PLEASE NOTE: This site had just begun and is without doubt ‘ Under Construction’. a new theme is first, then a better format toward the early morning blog post, then the rest. I thank you for your patience.
BIDEN THE CATHOLIC
You must check out Biden’s Easter address here https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/05/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-tradition-of-easter-at-the-white-house/, and listen careful for mentions of God, Jesus and the Easter Bunny…
60 MINUTES AND BEARING FALSE WITNESS
A reporter for CBS’ signature program 60 Minutes laid into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis preaching a false narrative about a pay-for-play scheme to increase vaccine distribution via his own campaign donors.
Doesn’t it seem as though the reporter although visible is seldom named in the story?
This observation gave me the idea of ‘doxxing media’, not gathering personal information, but only a tracing of the other stories they report and how those stories were reported. A tracking of the story-trail of each individual reporter and fact-checking the journalistic integrity of one at a time might be more revealing of a pattern of falsehoods.
Perhaps by singling them out for a closer examination we may finally get something done.
In the meantime I repeat that there is no Commandment more frequently violated in public life than that of bearing a false witness against one’s neighbor.
UPDATE ON ARKANSAS TRANSGENDER CHILD PROTECTION LAW
Arkansas lawmakers on Tuesday made the state the first to ban gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth, enacting the prohibition over the governor’s objections. The Legislature voted to override GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of the measure, which prohibits doctors from providing hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.
The article is here https://apnews.com/article/arkansas-lawmakers-enact-transgender-youth-treatment-ban-dce1d5ca9450b255caabc18f547f7b9b, if you want to read of the mental and spiritual illnesses of those experts and their ilk who called down any opposition to these horrid and cruel procedures.
And clergy types, to reiterate what I noted Monday last, “We used to speak of the cure of souls. Now we speak of carving up the body.” Transgendering a child is the most extreme instance of child abuse, and those culpable will pay.
MORE SOCIAL WORKERS, ETC., IN LIEU OF UNIFORMED OFFICERS?
Yesterday the City of St. Louis, Missouri, elected the first black woman to become Mayor of that crime-riddled area on April 20. So many black women in positions of leadership, mayors, attorneys general of locales and of states, congresswomen, the vice-president, governors… Soooo oppressed and excluded?
But this mayor-elect opts for more social workers and support persons not in uniform to address the problems of violence and murders in her city. In short, fewer police officers to serve the residents.
So this month is a time for each of us fact-checkers to jot down current crime numbers from the city’s own website. Then we shall see in a few months how her plans fared…
A possible reversal on the Administration’s part regarding the efficacy of border walls? Hmmm… ‘Film at 11’ on that one…
TOWARD A HYBRID LEARNING ASSUMPTION, AND FORGETTING ABOUT WASHINGTON, D. C.
Few would deny that this lengthy pandemic has tahght us lessons about the educations of our children and young adults. One of those is the possibility of decentralizing the educational process altogether.
Years ago in seminary I noted to the powers-that-be how the technology is in place for a professor to be in one location and the students in another. I played prophet in this as I noted that most other students had greater debt than my own, and that the sheer preponderance of smaller, declining congregations would not allow for placement of candidates upon graduations as their accrued debt made acceptance of low compensation offers unworkable. at the same time, I also noted that the required internship year could be in a local consortium of congregations large and small under the supervision of pastors and joint committees instead of the one-on-one placements. I was not heard.
Much of the problem was with the possibility for teachers to teach in one location as students learn in another. That might translate into the need for fewer professors and staff and buildings and energy footprints and… more benefits. But that also might mean fewer jobs.
And even long before that realization I also noticed the proliferation of church buildings that dot the landscape, their student-ready classrooms with drawing boards, overhead projectors, nascent computer technologies emerging to displace and improve all of the above… And these buildings remained empty for most of the week.
Now that this morning Fox and Friends reports that parents in Seattle, Washington, demand that homeless camps be removed from the campuses of public schools, and the superfluous drug paraphernalia scattered everywhere…
And that California has finally, finally agreed to reopen after some were already instructing non-citizens on the taxpayer’s money…
Placing such bedrock thinking in the hands of younger and more capable leaders might change everything educational, right up to and including the demise of the teacher’s unions and the consequent tyrannies of Washington, D.C.