All told, I suppose the Kennedys take the prize with druggies, drunks, bootleggers, adulterers, rapists, possibly even a murderer, but they're such a huge tribe, they have an advantage in numbers.
Carter had a crappy family, too. but lately B.O., for a rather small group, is making a good show with two illegal aliens - BTW, why haven't they been deported? Possibly B.O.is even an impostor, an alien faking his citizenship.
What I notice is that the low class of the family is always reflected the caliber of governance foisted off on us, the people.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
THE WORST DAY IN OUR HISTORY?
I intended to mention 11 September 2001 but it occurs to me that a person justifiably could believe it to be 4 November 2008, when the wholesale ruination of the U.S. was set in motion by a dim-witted electorate.
No, I want to confine comment to September 11, and I have to do it following a rich crop of very eloquent words; words about acts of heroism that day, of pity for several thousand murder victims, and, as difficult as they are to follow, exhortations for forgiveness. Consider those said.
I wish to return to the subject of the colossal unpreparedness of whatever passed then as our national resources of security, intelligence, and investigation and the criminal negligence of business organizations that, through stupidity and carelessness, actually abetted the vicious criminals in their heinous plans and execution. Also useless were our systems for reacting to attacks, for after the Trade Center disasters, there was still time to shoot down the plane that struck the nerve center of our defenses, a place virtually surrounded by fighter aircraft, not one of which came close to destroying it.
For a moderate Democrat - remember those? When did they all turn rabid? - I thought George W. Bush was a decent president, but what I still have difficulty in forgiving him is that by the afternoon of that hellish day or, at the latest, the first thing the next morning he had NOT cleaned house in all the offices and bureaus and agencies that were supposed to guard us against such atrocities. Wholesale firings and accusations of ineptitude were in order. Furthermore, he immediately should have set the country's legal apparatus against certain airline companies and other firms that made it all possible.
Militarily our defenses were deplorable, so when budget-hunting politicians want to cripple defense expenditures, at the expense of titanic welfare waste, land on them like angry falcons.
No, I want to confine comment to September 11, and I have to do it following a rich crop of very eloquent words; words about acts of heroism that day, of pity for several thousand murder victims, and, as difficult as they are to follow, exhortations for forgiveness. Consider those said.
I wish to return to the subject of the colossal unpreparedness of whatever passed then as our national resources of security, intelligence, and investigation and the criminal negligence of business organizations that, through stupidity and carelessness, actually abetted the vicious criminals in their heinous plans and execution. Also useless were our systems for reacting to attacks, for after the Trade Center disasters, there was still time to shoot down the plane that struck the nerve center of our defenses, a place virtually surrounded by fighter aircraft, not one of which came close to destroying it.
For a moderate Democrat - remember those? When did they all turn rabid? - I thought George W. Bush was a decent president, but what I still have difficulty in forgiving him is that by the afternoon of that hellish day or, at the latest, the first thing the next morning he had NOT cleaned house in all the offices and bureaus and agencies that were supposed to guard us against such atrocities. Wholesale firings and accusations of ineptitude were in order. Furthermore, he immediately should have set the country's legal apparatus against certain airline companies and other firms that made it all possible.
Militarily our defenses were deplorable, so when budget-hunting politicians want to cripple defense expenditures, at the expense of titanic welfare waste, land on them like angry falcons.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
DO WE STILL NEED LABOR DAY?
Yesterday we celebrated work and the people that accomplish it. Consider several historical observations about this human endeavor.
In the 13th century, Clare of Assisi, later St. Clare, composed the Rule to be followed by her order of sequestered nuns, the Poor Clares and, in it, devoted a chapter to work
“Chapter VII
The Manner of Working
The Sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working should labor faithfully and devotedly after the hour of Terce (about 8 a.m.) at work which contributes to integrity and the common good; and this in such a way that idleness, the enemy of the soul, being banished …
And the Abbess of her Vicaress is bound to assign to each one … in the presence of all, those things to be done by the work of her hands.”
Your first assignment, reader, is to deduce the importance of work to this Saint, whose paradigm of service to God had cornerstones of celibacy, obedience, poverty, and enclosure and devoted one of her few, defining chapters to the necessity of physical labor. Work was a GRACE from the Lord!
Next, examine these lines of Father Bede Jarrett (d. 1934), a Dominican priest in England.
“Life is incompatible with inactivity, for if we stagnate, we die. … every known power of man is subject to the same law of development – namely, to preserve a faculty, it must be exercised.”
“Labor, therefore, is the origin of all true greatness and dignity, the badge of intelligence.”
“The development, then, of the faculties is essential to their preservation, is a condition of life, since life itself must be always dynamic.”
In the U.S. today the value of work and the necessity of work to a healthy, dynamic, developing society appear to be losing recognition. More and more people are content to live by public welfare, a large contingent of the population has sunk to expect, even demand, it, and another huge subset have generations-long histories of never having attempted to work and merely subsist as indolent, detrimental slugs.
This is becoming a nation of panhandlers. Has it any justification – aside from an official day of no work – for a Labor Day?
In the 13th century, Clare of Assisi, later St. Clare, composed the Rule to be followed by her order of sequestered nuns, the Poor Clares and, in it, devoted a chapter to work
“Chapter VII
The Manner of Working
The Sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working should labor faithfully and devotedly after the hour of Terce (about 8 a.m.) at work which contributes to integrity and the common good; and this in such a way that idleness, the enemy of the soul, being banished …
And the Abbess of her Vicaress is bound to assign to each one … in the presence of all, those things to be done by the work of her hands.”
Your first assignment, reader, is to deduce the importance of work to this Saint, whose paradigm of service to God had cornerstones of celibacy, obedience, poverty, and enclosure and devoted one of her few, defining chapters to the necessity of physical labor. Work was a GRACE from the Lord!
Next, examine these lines of Father Bede Jarrett (d. 1934), a Dominican priest in England.
“Life is incompatible with inactivity, for if we stagnate, we die. … every known power of man is subject to the same law of development – namely, to preserve a faculty, it must be exercised.”
“Labor, therefore, is the origin of all true greatness and dignity, the badge of intelligence.”
“The development, then, of the faculties is essential to their preservation, is a condition of life, since life itself must be always dynamic.”
In the U.S. today the value of work and the necessity of work to a healthy, dynamic, developing society appear to be losing recognition. More and more people are content to live by public welfare, a large contingent of the population has sunk to expect, even demand, it, and another huge subset have generations-long histories of never having attempted to work and merely subsist as indolent, detrimental slugs.
This is becoming a nation of panhandlers. Has it any justification – aside from an official day of no work – for a Labor Day?
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