Uncle Ernie

Since the NFL decided to hire Pete Townshend for the upcoming Super Bowl event all hell has broken loose. Child AbuseWatch, the international child prevention group, have been trying for some time to bring attention to Townshend’s sex offender status. Most notably was the Kennedy Center Awards event last year when they wrote to the organizers protesting the honoring of someone with sex offender history.

Most recently they have asked the NFL to drop Townshend from the Super Bowl. In a way they are doing the NFL a favor. How? When the family values groups get hold of this they’re going to rip the NFL and their sponsors apart. It could indeed prove to be an incredibly expensive mistake on the NFL’s part to not read more than Townshend publicists take on Pete’s past when they were planning the half time show.

Another national advocacy group, Protect Our Children, headed by Kevin Gillick has taken the NFL protest a step further; two steps actually. They have made a lot of noise with the Immigration and Naturalization Department and ICE begging to ask how a registered sex offender, with criminal record, has been given free reign to enter the US.

U.S. immigration law says authorities will deny entrance to “Aliens convicted of, and those who admit having committed a crime involving moral turpitude (or an attempt or conspiracy to commit such a crime).” Townshend admitted to having broken the law in his search for child pornography. ‘How he has been given access to the U.S. remains a mystery or perhaps it’s another demonstration of celebrity privilege,’ Mr. Gillick said.

The second aspect of Protect Our Children’s campaign has a definitely more local sting in its tail. A letter has been sent to Florida Attorney General McCullom, demanding that Townshend comply with Florida law, specifically Florida Statute 775.21, which applies to anyone with a sex offender background.

They have asked that Townshend be taken into custody upon his reentry into Florida so that the provisions of FS775.21 may be applied – Sexual Offenders and Predators

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/whos-townshend-may-have-to-register-as-a-sex-offender-in-florida-557944/

Happy Holidaze

Hopin for some change?

Ha ha. Thanks Obama! Now, the insurance companies will have 30 million more
mandated customers! I love me some Obama today!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here's a problem I see with the GOP.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/73141-gop-slams-climate-effort

"The House GOP lawmakers on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s delegation to Copenhagen pulled no punches in their criticism of plans to curb carbon emissions."

So let me get this straight. It takes SIX republicans to speak out against Pelosi in
Copenhaagen? Why not just send ONE GOP to make the statement? Have a presser and have ONE pol speak out against it, but when you send 6 on the public dime, that is 'wasteful'. The thing to do is send one guy and point out they could have sent 5 more, but they were thinking about the carbon footprint...

But, no, these 6 were 'invited'. Which means a nice little junket to go eat in fancy restaurants, fly on expensive jets, and get foreign hookers and booze. THIS is what is wrong with the 2 parties now.

The GOP is no better.

Save the Planet!

Frosty

Undocumented Guests

I don't understand why the White House is so upset about the two party crashers at Barack Obama's steak dinner last week.....

Is it really appropriate and politically correct to call them party crashers just because they trespassed on Mr. Obama? Does that make them criminals? Isn't that discrimination? Shouldn't they be rewarded for such bold and brave behavior? Maybe they were just trying to feed their family?

I would suggest that it's more appropriate to call them "undocumented guests." Just because they weren't officially invited doesn't mean they should be treated like criminals. Maybe they should get free health care, free
housing, free legal services and free White House green cards so next time they can enter legally. And they should be able to bring all of their relatives and family members, too.

How can Mr. Obama be mad at them just because they crossed over some arbitrary man-made border? They were there only to do the things that regularly invited guests didn't want to do. (Like hang out with Joe Biden.)

How can the White House punish these poor oppressed undocumented visitors?

Why Switzerland does not worry

Thomas is conservative?

Research by the University of Alberta has chillingly revealed that kids' TV show Thomas and Friends may be engendering a "conservative political ideology" in future generations - a repressive mindset which "punishes individual initiative, opposes critique and change, and relegates females to supportive roles".

Shauna Wilton and friends from the uni's Department of Social Sciences analysed 23 episodes of the programme, and noted that while it "conveys a number of positive political values such as tolerance, listening, communicating with others and contributing to the community", there is a dark side to Thomas the Tank Engine.

Wilton claimed that "storylines in several episodes that divided the characters into different social classes and punished those who tried to gain individual power". She said: "Any change is seen as disrupting the natural order of things."

Furthermore, "of 49 main characters listed in the show, only eight were female, reflecting a general trend among children's programming".

Wilton concluded: "We tend to think of children's TV shows as neutral and safe, but they still carry messages. Eventually these children will attain full political citizenship, and the opinions and world outlook they develop now, partially influenced by shows like Thomas and Friends, are part of that process."

Wilton's findings, presented earlier this year to the Canadian Political Science Association, will doubtless add to a growing sense of unease among parents following the news that Disney, among others, punts "strictly heterosexual values" to wide-eyed kiddies.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/10/thomas_and_friends/

Irena

from 2007: NY Sun newspaper...

A class project by four high-school girls from Kansas has spurred a grassroots movement to nominate for a Nobel Peace Prize a woman who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis — a move endorsed last week by the deputy prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres.

A Polish social worker, Irena Sendler, who turns 97 next month, smuggled children out of the Warsaw ghetto and refused to disclose their whereabouts even after being tortured. Gestapo officers crunched her legs in a vice and smashed her bones with hammers.

Mrs. Sendler stashed the identities of the children she saved in jars and buried the jars under an apple tree. Her plan was to dig up the jars after the war and reunite the children with their families.

Mr. Peres has written a letter to President Kaczynski of Poland saying he agrees with growing Polish sentiment that Mrs. Sendler "should be duly considered for the Nobel Peace Prize."

"This brings me great joy, but on the other hand, it's a shame that my liaison officers are not alive. I would not have been able to do anything without the crew people around me," Mrs. Sendler told the Sun in a telephone interview from the nursing home where she lives in Warsaw.

Mrs. Sendler's story was buried when the Soviet Union imposed communism on Poland. And even though Mrs. Sendler was honored in 1965 by Yad Vashem as one of the righteous who saved Jews, it took four Protestant girls from Pittsburg, Kan., to teach Catholic Poland about the story.

In 1999, three Union High School ninth-graders, Megan Stewart, Elizabeth Cambers, and Jessica Shelton, and an eleventh-grader, Sabrina Coons, entered a history project after their teacher Norm Conard showed them an article about "Schindler's List," which mentioned others who rescued Jews from the Nazis. Surprised that Mrs. Sendler saved twice as many people as Schindler, the girls researched her life and wrote a play called "Life in a Jar."

"Irena Sendler changed my life. As a teacher, she made me more aware of the importance of Holocaust education and showing how one person can change the world. Through her actions, she gave our students the passion to tell her story," Mr. Conard told the Sun.

A social worker in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, Mrs. Sendler and her friends set up soup kitchens when the Nazis ordered her agency to cut off support for impoverished Jews. When the Gestapo corralled 450,000 Jews in Warsaw into a cramped ghetto and the prisoners began starving to death, Mrs. Sendler obtained a pass to enter under the guise of preventing an epidemic of infectious diseases. Once inside, Mrs. Sendler told the Jews the Nazis were planning to murder them and convinced them to hide their children.

Mrs. Sendler used an ambulance to smuggle children out of the ghetto in burlap sacks and coffins. A barking dog on the front seat would sometimes drown out the cries of children in the back who had been separated from their parents. She received help from her friends and Zegota, the Polish Council to Aid the Jews. More children were smuggled out in garbage cans, toolboxes, and through a church on the edge of ghetto.

In October 1943, Gestapo officers arrested Mrs. Sendler and tortured her for three months before she was sentenced to be shot by firing squad. But Zegota bribed a Nazi guard who helped her escape.

After the war, Irena dug up the jars and tracked down the 2,500 children to reunite them with their families. While most of the parents had been killed, many of the children found relatives scattered around Europe. The grown children, such as: Teresa Korner in Israel; Renata Zajdman in Montreal; Piotr Zysman Zettinger in Stockholm, Sweden; Irena Wojdowska in Szczecin, Poland, and Katarzyna Meloch, Michal Glowinski, and Elzbieta Ficowska of Warsaw, Poland, are living proof of the horrors of the genocide.

"If someone is drowning, you have to give them your hand. When the war started, all of Poland was drowning in a sea of blood, and those who were drowning the most were the Jews. And among the Jews, the worst off were the children. So I had to give them my hand," Mrs. Sendler told the Sun.

Not all Poles had clean hands during the war, and most were afraid to risk their lives. The Germans made it a crime to shelter Jews, and Christian Poles caught were executed.










who won in 2007?

The IPCC and Al Gore.

That's it Arthur. No Mo $$ from me.

"We want Vick! We want Vick!''

Michael Vick, 45 minutes after one of the most memorable games of his star-crossed NFL career, was still so emotional about it that I could almost feel his goosebumps over the phone. The day started with him being booed by the Georgia Dome crowd, but when Andy Reid called a couple of plays catering to Vick's strengths -- and they worked -- the crowd switched. It was a Vick lovefest.

"We want Vick! We want Vick!'' came the chant from every corner of the Dome.

"Awesome, awesome,'' Vick said over the phone from Atlanta. "I had chills down my spine. I will never, ever forget this day. To have them say they want me to be a part of their team, their city ... I just appreciate it so much. I appreciate everything about today. This will always be my hometown-away-from-home ...''

In the 34-7 win over the Falcons (to be fair, playing without Matt Ryan, who got standing ovations of his own in this same Dome last year as Vick's heir), Vick finally got to throw the ball downfield. People credit Vick for his athleticism, and justifiably, but I say he's got one of the three best arms in football, and two years in federal custody didn't rob him of that.

In the Eagles' first 11 games, Vick had touched the ball 18 times and generated 74 unspectacular yards. But in the third quarter Sunday, on third-and-one from the Falcons' five, he wriggled through the line for a five-yard touchdown. And after the chant got loud early in the fourth quarter, Reid put him back in the game and Vick threw a bomb up the left seam. It was so perfectly thrown, bisecting double-coverage, that Reggie Brown got interfered with and still caught the 43-yard throw.

"We've had that play in the playbook all season, but we haven't called it,'' said Vick. "In practice, I overthrow it every week, but this time, the safety bit on it and he [Brown] went up and got it. Thrilling.''

I told Vick the FOX cameras caught him talking to Arthur Blank before the game, and I wondered what they said. "Family stuff,'' he said. "It was good.


We're going to have dinner in the offseason.''

Here comes the squeeze!

"The Congressional Black Caucus is holding back support for President Obama's legislation over financial regulation reform because it wants the administration to help minority-owned businesses, such as Inner City Broadcasting. The troubled radio company and its financial plight have been specifically identified in meetings with top administration officials, according to the New York Times. Inner City Broadcasting, which owns 17 stations nationwide, faces a possible financial collapse because of pressure by Goldman Sachs and GE Capital to repay nearly $230 million in debt.

Black Caucus members and lobbyists for Inner City have been pressing the administration for special help for black-owned broadcasters, and to help push its cause, Inner City even hired prominent Washington lobbying firm the Podesta Group. Members of the caucus asked the administration to squeeze lenders like GE Capital and Goldman Sachs to renegotiate their loans with Inner City and other black-owned radio stations, arguing that these financial institutions themselves had already received federal assistance. Some caucus members even pushed to include black-owned radio stations in the bailout.

The matter came to a head on Wednesday, when 10 members of the Congressional Black Caucus skipped a House Financial Services Committee meeting, intentionally missing a critical vote on the regulatory reform package. They were trying to send a message to reinforce their demands that the White House take steps to address the financial crisis that has hurt black businesses, the Times reported. The vote allowed the legislation to move to the full House floor, where it is expected to be taken up next week.

"There is a lot of concern about Inner City Broadcasting," said Barney Frank (D-MA), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank also told the Times that at the request of Black Caucus members, he had called "private and public companies" on behalf of the radio station owners to urge them to work with Inner City and other media companies.

Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Jennifer R. Psaki said in a written statement, "We share the concerns raised by C.B.C. members about struggling minority communities, and that’s why we've engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues." Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally also confirmed to the Times that the company has been involved in talks with Inner City Broadcasting about its debt."

http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1612575

Pity the Goreacle

Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion "as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity," according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world's would-be environmental watchdog.