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keep a lighthouse

More isn’t always better, Linus. Sometimes it’s just more.
Pick one.
I don’t know anything about–
Don’t take a picture. Just look.
Ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean.
Quaint little fishing village. Ocean, ocean.
Lighthouse. Guy going into the lighthouse.
There’s a job for you.
What must that be like?
What kind of a guy takes a job keeping a lighthouse? 
Today, that’s what I wanna do…for some reason…keep a  lighthouse

Points for recognizing from whence this movie quote comes from…


									

Insulting questions…

when did we become so stupid?

This is a question on a safety test I’m currently taking:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1

“We” lost

I believe my wife  was right on, when she said many will vote for the opposing party, due to angst over the current state of the union.

I believe she’s been proven right.

I hope the ‘change’  that Barack has touted will come, will prove to be change for good, and not for evil.

Only time will tell…

R

VOTED

Wel, it’s over for another 4 years.

If folks ask how I voted, all I have to say is “I’m a pro-life, liberty loving capitalist”.

I am increasingly becoming convinced that decent, thinking people are ready to take the US further down a Marxist ideological path,

all for the sake of electing an administration that supposedly cares more about the environment, social justice, change and ‘the little guy’.

Or, because John McCain supposedly represents BIG BUSINESS BIG MONEY BIG TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH  blah blah blah…

It’s gotten to the point that decent, thinking people that I thought knew better, are unwilling to debate on a rational plane, Obama’s far left ideology.
Notice, I didn’t  even bring up religion…..

‘Spread the Wealth Around’ Comment Comes Back to Haunt Obama

I’m sorry folks, I’ve never been a fan of mandatory redistribution of wealth…
or > NARAL(interesting who they fully endorse)

…some interesting comments there too…

or > pro-abortion  stances:

AT A GLANCE

  • Reproductive Choice: Obama has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving a women’s right to choose under Roe v. Wade a priority as president.
  • Obama also supports expanded access to contraception, health information and preventive services to reduce unintended pregnancies.

OBAMA’S PLAN

  • Protecting a Women’s Right to Choose: Obama will make safeguarding women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn that decision.
  • Reducing Unintended Pregnancy: Obama will work to reduce unintended pregnancy by guaranteeing equity in contraceptive coverage, providing sex education, and offering rape victims accurate information about emergency contraception.

OBAMA RECORD

  • Throughout his career, in both the Illinois Senate & the US Senate, Obama has stood up for a women’s right to choose, consistently earning 100% ratings from pro-choice groups.

or> One who leans toward a pro-gay platform( I acknowledge his desire to allow states rights to have jurisdiction here, and his belief that marriage is a M/W)

However, seen as a whole, it is my belief, that an Obama administration, coupled with a left-leaning judiciary, would do little to dissuade homosexual agendas from being even further pushed onto very young minds via public schooling.

I realize that these are divisive issues.

And I know some of my ‘progressive’ friends will chalk these sentiments up to me being narrow, or ultra-fundamental or what ever…

I would counter that on at least some of these issues, I have the burden of scripture on my side (for those who care about that sort of thing).

me

Protect Our Kids from Preschool

Barack Obama says he believes in universal preschool and if he’s elected president he’ll pump “billions of dollars into early childhood education.” Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. Democratic governors across the country — including in Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia — have made a major push to fund universal preschool in their states.

But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them? Not according to available evidence.

“Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes,” says James Heckman, a University of Chicago Noble laureate in economics whose work Mr. Obama and preschool activists routinely cite. “But the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations.”

Mr. Obama asserted in the Las Vegas debate on Jan. 15 that every dollar spent on preschool will produce a 10-fold return by improving academic performance, which will supposedly lower juvenile delinquency and welfare use — and raise wages and tax contributions. Such claims are wildly exaggerated at best.

In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the nation’s report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.

Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now — two major organizations pushing universal preschool — refuse to take this evidence seriously. The private preschool market, they insist, is just glorified day care. Not so with quality, government-funded preschools with credentialed teachers and standardized curriculum. But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia — both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago — paint an equally dismal picture.

A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP. Oklahoma, in fact, lost ground after it embraced universal preschool: In 1992 its fourth and eighth graders tested one point above the national average in math. Now they are several points below. Ditto for reading. Georgia’s universal preschool program has made virtually no difference to its fourth-grade reading scores. And a study of Tennessee’s preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus nonpreschool kids on any subject after the first grade.

What about Head Start, the 40-year-old, federal preschool program for low-income kids? Studies by the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly found that although Head Start kids post initial gains on IQ and other cognitive measures, in later years they become indistinguishable from non-Head Start kids.

Why don’t preschool gains stick? Possibly because the K-12 system is too dysfunctional to maintain them. More likely, because early education in general is not so crucial to the long-term intellectual growth of children. Finland offers strong evidence for this view. Its kids consistently outperform their global peers in reading, math and science on international assessments even though they don’t begin formal education until they are 7. Subsidized preschool is available for parents who opt for it, but only when their kids turn 6.

If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids. A 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., a 1970s program in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a 1980s program in Chicago, Ill., all report a net positive effect on adult crime, earnings, wealth and welfare dependence for participants. But the kids in the Michigan program had low IQs and all came from very poor families, often with parents who were drug addicts and neglectful.

Even so, the economic gains of these programs are grossly exaggerated. For instance, Prof. Heckman calculated that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent — not even remotely close to the $10 return that Mr. Obama and his fellow advocates bandy about.

Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents — the vast majority — might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.

Yet that is precisely what Mr. Obama would do. His “Zero-to-Five” plan would increase federal outlays for early education by $10 billion — about 50% of total government spending on preschool — and hand block grants to states to implement universal preschool. This will make the government the dominant source of funding in the early education marketplace, vastly outpacing private spending.

If Mr. Obama is serious about helping children, he should begin by fixing what is clearly broken: the K-12 system. The best way of doing that is by building on programs with a proven record of success. Many of these involve giving parents control over their own education dollars so that they have options other than dysfunctional public schools. The Obamas send their daughters to a private school whose annual fee in middle school runs around $20,000. Other parents deserve such choices too — not promises of subsidized preschool that they may not want and that may be bad for their kids.

Ms. Dalmia is senior analyst and Ms. Snell is director of education policy at the Reason Foundation.

a sad day cometh

Though I do not yet know the details, I have heard that the venerable Jan Mee is being sold!

Suffice it to say, it will take some time before the full effects are known…

Little Women…again

What a great movie.

NEA

The NEA Spells Out Its Policies 

The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, DC over the Fourth of July weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as “Gay marriage causes Global Warming only because we are so hot”, “Hate is not a family value,” “The ‘Christian Right’ is neither,” and “Gay Rights are civil rights.”The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions which now become the NEA’s official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.

NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a “single-payer health care plan” (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps “to change activities that contribute to global climate change.”

The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language (even though this is supported by more than 80% of Americans).

The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans, or public support of any kind to non-public schools. The NEA opposes homeschooling unless kids are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar homeschooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools (even though their parents pay school taxes, too).

The NEA wants many additional (job-creating) services and programs to be provided by public schools such as early childhood education (i.e., baby-sitting for pre-schoolers). NEA resolutions call for “programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight,” and for “mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.”

NEA resolutions include all the major feminist goals such as “the right to reproductive freedom” (i.e., abortion on demand); “comparable worth” (i.e., government control of wages according to feminist ideology rather than the free market); full funding for the feminist boondoggle called the Women’s Educational Equity Act; and “the use of non-sexist language” (i.e., censoring out all masculine words such as husband and father).

The NEA even urges its affiliates to work for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA was declared dead by the U.S. Supreme Court 26 years ago.

The influence of the gay lobby is pervasive in dozens of NEA resolutions adopted by 2008 convention delegates. Diversity is the code word used for pro-gay indoctrination in the classroom.

The NEA’s Diversity resolution makes clear that this means teaching about “sexual orientation” and “gender identification,” words that are repeated in dozens of resolutions. The NEA demands that “diversity-based curricula” even be imposed on preschoolers. NEA convention delegates were invited to an Open Hearing by the SOGI Committee in Room 149A on July 1. In case you don’t know, SOGI stands for Sexual Orientation Gender Identification.

The NEA urges its members to offer “diverse role models” by the “hiring and promotion of diverse education employees in our public schools.” The NEA puts domestic partnerships and civil unions on an equal footing with marriage.

The NEA wants every child (i.e., regardless of age) to have “direct and confidential access [i.e., without notification to parents] to comprehensive health [i.e., including learning how to use condoms for premarital sex], social, and psychological programs and services.” The NEA wants all sex education courses, textbooks, curricula, instructional materials and activities to include indoctrination about sexual orientation and gender identification plus warnings about homophobia.

The NEA wants public schools to take over the physical and mental care of students through school clinics that provide services, diagnosis, treatment, family-planning counseling, and access to birth control methods “with instruction in their use.” Family planning clinics are called on to “provide intensive counseling.”

The NEA is very generous with taxpayers’ money spent on illegal aliens. The NEA not only favors amnesty for illegal alien students, but also in-state college tuition and financial aid to illegal alien college students.

The NEA is strong for “multicultural education,” which the resolution makes clear does not mean studying facts about different countries and cultures. It means “the process of incorporating the values” and influencing “behavior” toward the NEA’s version of “the common good,” such as “reducing homophobia.”

Of course, the NEA supports “global education” to teach “interdependency in sharing the world’s resources.” It’s also no surprise that the NEA adamantly opposes any requirement that schools “schedule a moment of silence.”

Will parents be silent about the radical goals of their children’s teachers?


R.O.W.

This is Redistribution of Wealth.

Gov Sarah Palin brought up that phrase last night in discussing the dems propsed tax hike on those earning >259K.

It’s a subject I’ve tossed about as well, and which will likely have far reaching effects should our opponent win the seat in the White House.

I know there are those who think that ROW is a good thing.

However, I would challenge those folks to point to a society such as ours, who enjoy our levels of freedom, where it has enjoyed a positive, and sustained run.

It is usually spun, using the guilt method.

I.E. “you’re taking food away from the hungry”

or

“you’re forcing children out onto the streets” etc etc etc

or

“my aunt Roberta is now a prostitute thanks to Ronnie Reagan”

So,  to use a word that Joe Biden repeatedly used in last nights debate, a FUNDAMENTAL worldview/paradigm difference exists between the two parties.

It seems to trace it’s roots back to the subtle inclusion of Marxist principles into our society, which I believe have blossomed during the late 50’s era forward. (this would bear researching at a greater level)

Anyway, the debates roll on..

Oh, and BTW, I’m almost shocked to hear the Dems adopt a hardline position as to the cause of Global warming.

Despite extremely compelling evidence to the contrary, they are insisting that humans have caused this phenomenon, solely due to carbon emissions.

ugh…

later

‘Low Hanging Fruit’

Man, here’s one phrase that just cracks me up.

We had a recent Bungee-Boss, who used that at every opportunity..

And today, a new employee used it, and it made me smile.

Wow…what a hippie

Just stumbled onto this pic from last year..

I can’t believe my hair was this long!

bein Celtic in Woolwich

The fam went to Woolwich today to meet up with a couple we’ve been e-mailing with for some weeks now regarding a shared desire to do some celtic music..

It was very cool, and we shared some lunch, played a buncha Celtic stuff, enjoyed a Pumpkinhead beer, & had a lovely Maine day overall.

 

what a waste…

I’m sitting at my desk, watching a fellow presumably from a property management company, across the street.

He’s using a leaf/stuff blower to ‘clean’ off the sidewalk.

Why am I posting about it?

Because:

1) it’s fairly windy out anyway

2) there’s like nothing worthy of blowing on ther sidewalk…they’re pretty clean!

He’s really blowing dust into the air.

Leaves haven’t fallen off the trees  in town yet .
geez..

and heeeeeeere we go!

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/12/abc-edits-out-palin-objection-to-holy-war-question/

 

deja vu?

or what…

ABC..Dan Rather…Bush..ABC…Bush…Dan Rather…

My newest toy…

She’ll make her debut tomorrow in Bridgton

Today’s Focus Index…

Politics - 2008

Ok, I guess I’d better just start poasting today…

Rather than say oh…, I’m not gonna debate politics, or it’s just too divisive(which it can be),

or each candidate has strengths & weaknesses so I’ll stay neutral for the sake of friendships etc

Screw that

It is what it is..and it’s gonna get messy

From what I can gather about the candidates qualifications & worldviews,

I’m voting for McCain/Palin!!!!

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