Thursday, September 15, 2005
News, Links, Etc.
Michael and Sharen Gravelle of Wakeman, Ohio, have eleven adopted children. And they're far from ideal parents:
The children - polite and well-dressed - seemed ordinary enough to neighbors, who hired some of them to help bale hay and saw them playing in a yard filled with toys. But the 11 children - all with conditions ranging from autism to fetal alcohol syndrome - were far from having a normal life, authorities said. Their adoptive parents allegedly forced several of them to sleep in homemade cages about 3 1/2 feet high.
9/11, as tragic as it was, did help turn New York's Mayor Giuliani into a national hero. Hurricane Katrina won't be having the same affect on New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin. A number of people have mentioned all the school busses that sat, unused, during the hurricane. Why didn't Nagin use them to round people up and move them out? According to him, that's not his responsibility. While Giuliani's presence in New York during the 9/11 crisis was constant, Nagin has already relocated to the Dallas area and bought a home. And shortly after Dubya took responsibility for the federal mismanagement of the crisis, Nagin stepped up and basically said that the mistakes he made were still someone else's ultimate responsibility. Watch this video at Political Teen and you'll hear Nagin say "If I would have known that the Calvary wasn't coming in three, two or three days, I would have probably planned things a little bit differently." Way to pass the buck, Mr. Mayor. Political Teen also has a great newsclip of Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden questioning Judge John Roberts during his hearing. You've heard of "good cop, bad cop?" Well, consider this "bad liberal, worse liberal." How this kind of hectoring, interrupting and general abrasiveness qualifies as "questioning," I don't know.Hurricane Katrina isn't the only disaster to hit some of the underprivileged children of New Orleans. For some of them, their day to day life is a perpetual disaster. A mother who donated time at a refugee base in Texas reported the following dialogue between herself and one little girl of about five years of age:
Me: Hi sweetie, I like your braids. Can you tell me your name?
Her: My name is Shayla
Me: That’s a pretty name Shayla, do you know your last name?
Shayla: My name is Shayla, that’s all I know.
Me: Okay, how about your mommy, do you know your mommy’s name?
Shayla: I call my mommy mama.
Me: Okay, but what do other people call her? What does your daddy call her?
Shayla: I don’t have a daddy.
Me: Oh, okay what about your neighbors or your aunts and uncles; what do they call your mommy?
Shayla: One time my aunty called my mama bitch, they got into it and the police came and took my aunty away. My mama got took to the hospital because my aunty stabbed her.
Me: That must have been really scary for you.
Shayla: (shrugs) it was better then when she got shot, Jesus almost took her then. She gave me her jell-o at the hospital
I hope you know what I mean when I say that, when this is over, I really hope this child's life doesn't go back to "normal."Where Have You Gone, Ronald Reagan is one of my favorite blogs, and it's really on a roll lately. Check out the new WHYGRR Media BS Advisory System. WHYGRR is also the source where I learned about the voice of reason known as Louis Farrakhan (I refuse to identify him as "Reverand," since that term usually denotes that someone is a man of God), and his assertion that whites blew up the levees in New Orleans in order to kill blacks. Are there really people, black, white, or otherwise, who take this nutjob seriously?Since Hurricane Katrina, Cindy Sheehan has been out of the spotlight for a couple of weeks. That must be driving her crazy. That's the only reason I can think of for her most recent, most desperate grab for attention. Her latest stunt actually makes Sean Penn look good by comparison. Hat tip to D-Dot's Rants for the heads-up on this one... Here we go again, folks:
Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was declared unconstitutional Wednesday by a federal judge ruling in the second attempt by an atheist to have the pledge removed from classrooms. The man lost his previous battle before the U.S. Supreme Court
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."
The Write Jerry tipped me off to this sad story:
A soldier home on leave from Iraq was electrocuted after stopping to help a motorist who hit a utility pole, state police said.
Army National Guard Sgt. Dale Martin Hardiman, 39, of Stonycreek Township, came into contact with downed electrical wires as he tried to help the car's driver early Saturday.
"He was being a good Samaritan," said his mother, Virginia Hardiman.
We have heroes abroad and we have heroes at home... and sometimes, they're the same person. God bless Dale Hardiman, and God rest his soul.
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