Racial Progress? Read This Inaugural ‘Prayer’……

I read the article below in Fox News Forum and was sickened by the acceptance of such a ‘prayer’ by our new President.  How does this help unite our country??  Where is Obama’s condemnation of such a blatant racial slur??  What kind of example to our children is the condoning of such a prayer by our President?  If President Obama truly believes this America is in SERIOUS trouble.  If he doesn’t why didn’t he speak out against it?

Read below and weep…..

January 21st, 2009 3:44 PM Eastern

Insults at the Inauguration?

By Tommy De Seno
Attorney/Writer

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to be the president to lead us to a “post-racial” America?

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to be the president to lead us to a “post-partisan” America?

Obama’s inauguration is the first I can recall where a racial smear was contained in a prayer while the president’s speech attacked those who didn’t vote for him.

President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address on Jan. 20 (AP)

So while we will be held to a standard of judging all by the content of their character, he will continue to judge us by our skin color. While we will be expected to utter no disagreement with his policies, he will openly hammer ours.

Let’s start first with the racial prejudice in Reverend Joseph Lowery’s inaugural “prayer.” Here are the words:

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.“

Let’s check the logic — I’m white, therefore I don’t embrace what is right. Lowery judged us not individually, but lumped us by skin and claimed we of such color suffer the same immorality — we aren’t righteous.

The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gives the benediction at the end of the swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

He said it in a prayer. What Jesus will do with the prayer will be learned by Lowery at his judgment day at St. Peter’s gate.

What Barack Obama did with that prayer is more important to me now. The video of the event shows him smile, not appear shocked, at the racial slur.So post-racial means accepting that “whites don’t embrace what is right?”

Lowery and Obama should note that African-Americans are about 13 percent of America. That means it took tens of millions of white people to vote Obama into office. Yet these men still claim white people are prejudiced. If his own election will not dissuade him from believing white people are not prejudiced, what will it take? Will it ever take?

If Don Imus were to hurl such a racial insult there would be girl’s basketball teams protesting around the world. But a new President accepts it in a prayer and the Associated Press describes his behavior that day as showing his “grace.” Good grief.

On to Obama’s inaugural address.

He ran on a campaign of “change” (and nothing else). He’s the anti-George. I get it. For that I expected his speech to put some distance between himself and the administration of the man seated a few feet from where Obama was speaking.

There is a big difference though between distancing yourself from a prior administration, which is OK, and distancing yourself from the millions of Americans who did not vote for you; that’s bad form when you claim to be the post-partisan uniter.

Let’s start with this line:

“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

The words “we have chosen” harkens back to the election contest. Obama believes those of us who did not vote for (choose) him mark our choices with “fear, conflict and discord” (I guess that’s why we cling to our guns and religion, right?).

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to…worn out dogmas…”

So if my “dogma” differs from his (it does) this is apparently my “end.” How very post-partisan of you, Mr. President!

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

Bickering and name calling with the opposition in the inaugural address? Oh, I feel so united!!!

You can fool the mainstream media who are head over heels in love with you Mr. Obama, but you’ll not hide your attacks in flowery language so long as I’m watching.

Historical note: In his Inaugural Address, Obama said we are a “young nation.” Compared to whom? Our Constitution is in the top three oldest governing documents on the planet.

Words mean things Mr. President, except when they are clichés.

Read more Tommy here.

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The Subprime Fiasco – How Did It Happen?

As usual in any crisis, there are the usual denials and finger pointing in the bright spotlight of blame.  Someone has to take the blame, someone has to take the fall.

Also, as usual, there is denial in all sectors.  ‘Not us, we didn’t do it!” No one is responsible.  So, what happened?

A mindset has been evolving for years in America.  ‘Dumbing down’ supposedly gives everyone a fair chance whether they are equipped to handle whatever it is they want or not, be it a specific job, getting into Harvard or buying a house.  This mindset has hurt much more than helped America and has maybe even kept people from realizing their true gifts and potential.  Not everyone can be or wants to be a CEO.   As we continue to lower standards in every sector, the land of opportunity has become the land of handouts and excuses and this is where it has brought us. Now the government has to bail these idiots out and the taxpayers, as usual, will be picking up the tab.

Who, over the past couple of decades, has accused banks of being racist, passed more and more regulations in the name of diversity and pressured lenders to give more loans to unqualified borrowers?  According to Nancy Pelosi, the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by deregulation and market failure.  She stated ‘The American people are not protected from the risk-taking and greed of these financial institutions.” Wow, has she no shame?  This risk-taking which she is now so scornful of was her idea along with a majority of Democrats and a few Republicans who made racist monsters out of lenders reluctant to approve loans to unqualified borrowers.  Pelosi’s voice was one of the loudest accusers of redlining. Maybe she is getting senile.  

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), banks were forced to make home loans to buyers that were poor credit risks and to lower industry standards for what is considered acceptable risk.  Institutions that didn’t comply were threatened with poor CRA ratings.   Lenders with low CRA ratings can not only be fined, but can be blocked from mergers and other business transactions needed for their successful expansion.  Banks exist to profit.  The more loans made in poor neighborhoods, the better their CRA rating.  Sounds like a no brainer, doesn’t it?

During the Clinton administration, with multiculturalism a priority, the practice of approving home loans to otherwise unqualified low-income borrowers took seed.  The mindset that everyone has the right to own a home (a nice idea) was encouraged by groups led by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which lobbied for these subprime loans.  ACORN at that time was represented by a new name in the news; Barak Obama.

HUD, then put the pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to acquire more subprime mortgages.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then donated to the campaigns of leading Democrats like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, both of whom were involved at derailing attempts to investigate the dangers of subprime mortgages.  Pelosi’s snapping evasiveness when questioned is explained.  Shame on you, Nancy, for biting the hand that fed you. 

Investment banks such as Bear Stearns approved ‘guarantees’ of these securities.  Wall Street hawked them as ‘safe as treasuries, but with a higher yield’.  Amazing what pressure and greed combined will do, especially in the guise of helping the poor.  With the government standing behind them and the desire to turn a blind eye to risk when a heavy profit is involved, lenders allowed themselves to become co-conspirators in the subprime market bubble.  Now among the big losers are the minorities the government originally set the banks out to benefit.

So, Wall Street gets the blame and centuries old lending standards and institutions are compromised nearly to extinction by greed, masquerading as diversity and the American people get to pick up the tab.  All those people who ‘deserved’ housing, whether they could afford it or not, have lost the homes they could never have paid for to begin with.  Everyone loses.

Moms, educate your kids in the facts of life.  Life is not fair, it’s difficult, with hard realities.  There is no free lunch or free anything that isn’t earned or paid for somehow.  No one ‘deserves’ anything just by existing, you have to earn it or fight for it.  If you haven’t earned it or fought for it with integrity, it is not worth having.

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Eulogy For My Grandfather

It’s been one year now since my Grandfather died at the age of 102. 

This is the eulogy I wrote for him and read at his funeral.

What is a life?  It’s not just an accumulation of seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years but what we do with the time we’re given.  No one who knew my Grandfather could deny that he was a man who really lived.  He always grasped life with both hands and ran with it.

Joseph Harko was born around March 18, 1905 of Ukrainian descent in Austria.  He came to America through Ellis Island in steerage when he was less than a year old with his mother, a chair and a down pillow that served as his bed.  They joined his father in Carteret, NJ and the rest is literally history.

As a 10th grader he had to quit school to work to support his mother and two younger sisters when his father became ill.  He was a self taught drafting engineer, taking correspondence courses and classes at The Singer Sewing Company where he worked.  He was a tap dancer in the Vaudeville team ‘Hark and Bark’ with his good friend, Jerry Bartok.  They went to Ned Wayburn School of Dance on 59th Street at Colombus Circle in New York City for tap dance lessons, the same place Fred and his sister Estelle Astaire went.  He told me of the cattle call of mass auditions in New York City when performers would gather outside the theatres in Harlem and rehearse their acts on the street until they were called in to audition. 

He was a man who drove miles with his wind up Victrola, set of records and his roll out oak floor mat to give tap dance lessons to the privileged few ‘rich kids’ during the Depression to make a living.  He was man who lived tragedy when his father died then a week later his 32 year old wife Helen died leaving him and my Mother, Barbara who was then six. He remarried to Helen’s sister Babe, had Lynn and continued on to outlive his second wife, all of his generation, most of the next and even one great-grandchild, my daughter Alaina.  But for the most part, he lived a truly blessed if not a charmed life for 102 years and then died comfortably, peacefully while asleep with his family at his bedside.

He touched so many lives in so many ways.  To me, the family genealogist, collector of family objects and their stories, my grandfather was an endless source of information.  As a child I would sit enraptured for hours with him in his basement sharing with him his love of collecting.  He would show me his coins, post cards, books, photos and the stories that went with each one.  There is no one who grew up around him that didn’t have a quarter pulled out of their ear during one of his many magic tricks. And I believe he knew every word of every song ever written as music was always a part of life with Joe Harko.  He played drums and sang in a band from 1927 to the 1970’s.  At family gatherings as a child, I remember moving all the furniture in the recreation room against the wall, turning on the Hi-Fi and dancing the Mexican Hat Dance and the Beer Barrel Polka on the linoleum floor.

What was life for my grandfather?  He was born in a time we can now only see in movies or in books.  To give his life a little perspective; His life began a year before Cornflakes were invented and the year Einstein published his Theory of Relativity.  The Model T was first sold when he was 3, the first crossword puzzle invented when he was 8.  He was 15 when the Band-Aid was invented and 23 before he ever heard the words Penicillin or bubble gum.  Scotch tape didn’t exist until he was 25, the year he saw and heard Al Jolson’s somehow prophetic ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet’ –  and he hadn’t,  as he still had 77 more years to go.

He was a young man who walked four miles from Duffy Street in Carteret to Berry Street in Woodbridge on a Friday night to date my Grandmother Helen Habinak.  Groups of young people used to gather at my great-grandparent’s house, the main attractions being their four winsome daughters and a player piano. Then he would walk four miles back home.

I remember him telling me at Easter dinners that if I ate my kielbasa he would take me to the Ukraine.  I remember Jerry, his parakeet, sitting perched on his glasses.  And how he would take off his glasses to clean them, look around and say ‘Where did everybody go?’  Then put them on and say ‘Oh, there you are!’

Yes, he was a character too.  My sister and I went to rake huge amounts of leaves in my mom and stepdad’s yard while they were in Florida, our little ones jumping into the piles.  My grandfather said he would stop by later to help, but we left for lunch before he came, taking a much needed break.  When we returned less than an hour later, every leaf was raked into about 20 small neat piles.  The ‘Grandpop Elf’ had come.

He loved his garden and took endless slides of it in every season and could dig holes for plants and young trees faster with a shovel than any roto-tiller.

When his second wife, Babe died, my mom and Lynn encouraged him to get out and get involved in Sr. Citizen’s activities.  From 1988 to about 1999 he was so busy, we had to schedule visits with him on his calendar.  I would call to say hi and get his answering machine. My Aunt who lived with him said ‘I’d go to bed on Friday night and my father would be coming in after midnight.  Something’s wrong with this picture.’

He could be hard headed too, like wanting to walk without his walker.  One afternoon he fell in the kitchen, making a big hole in the kitchen wall with his head.  The only funny thing about it was that he was fine but the sheetrock and wallpaper had to be replaced.  My stepdad’s comment to him later was ‘Now that was using your head, Joe.”

He was always about ‘life’.  I never heard him even mention dying; I believe he thought himself immortal and we were beginning to think he was.  Then after his second stroke, he mentioned to his caretaker at the nursing home that he was going to die,  but that it was OK because all his affairs were in order.  He had his final stroke the next morning.

We are here today to honor and celebrate the life of my Grandfather as there is nothing to mourn but our own loss.  I told my mother, that although I was thankful his life ended as it did, I feel like the frame of reference has been removed from my life. 

For now we remain, blessed to have known him and richer for having had him in our lives.  He was loved and cherished by family and friends, well taken care of by his daughters and his son-in-law who was truly wonderful with him.  He left this world in peace and comfort, content with his family at his bedside, having known children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to go to an eternity of joy with Christ and the family and friends he’d loved and lost.  What more could anyone ask for? 

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Kids – Well, Yeah, They’re Not Like They Used To Be…

 I went to my kids high school today to drop something off for my daughter.  As I was driving in onto school property I was flagged down by a ‘security’ woman who claimed I didn’t  stop.  Having no idea what she was talking about, I assumed she meant that I ran the stop sign, which I didn’t.  Apparently she wanted me to stop and ‘check in’ with her, but there was no sign or any indication I should do so I suggested she put up a sign or something if she wanted people to stop and check in with her.

 

I went into the school, signed in with the guard at the front door and gave him my picture ID.  As I was signing in, the guard was talking about the problem with girls fighting at the school.  There was another big fight today, making it the eighth day in a row that fights between female students had to be broken up by security.  This is where we drop off our kids to be educated.  The guard said ‘I don’t know what’s happened to kids, they’re so different now, it’s not like it used to be.’ 

 

Afterward I stopped by the grocery store and at the checkout saw pictures of Ellen DeGeneres’ wedding to her female spouse.  On my way out the guy walking out in front of me almost fell over looking at a young woman loading her groceries with a low cut top that she was almost falling out of.  Then I heard a clip on a talk show about a young single pregnant mom who already has a 1 ½ year old.  She can’t stop smoking even though she knows it’s hurting her and her baby.  She was crying that the guy whose baby she is pregnant with  has left her alone to handle everything.   HELLO!  Is it any wonder that kids today have problems?

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It’s Already Happening To Us

Change is strange.  Some of us fight it, some of us roll with it.  Sometimes change is good, sometimes it’s not.  The one immutable fact about change is that it is in itself, inevitable.  Sometimes it happens slowly, evolving over time almost unnoticed and can be seen more clearly in retrospect. Then there is radical, catastrophic change when you lose a spouse or a child, your job or a ‘911’ that somehow alters your life as you know it.

 

Every so often something happens that is a wakeup call or a marker of sorts in the avenue of change.  What happened in Canada on that bus, for me, was one of them. 

 

People have in so many ways become sheep-like, living artificial lives where natural responses have been bred out of us.  What does it say for humanity when a young man listening to his IPod on a crowded Greyhound bus is savagely stabbed to death then decapitated?  Although the bus was full of passengers, everyone stood by and watched this horror unfold.  Where were the few men or women who could’ve grabbed the murderer’s hand and disarmed him?  We are talking one man, very calmly, stabbing another to death with a bus full of people and they just watched in horror then ran away.  Did no one have a suitcase or bag they could’ve thrown at his head then have a few people to hold him down while someone used their cell phone to call the police? We’re talking about one man with a knife stabbing a seatmate to death with a busload of people watching.  It sounds like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.  It’s terrifying to me that something like that can happen at all.

 

Also, being in Canada, no law abiding citizen happened to be carrying a registered firearm that they knew how to use.  That murderer could’ve been dispatched quickly had someone had a gun.  But in Canada only the ‘bad guys’ have guns, I forgot.

 

I think back to the heroes on 911 on United Airlines flight 93 and their ‘Let’s Roll’ as they sabotaged the terrorists plans.  They were indeed heroes, people of integrity, intelligence, heart and purpose. 

 

How are you raising your children?  Are you raising heroes or sheep?  I’m not talking about fighting someone who wants your wallet, let them have it.  I’m talking about the knowledge of when to act and when to walk away.  Soon this will be their world, so talk to them if they are older about the things they may encounter.  The world is getting stranger and more dangerous every day.  Run scenarios with them, teach them to keep their heads up and their eyes and ears open in parking lots, parks, schools, stores and on public transportation and not to walk around in their own little world with IPods and a cell phone stuck to their heads, totally unaware of what is going down around them.

 

The 15 year old girl that was shot in the chest last week was my daughter’s softball teammate.  It’s not happening just to ‘other people’ in ‘other places’, it’s happening to us. 

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Juliana Wetmore ‘The Girl Without A Face’

 

'Graduation Day'

 

Five year old Juliana Wetmore was born with a very rare genetic disease called Treacher Collins Syndrome which affects the development of bones and other tissues in the face.  Juliana has already undergone 27 facial reconstruction surgeries. While preparing for surgery number 28, she is excited about starting kindergarten in the fall. 

Juliana, in every other way is as normal as any other five year old girl, except that she may have an intelligence level that is even higher than average.

“Juliana will eventually make her own decisions about continuing on with surgeries. At this point we are not doing cosmetic surgery.  We are doing surgeries which will enable her to function without a trach or feeding tube.Our ultimate goal for Juliana is for her to be happy with who she is. She will be able to achieve any goal which she sets for herself or any obstacles put before her.  We have no doubt that she can achieve this because she is so incredibly intelligent.”

Her parents, Thom and Tami Wetmore, have goals and dreams for their daughter.  One of their hopes is that the surgeons will eventually be able to configure her jaw in a way that her tongue will be inside her mouth.

Little Juliana’s courage and that of her family is well worth sharing with your children when you are counting your blessings together. 

Click here to visit Juliana’s Web site and read more about her journey.

 

 

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Making Up For Lost Time

How can you ‘lose time’? 

 

We just concluded a wonderful visit with my family at our house where my main focus was on spending  the time we usually don’t have together because of distance.  My Mom and step dad hadn’t seen my kids in two years.  That’s a long time when they’re 14 and 15. 

For the past week we’ve enjoyed each other’s company visiting, touring, talking, eating and just being together.  Almost gone were thoughts of laundry, housecleaning, watering the garden and taking out the garbage. 

Normally, I blog when things are quiet and my mind is free to roam for a bit.  Not so when my family visits or we visit them as all my ‘quiet’ time willingly belongs to my family.  

 

Time apart is never really lost.   Cramming into a week all the things you’d like to have been doing for the past year, without it feeling like you’re cramming is tiring, but well worth it.  We attempt to keep each other current on all that’s going on in our lives, but it’s never like being there.

 

I’m happily exhausted and already thinking about when we can do it again.  Until then I guess we’ll continue to lose time.

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‘I’m Bored – The 21st Century Disease’

 ‘Mom, I’m bored! ‘

‘You don’t want to tell me you’re bored because I can find a lot of things to keep you busy!’

Kids today, most of us for that matter, are overstimulated.  My daughter makes ‘mini bead people, animals and flowers’ and bracelets out of colored string.  If she runs out of beads or string, we head over to Michaels with our 40% off coupon and get more.  She is on a swim team, plays softball, soccer and lacrosse, is writing a book, draws beautifully and creatively and makes miniatures out of Femo clay.  If our son is not fighting a war or creating a city on his XBox while talking to some kid in Germany doing the same thing, he is watching his favorite movie or sit-com, bike riding, having an air soft gun war, swimming or downloading songs onto his iPod.   They have weekly Youth Group and a bible study, swim meets and they taught Vacation Bible School at our church complete with planning stories, creating costumes and learning lines……how can they be bored??? 

Maybe my memory has dulled or I’ve idealized my free time as a child, but I can honestly say I don’t ever remember being bored.  We had no computer games or even a computer.  Only the government and IBM had computers and they were the size of small houses.  We had no color TV, no amazing range of channels, just the few we got with our ‘rabbit ears’.  We had no DVD’s or videos just a slide viewer and a record player.  I remember my mother telling me ‘go outside and play’ when I wanted to remain lost in a good book or in coloring one of my awesome Venus Paradise coloring sets.  I ‘built a windmill’ out of my neighbor’s garbage wood that he had put out for pick up, made ‘long braids’ by braiding my old tights and putting them on my head after being so inspired by ‘Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates’ that I wanted to be Dutch.  I rode my bike around the entire town and into the next, flipping a coin at each major intersection with my best friend “Heads we go right, tails we go left” and finally came home when the streetlights went on. 

Ingenuity has been stimulated right out of many of us, I guess.  I’m always stunned when I hear older people say ‘I’m in no hurry to retire, I don’t know what I’d do with all that time, except to be bored.” 

With the world at our very fingertips and all that time to learn, enjoy and experience and maybe give something back….. how about volunteering?

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Survive Disasters, Have A Plan

If you’ve lived in several different areas of the country or the world, your perceptions can blur together and your instincts or a set plan will take over your reactions in a given situation.  Instincts are OK, having a plan is better.

When I was awakened by an earthquake during the night, it flashed me back to my San Francisco days and my two harrowing experiences standing in doorways while light fixtures swayed and pictures fell off the wall.  Months later while living in Manhattan and walking over a subway grate when a subway was passing under me, my immediate reaction was to run for a doorway, which I was told was ‘safe’.  (Oh, yeah.  I’m in NY not San Francisco!)

 

Now we are told NOT to stand in doorways, to find the ‘triangle’, which makes perfect sense once it’s explained.  The triangle is where most survivors of a disaster such as an earthquake are found alive.  Triangles are created when you are right beside some substantial piece of furniture or object or in the space created between them.  When the ceiling caves in and the beams fall down it creates little ‘triangles’ of space right next to the object where you are hopefully crouching down.  For example, kids should not hide ‘under’ desks or tables but in the aisle created between them.  Another example is not to hide under your bed but alongside it, preferably between your bed and your dresser.  This is one of the times when having a really small bedroom is a good thing. 

 

All this makes perfect sense if you train yourself to respond ahead of time as I did in ‘running for a doorway’, only have your practiced response be best case scenario.  Go over these scenarios with your family should a disaster strike while at home, at school, in the grocery store, etc.  It may mean the difference between survival and death. 

Also, have a disaster plan should something go bad while your family is separated from each other and pray you never need it.  Say Dad is at work, Mom is on the road and the kids are in school.  Plan a place to meet ahead of time. For example, meet your kids A. at the far left corner of the school parking lot, if possible, B. in front of the gymnasium if the parking lot is inaccessible.  etc.  Keep your kids informed without alarming them.  Make it into a game and plan ahead. Having a plan is good, having an alternate plan as well, is even better.

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A Great Fourth and The 9 Times Table

We had a great fourth of July weekend with my husband’s brother and his family.  When our families co-mingle it’s like all of us being with our best friends.  They went out of their way to make our stay a memorable one with good times, good food, good company.  We are truly blessed – even the kids all get along. 

Anyway, I learned a multiplication trick from my sister-in-law for young ones that forget their ‘9 times’ tables. 

Hold up 10 fingers.  Say for example ‘9 times 3’.  You put your third finger down, counting from the left.  The fingers to the left of the ‘down finger’ count as ‘10s’ the fingers to the right count as ‘1s’.    There will be two fingers to the left (20) and seven fingers to the right of the down finger (7).   9×3=27

Embarrassing but true, it’s handy not only for ‘little ones’ but for us older folks that have that occasional blank response in our heads when say 9×9 equals……..!

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