Look out! All hell is going to break loose! Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring! This is vastly different then if Chief Justice Rehnquist would have retired. If he retired then all that would have happened would have been him being replaced by another conservative. Now with the centrist O'Connor retiring everything will be up for grabs! Choice, states rights, civil liberties, separation of church and state. You name it it will be challenged.
I was at the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City over the weekend. I met a military reservist there who was trained in counter-insurgency in the Marines. So his job is to train others in counter-insurgency in Iraq. He says the draft will be back next year.
""My professor-I have this great professor-told me that you have to be careful not to get too much education, because you could lose your foundation, your core values."
"If you get a bachelors," the seasoned student reassured, "you'll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master's, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn LIBERAL. He's seen it happen to a lot of good Christians."
It seems that Christmas have become a very political holiday. Some Conservative Christians seem to want to make sure that everybody knows that this holiday is only about Jesus Christ and Christmas by forcing retailers to acknowledge this. While others want to take any semblance of the religous nature of Christmas from public places. Still others are offended when people say Happy Holidays.
I have a strong Catholic faith, but I also don't see the reason to shove my faith down everybody else's throat. At the same time do we need to go to extremes to remove all religous symbols? After all Christmas is a religous holiday. Isn't there a middle ground?
The US military is great at training our military on how to kill somebody, but do they do a good job of helping them recover after they have done that or have seen it occur?
A report came out about a year ago that said that one sixth of the US military that comes back from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from some type of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Of the 140,000 soldiers that we have in Iraq today that would equate to 23,000 soldiers! But that does not include all of the soldiers that have come back. There are probably closer to 500,000 soldiers that have been there or are there. That means that 83,000 soldiers could be suffering from some type of PTSD!!! But, wait it gets worse.
At least so far until all the votes are recounted.
Steve Rosenthal the chief executive officer of America Coming Together (ACT) wrote an article in the Washington Post as to why Bush won in Ohio according to current voting records.
My previous diary entry suggested that we organize a boycott of retailers that give to Republican politicians 80-100% of the time. This boycott would stay in affect until the companies even out their political spending among both parties.
According to politicalmoneyline.com only 7% of PACs run by corporations gave predominantly to Democrats. Here is a list of those who have overwhelming favored Republicans:
What if we formed a grassroots mass mailing campaign to educate the voters in a red leaning Congressional district about what is really going on in Congress and how it directly affects them?
The mass mailing would be a monthly mailing on issues of the day and how our Congressman voted on them. It would be a double-sided 8.5" X 11" or large postcard size piece of cardboard. Since people are too busy to pay attention to the news, maybe this type of brief but informative mailing would catch their attention. It shouldn't be demogoguery since that would turn people off. We don't need to demogoge them to win. We just need to illustrate how issues directly affect the voters with stark examples and framed in the correct manner.
Immigrants who have been jailed at Passaic County, NJ's jail have described how the they were constantly intimidated by dogs barking and lunging at them to keep them in line. At least two have been bitten multiple times and have received serious injuries as a result the jail's
incident reports state.
Bard Carson wrote an article recently in The New Republic about why he lost. He basically says that in the red states it is a clash with modernity. They hold their values so strongly that their spiritual lives are much more important than any material thing like health care or the minimum wage.
In NJ, this is the time of the year that we get a request for additional money to fund the Diocese's charitable causes. Evidently the money that we give every Sunday does not cover these causes. This request is called the Bishop's Annual Appeal. Just the other day I got another appeal to give money to my Diocese's Bishop's Annual Appeal.
I was listening to NPR in the car this afternoon and they had a story on all the voter irregularities that have been uncovered. They provided an explanation for all the theories that they talked about and why those theories are inaccurate.
1) Districts that had heavy concentration of Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
Reason not accurate: Dixicrats have voted more Republican lately.
ABC News World News Tonight just had a segment on the election fraud conspiracies that we have been talking about.
They basically said that those counties in Florida that were heavily Democratic but voted for Bush actually have a history of voting for Republican Presidents since at least 1992 in a lopsided manner. Admittedly it was not as lopsided but it was still pretty lopsided.
I will give you a Catholic's point of view on pro-life issues. I feel that I have no right to inflict my morals on another person. After reading a Gary Hart Op-Ed I learned this is a Jeffersonian viewpoint.
We need to link all pro-life issues together in the same sentence, especially capital punishment. Whenever somebody mentions abortion in a talk show or in an article they show say that in order to instill a real culture of life in this country then we should value ALL life. That means the unborn and those who are currently on death row. Yes, these people have commited nasty crimes, but how do you show value for life by taking life? That is the old testament way of doing things. The New Testament does not value retribution. It values forgiveness. Yes, these people should be held accountable for their crimes, but they should be put away in prison for the rest of their natural lives. It might even give them a chance to think about the wrong that they have committed. As a nice byproduct it would also save us money.
