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Twas the night of mid May,
The clouds were long shed,
The stars were all out,
The moon was half dead.
I’d just closed my eyes
In dark deepest dread.
I had a forewarning
Of what was ahead.
The river was foggy
So full of thick mist,
My eyes played tricks.
A hand grabbed my wrist
“What is it ” I cried
As my wrist was entwined.
“Come Hither”, it hissed,
in a voice harsh and sublime.
“In your search of pure knowledge
Things are not as you know
Shapes shift, spin around.
Truth lies buried under snow
Down becomes up, and up, is then down”
“Plant only one seed
Something evil will grow”.
Something dark is afoot,
In spirit it has stalked,
If it wins out tomorrow,
Education is debauched….
Tomorrow at Two
It will take place in Bright Light.
What I feared from my heart,
In that deepest dark night.
The 147th House would vote,
Without any debate,
On something important
To all our children’s fate.
War would soon be declared
On all those teachers who were right.
They’d all have to leave
Or stand up and fight.
A Bill with nice thoughts
Will be laid on the dock.
But in the dark wording it shields,
A most powerful shock.
Instead of making better,
It tears down all the schools,
Putting up cheap imitations
That mock all the rules.
No more shall a teacher know
What her calling required?
She could only hope like her kids,
Her scores would help get her hired.
Instead of knowledge, proven and direct.
She’d be tested on simply how well she could bet.
Praxis One and Praxis Two
Those tests of the best.
Would now be retired.
By which test could “bid” best.
Instead of old classics,
New standards were wrought,
“Romeo and Juliette” now replaced
By “How To Properly Clean a Pot”.
Twas necessary to learn prose they said.
No matter if such a bore.
It left no brain cells still standing.
Well done, Common Core.
Delaware’s education is 35th best.
That Includes the Ivy Leagues,
And all those good schools out West
“Not Good Enough”!
The gauntlet was laid
We must tear it down quickly
Our consultant’s need paid.
We must start something new!
We don’t know what it is.
But without old constraints
We can create it like jizz.
Who will do this? Good question!
That we do not know.
But when it gets done,
Arne Duncun will be here to show.
So we’ll make it mysterious.
And hard to deduce.
Make the poor teachers sweat,
Think they’re all in the caboose.
We can brainwash them now,
Do it before they begin.
They will soon work for peanuts
Because that’s all we’ll send in.
We won’t let them pass
Till their eyes all have tears in,
We’ll switch things around
Like we do on kids with Pearson….
We’ll make them earn B’s
To get into our class.
Those who don’t earn them,
Can get in with a pass.
These new tough standards
Will make bad teaching stop.
Besides we will need them
In our Race To The Top.
It says right here on line 53
“Must redo college standards”
Let us buy them new teacher ID’s
Which they can hang from their lanyards.
It says “redo”, not “raise levels” I see
Let us make up our creed
Raise them higher or lower,
Or even sideways if we need.
So let’s scrap what we have,
Make new in our image.
Trash all classic standards,
We’ll make it a corporate scrimmage.
The tests we used to have,
Were so hard and so tough,
Lets’ sub them with easy ones,
Those scores will rise with fluff.
When the kids scream about testing
We’ll know we’ve done enough.
Let’s water the standards
But tell them they’re tough.
Do it with ed- gobblyspeak.
So those dummies in House
Without even a peek,
Vote YES like a mouse….
Since what you get out
Is What you put in,
We’ll have robots for teachers
Their union will end.
But we got to be careful,
We got to act fast,
If they catch what we’re doing,
This campaign can’t last.
Strike quickly, strike fast
Strike them hard like a flogger.
Can’t let them hear the truth,
Keep them far from that “blogger”.
Oh we’ll smile, we will praise,
We’ll do what we must.
What ever it takes
To turn those standards to dust.
Make Teachers in our image?
Yes, that’s what we’ll do.
We’ll count ourselves lucky
If they can count up to two.
The children? Don’t worry,
They’ll be fine as we speak.
We’ll teach them with tests,
So their knowledge will peak.
Then when it does,
We’ll know that we have won.
Common Core is in place.
Our work is now done.
Our friends in this Biz
Will now pay for our way.
When we meet our next challenger
Thinking he has something to say.
The Battle is ending
The war’s almost won.
We just need some dumb asses
To vote in S.B 51…..”
The specter was silent
It paused for a while
“Who are you? I said
I saw a faint smile.
It turned slowly towards me
And gave me a stare.
I could feel the electricity
From the bottom of each hair.
“Tell me” I inquired,
just one more time.
But the vision was fading
Into many fine lines
All that was left were the eyes,
And they gave me a shiver
It then grew transparent,
It was the Christina river.
So my friends, if you’re up,
If you read this in the morn.
It wasn’t a dream,
You must sound off your horn.
You must call down to Dover,
Let them know how you feel.
Hell copy and paste this.
Let them know this is for real.
We are being bamboozled
By clever and wit.
Our children won’t learn
Anything, not one little bit.
Teaching requires
Something you can’t test.
Requires a human you respect
Pushing to do your best.
We are moving away,
From what has worked well.
We are tearing down Rome
And burning it to hell.
This bill is too rash
Though it sounds pretty good.
It needs not to be rushed,
But debated as it should.
If anything is to change
It depends now on all of you.
Without your quick input,
Like in the Senate, it will pass too.
It’s tearing down what is good
And replacing it with “what-ever”
Gotta be bad for the kids,
No matter hard they endeavor.
This bill needs work.
Though it’s ideas are nice.
It will mess things up royally
Without changes concise.
A simple amendment
Is all it would take.
To undo all the damage
And terrible things soon at stake.
A little snip of a scissors will do
Component V and Evaluations…
Just separate the two.
Because the way this is written
If you teach and you fail.
It’s the blacks and the poor,
Who lose and wind up in jail.
Their great teachers got fired,
Because they worked in the city.
The teachers in rich schools.
Got good scores, just sitting pretty.
This is the damage this Bill will soon do.
For under this plan
If your kids don’t test well,
Your career is so through
Doesn’t matter if their poor,
Or if their homes are all broken.
When it comes down to corporate,
All excuses are token
“it’s your fault” they’ll say
“It can’t be the test.
You’re lazy and useless
You didn’t do your best”.
Meanwhile in Newark,
Where teaching’s a breeze.
Just wave a magic wand,
And there is no pay-freeze.
Scores roll in higher
Because the curriculum is dumbed down.
Kids do all the work.
You smile looking down.
So reader, what do you think…
As is, what will this bill do?
If you were a new teacher,
if it was you starting anew.
Would you go to the city?
Where opportunity lies?
Teach out your heart?
And stifle your cries?
Or would you choose
The easy way out.
A lifelong career
With no second doubt.
It is so important
That this bill get changed
Otherwise our system
Will split from the strain.
Decouple the evaluations
From component Five.
Let’s do what we can
To keep education alive.
This bill needs work
On quite a few levels
That will only happen,
If this vote gets disheveled.
If you love your kids,
And kids of all ages,
Make them retract their pledges.
They don’t know what’s in this bill.
Because they were told it’s ok.
Only the parents who vote
Can still save the day.
This is you I’m telling
Just so you know.
You need to go here,
And call all that you know.
Send them this poem,
It will get their attention,
Then give them the pitch,
Tell them they’ll go to detention.
What they’re about to do,
Is destroy our great state.
By Dismantling educational.quality
And by then it is too late.
This bill is on rush,
That i can tell you.
Vacation is coming.
But hopefully they’ll hear you.
Say “This Bill Cannot Pass”
Exactly as it is written.
“Change it, change it now
Before you get smitten”.
I hope these few words
Don’t fall on deaf ears.
I don’t want to see children
Through veils of thick tears….
It is you, it is me,
Who must carry this fight.
It is we who are parents.
We have the most right!.
.
“I’m starting to think we really ticked off Mother Nature somehow, because we’ve been getting spanked by her for about a year now,” he said while grabbing some coffee at a convenience store…..
OF COURSE YOU DID, DUMMY. YOU VOTED FOR REPUBLICANS!
When your mom gets cancer. You don’t hate your mom. You hate the cancer.
Likewise, it was hard not to like the German people during WWII. It was easy to hate the fact that they were trying to kill you.
And so it is with Republicans… 99% of them are just like us. They too love their country; they too want it fixed; they too are angry, frustrated that events are not moving at fast-forward..
They are wonderful people; who also, happen to be Americans. We can never forget that if we were together in a bar with beer, wine, and spirits flowing like milk and honey, we’d all have a “gay ole time” (Flintstones’ reference) …
We want the same things, and we should be working together on fixing America… but we can’t….
Because of the Cancer…..
That cancer is not necessarily the Republican Party, but it is, the force that IS currently manipulating the Republican Party. That cancer is not a single person in the Republican hierarchy… It is instead that revision of the old cancer, that originally was against recognizing new states into the Federal Union. It is that old cancer that kept slavery legal for thirty years beyond when it should have been eliminated. It is the revision of that old cancer that kept blacks as second class citizens across the South. It is the cancer that fought against giving the Negro their Civil Rights. It is that cancer that denied Tobacco caused cancer. It was the same cancer that encouraged the killing of 4 students at Kent State, to teach those dirty hippies who listened to the Doors, a lesson they wouldn’t forget. It is the same cancer that denied the process of evolution, denied birth control, denied NPR, and ran rampant against all evidence of global warming…… Each time; they were wrong.
It is the same cancer that blew up a building in Oklahoma City.
It is the same cancer that fired bullets into working men and women who were refusing to work, until they got a raise…
It is the same cancer that took out Gabby Gifford……
With all these offenses, it is easy to point your finger and say, “Damn you Republicans..” It is in fact, way too easy.
But is not the people voting Republican who are to blame… They, like the German people, are bystanders. often gaping wide eyed when shown the truth, of what their support for the force of evil did to innocent men and women.
It is easy to turn all Republicans into demons if you don’t talk to them. But listening to them talk, (and we’re talking real people here, not their David Korsch’s) it is very easy to find common ground.
That common ground is this: sure, you tax the wealthy, and we’ll cut spending and together we’ll have high revenue with less expense, and be out of this mess in no time….
This is what every card carrying Republican is telling me, that is of course, if they don’t subscribe to the “cult-like” Republican meetings…. They say: “tax the fuckin’ wealthy; it won’t affect me; Just make sure that extra money is not wasted but is used to pay down the waste we already spent!”
Democrats have already offered to cut Medicare, Social Security, Defense Spending, all those things dear to their heart… So the problem isn’t them.
The problem is with the Republicans, who have balked on the tax issue, especially when it comes to raising taxes on millionaires… yet they have no qualms raising taxes on the middle class and poor. Republicans have shut down the Federal Government four times this year. Four times! They did so each time because the obvious was about to happen. WE were about to get a consensus among the rational members of both parties on how we were going to raise taxes and cut expenses (at the same time) which would bring us into line.
They pulled out of negotiations and said: we will not raise taxes one penny… and also, we will not do any business either in the House or Senate, until the Bush Tax Cuts are permanent.
And that,in one sentence, is why nothing gets done.
It’s as if a terrorist broke into your workplace. Under gunpoint he straps C4 to several of your firm’s employees, and starts firing his gun out the window to get everyone’s attention….
Rule Number 1: You don’t negotiate with terrorists.
That is the problem Obama and the rest of America is faced with, raising this question:
Do we attack (shut down government) and later clean up, or do we negotiate something we can both live with?
What do you do with cancer… Leave it? live with it?
There’s your answer to today’s political gridlock.
Removing all Democrats will be like having the Brits flee France across the channel, leaving the Nazi’s to run France without contention….
Removing all Republicans will be like marching triumphantly into Berlin.
It is pretty obvious who is the cancer and who is not. WE, THE PEOPLE, can’t let it linger any longer. The cancer must go, preferably without killing its host in the process…
The story goes that Warren Buffet, rather worried about his investments early 2008, wanted to talk to God… God told him to use his phone and he’d send him the bill… He got and paid the $333 million dollar charge. His investments flourished, too… That would be the end of the story, except he was down in Sussex County recently, following up first hand on a corporate case being processed out of Georgetown… once again, he asked God for the right to call, and agreed to accept the charges… When he got his bill, he was fuming… He was only charged 25 cents… “God”, he said, “you ripped me off on that first call, big time!”… God said, “Warren, don’t you get it? In Sussex County, that’s a local call…”
Local call or not, Sussex County is weighing in on whether to say a prayer before County meetings or to not… Here are a few takes on that policy: one, two, three, four……
As someone who grew up where prayers were always said before football games and county meetings, it isn’t a big deal…… That is, as long as everyone agrees it isn’t a big deal. You don’t see prayers before meetings conducted in New York.
Not because New Yorkers are heathens, but because in New York, you have a multiplicity of religions, so praying a prayer from one of them, is a slap in the face for all others…
Why it’s even an issue in Sussex County is because the Positive Growth Alliance, has been building condo’s like ants, and lots of people who did not grow up in Sussex County, now live there. Many have different ideas of religion than those who’ve always been there all their lives…
If everyone believe in the same version of God as does David Anderson, then of course, duh, why are we even arguing about it… Of course we’re going to pray to God to guide us through this meeting.. That’s what He’s for!
Suddenly, thanks to Rich Collins and the Positive Growth Alliance, we have tons of people who do object to having David Anderson’s version of God, one who dislikes Homosexuals, and one who casts pox on Democrats, one who believes married people should have sex only when they have children, one who believes sex between animals is immoral, one who believes taxes are caused by the devil, one who believes that nature was made to bulldoze and pave with a combination of petroleum and gravel. … one who believes that oil companies have the divine right to pollute oceans, one who believes that animals were made for us to kill. … one who believes a national religious holiday should fall on the first day of deer season.. one who believes pick up trucks and baseball caps are proof that homosexuality is a sin,… on who believes killing someone with a gun is not a sin, but taking that gun away for the safety of others is…
(yes, I’m having fun and talking tongue in cheek)…
The point I’m making is that Sussex County is changing; and it is changing mostly thanks to Rich Collins and the Positive Growth Alliance.
Can you make new citizens join the current religion? If so, then by all means, just like the days of old, they will see no qualms in having a tiny prayer before the meeting.
But if they don’t want to join that religion, then, to force one group of religious people to impose their prayers on others, is not American…In fact, it’s kinda creepy…
If in an effort to show fairness, the Sussex County decided they would do prayers from all religions in alphabetical order, when they came to “B” and hit Buddahism, giving an Buddahist prayer before the session, most of those in the audience would be saying WTF! This is our nation, why do we have to listen to such crap…
Which is… exactly what those Buddahists think, who have opened a business in Millsboro, and have come before the county to ask for a variance on something or other that is in their antiqued code….
So… If it is unnatural for a Baptist to suffer a Buddahist prayer, it is equally unnatural for a Buddahist to sit through a Baptist prayer…
It’s not about one religion being right and the other wrong. It’s about who the citizens are that make up Sussex County. If you want to blame anyone over this controversy, the blame solely lies with those who built up Sussex County and brought in all these new people to begin with… Now that they are here, we have to make Sussex County as fair to them as New York, is fair to us, when we take our business up there……
Positive Growth, huh? Depends on your version of positive I guess………….
At a recent planning session, the edict went out that this year, there would be no new taxes. The state budget would be balanced without any new revenue….
Progressives cringed but accepted the verdict. This year the Democrats were not going to raise taxes to balance the budget; instead they would balance the budget with painful cuts…
As I have on occasion mentioned before, raising the marginal rate on the top one percent, does wonders for an economy… That is the reason the 90’s were so great. Dropping the marginal rate, sucks money from out of the economy. That is the reason the first decade of this century, is less prosperous than the good times under Clinton. It is all about the top tax rate.
That is for the Fed… However, and though I have mentioned it on the state level, there things are a little different. As we saw last November, when you try to raise the tax level by the tiniest amount on the fewest of the richest…. by the time it gets down to the voting public, all they hear is… “raising taxes.” “Hell, no, I won’t have my taxes raised, and they vote accordingly”…
There is another issue. Taxes by businesses are seen in a bad light. Delaware is in competition with 48 larger states, and one smaller state, for a piece of America’s economic pie. We are wooing businesses away from other states; they are wooing our businesses over to them….
Anything that gums up a deal, is counter productive. Sure, we could tax a wealthy person more, which winds up going to pay for the unemployment we could have prevented by bringing in a new manufacturer, one who chose not to come, because he heard we were raising taxes…..
So, is there a unique way to raise the top marginal rate (which does wonders for the economy) and do it in a way that doesn’t raise taxes?
Actually….. yes, there is…
Here is how. We include a new deduction. Money spent on capital investment strictly in the state of Delaware.
I know it is hard for most people to grasp what just happened, so I’ll elaborate a little more…
You make a million dollars each year (income). The top Delaware tax rate goes up 1%… One percent of $1 million is $10,000…. In 2011 since your income is stable, you will pay $10,000 more in taxes than you did on this year’s return, 2010.
Unless, you decide to use that for construction to improve your business, home, or trailer park. Lets say you run a business out of your home. You redo your roof, pave your driveway, and upgrade your data speed…
The rise in marginal tax didn’t cost you a thing. You were planning to go to Ireland this year and blow the extra money there but… because of the tax laws, you spent it on construction in Delaware. You are not out anything. If you put your house up for market, it is now worth $10,000 more with a new roof, new driveway, and top of the line data connection…
But wait, Delaware is out $10,000 dollars.. What’s the point? You didn’t want to cut programs, so you raised the top marginal rate, and then, didn’t take the money? What gives?
What gives, IS….. well, lets track where that money goes first. The business selling the material for the roof and pavement and hardware for the data upgrade, gets 1/2 or $5,000…. They pay a series of taxes on that transaction…The other half goes to labor… Where 10% in taxes is pulled yielding $500. When that money gets spent again, more tax is paid, by the workers getting paid by that money coming in..
Bottom line, is that even though the wealthy individual does not pay taxes, the fact that he spent money in Delaware for that tax deduction,.creates jobs that weren’t there which will pay something into the state treasury….
This is actually the Reagan argument backwards. He argued that if you cut taxes, people would invest in jobs and more would work, pay their share of lower taxes, and the treasury’s revenue would rise… Naively, he, like most of us, assumed that free money would be spent in America. It wasn’t. It was invested overseas, so those people could get jobs, make things cheaper, and profit margins could rise.
All we are doing is modifying Reagan’s proposal, by saying, you can keep your tax liability where it is, only if you build something new here in Delaware.
All we are doing, by raising the top marginal percent …. is forcing that money to stay in Delaware….. Now what Republican could possibly be against that?
Duffy is God’s answer to a prayer.. I miss the old days of blogging when we were debating principals instead of people… Duffy has stuck to the old line of debating principals with facts, and that is what makes him special in the eyes of bloggers everywhere…
Since the passing of Steve Newton, he has been the only one to challenge me in any argument, and usually some pretty good stuff comes out of both sides during the exchange… I have respected that.. Cause once again, opinions mean dick. Facts are what we steer by.. It is my hope that in responding to his challenge that an answer may make itself apparent.. Who knows? It may not come from me… But if I’m the catalyst for bringing it out in the open, then… none of this was in vain..
Why I like to debate Duffy is simple.. Neither side, he or I, is concretely set in their opinions… We accept it when the other side makes sense… I usually go into such debates having no idea where they’ll end up… I hope the rest of you enjoy the ride as welI….
That said..
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate.
First off, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was developed for, and locked in on, urban developmental areas and had no part of the subprime boom, which primarily occurred out in western desert regions where owning 4 to 5 investment homes was normal… Those homes were overwhelmingly funded by loan originators NOT SUBJECT to the act… We all know the crises was not because people couldn’t afford a payment on their house. It came about, because with no occupants, people could not afford the payments of 4 to 5 houses….. Instead of one loan per borrower turning up in default; four to five were.
Second off, The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in 2005.
Courtesy of NYT
Third off, During those exact same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of loans secured by the Feds… Follow the dotted line on the very bottom of the graph…
Courtesy of NYT
Fourth off; During those exact same years, private secures, like Delaware’s own AIG, grabbed the lions share of the market.
Courtesy of NYT
Remember these graphs for later on when I discuss the results of deregulation, versus regulation… But like it or not, these graphs conclusively show that private insurers, who thanks to Marie Evans, we now know were deregulated by Phil Gramm in the 2000 Omnibus Bill, were the primary cause of the worlds financial collapse.. Probably put best by these words of AIG’s spokesperson, who when asked why they didn’t have sufficient funds to cover losses, said point blank, “We were deregulated. We were no laws requiring us to keep any funds, ..so we spent it…”
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. I agree that the hedge funds did survive better than the banks. Not because of bailouts, but because they sold short during the crises and made billions while firms closed and people got thrown out of work. There is nothing wrong with that; I did the same. In fact close readers may remember my warnings that the crises was impending almost a year earlier. Very close readers may remember my telling them exactly when to sell, and at what point the stock market would rebound… I must say: I called it rather well. 🙂
De regulated hedge funds are not the issue… De-regulated, excessively leveraged, mortgage securities, are a different story however… They, not the banks that held them, are the cause of the crises…Years from now, when academics search for causes of the stock market crash of 2008, they will focus on the pivotal role of mortgage-backed securities. These exotic financial instruments allowed a downturn in U.S. home prices to morph into a contagion that brought down Bear Stearns a year ago this month – and more recently have brought the global banking system to its knees.
Where you err is when you state that banks too big to fail, assumed they would be bailed out… By implication, you say imply they failed from squandering money, and wanted the bailouts.. But your tax dollars didn’t flow directly to the bottom line.
So in that sense, the bailout money represents an expense for banks. That’s one reason a number of banks have said they want to give the money back as soon as possible.
You say big banks were counting on a bailout, and they got them? That didn’t happen to these banks. New Mexico, Georgia, and Florida each lost a bank just last Friday. That brings to 8, the number of banks failed in June. Unfortunately if a bank is failing, it can’t bet on itself to fail, as can a hedge fund.
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. The idea is that the banks made bad decisions knowing taxpayers would bail them out is the issue that is inaccurate. For the record, I have no qualms that it was the Clinton legacy who tore down the wall between banks and investment banking. Like you, I feel it was a good idea to do so… Again the problem was not primarily with banks making loans to people who could not pay.. Although, it was as late as October 2009, when I was made aware of one private Bank in Denver still exaggerating income to make loans look good enough on paper to get approval of securitization. What caused the collapse was the leveraging of those loans as securities, so that as the housing market became overextended, and the ARM jumped past the low cost opening years, the damage was 100 times worse because of leveraging. What made the collapse criminal, was that the insurance most financial institutions had bought from AIG, to cover such an improbable event, had already spent by that companies executives, out on bonuses to themselves. What made it doubly criminal, was that when they received government dollars through a taxpayer bailout, those same executives assumed it was to first go towards paying their bonuses again. However, very recent events may give some cover to the argument that some collusion was implicit in the bailing out of Goldman Sacs and AIG… Basically, once bailed out, AIG paid Goldman Sacs for shares twice as much as they were worth. The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts.
Every hearing for HB 5 is packed with Sussex County citizens carrying Skittle colored Bibles hollering out the word “abomination“. Now I thought I knew what that word meant, but seeing unsettled people calling the right of all people to be considered equal under law an “abomination”, kind of threw me..
Seriously! How could the very principals outlining our Declaration of Independence and embodied within the framework of our Constitution, be considered an abomination? Were these people really some fractured part of Al Qaeda and why were they truly working the same side? As silly as that sounds, if one just follows the train of thought that these people always throw out whenever a microphone is pointed towards their mouth, that is exactly correct.
Both are fighting the great Satan and see that embodiment walking around within the confines of our own government….
(The following is in code: wise people can figure it out, stupid people can’t. I figured that to discuss sensitive subjects, it was wise to keep them out of reach of Google so that young impressionable readers lacking the maturity to fathom the depth of the arguments, don’t visit.)
Those protesting HB 5 who call it an abomination, pretend they are Christians. They are not. They are Jews. They follow the Old Testament version of Jewish law and have not adequately made the adjustment that Jesus so willingly gave his life up to teach us…
For if one wants to crystallize and pull the essence of Jesus’s message out of the four gospels, one could simply characterize it in two words: “Love” and “Respect”. Those are what Jesus was sent to teach. Everyone who has run across John 3:16, knows that Jesus’ raison d’etre was to physically show that God so loved the world, that he sent his only son, to die, so that all could live..
Let’s focus on that thought for a second. What is “real love”. Right now, if you personally had within this one second to choose: would you choose to give your life up for your child or spouse? If you had only that split second to choose, would you instinctively give yourself up to protect them so they could live?
After years of struggling with this question myself, I have come up with some parameters that may help guide one’s answer. If you truly love your child or spouse more than you do yourself, you will. Absolutely. But if you love yourself more than you do your child… then you won’t… This impossibly complicated answer, … is really just that simple.
But discussion about the “love factor” has been overdone. It is the “respect factor” which provides a more intriguing aspect of Jesus’ teaching. And if one looks, there is to be found a big difference between what Jesus teaches about homosexuality between men, and what the old testament happens to say… Jesus never, never, never, and never mentions homosexuality.
For you see, Jesus was huge on respect, even to the point of showing respect to one’s enemies or opponents. His well documented rage aimed at the Temple moneychangers, was over the desecration of their respect for God, which they accomplished by their turning His place of worship into a profit oriented market place…. His message to them, was: if you don’t respect God even in his own house; THEN GET OUT! On that he was very clear.
Respect was always important to Jesus. “Give unto Ceasar (the government), that which is Caesar’s (the governments). Give to God, what is God’s.” He carried the analogy one step further… “If a Centurion forces one to carry his pack one mile, request to take it two miles”… Justify your own existence by showing thy enemy some token measure of respect.
Yes, Jesus was big on respect. That is why it is fair to say, that those who bring their Bibles into Legislative Hall to loudly thump, and then chant repeatedly like Gregorians, “abomination”, “abomination”, “abomination”, and continuously castigate those who have a slightly wider sexual preference than they themselves adhere to,…… actually cast a bigger abomination towards the name of Jesus, than do those who genuinely love each other as man and wife, but just happen to be of the same gender…
This flip-flop of the word abomination, actually makes good sense. For if Jesus respected Caesar, if Jesus respected the harlot about to be stoned, if Jesus respected the outcast Samaritans, if Jesus even gave up a singular measure of respect to the demon who departed the man possessed, and then leaped into a herd of wild pigs sending them over a cliff, … and especially, i mean especially if those frightened followers of Jesus, respected and took in a man formerly called Saul, who had smilingly condemned and then held the cloak of the first Christian martyr Stephan, even as tossed rocks split open his skull allowing it’s contents to leak into the soil below …. then it is quite improbable that anyone avowing hatred, wrath, disgust, anger, and above all, disrespect… towards people of the same gender who just simply want a little legal protection to love each other… are truly Christians.
FOR THEY ARE NOT FOLLOWING THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS. They are following some earlier words of men…. And from our own perspective offered in our own lifetime, when we can look towards the Middle East and see their Muslim religion in primitive contrast to our worldly view… we see how simple minded men sometimes take up behaviors which benefit them, and wrap them up someway in god’s name to give it sanctity. For example, legalized rape by a husband of his wife in the Muslim world, is a case in point. No merciful God would condone such behavior. That is a ruling strictly made for, and made by, horny men.
So which is the truer abomination? A small piece of Jewish law decided by committee? Or the disrespect of the actual teachings of Jesus himself? Most true Christians are taught that the words of Jesus far outweigh the words of men.
So it brings a valid question to those about to cast their vote on HB 5. Do they too bring disrespect on Jesus himself by voting to allow the continuance of discrimination based only on sexual preference? Are they not equal to the Taliban, using some strict interpretation of religion, to impose a hardship upon and over another citizen?
Yes they are.
Which means that Tony DeLuca, Thurman Adams, Bob Venebles, Senator Bonini, Senator Bunting, Senator Cook, Senator Ennis, Senator Marshall, and Senator Gary Simpson, (if their legislative record even allows them access to the gates of Heaven), will surely have considerable trouble getting past the questions of Saint Peter who is guarding Heaven’s Gate.
Perhaps through him, God will say this to them: why should I not treat you the way you treated those children of mine who just happened to love people of the same gender as themselves? They loved… and your answer was what?
Abomination?
Well sorry Dudes and Dudettes! It was your own vote which cast your fate. These were my people hurting, my brothers, and my sisters. For they understood love, and how important love is to fight for, but of them you chose to NOT protect them and by doing so, imply they were inferior. I’m sorry but you cannot enter here until you are forgiven… And it’s hard to forgive someone who remains unrepentant…. To do so, would be an abomination of everything my Son was sent to teach…..
When you have the capacity to forgive them, … I will forgive you.
Amen.
Sussex Green drops a bombshell…
Despite what Meatball says, there is something sick in Sussex County and it rhymes with taker….
Here in essence is the argument for open government… This type of stuff goes on all the time and those of us jaded by its constant misuse, forget that is really antithetic to representative government… Which is why we need citizen watchdogs… and Sussex County has one now….
This must be read… Not only by residents of Sussex County who have to put up with the antics of a family who thinks they can rule with impunity, but by every man, women, and child of the future, so they know exactly how these things are done, and can intercept their implementation before similar actions are finalized.
Here are several examples of the travesty those communists who represent the fine folks of Sussex County have levied against their own kind….
Instead, the list of parcels and areas being considered for inclusion on the future land use map were presented to the P&Z Commission as Old Business at a meeting on April 30, 2008. The parcels and areas were discussed by the P&Z Commission, approved or rejected, and that was that. There was no public hearing on any of them. Then, when the Comp Plan was finally approved (June 24, 2008) all those amendments, which had been approved at the April 30, 2008 meeting were incorporated into the land use map and became part of the ordinance that authorized the Comp Plan.
The Wilson Baker parcels case illustrates this. Baker got a conditional use (c/u) for the smaller parcel in 2005. He either owned or quickly acquired the larger adjoining parcel of AR-1 soon after being granted the c/u on the smaller parcel. He established a propane, kerosene, and diesel fuel business on the smaller parcel under the c/u requirements. However, he wanted to sell both parcels and that proved a bit too complicated because of the c/u, or so his representative testified at the recent change of zoning hearings before the P&Z Commission and County Council. As a result, he apparently decided that getting both parcels rezoned to heavy industry (HI-1) from their current AR-1 would be the most profitable option.
The P&Z Commission scheduled the Wilson Baker parcels for the June 18, 2008 meeting under the agenda heading “Additional Old Business”. The one item under that heading is “Comprehensive Land Use Plan”. The minutes state that Mr. Lank “advised the Commission that a request had been received for inclusion into the Town Center Area around the Town of Milton; that the request came from Baker Petroleum of Wilson Baker, Inc. for the inclusion of their properties; that they are intending to apply for industrial zoning and to create a railroad spur for access to rail service; that the site has been reviewed through the PLUS process” (P&Z Commission Minutes, June 18, 2008, Page 8). The P&Z Commission decided to incorporate the request of Baker Petroleum into the Future Land Use Map by consensus. There was no public hearing
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On June 24, 2008, the County Council voted to adopt the ordinance establishing the 2007 Comp Plan Update, with amendments. There was no public hearing
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The entire sketch of how this parcel was rezoned was not done in secret.. It is available on reruns of the Dukes of Hazard television series that was shot during the 1980s.. The faces may look a little different, but the characters who play them are the same…….
El Somnambulo on Delaware Liberal announces that Bob Venables and others are preparing to propose a Marriage Protection Act: SB 27… This will limit marriage to a relationship between a man and a women..
Once again, Bob and his group are more worried about protecting their own assholes, than they are about the needs of their constituents…
Their priorities are ass backwards… When you can show me protection all children abused in heterosexual marriages, when you can show me protection for all women beaten on a regular bases in heterosexual messages, when you can show me a plummeting divorce rate especially in heterosexual marriages, then heterosexual marriage might sound like an institution worthy of protection…
But it until then, in their twisted moralism, they are serving to protect child abuse, wife beating, and painful divorce ….
Living in their cultist enclaves may make them unaware of how the rest of the world lives.. We think it is time they stop worrying about other people’s vaginas and assholes and instead focus ….. on helping people.
lol.
Some of us old timers have been celebrating the second Tuesday of January for what seems like quite a few years… Each year we see signs that Open Government will come to our General Assembly. Last year was the greatest.. Complete with a living autographed open body, fluorescent green tee shirts, and Robert Venebles praying for the souls of those wanting to hold public officials accountable, surely with such a circus atmosphere just before election we would finally see results…..
It never left the drawer.
Fun and games won’t get it done.
What will?
You.
A public who demands that open government is passed; a public who dogs those royalists intent on keeping our hands away from our money, a public who exposes the lies and fallicies of their obfuscations…. WILL PREVAIL IN THE END.
We have to. At some future point they will need our vote.
OK, so that brings up this point which often made by the contractors of our current closed governmental system. If it is inevitable, why the hurry… Why put wrinkles in the current system which seems to work OK as it is now? After all, are their any major problems, serious catastrophies, widespread panics being caused by our current secret General Assembly?
Actually…. yes.
There is a $600,000,000 dollar shortfall; one of the reasons being the lack of open government in those areas that determine where we spend our money… The General Assembly.
In plain terms here is how it goes down.
A handful of legislators decide who gets what money. Those handful are sequestered in a chamber, away from the public’s eye, but freely visited every day by lobbyists for various interests. Many offer gifts. They have access, but someone wishing to get a safety device installed on school buses to protect our children, has to go through loops, tunnels, push bells and whistles, just to get enough points to be heard….
Open government is just a way to balance it out more… There are two ways to balance it out… One is to get rid of lobbyists entirely… then there is nobody in that chamber… The easier way is to open of those sessions so anyone can see what is going on… There is a reason shady deals are not done in the open… people will know about them.. So if we open those arrangements, we can hear when a lobbyist says he will provide tickets to the Netherlands to study wind farming.
And when they come back from that trip spouting only the corporate philosophy of that business that gave them the tickets…. we can say now wait a minute… You were “rickrolled“. What about the other argument?
In tight times there is nothing wrong with looking hard at ones budget…. Making hard choices is what we do… ie should we spend this little bit of money on our roads, or on our schools. Each makes the best argument in their favor, and then someone…. has to decide. That’s it. That is how it is done..
What is wrong, and why legislators such as Senator Thurman Adams, Senator Tony DeLuca, Senator Patty Blevins, and Senator Harris McDowell want open government to go away, is that without anyone looking over their shoulder, instead of going to a road or a school, that money now goes to a developer who has property he can’t unload for a profit to anyone except to the state….
And we hear: “the state has invested “so many” dollars to preserve open space containing so many acres so that future Delawareans can……..”
We don’t ever learn that a school was not built, a road was not repaired, 150 jobs were cut, just to make that sweetheart deal happen…
Here is real fact: choke on this.
In the development of the Wilmington Waterfront, those developers were given carte-blanche legal protection…
Accordingly, no legal or equitable action seeking damages for personal injury or death as a result of any operation, condition, service, or program related to the parcels that were the subject of these development agreements shall be permitted, maintained, or recovered against such entities
Or $4,000,000 to redo Garrison Lake Golf Course.
Bottom line is as we try to trim $600,000,000 from our state’s expenses, how much less would we be trimming if during the past 8 years we had not invested in various governmental officials pet projects?
Quite a lot.
As a result, our children will learn in shoddy schools, potholes will tear off our oil pans, our police forces and teachers numbers will be diminished….. all because someone was “hooked up” in an earlier closed session committee that decided where and how our public money will be spent…
As was emphatically said by our new Speaker of the House….” Damn it; its the public’s money!” then it stands to reason that the public be part of deciding how that money is spent…..
We did it with Bluewater Wind… Our duty as citizens of this state demand we do it again…
We are at a point where almost everyone in Delaware is in favor of Open Government.. It is an issue that crosses party lines…
Those few who do not, are all in the Senate. That is why we need to take our fight there. Within that chamber are the ones who need to band together to vote with at least 11 votes to do away with the desk drawer veto. From this group of twenty one, 11 need to agree that if any of their coalition is threatened or denied his right to bring his bill on the floor, because he dared to stand up to Adams on open government, that irregardless of party loyalty, the other ten will stand behind them and override Senator Adams and bring that bill on the floor of a vote.. It will need to be bipartisan, which is why it will need all of us to apply the political muscle….
As per our drill with Bluewater Wind, here are the numbers…..
Senate Democrats
Dover: 302-744-4165
Wilmington: 302-577-8542
Senate Republicans
Dover: 302-744-4134
Wilmington: 302-577-8517
And for good measure:
House Republicans
Receptionist: (302) 744-4171
FAX: Dover (302) 739-2773
Wilm. (302) 577-6396
House Democrats
Receptionist: (302) 744-4351
FAX: Dover (302) 739-2313
One might recommend printing up on ones computers business cards with just one number, explaining to ones friends and neighbors the importance of their call, and handing out the numbers enabling a greater number of Delaware’s citizens to become involved with controlling their own destiny.
After all that is why our ancestors fought the revolution. That is why they fought for Lincoln, to keep this nation together. That is why they beat back the Japanese and Germany during WWII, to ensure those freedoms remained at home… That is why Delawareans are in Iraq RIGHT NOW.
They are not there so some very important piece of legislation can get buried in someone’s desk drawer……
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