Here is a very interesting column by Howard Fineman stating that where Democratic incumbents are terrified of being seen with Obama, Bill Clinton is stepping in to the rescue. This solution give these incumbents the power of a Presidential fundraiser, but not the baggage of being seeing with a completely incompetent and unpopular President.
What really is happening here, in the nuances, is that the Clintons are taking back control of the Democratic Party (he who controls the purse strings in politics...). They have given Barack enough time to have fun. The Clintons are also building IOU's for when Hillary challenges Obama for the 2012 Democratic Presidential nomination.
Here is Fineman's take:
"...According to Democratic polls, Democratic Senate candidates are doing much better in the horse race of the campaign than Obama is doing in overall popularity in most states. In Missouri, for example, Obama’s approval rating is 36 percent, but Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan is only a couple of points behind Republican Roy Blunt.
So into the top-of-the-ticket, presidential-level campaign void has (happily) stepped Bubba, as charming as ever, as sharp as ever at stating his case to voters. Plans are still “up in the air, but expect to see him out quite a bit,” says his spokesman, Matt McKenna.
...And when Clinton is “out” there, don’t expect him to fill his speeches with personal praise of Barack Obama. As a lawyer and salesman, Clinton knows that touting Obama as The One is a nonstarter given the president’s plummeting job-approval numbers. But permit me a moment of Machiavellian thinking to suggest that Clinton loves to be in a situation in which he has to make the Democrats’ case by damning with faint praise a man whose campaign he once dismissed as a “fairy tale.”
I always love listening to Bill Clinton. If you listen carefully, you can see all the gears in motion: he makes himself clear to people who bother to take him seriously. So what is he saying? That this president has “done a better job than he has gotten credit for so far.” (Which is not the same thing as saying that Obama has done a good job)."
The UK tabloid rag the Globe reported that Bill Clinton only has 6 months to live ;) , but boy is he going out doing what he loves: being the center of attention and being seen as selfless and benevolent despite his political motives!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Denis Dillon: A Profile in Courage
This week a pro-life hero was laid to rest.Denis Dillon was the Nassau County District Attorney for 31 years and one of the most non-wavering, public pro-life voices on Long Island over the past few decades.
During the week, he revolutionized the District Attorney’s office and provided such a progressive standard that eventually countless DA offices across our country adopted his way of doing things. He had one of the highest conviction rates in the country.
On weekends, he would be a pro-life activist by often partaking in public pro-life demonstrations setting a golden example on how public servants did not have to abandon their convictions.
Long Island’s newspaper, Newsday, took many cheap shots at him over the years because of his convictions and he was persecuted for his Catholic Faith.
New York State Justice Arthur Diamond remembered Denis at his funeral Mass with a story:
“Days before former Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon would stand for re-election one year, Dillon's longtime friend Arthur Diamond offered him some unsolicited advice.
"Stop hitting so hard on the anti-abortion issue," Diamond remembered telling Dillon, a devout Catholic. "It's hurting you politically."
Dillon paused, then said, "I love you, Artie, but I can't worry about this election. I have to worry about what happens to me long after this election," [Blogger Note: meaning when he met God].
There have been many quotes in Denis’ eulogies that were taken from the St. Thomas More (patron saint of lawyers) movie, A Man for All Seasons. But Denis, I believe you did meet God and it was a welcoming embrace because as stated in this great movie, “[God] will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him."
"May the angels lead you into paradise: may the martyrs receive you at your coming, and lead you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have everlasting rest.”
For more of a biography of this great man, click here:
Friday, August 13, 2010
Charles Krauthammer: "...no Mosque at Ground Zero."
Charles Krauthammer has a very compelling column today on the controversy of building a mosque at Ground Zero. I, being a New Yorker impacted by 9/11 -- while also be a huge proponent of the Freedom of Religion, go back and forth on the issue, so this piece was a worthwhile read for me:
"A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).
When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there [Blogger Note: and the first responders who sacrificed their lives there trying to save others] -- and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.
That's why Disney's 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War. It's why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It's why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.
And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.
...Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won't one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi -- spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and onetime imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?
...Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.
Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.
Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, "I'm not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."
America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.
These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero."
"A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).
When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there [Blogger Note: and the first responders who sacrificed their lives there trying to save others] -- and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.
That's why Disney's 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War. It's why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It's why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.
And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.
...Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won't one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi -- spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and onetime imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?
...Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.
Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi -- yet despite contemporary Germany's innocence, no German of goodwill would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.
Which makes you wonder about the goodwill behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposal. This is a man who has called U.S. policy "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, "I'm not a politician. . . . The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."
America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.
These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero."
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Barack Obama's Persona Part II; The Academic
In following the point from a previous post that I believe Barack Obama is emotionally voided, I believe the second major component of his persona is that he is completely entrenched in the academic mindset.
Academia is a place where concepts and theories are king, where unrealistic concepts never have to be put to the fire to test their validity. It is a place where elite educators congratulate themselves on producing written thoughts on paper and theory lectures and not tangible measurements of creation and achievement.
For 12 years, Barack Obama served as a college professor at the University of Chicago Law School. This decade of academic mindset became thoroughly entrenched in him and is present even to this day. Even Liberal talking heads currently mention his press conferences have more of a tone of a college professor lecturing his class than anything else.
It should surprise no one that Barack Obama came from Academia. Do you ever wonder why there are so many Liberals in academia? It is not because they all decide one day to all be professors. It is because they gravitate to one of the only few places left in the world where they can exist with their failed, non-real world ideologies and get paid handsomely.
In contrast, however, academics will also shoot a proposal down based on their bravado academic reputations that prevent them from seeing possibilities. In 1965, Fred Smith turned in a term paper to his Yale professor that dealt with the concept on having centralized distribution hubs for a national package delivery company. So a package would go from New York City down to Memphis to be sorted; then back to the final destination across the river in Paramus, NJ. The paper received a “C” from his academic college professor stating it was implausible. Fred Smith had the last laugh though; he went on to found Federal Express.
To give you a real life story of mine comparing academia to real world, upon completing my Masters Degree I knew four different ways to determine a break-even selling price on a product to a customer; the exact price where a company selling a product does not make profit, but does not lose money either. At my first real job I was posed with a problem that Wal-Mart told my company that we needed to sell our product to them at a 20% loss, or we would lose their $80 million dollar business. I was completely a deer frozen in the headlights. I knew the text book instruction on how to figure out a break-even, but did not have real world experience to take it to the next level, or even understand there was a next level, in deciding whether we should sell something at a loss. I needed some real world experience to catch up with my education.
In the business world, if you say something completely foolish or wrong you are beaten to a pulp by upper management who are protecting their turf, and you probably do not get promoted. If you throw out an idea on the table, that you haven’t thought through thoroughly, it will be a feeding frenzy exposing all the holes in your suggestion. So you learn to think about every objection that could be brought up and all the real world considerations. Abraham Lincoln once said when he debated someone he would spend one-third the prep time thinking about what he would say, and two-thirds his prep time thinking what his opponent would say.
Academia is different however. You have a tenure certificate in your hand that protects your livelihood from mistakes and stupidity.
This was definitely the environment from where Barack Obama emerged from.
Our President announced that he would close down Gitmo, a great in-theory-promise to his left-wing supporters. Then after blurting this out, he realized that no state or country wanted to take any of the prisoners and there were legitimate reasons why Gitmo existed. A very bad promise in reality, only half thought through. He was congratulated by the academics on this idea before the operation of this project imploded. Academia vs. Real World.
There are countless examples of Obama not thinking about what he was saying. “Spread the Wealth”, No business trips to Las Vegas, the Special Olympics gaff on the late show, etc… All these show why the teleprompter is so valuable to him.
Obama’s stimulus package is completely borne from academia. It is based on all theories that will not work in the real world. You can’t spend your way out of a recession. Ask FDR who policies failed for 10 years eventually needing the industrial production of WWII to get us out of the Great Depression. Do we really think America will be on the road to recovery with a $13 Trillion debt? Taxes and inflation will have to follow this. If you make the rich and corporations pay more taxes to pay for this, they will only constrict their expenses, read cut jobs, that the middle and lower class people need resulting in even less consumer dollars - - extending the recession. It is a vicious cycle.
One story that you should read is how they increased taxes on the wealthy in Maryland believing this would increase their government coffers. The wealthy moved out of Maryland and took all their tax revenue with them and now Maryland has less tax revenue than when they started. Academia vs. the real world. This solution made so much sense up on the chalk board...
Bill Frezza had a great column stating that the $700 Billion bailout resulted in one million jobs. Doing the math, it cost us $787,000 per job creation. Frezza points out that Obama’s White House Economics advisers are all academic professors who never worked in the business world:
"They never had to meet a payroll. They never had to raise money to fund their businesses from skeptical investors. They never bet their life savings on their own business judgment. They never had to scramble to pay off a banker who called in a loan. They never had to decide whether to take a calculated risk to expand their workforce hoping to take market share from a fierce competitor. .. They never had to manage a reduction in force, explaining to employees that their jobs have been eliminated because the tax and regulatory burdens imposed by some new law forced them to cut costs. They never lost business to a government-subsidized competitor whose cost of capital was vastly lower than theirs. They never had to grease the palms of politicians offering constituent services to resolve a bureaucratic hangup caused by the labyrinthine government approvals these selfsame politicians inflict on many businesses. They never had to deal with a missed sales forecast caused by an economy so roiled by capricious and uncertain fiscal policy that frightened customers were holding back orders. They never had to deal with a key supplier that unexpectedly went bankrupt because their source of credit dried up as dollars got sucked out of the commercial economy into government debt... They never had to stand up in front of disappointed investors to explain why they lost money that had been entrusted to them. And you can be sure that none of them ever fell on their face and had to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and decide whether it was worth going through all of the joys described above to take another shot at building a business from scratch.
Go read their biographies. Do Christina, Austan, and Cecilia appear to you to be contributing members of the productive economy? Do you see any evidence that they've spent even a fraction of their careers creating jobs? What do you think qualifies these people to work as high level apparatchiks of a governing class determined to manage the businesses of others?
All three have Ph.D.'s from fancy universities. They are prize winning experts in macroeconomics. To have come this far you can bet that they are ambitious, articulate, well connected, and brilliant. Yet when the Council of Economic Advisers did its calculations to determine the number of jobs saved by the stimulus, they shamelessly counted assets and totally ignored liabilities.
… No, these people and those that appointed them are cunningly smart. It's we who are the fools for listening to them. Long after these experts return to their sinecures in academia to train another generation of economists on the wisdom of central planning and Keynesian pump priming, it's we and our children and our grandchildren who will be paying the price.”
So it is somewhat sad, we are left with a country with such major, serious problems, and a President who does not have the real world, tangible experience to fix them. He doesn’t even know where to start with his chalk in hand.
Academia is a place where concepts and theories are king, where unrealistic concepts never have to be put to the fire to test their validity. It is a place where elite educators congratulate themselves on producing written thoughts on paper and theory lectures and not tangible measurements of creation and achievement.
For 12 years, Barack Obama served as a college professor at the University of Chicago Law School. This decade of academic mindset became thoroughly entrenched in him and is present even to this day. Even Liberal talking heads currently mention his press conferences have more of a tone of a college professor lecturing his class than anything else.
It should surprise no one that Barack Obama came from Academia. Do you ever wonder why there are so many Liberals in academia? It is not because they all decide one day to all be professors. It is because they gravitate to one of the only few places left in the world where they can exist with their failed, non-real world ideologies and get paid handsomely.
In contrast, however, academics will also shoot a proposal down based on their bravado academic reputations that prevent them from seeing possibilities. In 1965, Fred Smith turned in a term paper to his Yale professor that dealt with the concept on having centralized distribution hubs for a national package delivery company. So a package would go from New York City down to Memphis to be sorted; then back to the final destination across the river in Paramus, NJ. The paper received a “C” from his academic college professor stating it was implausible. Fred Smith had the last laugh though; he went on to found Federal Express.
To give you a real life story of mine comparing academia to real world, upon completing my Masters Degree I knew four different ways to determine a break-even selling price on a product to a customer; the exact price where a company selling a product does not make profit, but does not lose money either. At my first real job I was posed with a problem that Wal-Mart told my company that we needed to sell our product to them at a 20% loss, or we would lose their $80 million dollar business. I was completely a deer frozen in the headlights. I knew the text book instruction on how to figure out a break-even, but did not have real world experience to take it to the next level, or even understand there was a next level, in deciding whether we should sell something at a loss. I needed some real world experience to catch up with my education.
In the business world, if you say something completely foolish or wrong you are beaten to a pulp by upper management who are protecting their turf, and you probably do not get promoted. If you throw out an idea on the table, that you haven’t thought through thoroughly, it will be a feeding frenzy exposing all the holes in your suggestion. So you learn to think about every objection that could be brought up and all the real world considerations. Abraham Lincoln once said when he debated someone he would spend one-third the prep time thinking about what he would say, and two-thirds his prep time thinking what his opponent would say.
Academia is different however. You have a tenure certificate in your hand that protects your livelihood from mistakes and stupidity.
This was definitely the environment from where Barack Obama emerged from.
Our President announced that he would close down Gitmo, a great in-theory-promise to his left-wing supporters. Then after blurting this out, he realized that no state or country wanted to take any of the prisoners and there were legitimate reasons why Gitmo existed. A very bad promise in reality, only half thought through. He was congratulated by the academics on this idea before the operation of this project imploded. Academia vs. Real World.
There are countless examples of Obama not thinking about what he was saying. “Spread the Wealth”, No business trips to Las Vegas, the Special Olympics gaff on the late show, etc… All these show why the teleprompter is so valuable to him.
Obama’s stimulus package is completely borne from academia. It is based on all theories that will not work in the real world. You can’t spend your way out of a recession. Ask FDR who policies failed for 10 years eventually needing the industrial production of WWII to get us out of the Great Depression. Do we really think America will be on the road to recovery with a $13 Trillion debt? Taxes and inflation will have to follow this. If you make the rich and corporations pay more taxes to pay for this, they will only constrict their expenses, read cut jobs, that the middle and lower class people need resulting in even less consumer dollars - - extending the recession. It is a vicious cycle.
One story that you should read is how they increased taxes on the wealthy in Maryland believing this would increase their government coffers. The wealthy moved out of Maryland and took all their tax revenue with them and now Maryland has less tax revenue than when they started. Academia vs. the real world. This solution made so much sense up on the chalk board...
Bill Frezza had a great column stating that the $700 Billion bailout resulted in one million jobs. Doing the math, it cost us $787,000 per job creation. Frezza points out that Obama’s White House Economics advisers are all academic professors who never worked in the business world:
"They never had to meet a payroll. They never had to raise money to fund their businesses from skeptical investors. They never bet their life savings on their own business judgment. They never had to scramble to pay off a banker who called in a loan. They never had to decide whether to take a calculated risk to expand their workforce hoping to take market share from a fierce competitor. .. They never had to manage a reduction in force, explaining to employees that their jobs have been eliminated because the tax and regulatory burdens imposed by some new law forced them to cut costs. They never lost business to a government-subsidized competitor whose cost of capital was vastly lower than theirs. They never had to grease the palms of politicians offering constituent services to resolve a bureaucratic hangup caused by the labyrinthine government approvals these selfsame politicians inflict on many businesses. They never had to deal with a missed sales forecast caused by an economy so roiled by capricious and uncertain fiscal policy that frightened customers were holding back orders. They never had to deal with a key supplier that unexpectedly went bankrupt because their source of credit dried up as dollars got sucked out of the commercial economy into government debt... They never had to stand up in front of disappointed investors to explain why they lost money that had been entrusted to them. And you can be sure that none of them ever fell on their face and had to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and decide whether it was worth going through all of the joys described above to take another shot at building a business from scratch.
Go read their biographies. Do Christina, Austan, and Cecilia appear to you to be contributing members of the productive economy? Do you see any evidence that they've spent even a fraction of their careers creating jobs? What do you think qualifies these people to work as high level apparatchiks of a governing class determined to manage the businesses of others?
All three have Ph.D.'s from fancy universities. They are prize winning experts in macroeconomics. To have come this far you can bet that they are ambitious, articulate, well connected, and brilliant. Yet when the Council of Economic Advisers did its calculations to determine the number of jobs saved by the stimulus, they shamelessly counted assets and totally ignored liabilities.
… No, these people and those that appointed them are cunningly smart. It's we who are the fools for listening to them. Long after these experts return to their sinecures in academia to train another generation of economists on the wisdom of central planning and Keynesian pump priming, it's we and our children and our grandchildren who will be paying the price.”
So it is somewhat sad, we are left with a country with such major, serious problems, and a President who does not have the real world, tangible experience to fix them. He doesn’t even know where to start with his chalk in hand.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
My Top Americans that Liberals Hate the Most
The Editors of Townhall.com put out a "Top 100 Americans that Liberals Hate the Most" List. Here is their Top 10:
1-Glen Beck
2-Sara Palin
3- Rush Limbaugh
4- George W. Bush
5-Ann Coulter
6-Michelle Malkin
7-Tea Party Members
8-Dick Cheney
9-Bill O'Reilly
10-Michelle Bachmann
Now, I think they are giving Glen Beck way too much credit. Liberals see him as an emotional flake, not overly threatening. I mean this guy pauses in the middle of a show, directs his head to the covering camera and starts his eyes tearing up for dramatic purposes.
I also noticed on this list there are many people who are involved with Town Hall magazine that seem to rank higher than they should. I really don't think the ACLU stays up at night thinking about Michelle Malkin who is number 6 on the list.
Here is my real list of who Liberals really "hate" the most in order. I also go inside the Liberal mindset to show you how they perceive these people to give you a little insight on how Liberals think:
1- Sarah Palin- There is a very-old skit on Abbott and Costello where Lou Costello tries to ask directions to the Susquehanna Hat Company. Upon mentioning this company to any pedestrians passing by, the pedestrians become totally enraged beyond measure for some incomprehensible reason and start lashing out. Whala... the” Sara Palin Affect” with Liberals, need I say more? Liberals see Palin as a bumpkin, air-head who is foolin' (you betcha') everyone in regard to her intelligence and abilities. They don’t understand why everyone can’t see her for what she obviously is in their eyes. Then there is that whole Elitist vs. common man thing, and a woman who welcomed a Down Syndrome baby into her life. It is total rage!
2-George W. Bush – The poor guy has been lying on the couch,watching sports and barbecuing for the last 18 months and he is still blamed for every societal ill there is. He was even mentioned as being responsible for the Gore divorce and the Gulf leak. Way too funny. Liberals see GW as a irresponsible frat boy who stole an election and could care less about any of their opinions when he ran the country. Liberals hate being ignored or having their pseudo-intellects dismissed. They also firmly believe that he tricked us into the Iraq war, despite almost every member of Congress voted for it.
Recently, Sienna College polled 238 professors/presidential scholars on the greatest and worst Presidents in history. These academics, read Liberals, put GW at 39, fifth from the bottom with the likes of Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan. Obama came in as 15th overall. Obama was also ranked 8th as most intelligent - although he's not looking to bright lately. All of this is one more piece of evidence that academia is in la-la land, and not tapped into or respected by the real world. GW is in good company, though. Bill Clinton (who was impeached) beat Ronald Reagan (who won the Cold War) on the list as well.
3-Dick Cheney – Liberals see him as the Evil Emperor to GW Bush’s Lord Vader. They believe that GW was not smart enough to run the country by his own wits, so Liberals are convinced that Cheney called all the shots; pulled all the strings. Kinda’ like Sinatra in Vegas. They kinda’ see him like the old, bald, grouchy puppets in the balcony of the Muppet Show who is miserable and heckles everyone. They think of him as a war monger because of his prior role as Secretary of Defense. Throw in his fortune was made from Big Oil, he is deserving of number 3 most hated.
4- The Roman Catholic Church - Townhall.com names an organization on their list, the Tea Party, but the Catholic Church in America is far more hated than the Tea Party. Some would argue this should be number one on the list. Liberals know that the Church is the last bastion of unwavering morality in the world. Her teachings completely conflict with every self-centered lifestyle that Liberals want to have without a ping of conscience. I will bet my life on where the Catholic Church will stand on abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research five centuries from now. I could not do this with any other religious, political, social or ethical organization, and Liberals know this as well.
5- Ann Coulter - Is seen as obnoxious, loud, rude and without class, and that's just how her fellow Conservatives view her.
6-Newt Gingrich – Liberals see Gingrich similar to how the right sees Nancy Pelosi. Some extreme wacko swinging on the fringe of ideology completely not in touch with any reality. They see him as a hypocrite, family value guy who left his wife when she was sick, actually validity in this charge.
7-Justice Antonin Scalia – The Town Hall polls put Clarence Thomas ahead of Scalia, but I believe Scalia is hated more than Thomas by Liberals. First off, Scalia has been infuriating them for longer. Thomas is seen as a misdirected African-American. Thomas is always civil and soft spoken to his credit, though. Scalia is cutting and bluntly honest. When asked who was the one Liberal he disliked the most, he answered, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg…” So much for harmony in the workplace. He once rebutted a lawyer arguing a capital punishment case with, "Where does it say the death penalty has to be painless?" There is nothing that Liberals hate more than a Conservative who is razor sharp and can destroy all their emotional arguments easily with facts and intellect. The ACLU does lose sleep over Scalia.
8-Mark Levin – I think if you gave the Obama administration a choice to take one Conservative talk show host to take off the air… It would not be Rush, nor Sean Hannity, nor Glen Beck nor Bill O’Reilly. It would be Mark Levin. Levin met the dawning of the Chosen One’s euphoric Presidency with his best selling, wet-blanket book “Liberty and Tyrrany.” He is also the most cutting, the highest I.Q. and the most inciting of all the talk show hosts. The other hosts would be very careful about calling Obama a socialist openly for fear of lawsuit. Levin screams it before every commercial break and dares the lawsuit with “That's right… I said it!” There is nothing more than Levin would like than to be sued for slander by the Obama administration, and explain to the world via satellite-courtroom why our President is a socialist. Liberals see Levin as someone who should have been institutionalized a long time ago. They truly believe he does not have all of his faculties. To all the Bill O'Reilly fans, you should ask yourself why Obama picked O'Reilly to go on out of all the Conservative talkshows when running for President.
9-Gianna Jessen – I called her in a previous post the Most Dangerous Woman in America. Many liberals do not even know her, but when they find out she is the fetus who made it through a botched abortion with scaring injuries, and now can give these destroyed members of the human race a human voice… Oh boy… hold your hat. They truly wish that she could have been discarded as planned.
For the 10th slot, take your pick: Donald Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Pat Buchanan, etc...
One name on this list that is going to climb like a bullet is Madeleine Sackler. I don't know if you have heard about her movie, The Lottery, that shows the true underbelly of the teacher's union, but this movie is going to tear down the place. Nothing is more hostile than lazy people making tons of money who have their tenure questioned. Good stuff!
1-Glen Beck
2-Sara Palin
3- Rush Limbaugh
4- George W. Bush
5-Ann Coulter
6-Michelle Malkin
7-Tea Party Members
8-Dick Cheney
9-Bill O'Reilly
10-Michelle Bachmann
Now, I think they are giving Glen Beck way too much credit. Liberals see him as an emotional flake, not overly threatening. I mean this guy pauses in the middle of a show, directs his head to the covering camera and starts his eyes tearing up for dramatic purposes.
I also noticed on this list there are many people who are involved with Town Hall magazine that seem to rank higher than they should. I really don't think the ACLU stays up at night thinking about Michelle Malkin who is number 6 on the list.
Here is my real list of who Liberals really "hate" the most in order. I also go inside the Liberal mindset to show you how they perceive these people to give you a little insight on how Liberals think:
1- Sarah Palin- There is a very-old skit on Abbott and Costello where Lou Costello tries to ask directions to the Susquehanna Hat Company. Upon mentioning this company to any pedestrians passing by, the pedestrians become totally enraged beyond measure for some incomprehensible reason and start lashing out. Whala... the” Sara Palin Affect” with Liberals, need I say more? Liberals see Palin as a bumpkin, air-head who is foolin' (you betcha') everyone in regard to her intelligence and abilities. They don’t understand why everyone can’t see her for what she obviously is in their eyes. Then there is that whole Elitist vs. common man thing, and a woman who welcomed a Down Syndrome baby into her life. It is total rage!
2-George W. Bush – The poor guy has been lying on the couch,watching sports and barbecuing for the last 18 months and he is still blamed for every societal ill there is. He was even mentioned as being responsible for the Gore divorce and the Gulf leak. Way too funny. Liberals see GW as a irresponsible frat boy who stole an election and could care less about any of their opinions when he ran the country. Liberals hate being ignored or having their pseudo-intellects dismissed. They also firmly believe that he tricked us into the Iraq war, despite almost every member of Congress voted for it.
Recently, Sienna College polled 238 professors/presidential scholars on the greatest and worst Presidents in history. These academics, read Liberals, put GW at 39, fifth from the bottom with the likes of Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan. Obama came in as 15th overall. Obama was also ranked 8th as most intelligent - although he's not looking to bright lately. All of this is one more piece of evidence that academia is in la-la land, and not tapped into or respected by the real world. GW is in good company, though. Bill Clinton (who was impeached) beat Ronald Reagan (who won the Cold War) on the list as well.
3-Dick Cheney – Liberals see him as the Evil Emperor to GW Bush’s Lord Vader. They believe that GW was not smart enough to run the country by his own wits, so Liberals are convinced that Cheney called all the shots; pulled all the strings. Kinda’ like Sinatra in Vegas. They kinda’ see him like the old, bald, grouchy puppets in the balcony of the Muppet Show who is miserable and heckles everyone. They think of him as a war monger because of his prior role as Secretary of Defense. Throw in his fortune was made from Big Oil, he is deserving of number 3 most hated.
4- The Roman Catholic Church - Townhall.com names an organization on their list, the Tea Party, but the Catholic Church in America is far more hated than the Tea Party. Some would argue this should be number one on the list. Liberals know that the Church is the last bastion of unwavering morality in the world. Her teachings completely conflict with every self-centered lifestyle that Liberals want to have without a ping of conscience. I will bet my life on where the Catholic Church will stand on abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research five centuries from now. I could not do this with any other religious, political, social or ethical organization, and Liberals know this as well.
5- Ann Coulter - Is seen as obnoxious, loud, rude and without class, and that's just how her fellow Conservatives view her.
6-Newt Gingrich – Liberals see Gingrich similar to how the right sees Nancy Pelosi. Some extreme wacko swinging on the fringe of ideology completely not in touch with any reality. They see him as a hypocrite, family value guy who left his wife when she was sick, actually validity in this charge.
7-Justice Antonin Scalia – The Town Hall polls put Clarence Thomas ahead of Scalia, but I believe Scalia is hated more than Thomas by Liberals. First off, Scalia has been infuriating them for longer. Thomas is seen as a misdirected African-American. Thomas is always civil and soft spoken to his credit, though. Scalia is cutting and bluntly honest. When asked who was the one Liberal he disliked the most, he answered, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg…” So much for harmony in the workplace. He once rebutted a lawyer arguing a capital punishment case with, "Where does it say the death penalty has to be painless?" There is nothing that Liberals hate more than a Conservative who is razor sharp and can destroy all their emotional arguments easily with facts and intellect. The ACLU does lose sleep over Scalia.
8-Mark Levin – I think if you gave the Obama administration a choice to take one Conservative talk show host to take off the air… It would not be Rush, nor Sean Hannity, nor Glen Beck nor Bill O’Reilly. It would be Mark Levin. Levin met the dawning of the Chosen One’s euphoric Presidency with his best selling, wet-blanket book “Liberty and Tyrrany.” He is also the most cutting, the highest I.Q. and the most inciting of all the talk show hosts. The other hosts would be very careful about calling Obama a socialist openly for fear of lawsuit. Levin screams it before every commercial break and dares the lawsuit with “That's right… I said it!” There is nothing more than Levin would like than to be sued for slander by the Obama administration, and explain to the world via satellite-courtroom why our President is a socialist. Liberals see Levin as someone who should have been institutionalized a long time ago. They truly believe he does not have all of his faculties. To all the Bill O'Reilly fans, you should ask yourself why Obama picked O'Reilly to go on out of all the Conservative talkshows when running for President.
9-Gianna Jessen – I called her in a previous post the Most Dangerous Woman in America. Many liberals do not even know her, but when they find out she is the fetus who made it through a botched abortion with scaring injuries, and now can give these destroyed members of the human race a human voice… Oh boy… hold your hat. They truly wish that she could have been discarded as planned.
For the 10th slot, take your pick: Donald Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Pat Buchanan, etc...
One name on this list that is going to climb like a bullet is Madeleine Sackler. I don't know if you have heard about her movie, The Lottery, that shows the true underbelly of the teacher's union, but this movie is going to tear down the place. Nothing is more hostile than lazy people making tons of money who have their tenure questioned. Good stuff!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Obamacare: Academia Incompetence vs. Tangible Reality
Karl Rove lays out what is coming in Obamacare, initiated by an academic who never had to exist in the real world:
"...This [reality of people being able to lose their health care] was brought home to me when I asked the CEO of a major restaurant chain about health reform's effect on his company, which now spends $25 million a year on employee health insurance. That will jump to at least $90 million a year once the new law is phased in. It will be cheaper, he told me, for the company to dump its coverage and pay a fine—$2,000 for each full-time worker—and make sure that no part-time employee accidentally worked 31 hours and thereby incurred the fine.
This reality is settling in at businesses across America. A Midwestern contractor told me he pays $588,000 for health insurance for 70 employees, contributing up to $8,400 a year for a family's coverage. If he stops providing health insurance, he'll pay $2,000 per employee in fines, and the first 40 employees are exempt from fines altogether." [Blogger note: 70 employees, the first 40 are exempt from any fine, so he will pay $2k on 30 employees totaling $60,000, as opposed to the $588K he is paying now. This owner could pocket $500K in savings and can throw 70 people on the public health care system. Maybe that's what Obama wants.]
So basically, Obama's legislation was set up so it is more efficient for private sector companies to pay the fines and drop health care for its employees, than provide health care for its employees. Driving quicker towards having everyone on national health care.
"...This [reality of people being able to lose their health care] was brought home to me when I asked the CEO of a major restaurant chain about health reform's effect on his company, which now spends $25 million a year on employee health insurance. That will jump to at least $90 million a year once the new law is phased in. It will be cheaper, he told me, for the company to dump its coverage and pay a fine—$2,000 for each full-time worker—and make sure that no part-time employee accidentally worked 31 hours and thereby incurred the fine.
This reality is settling in at businesses across America. A Midwestern contractor told me he pays $588,000 for health insurance for 70 employees, contributing up to $8,400 a year for a family's coverage. If he stops providing health insurance, he'll pay $2,000 per employee in fines, and the first 40 employees are exempt from fines altogether." [Blogger note: 70 employees, the first 40 are exempt from any fine, so he will pay $2k on 30 employees totaling $60,000, as opposed to the $588K he is paying now. This owner could pocket $500K in savings and can throw 70 people on the public health care system. Maybe that's what Obama wants.]
So basically, Obama's legislation was set up so it is more efficient for private sector companies to pay the fines and drop health care for its employees, than provide health care for its employees. Driving quicker towards having everyone on national health care.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Dick Morris: The President is No Executive
Dick Morris wrote two columns that I combined that really touches the essence of President Obama's limitations is this recent crisis:
"Contrary to what the Constitution says, the president does not run the executive branch of the federal government. It runs itself. Following Newton’s Laws of Motion, it is “a body in motion that tends to remain in motion in the same direction and at the same speed unless acted upon by an outside force.” The bureaucracy keeps doing what it is programmed to do unless someone intervenes.
And that intervention is the proper job of the president. He has to step in, ask the right questions, get inside and outside advice, and decide how to intervene to move the bureaucracy one way or the other. President Clinton had an excellent sense of how to do this and when to get involved. President Obama does not.
…Because [Obama] has no administrative experience. I often saw Bill Clinton, as governor and as president, call in experts and ask the tough questions when he faced a new disaster. In Arkansas, it was tornadoes or floods or fires. In Washington, it was Oklahoma City. But, each time, he thoroughly familiarized himself with all the technical issues. He took a bath in the science and substance of the hazard and became as knowledgeable as those who had spent a lifetime studying it. So he knew what questions to ask.
Any CEO or COO or manager has similar experience. But a community organizer, law professor, state senator, US Senator, and president doesn’t have the requisite experience. He doesn’t know not to trust his own bureaucracy. He hasn’t been burned enough to realize that he needs to intervene to waive restrictions, set aside regulations, and open up the process to new solutions.
Why did he not waive the Jones Act (he still hasn’t) to allow foreign vessels to ply our waters to clean up the spill? Not because he was against it. He couldn’t have been against so obvious a course as waiving it. It was likely because nobody told him about it and he never knew to ask
…When the spill started, he and his campaign staff – now transplanted to the White House – reacted the way a Senator or a candidate would, blaming British Petroleum, framing an issue against the oil company, and holding it accountable. But what he needed to do was to review the plans for coping with the disaster and intervene to move the bureaucracy in untraditional but more appropriate directions. Instead, he let business as usual and inertia move the process.
…But this president is no executive. He is a legislator – he is now pushing new environmental legislation. He is a lawyer – his Attorney General is investigating criminal charges against BP. He is a populist – he is quick to blame BP. He is a big spender – he wants a fund to pay the spill’s victims. He is all of these things. But he is no chief executive and that, unfortunately, is the job he was elected to do."
"Contrary to what the Constitution says, the president does not run the executive branch of the federal government. It runs itself. Following Newton’s Laws of Motion, it is “a body in motion that tends to remain in motion in the same direction and at the same speed unless acted upon by an outside force.” The bureaucracy keeps doing what it is programmed to do unless someone intervenes.
And that intervention is the proper job of the president. He has to step in, ask the right questions, get inside and outside advice, and decide how to intervene to move the bureaucracy one way or the other. President Clinton had an excellent sense of how to do this and when to get involved. President Obama does not.
…Because [Obama] has no administrative experience. I often saw Bill Clinton, as governor and as president, call in experts and ask the tough questions when he faced a new disaster. In Arkansas, it was tornadoes or floods or fires. In Washington, it was Oklahoma City. But, each time, he thoroughly familiarized himself with all the technical issues. He took a bath in the science and substance of the hazard and became as knowledgeable as those who had spent a lifetime studying it. So he knew what questions to ask.
Any CEO or COO or manager has similar experience. But a community organizer, law professor, state senator, US Senator, and president doesn’t have the requisite experience. He doesn’t know not to trust his own bureaucracy. He hasn’t been burned enough to realize that he needs to intervene to waive restrictions, set aside regulations, and open up the process to new solutions.
Why did he not waive the Jones Act (he still hasn’t) to allow foreign vessels to ply our waters to clean up the spill? Not because he was against it. He couldn’t have been against so obvious a course as waiving it. It was likely because nobody told him about it and he never knew to ask
…When the spill started, he and his campaign staff – now transplanted to the White House – reacted the way a Senator or a candidate would, blaming British Petroleum, framing an issue against the oil company, and holding it accountable. But what he needed to do was to review the plans for coping with the disaster and intervene to move the bureaucracy in untraditional but more appropriate directions. Instead, he let business as usual and inertia move the process.
…But this president is no executive. He is a legislator – he is now pushing new environmental legislation. He is a lawyer – his Attorney General is investigating criminal charges against BP. He is a populist – he is quick to blame BP. He is a big spender – he wants a fund to pay the spill’s victims. He is all of these things. But he is no chief executive and that, unfortunately, is the job he was elected to do."
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Oil Spill and Obama's Inaction
Yep, Mr. President... It's oil...Below is a portion of the Oil Polution Act from 1990, that clearly outlines the Barack Obama can quickly and legally take complete control of the clean up of this spill through Federal agencies and does not need to wait for BP to get their act together:
Section 4201(a) of the Oil Pollution Act, which is codified at Title 33 of the United States Code, Section 1321(c), reads in part:
(c) Federal removal authority.
(1) General removal requirement.
(A) The President shall, in accordance with the National Contingency Plan and any appropriate Area Contingency Plan, ensure effective and immediate removal of a discharge, and mitigation or prevention of a substantial threat of a discharge, of oil or a hazardous substance–
(i) into or on the navigable waters;
(ii) on the adjoining shorelines to the navigable waters;
(iii) into or on the waters of the exclusive economic zone; or
(iv) that may affect natural resources belonging to, appertaining to, or under the exclusive management authority of the United States.
(B) In carrying out this paragraph, the President may–
(i) remove or arrange for the removal of a discharge, and mitigate or prevent a substantial threat of a discharge, at any time;
(ii) direct or monitor all Federal, State, and private actions to remove a discharge; and
(iii) remove and, if necessary, destroy a vessel discharging, or threatening to discharge, by whatever means are available.
(2) Discharge posing substantial threat to public health or welfare.
(A) If a discharge, or a substantial threat of a discharge, of oil or a hazardous substance from a vessel, offshore facility, or onshore facility is of such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States (including but not limited to fish, shellfish, wildlife, other natural resources, and the public and private beaches and shorelines of the United States), the President shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge or to mitigate or prevent the threat of the discharge.
(B) In carrying out this paragraph, the President may, without regard to any other provision of law governing contracting procedures or employment of personnel by the Federal Government–
(i) remove or arrange for the removal of the discharge, or mitigate or prevent the substantial threat of the discharge; and
(ii) remove and, if necessary, destroy a vessel discharging, or threatening to discharge, by whatever means are available.
We got what we knew we were electing. Someone with no executive experience; and someone who's leadership style is framed around blaming someone else.
What Obama has to be careful of is that he is at the top of the list for BP's political donations, and he should be concern with the appearance of inpropriety. Erica Lovley reports at Politico:
"During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records."
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Two Political Predictions this Weekend
1) Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Nomination for President in 2012, not Barack Obama.
My Reasoning:
A) By all reports, there is an incredible amount of animosity between the Clintons and the Obamas. When considering Hillary for Vice-President, Michelle Obama told the future President: "Do you really want Bill and Hillary just down the hall from you in the White House?"
There is no loyalty here, everything will be fair game. She will challenge him if necessary.
B) After enlisting Bill Clinton's help to offer Joe Sestak a cushy job in lieu of running for Senator against Arlen Specter, the Obama White House threw Bubba Bill under the bus as soon as this shady deal was exposed. This has entangled the former President in a scandal and even possibly a crime. The Clintons must be enraged, after what they saw as providing support for Obama and doing him a favor. Again, no loyalty owed so she will challenge.
C) Obama has lost the support and burned his bridges with the ACLU, pro-Israel supporters, environmentalists, some unions, some gays, etc... He will be a man without a country come 2012, and people will be screaming for Hillary.
D) Obama's popularity is plummeting and will continue. The insiders in the Democratic Party will come to realize he can not win. He might not even run.
2) If John Kasich wins the Governorship on Ohio this year, he will eventually become the President of the United States:
My Reasoning:
1) Kasich will be an incredibly popular Governor. He chaired the House Budget Committee in D.C. and will cut state government waste with a chainsaw. He will eventually give Ohioans relief by lowering taxes, creating jobs and turning Ohio's economy around. He will have a fiscal record that will appeal to Americans as our financial situation grows dimmer with a $13 trillion debt.
2) He is a polished and professional communicator and incredibly likable. He has that Abraham Lincoln lankiness, and Opie face, that portrays honesty, and is the son of a mailman. He has wide American appeal. Americans over the next few years will move away from the perfectly-gelled hair, teeth-whitening, $1,000 suits politicians.
3) If the GOP can lock up Ohio, most Presidential elections are over. Kasich on the ticket will ensure this.
...but he has to win the Gubernatorial Election this year.
My Reasoning:
A) By all reports, there is an incredible amount of animosity between the Clintons and the Obamas. When considering Hillary for Vice-President, Michelle Obama told the future President: "Do you really want Bill and Hillary just down the hall from you in the White House?"
There is no loyalty here, everything will be fair game. She will challenge him if necessary.
B) After enlisting Bill Clinton's help to offer Joe Sestak a cushy job in lieu of running for Senator against Arlen Specter, the Obama White House threw Bubba Bill under the bus as soon as this shady deal was exposed. This has entangled the former President in a scandal and even possibly a crime. The Clintons must be enraged, after what they saw as providing support for Obama and doing him a favor. Again, no loyalty owed so she will challenge.
C) Obama has lost the support and burned his bridges with the ACLU, pro-Israel supporters, environmentalists, some unions, some gays, etc... He will be a man without a country come 2012, and people will be screaming for Hillary.
D) Obama's popularity is plummeting and will continue. The insiders in the Democratic Party will come to realize he can not win. He might not even run.
2) If John Kasich wins the Governorship on Ohio this year, he will eventually become the President of the United States:
My Reasoning:
1) Kasich will be an incredibly popular Governor. He chaired the House Budget Committee in D.C. and will cut state government waste with a chainsaw. He will eventually give Ohioans relief by lowering taxes, creating jobs and turning Ohio's economy around. He will have a fiscal record that will appeal to Americans as our financial situation grows dimmer with a $13 trillion debt.
2) He is a polished and professional communicator and incredibly likable. He has that Abraham Lincoln lankiness, and Opie face, that portrays honesty, and is the son of a mailman. He has wide American appeal. Americans over the next few years will move away from the perfectly-gelled hair, teeth-whitening, $1,000 suits politicians.
3) If the GOP can lock up Ohio, most Presidential elections are over. Kasich on the ticket will ensure this.
...but he has to win the Gubernatorial Election this year.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Society's Misplaced Values
Over the past few months, I find myself landing on some of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's writings from different sources.
This is a great piece on the hostility that large families face. I have recently experience some of this telling acquaintences that we are expecting our fourth. They never realize their reactions to this news tells me more about them then they could ever realize in just a few seconds. Here is Rabbi Boteach's piece:
"...I don't mind that the world doesn't really love babies, just that it pretends to. It's time we got honest about our priorities. Most people get a new car every two or three years, but one or two babies through the life of their marriage is plenty. You can get drunk on an airplane, laugh hysterically with your mates, and still not really anger people. But if you dare bring a crying baby on board you will be given malicious looks as if the little thing is a package that ticks. If you walk your dog along the street, people will stop you to tell you how cute he is. If you walk down the street with a baby, you might find a woman or two who coos, but for the most part, you'll be utterly ignored
...Why are people impressed that Jay Leno owns 20 motorcycles, but disgusted that some religious families choose to have 10 children?
Let's not finesse the response. [Blogger Note: He comes the Rabbi with the MACK truck of truth through the donut shop!] We all know why. A world that has lost its innocence has trouble appreciating beings who are innocent. A world that has become selfish has soured to the idea of leading a life of selflessness. A world that has become grossly materialistic is turned off to the idea of more dependents who consume resources. And a world that mistakenly believes that freedom means a lack of responsibility is opposed to the idea of needy creatures who "tie you down."
They can go fly a kite. [Blogger Note: This Irish-Catholic would phrase this much differently; the Rabbi is very kind and a better man than I.]
By just looking at my children, I become more innocent. By loving them, I become more noble. By spending my money on them rather than myself, I find transcendence. And by being a father and liberating all of the love in my heart, my spirit soars free. I work hard to support a large family and I give up no pleasures in doing so because my children are my foremost pleasure."
I can see why John Paul the Great called the Jewish people our older brothers, very wise.
Htip Creative Minority
This is a great piece on the hostility that large families face. I have recently experience some of this telling acquaintences that we are expecting our fourth. They never realize their reactions to this news tells me more about them then they could ever realize in just a few seconds. Here is Rabbi Boteach's piece:
"...I don't mind that the world doesn't really love babies, just that it pretends to. It's time we got honest about our priorities. Most people get a new car every two or three years, but one or two babies through the life of their marriage is plenty. You can get drunk on an airplane, laugh hysterically with your mates, and still not really anger people. But if you dare bring a crying baby on board you will be given malicious looks as if the little thing is a package that ticks. If you walk your dog along the street, people will stop you to tell you how cute he is. If you walk down the street with a baby, you might find a woman or two who coos, but for the most part, you'll be utterly ignored
...Why are people impressed that Jay Leno owns 20 motorcycles, but disgusted that some religious families choose to have 10 children?
Let's not finesse the response. [Blogger Note: He comes the Rabbi with the MACK truck of truth through the donut shop!] We all know why. A world that has lost its innocence has trouble appreciating beings who are innocent. A world that has become selfish has soured to the idea of leading a life of selflessness. A world that has become grossly materialistic is turned off to the idea of more dependents who consume resources. And a world that mistakenly believes that freedom means a lack of responsibility is opposed to the idea of needy creatures who "tie you down."
They can go fly a kite. [Blogger Note: This Irish-Catholic would phrase this much differently; the Rabbi is very kind and a better man than I.]
By just looking at my children, I become more innocent. By loving them, I become more noble. By spending my money on them rather than myself, I find transcendence. And by being a father and liberating all of the love in my heart, my spirit soars free. I work hard to support a large family and I give up no pleasures in doing so because my children are my foremost pleasure."
I can see why John Paul the Great called the Jewish people our older brothers, very wise.
Htip Creative Minority
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sr. Margaret McBride: A Heartless Excommunication?
Secular news headlines are ablaze with Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted confirming the excommunication of Sr. Margaret McBride, a hospital executive, for procuring an abortion for a 27-year old woman with pulmonary hypertension who was 11 weeks pregnant. Sr. McBride cited the high mortality rate of mothers coming to term with this condition as her rationale.
Understanding this situation is a very difficult scenario, well above my "pay grade”, I would at least like to offer some bullet points for your consideration and further the discussion before we automatically demonize the Bishop and praise Sr. McBride.
1) Years back the maternal mortality rate of carrying a pregnancy to term with this condition was cited at 50%. More recently, it was then adjusted to 30%. An October 2005 article citing an 18 year survey actually cited 22%. I would ask each person who supports Sr. McBride’s decision an equally challenging question. At what mortality rate does the unborn child merit consideration and an abortion would be considered wrong?
2) How ‘bout 11%...? A research report by 13 doctors published in the International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (April 2010) cites a medical study where treating pregnant women who have PH with an early introduction of targeted pulmonary vascular therapy and early planned delivery under regional anesthesia had all the women in the study survive as well as their babies -- with the exception of one woman who chose to stop the treatment after childbirth. At the 11% mortality rate of this study do we sign off on the death certificates as a foregone conclusion of the 89 babies out of 100 that would survive birth along with their mothers? Or do we start thinking about treating both patients?
3) Father John Ehrich, the Medical Ethics Director for the Diocese Phoenix defended the Church and bishop in writing, "The unborn child can never be thought of as a pathology or an illness…" "That is, the child is not that [condition] which threatens the life of the mother, rather it is the pathology or illness [pulmonary hypertension] which threatens the mother's life." So my question is did this “ethics” review done by Sr. McBride prior to approving this abortion approach this dilemma as the pregnancy was the danger, or the pulmonary hypertension was the danger? Reading between the lines is that for Fr. Ehrich to specifically mention this in his Diocesan defense could infer that when the Diocese reviewed the minutes and documentation from this decision, this might have been the case, otherwise why would Fr. Ehrich draw ample attention to this consideration?
4) It should be stated that the excommunication was established by Sr. McBride’s action in itself and not initiated by a formal declaration from the Bishop.
5) My final observation is that why would a Catholic nun not consult the local Magisterium on a decision like this? Did she think they had no authority for a Catholic hospital within their Diocese? Sr. McBride was quickly relocated in her position after her action, so the Diocese did have authority over the hospital. So obviously this is not the reason the Diocese was not consulted. In my secular world, I wouldn't never make a decision against my company's set guidelines without getting approval from the chain on command. One would question are these decisions such a commonplace thing in this hospital that the frequency of the decisions have diluted the need to consult the Diocese on every one? Something is not right. There is more here than what is told.
Understanding this situation is a very difficult scenario, well above my "pay grade”, I would at least like to offer some bullet points for your consideration and further the discussion before we automatically demonize the Bishop and praise Sr. McBride.
1) Years back the maternal mortality rate of carrying a pregnancy to term with this condition was cited at 50%. More recently, it was then adjusted to 30%. An October 2005 article citing an 18 year survey actually cited 22%. I would ask each person who supports Sr. McBride’s decision an equally challenging question. At what mortality rate does the unborn child merit consideration and an abortion would be considered wrong?
2) How ‘bout 11%...? A research report by 13 doctors published in the International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (April 2010) cites a medical study where treating pregnant women who have PH with an early introduction of targeted pulmonary vascular therapy and early planned delivery under regional anesthesia had all the women in the study survive as well as their babies -- with the exception of one woman who chose to stop the treatment after childbirth. At the 11% mortality rate of this study do we sign off on the death certificates as a foregone conclusion of the 89 babies out of 100 that would survive birth along with their mothers? Or do we start thinking about treating both patients?
3) Father John Ehrich, the Medical Ethics Director for the Diocese Phoenix defended the Church and bishop in writing, "The unborn child can never be thought of as a pathology or an illness…" "That is, the child is not that [condition] which threatens the life of the mother, rather it is the pathology or illness [pulmonary hypertension] which threatens the mother's life." So my question is did this “ethics” review done by Sr. McBride prior to approving this abortion approach this dilemma as the pregnancy was the danger, or the pulmonary hypertension was the danger? Reading between the lines is that for Fr. Ehrich to specifically mention this in his Diocesan defense could infer that when the Diocese reviewed the minutes and documentation from this decision, this might have been the case, otherwise why would Fr. Ehrich draw ample attention to this consideration?
4) It should be stated that the excommunication was established by Sr. McBride’s action in itself and not initiated by a formal declaration from the Bishop.
5) My final observation is that why would a Catholic nun not consult the local Magisterium on a decision like this? Did she think they had no authority for a Catholic hospital within their Diocese? Sr. McBride was quickly relocated in her position after her action, so the Diocese did have authority over the hospital. So obviously this is not the reason the Diocese was not consulted. In my secular world, I wouldn't never make a decision against my company's set guidelines without getting approval from the chain on command. One would question are these decisions such a commonplace thing in this hospital that the frequency of the decisions have diluted the need to consult the Diocese on every one? Something is not right. There is more here than what is told.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Modern Day Witnesses for the Faith; May Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them
VCR friend Tim Drake, from the Register:
"We are a Church of Martyrs. As the saying goes, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” From the death of Christ, on the Cross, and Stephen, the first martyr, to today, blood has been shed by those who follow Christ. We do not follow a bloodless faith.
The Vatican’s Fides agency has issued a list of all those involved in pastoral work who were killed during 2009. The list reveals where the Church’s modern “martyrs” have died for the practice of their faith. The Church no longer refers to the group as a “list of martyrs,” since the circumstances of death in many cases is unknown. Instead, they are listed as those involved in pastoral or missionary work who died violently.
Of the 37 who died in 2009, Central and South America appear to be the most dangerous places for the Catholic faith, with a total of 19 deaths. Both Colombia and Brazil had six deaths.
Thirty of those who were killed were priests, 19 of them diocesan. Two were seminarians, both of whom were killed in Mexico. Two were nuns, one a Trappist; the other a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament, who was killed in the U.S. in the state of New Mexico. Three of the total were lay people.
After Central and South America, the second most dangerous place for missionaries was Africa, with a total of 11 deaths, followed by Asia, with a death in the Philippines, and another in India. Three were from the U.S."
Here is a list of all the martyrs who died this past year . Please follow this link and say a prayer for the repose of their souls.
"We are a Church of Martyrs. As the saying goes, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” From the death of Christ, on the Cross, and Stephen, the first martyr, to today, blood has been shed by those who follow Christ. We do not follow a bloodless faith.
The Vatican’s Fides agency has issued a list of all those involved in pastoral work who were killed during 2009. The list reveals where the Church’s modern “martyrs” have died for the practice of their faith. The Church no longer refers to the group as a “list of martyrs,” since the circumstances of death in many cases is unknown. Instead, they are listed as those involved in pastoral or missionary work who died violently.
Of the 37 who died in 2009, Central and South America appear to be the most dangerous places for the Catholic faith, with a total of 19 deaths. Both Colombia and Brazil had six deaths.
Thirty of those who were killed were priests, 19 of them diocesan. Two were seminarians, both of whom were killed in Mexico. Two were nuns, one a Trappist; the other a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament, who was killed in the U.S. in the state of New Mexico. Three of the total were lay people.
After Central and South America, the second most dangerous place for missionaries was Africa, with a total of 11 deaths, followed by Asia, with a death in the Philippines, and another in India. Three were from the U.S."
Here is a list of all the martyrs who died this past year . Please follow this link and say a prayer for the repose of their souls.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Great Priestly Works Accomplished in Darkness
Archbishop John Quinn gave a very well-constructed speech at the National Federation of Priests’ Councils in Houston, Texas on April 13, 2010. I listed a few paragraphs to give you the flavor but it should be read in its entirety:
"I am here to pay tribute to you, the priests of the United States. You stand on the front line. You meet the angry or confused or troubled people at the Sunday Masses in your parishes and missions. You have to try to answer their questions about the worldwide crisis caused by priests and bishops around the world. You are the ones out there in the parishes whose hearts break at the anguish of our people over the robbed innocence of their children. And you weep inside over the desecration of something so beautiful, so cherished as the priesthood is to all of us. You are the ones who meet the children and the families, and try your best to walk with them in their search for peace and healing. You are there where the wound is.
I know that all over this country, in small towns and large cities, there are priests who stay up all night in a hospital waiting room with a distraught family whose teen-age daughter lies near death from an automobile accident. I know that there are priests in rural dioceses, like the priests I knew in Oklahoma, who drive hundreds of miles both ways to one or several mission churches on Saturday evenings and then have three Masses on Sundays with baptisms, counseling, youth groups and parish gatherings in the afternoon and evening…You are the priests who have persevered when your heart sank over an admired and gifted classmate who was removed from ministry because of allegations of abuse.
…We are at a critical point in the life of the church. Here and there commentators are beginning to compare it to the magnitude of the crisis of the Reformation. This is not the place to raise these cosmic issues. But I do believe it is the place to raise the question every priest must confront today. It is the question first raised by the Jesuit Karl Rahner: “Why would a modern man want to become or remain a priest today?”
…I think of my friend, Alfred Delp, who with his hands chained in a concentration camp, signed the paper of his final vows. I think of a brother priest who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of [society's] unimportant people…I think of a brother priest who assists daily in a hospital at the bedside of death…I think of a brother priest who as a prison chaplain proclaims over and over the message of the Gospel with never any sign of gratitude. I think of the brother priest who (in a parish) with tremendous difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the task of awakening in just a few people a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity. These and many other forms and acts of renunciation, known to God alone, are still what is decisive in the priesthood.
But there are men like these who have lived in and come from our own American dioceses.
Think of Emil Kapaun, a priest of Wichita, Kansas. In a prison camp in Korea he stole food from the commissary at night for his starving men knowing that he would be shot on sight if discovered. Depression and futility gripped many of the men in his unit. A Protestant chaplain with a wife and children at home was severely depressed and Emil knew he would die if something didn’t change. He deliberately said things to make him angry knowing that the experience of anger would bring him out of himself. It worked, and the man lived to return to his family. Emil tried everything to keep the men positive and hopeful. The men who got dysentery, he carried on his shoulders to the latrine and cleaned them. Eventually he got phlebitis and the guards took him off to die. The last thing his men heard was Emil assuring the guards he held no animosity or hatred for them.
Stanley Rother, whose bishop I was at one time, was a priest of Oklahoma City. He volunteered for the mission we had in Guatemala. He served the people with great dedication, teaching them their faith and instructing them in the social doctrine of the church. He carried on his ministry as priests he knew and worked with were murdered. His own catechists and parish leaders were abducted and murdered. Told that he was on the death list, he was urged to return to Oklahoma, which he did. But there only a short time, knowing clearly that it would mean certain death he decided to go back to Guatemala. He told his parents, “The Shepherd can’t run. I have to go back.” Father Rother was killed shortly after his return.
… Joseph Guetzloe, a Divine Word Father, was pastor of a Japanese community in San Francisco. When the Japanese were forced to move to segregation camps during World War II, Father Gutzloe asked to go with them. He voluntarily spent all the war years there with his people. A young priest, ordained one year, wrote to me about his experience during that first year and said, “ I have been looking for the lack of success in the lack of technique and finding it in the lack of holiness.”
…The cataclysmic avalanche of the sexual abuse scandal is a profoundly troubling experience for every priest. It touches not only the perpetrators and those so gravely hurt by them, but it is now engulfing the papacy itself and eroding the leadership and credibility of the bishops in the church. It forces us to ask the question of Karl Rahner, “Why would a modern man want to become or to remain a priest today?” How can an American priest persevere in the midst of such a shattering trial? How do we priests and how does the church persevere in time of severe trial?
…For St. Bernard, John the Baptist is the great image of the priesthood in the Gospel. He is the friend—the friend of the Bridegroom. An important role of the friend of the Bridegroom was that he was responsible for the joy of the guests at the wedding feast. This is how Christ presents himself in the Resurrection accounts: he is the minister of consolation. He consoles Mary at the tomb, He consoles the disciples locked in fear in the upper room, he consoles Thomas in his doubts. This is our role as priests—to console the Holy Church of God in a time of intolerable pain and suffering. We are called to be the ministers of consolation and of evangelical hope.
…And so, in a difficult time we should not forget that the great works of God have been accomplished in darkness. The people fled Egypt in the darkness; they crossed the Red Sea in the darkness; the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the darkness of night; He gave us the Eucharist and the priesthood in the darkness of the Last Supper; he died on the Cross when the Gospel says “darkness covered the earth.” He lay in the darkness of the tomb. On the third day, He rose again in the darkness, and the empty tomb was discovered “early in the morning while it was still dark.” God is at work even in the darkness.
What John of the Cross describes as the dark night of the soul has in our time become the dark night of the church. John explains that the dark night is a bewildering experience, it strips away all the visible supports. It brings a helpless, sinking feeling. But it is only truly the dark night when it is accepted as coming from God and borne in faith. The believer and the church who pass through the dark night in faith are led to the loss of everything secondary and to discover that God is not who they thought he was and they are not who they thought they were. It is the discovery that God is beyond everything we can articulate or conceive and it is the experience that we do not control God. The dark night is dark because God is infinite light overwhelming our limited capacities. It is in the experience of the dark night that the believer and the church come to know that God is all. This dark night of the church is a divine [method to teach] us painfully that we are incredibly poor and utterly dependent on God…"
"I am here to pay tribute to you, the priests of the United States. You stand on the front line. You meet the angry or confused or troubled people at the Sunday Masses in your parishes and missions. You have to try to answer their questions about the worldwide crisis caused by priests and bishops around the world. You are the ones out there in the parishes whose hearts break at the anguish of our people over the robbed innocence of their children. And you weep inside over the desecration of something so beautiful, so cherished as the priesthood is to all of us. You are the ones who meet the children and the families, and try your best to walk with them in their search for peace and healing. You are there where the wound is.
I know that all over this country, in small towns and large cities, there are priests who stay up all night in a hospital waiting room with a distraught family whose teen-age daughter lies near death from an automobile accident. I know that there are priests in rural dioceses, like the priests I knew in Oklahoma, who drive hundreds of miles both ways to one or several mission churches on Saturday evenings and then have three Masses on Sundays with baptisms, counseling, youth groups and parish gatherings in the afternoon and evening…You are the priests who have persevered when your heart sank over an admired and gifted classmate who was removed from ministry because of allegations of abuse.
…We are at a critical point in the life of the church. Here and there commentators are beginning to compare it to the magnitude of the crisis of the Reformation. This is not the place to raise these cosmic issues. But I do believe it is the place to raise the question every priest must confront today. It is the question first raised by the Jesuit Karl Rahner: “Why would a modern man want to become or remain a priest today?”
…I think of my friend, Alfred Delp, who with his hands chained in a concentration camp, signed the paper of his final vows. I think of a brother priest who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of [society's] unimportant people…I think of a brother priest who assists daily in a hospital at the bedside of death…I think of a brother priest who as a prison chaplain proclaims over and over the message of the Gospel with never any sign of gratitude. I think of the brother priest who (in a parish) with tremendous difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods away at the task of awakening in just a few people a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity. These and many other forms and acts of renunciation, known to God alone, are still what is decisive in the priesthood.
But there are men like these who have lived in and come from our own American dioceses.
Think of Emil Kapaun, a priest of Wichita, Kansas. In a prison camp in Korea he stole food from the commissary at night for his starving men knowing that he would be shot on sight if discovered. Depression and futility gripped many of the men in his unit. A Protestant chaplain with a wife and children at home was severely depressed and Emil knew he would die if something didn’t change. He deliberately said things to make him angry knowing that the experience of anger would bring him out of himself. It worked, and the man lived to return to his family. Emil tried everything to keep the men positive and hopeful. The men who got dysentery, he carried on his shoulders to the latrine and cleaned them. Eventually he got phlebitis and the guards took him off to die. The last thing his men heard was Emil assuring the guards he held no animosity or hatred for them.
Stanley Rother, whose bishop I was at one time, was a priest of Oklahoma City. He volunteered for the mission we had in Guatemala. He served the people with great dedication, teaching them their faith and instructing them in the social doctrine of the church. He carried on his ministry as priests he knew and worked with were murdered. His own catechists and parish leaders were abducted and murdered. Told that he was on the death list, he was urged to return to Oklahoma, which he did. But there only a short time, knowing clearly that it would mean certain death he decided to go back to Guatemala. He told his parents, “The Shepherd can’t run. I have to go back.” Father Rother was killed shortly after his return.
… Joseph Guetzloe, a Divine Word Father, was pastor of a Japanese community in San Francisco. When the Japanese were forced to move to segregation camps during World War II, Father Gutzloe asked to go with them. He voluntarily spent all the war years there with his people. A young priest, ordained one year, wrote to me about his experience during that first year and said, “ I have been looking for the lack of success in the lack of technique and finding it in the lack of holiness.”
…The cataclysmic avalanche of the sexual abuse scandal is a profoundly troubling experience for every priest. It touches not only the perpetrators and those so gravely hurt by them, but it is now engulfing the papacy itself and eroding the leadership and credibility of the bishops in the church. It forces us to ask the question of Karl Rahner, “Why would a modern man want to become or to remain a priest today?” How can an American priest persevere in the midst of such a shattering trial? How do we priests and how does the church persevere in time of severe trial?
…For St. Bernard, John the Baptist is the great image of the priesthood in the Gospel. He is the friend—the friend of the Bridegroom. An important role of the friend of the Bridegroom was that he was responsible for the joy of the guests at the wedding feast. This is how Christ presents himself in the Resurrection accounts: he is the minister of consolation. He consoles Mary at the tomb, He consoles the disciples locked in fear in the upper room, he consoles Thomas in his doubts. This is our role as priests—to console the Holy Church of God in a time of intolerable pain and suffering. We are called to be the ministers of consolation and of evangelical hope.
…And so, in a difficult time we should not forget that the great works of God have been accomplished in darkness. The people fled Egypt in the darkness; they crossed the Red Sea in the darkness; the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the darkness of night; He gave us the Eucharist and the priesthood in the darkness of the Last Supper; he died on the Cross when the Gospel says “darkness covered the earth.” He lay in the darkness of the tomb. On the third day, He rose again in the darkness, and the empty tomb was discovered “early in the morning while it was still dark.” God is at work even in the darkness.
What John of the Cross describes as the dark night of the soul has in our time become the dark night of the church. John explains that the dark night is a bewildering experience, it strips away all the visible supports. It brings a helpless, sinking feeling. But it is only truly the dark night when it is accepted as coming from God and borne in faith. The believer and the church who pass through the dark night in faith are led to the loss of everything secondary and to discover that God is not who they thought he was and they are not who they thought they were. It is the discovery that God is beyond everything we can articulate or conceive and it is the experience that we do not control God. The dark night is dark because God is infinite light overwhelming our limited capacities. It is in the experience of the dark night that the believer and the church come to know that God is all. This dark night of the church is a divine [method to teach] us painfully that we are incredibly poor and utterly dependent on God…"
Friday, May 7, 2010
Future Vice-President:"She is Worth Every Tear."
Rick Santorum has a way of breaking through the stereotypes of modern politicians. This column was published yesterday in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Htip to Reflections of a Paraplytic; I would also suggest you go over and visit Chelsea Zimmerman's blog. It is a worthwhile visit and you will leave thoroughly impressed. Both Santorum and Zimmerman do justice to the inherent beauty of life. Here is the former-Senator's column:
'Incompatible with life." The doctor's words kept echoing in my head as I held my sobbing wife, Karen, just four days after the birth of our eighth child, Isabella Maria.
Bella was born with three No. 18 chromosomes, rather than the normal two. The statistics were heartbreaking: About 90 percent of children with the disorder, known as trisomy 18, die before or during birth, and 90 percent of those who survive die within the first year.
Bella was baptized that day, and then we spent every waking hour at her bedside, giving her a lifetime's worth of love and care. However, not only did she not die; she came home in just 10 days.
She was sent home on hospice care, strange as that sounded for a newborn. The hospice doctor visited us the next day and described in graphic detail how Bella would die. In sum, she could die at any time without warning, and the best we could hope for was that she would die of the common cold.
Karen and I discontinued hospice so that we and our amazing doctors, James Baugh and Sunil Kapoor, could get to work focusing on Bella's health, not her death.
Like so many moms of special kids, Karen is a warrior, caring for Bella night and day and, at times, fighting with health-care providers and our insurance company to get our daughter the care she needs.
Being the parent of a special child gives one exceptional insight into the negative perception of the disabled among many medical professionals, particularly when they see your child as having an intellectual disability. Sadly, we discovered that not only did we have to search for doctors who had experience with trisomy 18. We also had to search for those who saw Bella not as a fatal diagnosis, but as a wanted and loved daughter and sister, as well as a beautiful gift from God.
We knew from experience that Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was such a place. Fourteen years ago, we had another baby who was diagnosed as having no hope, but CHOP's Dr. Scott Adzick gave him a shot at life. In the end, we lost our son Gabriel, but we will always be grateful to Dr. Adzick for affirming the value of his life.
When Bella was 3 months old, she needed some minor but vital surgery. Some doctors told us that a child like Bella wouldn't survive surgery or, even worse, that surgery was "not recommended" because of her genetic condition - in other words, that her life wasn't worth saving. So we again turned to the Children's Hospital and found compassion, concern, and hope in Dr. Thane Blinman. He told us he had several trisomy 18 patients who did well - and so did Bella.
Next week, we will mark Bella's second birthday. Over these two years, we have endured two close brushes with death, lots of sleepless nights, more than a month in CHOP's intensive care unit, and the constant anxiety that the next day could be our little girl's last.
And yet we have also been inspired - by her fighting spirit, and by the miracle of seeing our little flower blossom into a loving, joyful child who is at the center of our family life.
Most children with trisomy 18 diagnosed in the womb are aborted. Most who survive birth are given hospice care until they die. In these cases, doctors advise parents that these disabled children will die young or be a burden to them and society. But couldn't the same be said of many healthy children?
All children are a gift that comes with no guarantees. While Bella's life may not be long, and though she requires our constant care, she is worth every tear.
Living with Bella has been a course in character and virtue. She makes us better. And it's not just our family; she enriches every life she touches. In the end, isn't that what every parent hopes for his or her child?
Happy birthday, Isabella!
God Bless you and your family, Senator!
'Incompatible with life." The doctor's words kept echoing in my head as I held my sobbing wife, Karen, just four days after the birth of our eighth child, Isabella Maria.
Bella was born with three No. 18 chromosomes, rather than the normal two. The statistics were heartbreaking: About 90 percent of children with the disorder, known as trisomy 18, die before or during birth, and 90 percent of those who survive die within the first year.
Bella was baptized that day, and then we spent every waking hour at her bedside, giving her a lifetime's worth of love and care. However, not only did she not die; she came home in just 10 days.
She was sent home on hospice care, strange as that sounded for a newborn. The hospice doctor visited us the next day and described in graphic detail how Bella would die. In sum, she could die at any time without warning, and the best we could hope for was that she would die of the common cold.
Karen and I discontinued hospice so that we and our amazing doctors, James Baugh and Sunil Kapoor, could get to work focusing on Bella's health, not her death.
Like so many moms of special kids, Karen is a warrior, caring for Bella night and day and, at times, fighting with health-care providers and our insurance company to get our daughter the care she needs.
Being the parent of a special child gives one exceptional insight into the negative perception of the disabled among many medical professionals, particularly when they see your child as having an intellectual disability. Sadly, we discovered that not only did we have to search for doctors who had experience with trisomy 18. We also had to search for those who saw Bella not as a fatal diagnosis, but as a wanted and loved daughter and sister, as well as a beautiful gift from God.
We knew from experience that Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was such a place. Fourteen years ago, we had another baby who was diagnosed as having no hope, but CHOP's Dr. Scott Adzick gave him a shot at life. In the end, we lost our son Gabriel, but we will always be grateful to Dr. Adzick for affirming the value of his life.
When Bella was 3 months old, she needed some minor but vital surgery. Some doctors told us that a child like Bella wouldn't survive surgery or, even worse, that surgery was "not recommended" because of her genetic condition - in other words, that her life wasn't worth saving. So we again turned to the Children's Hospital and found compassion, concern, and hope in Dr. Thane Blinman. He told us he had several trisomy 18 patients who did well - and so did Bella.
Next week, we will mark Bella's second birthday. Over these two years, we have endured two close brushes with death, lots of sleepless nights, more than a month in CHOP's intensive care unit, and the constant anxiety that the next day could be our little girl's last.
And yet we have also been inspired - by her fighting spirit, and by the miracle of seeing our little flower blossom into a loving, joyful child who is at the center of our family life.
Most children with trisomy 18 diagnosed in the womb are aborted. Most who survive birth are given hospice care until they die. In these cases, doctors advise parents that these disabled children will die young or be a burden to them and society. But couldn't the same be said of many healthy children?
All children are a gift that comes with no guarantees. While Bella's life may not be long, and though she requires our constant care, she is worth every tear.
Living with Bella has been a course in character and virtue. She makes us better. And it's not just our family; she enriches every life she touches. In the end, isn't that what every parent hopes for his or her child?
Happy birthday, Isabella!
God Bless you and your family, Senator!
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