Fallen Soldier: Highest Honor, Immeasurable Grief

A while back I gathered with some fellow Red Cross volunteers to "turn out" for a returning soldier killed in Afghanistan.  Like other civic groups, we are occasionally asked to be present at funeral processions and burials in order to show the grieving family the support of the community. 

This was the first such event I had attended.  I had just returned from a long day of teaching and a rigorous workout at the gym.  As I pulled together some semblance of dinner, I pushed the button on the answering machine and listened to a message from a Red Cross office worker asking if I could attend.  My first thought was:  "I'm too tired."

As I ate dinner and then started grading some tests, I felt a big more invigorated by the food.  My mind wandered back to the invitation ... the request.  It was still relatively early with there being about an hour and half before I had to leave if I were to attend.  My mind started pondering the request ...

"I'm too tired ..." sounded pretty shallow in light of the young man's sacrifice.


"You always say you support the troops ... is it just lip service?" I figured it was a simple enough of a request.  If a whole lot of individuals, who most likely had also just gotten home from work, took a brief moment to truly show support for the young soldier and his grieving family, what a showing that would be!

"Are you really that tired?"  Too tired to care?  The need and reward will be so much greater.

I called two other Red Cross volunteers to see if they happened to be going.  Luckily, both were.  So, we met up at a nearby location to carpool over to the funeral home and cemetery. 

The young man would be transported with special escort directly from the airport.  We wore our Red Cross attire.  We were amazed as we pulled up to the location ...

The fire district had two engines at the entrance to the cemetery, each facing the other with their ladders extended into the air.  A huge American flag was suspended from the engines' ladders.  Police cars encircled the engines with lights going.  The road was lined up and down with all kinds of people and groups: Boy Scouts and "regular folks" holding flags.

We Red Cross volunteers met at the funeral home.  We each received an American flag to hold and were deeply thanked by office managers for being there.  I saw men dressed in Scottish kilts, many VFW members, and Marines in their sharp dress uniforms. 

Our tiny group wound up standing right where all the action would be.  First, the young man was escorted to the funeral home in an old, classic pick-up truck, his flag-draped coffin highly visible from the rear.  It must have been an impressive and moving sight as it travelled along the highway escorted by motorcycle cops and limousines.

Before the family arrived, in the distance we heard an odd rumble.  Then, the cemetery grounds were flooded with at least 100 Patriot Guard Riders!  (Yeah -- I counted.)  We all breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that their presence would ward off any whackos that would dare protest the young man's funeral.

And, then, the family arrived.  Each member slowly climbed out of the limousine looking bewildered and distressed.  The family gathered together at the edge of the carport where the pick-up waited.  They were joined by a Scottish Honour Guard, the VFW, and the Marines.  In the precision only the military can muster, the Marines reverently pulled the casket from the pick-up's bed and marched it into the funeral home.  My eyes filled with tears as I thought: "What an awful thing this must be for a parent to experience!"  My heart ached for the mother and father.  Their young son's life snatched away so cruelly, so quickly, so violently ... far too soon.  "Lord, have mercy!" I prayed.

The respect that was displayed by all that night was heartfelt and, hopefully, healing.  As I looked around, I saw police officers standing at attention.  A young soldier dressed in fatigues stood alone at attention, seemingly to have appeared out of nowhere.  Some individuals dressed in civilian clothes stood at attention and saluted.  The Patriot Guard Riders stood along the road in respectful silence, their bikes' flags waving gently in the cool evening.

The coming days, weeks and months will be unspeakably hard for the family and friends.  "Lord, have mercy!" 

They will vaguely recall faces and pieces of conversations, but much will be a blurry dream ... a blurry nightmare. 

I do pray, however, that they will remember the words that lifted them up the most, the presence of dear friends and relatives who in vain tried to comfort them ... and maybe even the presence of strangers who, in rag-tag fashion, gathered to pay their respects to our community's soldier.

May God pour out His healing and peace, like a salve, upon these dear people.  "Lord, have mercy!"

Shop Target, Best Buy & Home Depot: Thumb Your Noses at Leftist Agenda

There is yet another call to boycott Target for supposedly being anti-gay.  Target recently donated $150,000 to MN Forward, a jobs initiative group, which backs Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.  But, because Emmer opposes same-sex marriage, one Target customer called for boycott.  Here's the story from CBS News:

Target Boycott Movement Grows Following Donation to Support "Antigay" Candidate

Revelations that Target Corp. donated $150,000 to a group that is running ads backing conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposes same-sex marriage, continue to generate calls to boycott the company. 

Groups such as this one - "Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics" - have spring up on Facebook, where those upset with the donation are encouraged to contact Target to let them know what they think. 

Meanwhile, a woman by the name of Randi Reitan, who has a gay son, has posted a video to YouTube showing her cutting up her Target card and returning merchandise in protest.

"The Target I know was a Target that embraced its gay employees," she says in the video before discussing how she told a store manager about why she returned the items she had purchased. 

"I shared with her why I had bought each item, who they were for, and why that person wouldn't want me to have bought them at a Target store," she says. "The items were for my grandchildren, and they love their uncle Jake so much, and Jake is gay, and they wouldn't want to have things coming from a store that contributes to a campaign that would have a governor candidate with the antigay views that Tom Emmer has." 

Target, which is based in Minnesota, has defended its donations to the group, called MN Forward, by stating that they were tied to Emmer's positions when it comes to creating a positive environment for businesses, not his stance on social issues. 

"Target's support of the GLBT community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company," Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel said. The company has also said that its political action committee has split donations evenly between both parties this year. (PAC donations involve money from employees and shareholders, as opposed to the corporate funds used to donate to MN Forward.) 

Target is not the only retailer to have donated to MN Forward - electronic retailer Best Buy Co. gave the group $100,000 - but it has been the primary target of anger in large part because it has long been seen as an ally by the gay rights movement. 

...

Jim Hoff, The Gateway Pundit, is reporting today about Home Depot's co-founder Ken Langone blasting Obama for his anti-business stance.  Here's an excerpt from Langones Wall Street Journal opinion piece (emphasis added):

Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President

If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.

By Ken Langone

Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase. 

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

But there's a much deeper problem than whether I am personally irked or not. Your insistence that your policies are necessary and beneficial to business is utterly at odds with what you and your administration are saying elsewhere. You pick a fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accusing it of using foreign money to influence congressional elections, something the chamber adamantly denies. Your U.S. attorney in New York, Preet Bahrara, compares investment firms to Mexican drug cartels and says he wants the power to wiretap Wall Street when he sees fit. And you drew guffaws of approving laughter with your car-wreck metaphor, recently telling a crowd that those who differ with your approach are "standing up on the road, sipping a Slurpee" while you are "shoving" and "sweating" to fix the broken-down jalopy of state.

That short-sighted wavering—between condescending encouragement one day and hostile disparagement the next—creates uncertainty that, as any investor could tell you, causes economic paralysis. That's because no one can tell what to expect next.

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot. Our dream was to create (memo to DNC activists: that's build, not take or coerce) a new kind of home-improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers. The concept was to have a wide assortment, a high level of service, and the lowest pricing possible.

We opened the front door in 1979, also a time of severe economic slowdown. Yet today, Home Depot is staffed by more than 325,000 dedicated, well-trained, and highly motivated people offering outstanding service and knowledge to millions of consumers.

If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase—never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers.

Meantime, you seem obsessed with repealing tax cuts for "millionaires and billionaires." Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty. My parents worked tirelessly to build on that opportunity. My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago. The wealth that was created by my investments wasn't put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

I stand behind no one in my enthusiasm and dedication to improving our society and especially our health care. It's worth adding that it makes little sense to send Treasury checks to high net-worth people in the form of Social Security. That includes you, me and scores of members of Congress. Why not cut through that red tape, Mr. President, and apply a basic means test to that program? Just make sure that money actually reduces federal spending and isn't simply shifted elsewhere. I guarantee you that many millionaires and billionaires will gladly forego it—as my wife and I already do when we forward those checks each month to charity.

It's not too late to include the voices of experienced business people in your efforts, small business owners in particular. Americans would be right to wonder why you haven't already. 

Mr. Langone, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange and co-founder of Home Depot, is chairman of Invemed Associates.

I'm happy to report that I recently gave Home Depot quite a bit of my business with my major home renovation back in the spring and early summer!  Great store!  Great products!  My next phase of home renovation will be with the bathrooms.  Maybe I should run by this week and start buying some items, such as ceramic tile, a bathroom fixture ...

Well, I am due for my weekly trip to Target -- my favorite story anyway!  Also, seems like I need to go ahead and buy that iPad I've been drooling over for months ... guess I could put it on my Best Buy card and take 18 months to pay it off interest-free.   (Oh, and with my lovely new wood floors, I bought from Best Buy the fabulous vacuum robot "Roomba' and spiffy little steam cleaner for hardwood floors.  Love them!)

Chilean Miners: Their T-Shirts Gave Thanks to God

If you were like me earlier this week, you were glued to the TV watching live coverage of the miraculous rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped by a cave in back in early August.  I noticed many of the miners sported interesting t-shirts, the front emblazoned with "Gracias, Señor!" -- 'Thanks, Lord!"  I wondered about the t-shirts, and today found this at The Christian Post (emphasis added):

Miners Clad in Jesus Shirts Give Glory to God

Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter

Fri, Oct. 15, 2010 Posted: 01:13 PM EDT

---

When the 33 trapped miners in Chile emerged from underground, at least two dozen of them were wearing T-shirts that proclaimed "Gracias Senor," or "Thank you Lord."

Christian Maureira, national director of Campus Crusade for Christ in Chile, who helped provide the shirts, said the miners wanted to recognize and thank God publicly as the world watched the anticipated rescue this week.

The miners were rescued on Tuesday and Wednesday after being trapped in the San Jose mine in Chile since the Aug. 5 cave-in.

During the 10-week stint some 2,000 feet underground, Jose Henriquez, 55, stepped up as a spiritual leader in the group, leading prayer services at noon and 6 p.m. each day.

He wrote a letter to Maureira after MP3s of the "JESUS" film and the New Testament were delivered to the miners through a 4-inch-wide tube.

"Thank you for this tremendous blessing for me and my coworkers. It will be good for our spiritual edification. I am fine because Christ lives in me," Henriquez, who is part of a Pentecostal church, wrote.

He also quoted the Old Testament passage Psalms 95:4 – "In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him."

That passage was printed on the back of the T-shirts that a majority of the miners wore as they were pulled out to safety this week.

Berry Fiess, director of Field Information Services of The JESUS Film Project, made it clear that the miners decided on their own to ask for shirts that essentially give glory to God. The shirts also have the JESUS Film Project logo on the sleeve.

"They requested – after we sent the MP3s – that we get these shirts for them. They told us what they wanted on the front and back sides," Fiess explained. "There appears to be this strong desire to honor God and I think that this situation must have brought them close to their Maker."

Maureira worked with a designer to produce the shirts and they were delivered to the miners on Monday, just a day before they began hopping into the "Phoenix" escape capsule to reach the surface.

According to Maureira, who had initiated delivering audio Scripture to the miners, several of the men gave testimonies about meeting God while trapped.

Responding to those who wonder where God was during other cave-ins where miners died, the CCC Chile director commented, "I believe that God is sovereign and all miners – either those that have survived or those who have died – accomplish the will of God."

Another collapse could have happened during the rescue process in Chile, or the instruments might not have worked, Fiess noted.

"And like the shirt said on the back, 'In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him,'" he said.

Fiess also noted that there have been many Christians who were saved miraculously and those who suffered and died. But he cited three biblical figures, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Old Testament book of Daniel, who were prepared to give glory to God whether they were delivered from a blazing furnace or not.

In the case of the miners in Chile, Fiess said, "I think it's valid to give God the honor and the glory here because God is the one who can provide His grace and mercy at any time that He wants."

I'm sure the radical atheists and the PC-minded audience members weren't happy to see the t-shirts.  But, as they say, 'there are no atheists in a foxhole.'

Jon Stewart Rally: Oprah & Huffington Post Have to Pitch in to Boost Crowd

Apparently, Jon Stewart's lame attempt at spoofing Glenn Beck's August rally in D.C. isn't faring well.  So, Oprah and The Huffington Post are stepping in to keep "the dream alive."  This from FoxNews ... that evil bastion of reporting (emphasis added):

Oprah Becomes Latest Star to Lend Celebrity Endorsement to Stewart's Rally

Oprah fans who were accustomed to getting new cars and exotic trips to Australia got her latest "present under the tree" on Thursday: an all-expenses-paid trip later this month to Washington, D. C., for Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity."

The daytime talk queen appeared via satellite Thursday on Stewart's "The Daily Show" and told audience members to open red envelopes under their chairs, where they found round-trip plane tickets to Washington along with a two-night stay in an undisclosed hotel.

It was the latest effort by celebrities to pump up the event in the wake of a controversy over the crowd size at the rally Fox News host Glenn Beck held in Washington in August.

Website publisher Arianna Huffington also offered free bus rides to the rally during an appearance on Stewart's show last month.

While Beck's rally on the National Mall attracted plenty of controversy and criticism for occurring at the same place and on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, it didn't enjoy the same sort of celebrity endorsements. Civil rights activist Al Sharpton held a counter rally on the same day.

At least tens of thousands attended Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, in which he and Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate and a Fox News contributor, urged the audience to restore traditional American values and honor King's message.

Beck estimated that at least 500,000 people showed up. CBS News reported 87,000.

Stewart planned his rally shortly after Beck's. On Stewart's show Thursday, before Winfrey's announcement, fellow Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert made a surprise appearance and begged Stewart to merge his rally with his competing "March to Keep Fear Alive" after he failed to get a permit.

It's not clear how much Winfrey is spending to provide the free trip. Winfrey spokesman Don Hallcombe told FoxNews.com that there's no way to come up with an estimate.

It's estimated that Huffington will spend $250,000 for 100 buses. As of late last week, 11,000 people had reportedly signed up for the buses.

When asked why Oprah didn't offer Beck fans a free trip to his rally, Hallcombe wouldn't say, but he denied that Winfrey was trying to help Stewart attract more people to his rally than Beck's.

"I think this was really about a moment when Jon was a guest on our show and they discussed how Oprah had invited her audience to Australia," Hallcombe said, referring to Stewart's appearance on Winfrey's show last month. "This was a fun way to then surprise Jon's audience with a trip of their own."

Looks like little Jon has to get help from his older, cooler sisters so that the cool crowd will come to his wimpy party.

I wonder if, like other Liberals, they'll ask for some kind of entitlement dollars to "level the playing field" ... although Beck got no big corporate holders to bankroll his rally.

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, crrrrrrry if I want to.  You would cry, too, if it happened to youuuuuuuu!"

Hallelujah! Finally Some Good News!!! Miners Being Rescued from Chilean Collapse

It was exciting to watch the start of the rescue operations of the Chilean miners last night before I went to bed!  I watched the first two guys come to the surface and be reunited with their families.  The excitement continues.  Let's pray that all are safely returned.

From the AP this morning ... (emphasis added)

Chile joyout at clock-work like miner rescue

By FRANK BAJAK and VIVIAN SEQUERA
Associated Press Writers

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile (AP) - The miners emerged like clockwork, jubilantly embracing wives, children and rescuers and looking remarkably composed Wednesday after languishing for 69 days in the depths of a mine that easily could have been their tomb.

The anxiety that had accompanied the final days of preparation melted away at 12:11 a.m. when the stoutest of the 33 miners, Florencio Avalos, emerged from the missile-like rescue capsule smiling broadly after his half-mile journey to the surface.

In a din of cheers, he hugged his sobbing 7-year-old son and wife and then President Sebastian Pinera, who has been deeply involved in an effort that had become a matter of national pride.

The most ebullient of the bunch came out second, an hour later.

"I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil. And I reached out for God," said Mario Sepulveda as he awaited the air force helicopter ride to a nearby hospital where all the miners were to spend 48 hours under medical observation.  The miners have survived more time trapped underground than anyone on record, and the world was captivated by their endurance and unity as officials carefully planned their rescue.

Chile exploded in joy and relief at the first, breakthrough rescue just after midnight in the coastal Atacama desert.
...

The methodical pace at which the miners were delivered from the mountain matched the rescue team's prediction that all would be free after about 36 hours, barring major glitches.

After the fifth miner, the rescuers paused to lubricate the spring-loaded wheels that gave the 13-foot-tall capsule a smooth ride through the shaft.  Then they brought up the sixth and seventh.

As dawn broke over the rock-strewn moonscape, eight men had been pulled from the mine in a little over seven hours, putting the rescue on track to end before the sun rises Thursday.

The entire rescue operation was meticulously choreographed, with no expense spared in bringing in topflight drillers and equipment - and drilling three separate holes into the copper and gold mine.

Mining is Chile's lifeblood, providing 40 percent of state earnings, and Pinera put his mining minister and the operations chief of state-owned Codelco, the country's biggest company, in charge of the rescue. It went so well that its managers abandoned what a legion of journalists had deemed an ultraconservative plan for restricting images of the rescue.

A huge Chilean flag that was to obscure the hole from view was moved aside so the hundreds of cameras perched on a hill above could record images that state TV also fed live.

That included the surreal moment when the capsule dropped into the chamber for the first time where the bare-chested miners, most stripped down to shorts because of the subterranean swelter, mobbed the rescuer who emerged to serve as their guide to freedom.

"This rescue operation has been so marvelous, so clean, so emotional that there was no reason not to allow the eyes of the world - which have been watching this operation so closely - to see it," a beaming Pinera told a news conference after Avalos was brought to the surface.

When the last man surfaces, it promises to end a national crisis that began when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed Aug. 5, sealing the 33 in the lower reaches of the mine.

The first capsule came out of the manhole-sized opening, and Avalos stepped out as bystanders cheered, clapped and broke into a chant of "Chi! Chi! Chi! Le! Le! Le!" - the country's name.

Avalos, the 31-year-old second-in-command of the miners, was chosen to be first because he was in the best condition. The next three men out, including the lone foreigner, Carlos Mamani of Bolivia, followed because they were deemed the fittest of body and mind.

The next group of 10 included miners with health problems such as hypertension, diabetes and skin ulcers.

Sepulveda's shouts were heard even before the capsule surfaced.

After hugging his wife, he jokingly handed souvenir rocks from the mine to laughing rescuers. Then he bounded out behind other officials behind a barrier and thrust a fist upward like a prizefighter.

Putting him on a gurney for a short ambulance ride to a triage center - the protocol for all the miners - almost seemed like overkill.
...

The last miner was slated to be shift foreman Luis Urzua, whose leadership was credited for helping the men endure 17 days with no outside contact after the collapse. The men made 48 hours' worth of rations last before rescuers reached them with a narrow borehole to send down more food.
...

Gee, in light of how Chile's President Pinera was present and supportive during the whole ordeal, I wonder how our Dear Leader would have reacted in such a situation here, given his limp-wristed response to troop reinforcements in Afganistan and his total screw-up of the Gulf oil spill. 

I should Bush would have been blamed.

Weird Relatives

Craziness!  Can you imagine?!?

Family Ties: Obama Related to Palin, Limbaugh

By Kristin Brown

President Obama, Sarah Palin [1], and Rush Limbaugh.

Political opponents? Yes.

Strong personalities? Definitely.

Relatives? You betcha.

Something must run in the family.

The latest discovery from Ancestry.com shows that President Obama is related to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, one of his most vocal critics, as well as to frequent political opponent Sarah Palin [1].

Obama and Palin are 10th cousins, connected through their common ancestor John Smith. Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins, once removed, through common ancestor Richard Terrell.

Other political adversaries also share family ties - the study also found that Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, is also related to Palin - as well as to conservative commentator Ann Coulter [2]. All three are related through John Lathrop, who was exiled in 1634 to colonial Massachusetts after becoming a minister of an illegal independent church in England.

And a leadership gene clearly runs through Samuel Hinckley's family, because Obama, Palin, and former president George W. Bush are all related through common ancestor Hinckley, who was among the first wave of settlers in America in the 1600s. Obama and Bush are 11th cousins; Palin and Bush are 11th cousins as well.

Obama famously joked about his distant relation to former vice president Dick Cheney [3] back in 2007, after it was revealed that the presidential candidate and the former vice president were 8th cousins. Obama said he was "okay" with the family connection, but he didn't "want to be invited to the family hunting party."

Whether or not Obama, Palin, and Limbaugh and Bush will be gathering for a family barbeque anytime soon remains to be seen.

Democrats' Agenda: Global Warming, Universal Heath Care & Stimulus Packages

LITTLE GIRL ON A PLANE 

   A congressman was seated next to a little girl on an airplane so he turned to her and said, "Do you want to talk?   Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger." 

   The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, "What would you want to talk about?" 

   "Oh, I don't know," said the congressman.  "How about global warming, universal health care, or stimulus packages?" as he smiled smugly. 

   "OK," she said.  "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first.  A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps.  Why do you suppose that is?" 

   The legislator, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." 

   To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss global warming, universal health care, or the economy, when you don't know shit?"

   And then she went back to reading her book.

Abortion: New Movie to Expose the Business of Abortions

From Stephanie Samuel of The Christian Post (emphasis added):

New Film 'Blood Money' Reveals the Business Behind Abortion

Fri, Oct. 08, 2010 Posted: 06:17 PM EDT

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WASHINGTON – In a new documentary that looks to blow the lid off the pro-choice movement, a former independent abortion clinic owner reveals the abortion industry as one of sales, scripts and marketing.

“The abortion clinic is a constant cycle of making money,” says Carol Everett, who managed three different abortion clinics in Dallas County before becoming a pro-life author and speaker.

“Blood Money,” which screened Wednesday night at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, features the testimony of lawyers, scientists, priests, abortion patients and clinic insiders to expose abortion more as a money-maker than a medical service.

Everett is especially crucial to the film’s premise. The former abortion provider gives chilling accounts of how she ran her business. According to Everett, counselors answering the phones were actually trained saleswomen reading from scripts. Doctors performing the abortions packed their schedules to perform 20 to 30 abortions an hour. Newly diagnosed moms were encouraged to make on-the-spot decisions for an abortion for a discounted price.

“Nobody knows what goes on in an abortion clinic,” Everett says in the film. “I realize I have been involved in the deaths of 35,000 babies.”

In “Blood Money," as she’s done in a number of speaking engagements, Everett tells the tales of some of those abortions. In one particular story, Everett tells the story of a woman who came in to have an abortion and ended up with a perforated uterus.

“Her uterus was perforated [and] her bowel was sticking out of her vagina,” she recalls.

In another story, Everett tells of a woman’s procedure going horribly wrong.

“I’ve never seen so much blood,” she recalls thinking upon opening the door to the operating room. The patient was eventually sent home, where she bled to death later that night.

“We killed that woman,” says Everett, who was actively involved in the abortion rights movement for over six years.

For “Blood Money,” filmmakers gathered a number of testimonials from advocates in several pro-life groups, including Priests for Life and Pro-Life Unity.

“We asked a number of people in the pro-life community to make a list of those they thought should be in the film,” says executive producer David Kyle.

As for the post-abortive women, Kyle says, “It was providence that we just happened across them.”
In the movie, abortion patients share their stories of being coerced into abortion, and their unforgettable procedures.

They also talk about experiencing depression and suicidal tendencies afterward.

“I took a bunch of drugs and slit my wrist,” one woman says.

Regarding the testimonies, film narrator Alveda King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, blames the U.S. Supreme Court for having “opened up the floodgates for abortion clinics to make money off the pain and suffering of women.”

In the infamous Roe v. Wade case, the 1973 Supreme Court held in a 7-2 ruling that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion. Abortion, therefore, was deemed a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution.

In addition to testimonies, the film also explores the origins of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and statistics that some pro-lifers say prove that abortion is wiping out the African-American minority.

Kyle says he is currently trying to drum up enough interest to get the film in theaters.

“If we could find a distributor willing to [show the movie nationally], we would. Unfortunately, to date none have shown an interest,” he reports.

The movie was featured in Chicago last month. A DVD of the film has also been made available for purchase on the website www.bloodmoneyfilm.com.

“Friends of the Film” currently include Priests for Life, King for America, Pro-Life Unity, and Living Hope for Life. The movie also has over 9,000 Facebook members.

How brave of Carol Everett to come forward and testify to the tactics of the abortion industry.  May God bless her efforts at curtailing the abortionists' agenda and assuage her guilt.  She truly is a courageous woman!

Senate to America: "Let Them Eat Cake!"

Nice to see our already well-heeled Senate staffers being pampered even more ... and on OUR dime!  Check this out:

Senate Office to Host Health Fair for Well-Covered Staffers

As millions of hardworking Americans struggle to make ends meet, Senate staffers will participate next week in a two-day orgy of back massages, organic food tastings and milk mustache photos.
It's all part of a health fair for the staffers, who enjoy some of the best health care in the country.

Not only will they get health screenings, they'll also find out if their iPods are too loud.

Neither the Senate's Education and Training Office nor the Senate sergeant-at-arms, which oversees the office, would say which vendors are providing the services or how much the health fair will cost taxpayers.

But there will be no shortage of vendors providing screenings for visual acuity, chiropractic health, bone density, glaucoma, PSA levels, cholesterol levels and hearing.

The Senate staffers also will be treated to seated massages, herbal teas, polarity therapy, low-fat cheese samples and organic foods. A pharmacist and health coach will be available to speak to fairgoers about their medications, nutrition and healthy lifestyle questions.

Fairgoers can test themselves with brain games and bring their MP3 players to be tested for decibel levels.

The fair, to be held on Thursday and Friday, is not uncommon among federal agencies, a senior Senate aide told FoxNews.com. Fairs of this sort are held every year.

An aide in the sergeant-at-arms office told FoxNews.com in an e-mail that the fair is open to all Senate staff, and there is no fee to attend. The costs to the office, the aide said, are "minimum."

But based on their available health care benefits, Senate staffers don't appear to be in dire need of a health fair.

While the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) offers different types of plans, including PPOs , HMOs and high deductible plans, all include certain benefits such as hospital care, surgical care, inpatient and outpatient care, mental health coverage, substance abuse care and prescription drug coverage.

Senate staffers enrolled in the program don't have waiting periods or coverage limitations on pre-existing conditions.

What an absolute, callous display of insensitivity and privilege.  So what if this has been done in years past!  What morons thought it would be OK to continue with this ostentatious "health fair" on the taxpayers' dime at a time when taxpayers are continually asked to fork over more money to pay for bailouts and senate pay raises!

Democrats are "The Lawyer's Party"

Here's a great forward I received the other day from a friend.  [Thanks, J!]  I found that it was originally published in March of 2008 over at American Thinker.  [Emphasis added]: 

The Lawyer's Party
Bruce Walker

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers.  Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers.  John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth.  Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.)  Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.  Look at the Democrat Party in Congress:  the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.  

The Republican Party is different.  President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen.  The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers.  Newt Gingrich was a history professor;  Tom Delay was an exterminator; and  Dick Armey was an economist.   House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer.  The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?  Gerald Ford, who left office thirty-one years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.  The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work.  The Democratic Party is made up of lawyers.  Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich.

 

The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America.  And so we have seen the procession of official enemies in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party grow.  Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail?  Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. 

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.  Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people.  Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine.  But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.  When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all consuming.   Some Americans become "adverse parties" of our very government.  We are not all litigants in some vast social class action suit.  We are citizens of a republic which promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers. 

Today, we are drowning in laws, we are contorted by judicial decisions, we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives.  America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked.  When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.  When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great.  When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to use, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America.  Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789.  Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders.  Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.  Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work.  Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

 By the way ... no offense intended here to lawyers!  They get a bum rap a lot of times, with people overlooking all the good they actually do.  I do, however, think that we need to have more political leaders with real world experience and fewer of the ivory-tower academes who haven't actually functioned and existed in reality.  Theories only get you so far ... It's reality that truly teaches and changes things.  I think Walker makes a powerful point in how the mindset of a lawyer creates all this political tension and chaos in our society.

Stem Cell Research: New Breakthroughs Diminish Controversy

Several states have recently been caught in the crosshairs of the moral / ethical debate surrounding stem cell research, with many opponents fearing the "harvesting" and wide-scale use of embryonic stem cells. At the time that Missourians, for example, were considering permitting a research facility within its borders (of course, the campaign heavily funded by the research company), my thoughts were if people were even considering the newly emerging stem cell sources that did not involved human embryos.

Fortunately, scientists are brillianty circumventing the controversy, steering stem cell therapies away from the controversial use of embryonic cells to other, non-polemical sources. Here's the most recent example as reported by Eric Young of The Christian Post Reporter (emphasis added):

Christian Physicians Hail New Breakthrough in Stem Cell Research

Christian medical professionals are hailing the latest breakthrough in stem cell research, claiming that it further proves that the destruction of embryos is unnecessary to find cures for disease.

"This breakthrough validates many other significant proofs of the therapeutic promise of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and adult stem cells,” declared Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA), on Monday.

"Compared to the speculative, controversial and dangerous embryonic stem cell research that the [Obama] administration insists on funding illegally, iPS cell and adult stem cell research is a cheaper, faster, safer, more efficient and quicker path to the cures we need,” he added.

On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Derrick J. Rossi of the Children's Hospital Boston revealed its development of a new technique that can quickly and more efficiently create safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells.

The new method, which is featured in the October issue of Cell Stem Cell, uses synthetic RNA to drive the expression of stem cell-inducing proteins without irreversibly altering the cells' genetic material.

The resulting stem cells then are able to recapitulate the functional and molecular properties of human embryonic stem cells, and therefore can be transformed into specialized cells to treat disease.

Furthermore, unlike current methods that use viruses to deliver the genes that “reprogram” a cell into a stem cell, the new method poses little (if any) risk for cancer as RNA doesn’t become part of the cell’s genome. The resulting stem cells are also generated at much higher efficiencies than standard virus-based techniques and in half the time.

If that's not reason enough to celebrate, Rossi - whose team spent more than a year developing the synthetic, chemically-modified RNA - said the new technology also has potential reaching far beyond the stem-cell field.

“In terms of therapeutics, any genetic disease that involves a mutation of a gene that doesn’t make a certain protein, we can now approach that with this technology to reintroduce that protein into those cells and reestablish proper function to those cells,” he reported. “So we think that this is going to be really important for many therapeutic avenues in addition to basic questions of biology.”

After news spread of the latest development, CMA’s Stevens questioned how anyone could continue insisting that the government, “in a time of financial crisis, should continue to shovel hundreds of millions of tax dollars down the black hole of speculative embryo-destroying research.”

"These new iPS cells are safer; there is no evidence of a risk of causing cancer by using viruses to insert genes into cells. The new cells are produced more efficiently, taking just 17 days to create. The new iPS cells are cheaper to develop, can easily tissue match the patient that the therapy are given too and are morally acceptable to all,” Stevens noted. “The fact that these iPS cells strategy can then turn those cells into ones that could be used for transplants is a huge step forward as well."

Notably, despite the highly touted potential of embryonic stem cells, research on embryo-derived cells has yet to treat a single disease. Adult stem cell research, meanwhile, has produced treatments for heart muscle rehabilitation, muscle growth, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, among others. Altogether, more than 80 diseases are already being treated with non-controversial adult stem cells and 1,970 clinical trials with adult stem cells are underway. With embryonic stem cells, there is only one human clinical trial.

“With patients desperately waiting for cures and ethical alternatives showing such great promise, it is increasingly ludicrous to spend and speculate our tax dollars instead on unethical, illegal and cancer-producing embryonic stem cell research,” Stevens remarked.

CMA, which claims a membership of around 16,000 physicians, medical students and allied health professionals, was an original party to a lawsuit that on Aug. 23 won a temporary halting of all federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

A federal appeals court in Washington has since made permanent a stay requested by the Obama administration on the district court judge's order to halt federal funding of the controversial research.

The U.S. government’s funding of embryonic stem cell research, therefore, is allowed to continue as the case against it makes way through the court system.

Supporters of the controversial research emphasize that embryonic stem cells can differentiate into almost any tissue and therefore have the potential to treat a wide range of diseases.

Now THAT is innovation!! Where one technology poses several problems, someone comes up with a solution ... one that is better, cheaper, and faster to boot!

Remember November: Four Weeks and Counting

remembernovember.com

Obama Administration's BP Oil Spill Cover-Up

We saw this coming at the start and as the mess continued over the summer -- the fall-out from the BP oil spill and Obama's ineptness at  dealing with a crisis ... from Dina Cappiello of the AP (emphasis added):

Panel: Feds blocked worst-case Gulf spill figures

Interviews reveal that White House denied a request to make discharge numbers public

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and made other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House in the wake of the April 20 accident.

Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, and President Barack Obama's senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was "gone." The analysis actually said it could still be there.

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report says.

The administration disputed the commission findings, saying senior government officials "were clear with the public public what the worst-case flow rate could be."

In a statement Wednesday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco and White House budget director Jeffrey Zients pointed out that in early May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told the public that the worst-case scenario could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons.

For the first time, the documents — which are preliminary findings by the panel's staff — show that the White House was directly involved in controlling the message as it struggled to convey that it, not BP, was in charge of responding to what eventually became the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Citing interviews with government officials, the report reveals that in late April or early May, the White House budget office denied a request from NOAA to make public its worst-case estimate of how much oil could spew from the blown-out well. The Unified Command — the government team in charge of the spill response — also was discussing the possibility of making the numbers public, the report says.

The White House budget office has traditionally been a clearinghouse for administration domestic policy.

The report shows "the political process was in charge and science really does not have the role that was touted," said Christopher D'Elia, dean of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

But Jerry Miller, head of the White House science office's ocean subcommittee, told The Associated Press in an interview at a St. Petersburg, Fla., scientific conference on the oil spill that he didn't think the budget office censored NOAA.

"I would very much doubt that anyone would put restrictions on NOAA's ability to articulate factual information," Miller said.

The explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, spewed 206 million gallons of oil from the damaged oil well, and sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

BP's drilling permit for the well originally estimated the worst-case scenario to be a leak of 6.8 million gallons per day. In late April, just after the spill began, the Coast Guard and NOAA received an updated worst-case estimate of 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day.

While those figures were used as the basis for the government's response to the spill — they appeared on an internal Coast Guard situation report and on a dry-erase board in NOAA's Seattle war room — they were never announced to the public, according to the report.

However, they were, in fact, announced, as news stories from May 2 to May 5 show, though the figures received little attention at the time.

For more than a month after the explosion, government officials were telling the public that the well was releasing 210,000 gallons per day. In early August, in its final estimate of the spill's flow, the government said it was gushing 2.6 million gallons per day — close to the worst-case predictions.

The documents also criticize Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, saying that during a series of morning-show appearances on Aug. 4, she misrepresented the findings of a federal analysis of where the oil went and incorrectly portrayed it as a scientific assessment that was peer-reviewed by inside and outside experts.

"I think it's also important to note that our scientists have done an initial assessment, and more than three-quarters of the oil is gone," Browner said on NBC's "Today" show.

But the analysis never said it was gone, according to the commission. It said it was dispersed, dissolved or evaporated — meaning it could still be there. And while NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco was more cautious in her remarks at a news conference at the White House later that day, the commission staff accuses the two senior officials of contributing to the perception that the government's findings were more exact than they actually were.

Florida State University professor Ian MacDonald, who has repeatedly clashed with NOAA and the Coast Guard over the size of the spill, the existence of underwater plumes and oil in the sea floor, said he felt gratified by the report.

From the beginning, there was "a contradiction between discoveries and concerns by academic scientists and statements by NOAA," MacDonald said in an interview with the AP at the oil spill conference.

And he said it is still going on. MacDonald and Georgia Tech scientist Joseph Montoya said NOAA is at it again with statements saying there is no oil in ocean floor sediments. A University of Georgia science cruise, which Montoya was on, found ample evidence of oil on the Gulf floor.

And the lies ... er,  "misrepresentations" will continue from this administration.

Green's Creepy "Humor": 10:10 Campaign Draws Harsh Criticism for Violent Ad

This story should make Saturday extra special for you ... you know, October 10th ... "10:10."  Business & Media Institute reports that our wonderful mainstream media (MSM) is oddly silent regarding a shockingly violent ad produced in the UK's branch of the 10:10 movement to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprints by 10%.  Here's the story from Julia Seymour:

The group 10:10 UK’s “No Pressure” video advertisement that was intended to promote its cause begins with a teacher lecturing her students: “Just before you go there’s a brilliant idea in the air that I’d like to run by you. Now it’s called 10:10 – the idea is that everyone starts cutting their carbon emissions by 10 percent, thus keeping the planet safe for everyone, eventually.”

Preaching global warming alarmism to children is nothing shocking, but the next part of the film was. The teacher singles out the two students who are skeptical about participating, presses a red button and BLAM! those children’s bodies explode as blood and guts cover their classmates.

Here's the video clip that has since been pulled from 10:10's website, but still available on YouTube:

And you wonder why people were so upset?!? -- including some of the corporate and celebrity sponsors?  Seymour's report continues:

The violent depiction may be a new low for the environmental movement, but its violent rhetoric has been in use for years. Yet, the response from the liberal news media in the U.S. has been minimal, despite the willingness of the same outlets to portray – without a shred of evidence – conservatives as “incendiary” and violent.

Despite the horrific nature of the video and the message that skeptics should be killed, the television news media media, with the exception of Fox News, haven’t reported on it as of October 5.

The New York Times has run a couple of articles on its website, and James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal wrote a strong condemnation October 5 of the “green supremacists” that created the video. But, so far at least, much of the national news media have ignored the controversy.

The video was outrageous enough to upset even climate-change extremist Bill McKibben, who called it “the kind of stupidity that hurts our side.” Taranto said that the video had “drawn lots of criticism, much of which to our mind is not strong enough.” Perhaps he had the Time magazine’s blog headline in mind which callously read: “Blowing Up British Kids: Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea.”

[Go to the original article for more.]

I went to 10:10global.org's (UK) website to look for their apology:

As you may have heard, last week, 10:10 made a mistake by releasing a short film about cutting carbon which was supposed to be humorous but in the event upset a lot of people.  We quickly realised that we had made a serious mistake and took it down from our website within hours.

We also issued a statement apologising but there has subsequently been quite a lot of negative comment, particularly on blogs, and understandable concern from others working hard to build support for action on climate change.

We are also sorry to our corporate sponsors, delivery partners and board members, who have been implicated in this situation despite having no involvement in the film’s production or release.

I am very sorry for our mistake and want to reassure you that we will do everything in our power to ensure it does not happen again.

10:10 is a young and creative team but we will learn lessons from this. We are going to investigate what happened, review our processes and procedures, and share the results with our partners.  Responsibility for this process is being taken by the 10:10 board of directors.

This media coverage for this film was not the kind of publicity we wanted for the cause of saving the climate, nor for 10:10, and we certainly didn’t mean to do anything to distract from all the efforts of those in other organisations who are working so hard to secure effective action on climate change. 

  

If you have been in touch with us personally about the film, we will be replying to individual emails over the next few days. I’m sorry not to have emailed you about this more quickly - although I have followed developments closely, I’ve been working from home with a four-week-old baby.  I thank you for your patience and your support for the 10:10 campaign.

Eugenie Harvey

Director 10:10 UK

This whole goofy situation reminds me of a story I ran across a few months ago in which a study indicates that a person who is environmentally conscious might also have a morally weak conscience.   Here's what Kate Connolly of the UK's Guardian reported (emphasis added):

How going green may make you mean

Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds

When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.

According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".

Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write. [See footnote].

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

Mazar and Zhong said their study showed that just as exposure to pictures of exclusive restaurants can improve table manners but may not lead to an overall improvement in behaviour, "green products do not necessarily make for better people". They added that one motivation for carrying out the study was that, despite the "stream of research focusing on identifying the 'green consumer'", there was a lack of understanding into "how green consumption fits into people's global sense of responsibility and morality and [how it] affects behaviours outside the consumption domain".

The pair said their findings surprised them, having thought that just as "exposure to the Apple logo increased creativity", according to a recent study, "given that green products are manifestations of high ethical standards and humanitarian considerations, mere exposure" to them would "activate norms of social responsibility and ethical conduct".

Dieter Frey, a social psychologist at the University of Munich, said the findings fitted patterns of human behaviour. "At the moment in which you have proven your credentials in a particular area, you tend to allow yourself to stray elsewhere," he said.

• This footnote was added on 31 March 2010: The study findings above, and the methods used, are challenged by researchers associated with the social psychology department at the London School of Economics, the Institute of Ecological Economy Research in Berlin, and the Institute for Perspective Technological Studies in Seville. Their analysis can be found here: lrcg.co.uk

Gee, I wonder if those researchers who challenge the study might not be Greenies themselves and are simply fighting the unflattering appraisal of the "green consumer" and their "green halos."

Following the fall-out from the public over the ad campaign, I wonder if the 10:10 crowd might consider the "wrongness" of such a nasty ad.  Or, maybe they, like their fellow Greens in the study, think they're high and lofty goals absolve them from responsible advertising.

Mid-Week Laugh: I Needed A Good Chuckle

I am amazed that some good folks continue to check back here in spite of my being pretty much AWOL since school has started.  I think this is the busiest school year EVAH!  I do keep hoping for things to slow down a bit and get into a regular groove, so that I can get back to blogging.  I have a lot of venting to do.  (Sheeesh!  And I ain't even coaching this fall!)

Anyway, while searching for something entirely unrelated on YouTube, I ran across this video.  I love to see a cocky person get his comeuppance.  Check this out!

Sun Chips Biodegradable Bags A Bust

It's tough going green ... and here's another "FAIL!" in the Green movement.

Noisy Sun Chips Bags Sacked 
By Bruce Horovitz

Frito-Lay is preparing to quietly sack its "green" but noisy SunChips bag. 

Roughly 18 months after Frito-Lay, with great fanfare, launched a biodegradable SunChips bag made from plant material that was billed as 100% compostable, the company is yanking the noisy material from the packages of five of six SunChips flavors immediately.

The company is returning them to their former bags that can't be recycled - but won't wake the neighbors - while it works frantically to come up with a new, quieter eco-friendly bag.

The noise of the bag - due to an unusual molecular structure that makes the bag more rigid - has been compared to everything from lawnmowers to jet engines. There's even an active Facebook group with more than 44,000 friends that goes by the name of "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag."
"Clearly, we'd received consumer feedback that it was noisy," says Aurora Gonzalez, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman. "We recognized from the beginning that the bag felt, looked and sounded different."

The bag illustrates the sometimes unexpected bumps that can trip up companies trying to do the right thing environmentally. SunChips sales have declined more than 11% over the past 52 weeks (excluding Wal-Mart, which doesn't share its data), reports SymphonyIRI Group, the market research specialist.

While consumers say they want companies to be more environmentally conscious, consumer pressure continues to be strong for companies' products to be convenient, predictable and consumer-friendly.
"Everybody seems to be on the bandwagon for environmentally friendly packaging," says JoAnn Hines, a packaging consultant who refers to herself as the Packaging Diva. "But the problem is that bags like this come out without researching all the consequences." 

Consumers can be of two minds, too, she adds. While most mothers say they want "greener packaging," Hines says, mothers also are the biggest purchasers of single-serve chip bags.

Environmentalists hope Frito-Lay executives don't give up on a compostable SunChips bag.

"We need a system where composting becomes business as usual in the U.S.," says Gwen Ruta, head of corporate partnerships for the Environmental Defense Fund. "I hope SunChips can move us in that direction."
Frito-Lay says it's trying.

"We are on a journey with compostable packaging," says Gonzalez. Frito-Lay is showing its commitment by sticking with the noisy but compostable packaging for the sixth flavor, its top-selling Original, she says.

"We are applying what we have learned from this first generation to get to the next generation of environmentally friendly packaging," says Gonzalez.

USA TODAY