well,” she said, “I want to be a mom.

There was a silence. Finally someone asked, “Then why are you here?”

“Because I think the basic unit of society ought to be educated,” my daughter said.

It makes you want to read the rest doesn't it? Go here.

Baldilocks is an author and she needs help.

And isn't it wonderful that Chris Muir who writes Day by Day thought of a great way to help her? A whole day's cartoon worth.  Thanks, Chris, a great tribute to Juliette.
Today she gave an update on the help she has received.  If you didn't read the post on her from August 17th, read it now.
Then read why she needs help here.  I've ordered the book and haven't received it yet, but I expect it to be a good read.  Her blog writing is great, the book should be, too.

"To be able to burn the kind of light bulb I want,"

One of the major purposes of the the Glenn Beck Rally.  This quote is from an editorial by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post.  Here is the whole quote:

But among those in Saturday's throng, the linkage between faith and libertarian-leaning politics seemed obvious. 

"We've lost our morality. The country is headed in the wrong direction by removing God from everything," said Bob Erdt, a retired Ford engineer from Michigan, explaining his participation. Then, Erdt shifted seamlessly to the fiscal side. "We're spending way too much money that we don't have," he said. "Anybody with any common sense or honor or morality knows we can't be spending like this and not bringing the country to ruin."

Asked what had inspired her to fly to the capital from Colorado, Andrea Carrasco started with God and ended with light bulbs.

She came, Carrasco said, to "ask God to restore the country. Our freedom is lost. My freedoms are lost. To be able to preach anywhere we want, to have God in our schools, to drive any kind of car we want and if I want to drive a gas guzzler, I can, if I want to eat a lot of sugar and salt, and I shouldn't be forced to buy medical care."

Carrasco paused, but only briefly. "To be able to burn the kind of light bulb I want," she added. "The list goes on."

Even with that Ruth Marcus still doesn't get it.  She begins the article with this:

I left the Glenn Beck rally worried that I didn't have much of a story.

It was all revival meeting, no political fireworks. The news reports accurately likened the atmosphere to that of a church picnic -- and no reporter wants to write about a church picnic.

But then I realized: The abundance of religiosity was the news. Beck is offering -- and whatever the precise crowd count on Saturday, a whole lot of people seemed to be buying -- a new form of fusion politics, melding the anti-government, anti-spending, anti-tax fervor of the Tea Party with the faith-based agenda of the religious right.

And ends with this:

It's too early to know whether Beck's bridge between social and fiscal conservatism is sturdy enough to withstand the conflicting pulls. Already there is edginess among traditional leaders of the religious right about Beck's bona fides.
Another question is whether the linkage between the two wings risks limiting the Tea Party's appeal to independent voters worried about the deficit but at risk of being turned off by overt religiosity or hard-line social conservatism.

Beck's brand of messianic politics feels creepy to me -- but it is clearly compelling to thousands. Make that hundreds of thousands. This was one church picnic worth covering.

The religiosty was news to her, but she missed the biggest message of how many would turn out because they are so dissatisfied at the direction of the country over the past 60 years.  Read it all  here.