Religious Teapot Tempest

Religious Teapot Tempest

Oh, great someone or something way up there high in the sky we ask your blessings. Amen.

That wasn’t precisely the prayer dictated by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2008. In fact, no prayer was dictated but the tradition of permitting Virginia State Police chaplains to invoke the name of Jesus Christ was ended in favor of a non-denominational “prayer,” if it could be called a prayer, to be offered at all official police functions.

Favored by then-governor Tim Kaine (D), the new rule effectively ended a policy in place since the founding of the volunteer police chaplains organization in 1979. The old rule was just re-instituted by Republican Governor Bob McDonnell.

The new governor said through a spokesman that, “The Governor does not believe the state should tell chaplains of any faith how to pray,” adding, “The Governor believes that longstanding bipartisan policy is the appropriate one. This policy puts the State Police chaplains in the same position as those in the United States Military, Virginia National Guard and other law enforcement agencies:” http://bit.ly/aS4Rsc

Case closed? Hardly. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1654)

Hope and Failure in America's Schools, Part One

Hope and Failure in America's Schools, Part One

. . . Three-quarters of the way through the 2009-2010 school year, schools are very much in the news, both in the good news category and the not so good.

Today, from the Good News Department offering hope for the future:

Virginia Senate Votes to Expand Charter Schools: Much to the chagrin of the National Education Association, President Obama recently endorsed the idea of charter schools as a way of improving and reforming education. The new Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, favors charters as well and now Virginia’s Democratic-controlled Senate is on record as supporting their expansion following approval by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1557)

Ironies On Top of Ironies

Ironies On Top of Ironies

“The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs,” according to Dictionary.com. Put more simply, it’s ironic when things happen that are the precise antitheses of what we would expect or wish to happen.

The world and the nation are awash in ironies today, some salutary, most depressing. A few examples:

Wartime Irony: Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are doing their damnedest to repel and defeat a ragtag bunch of turbaned psychopaths intent on mindless jihad and salivating for those 72 virgins promised by Allah. All they are asked to do is make the ultimate sacrifice and surrender their lives for Islam in the process of killing the infidel enemy.

Yet, though many live in the same primitive squalor in which their forebears lived hundreds of years ago, our troops have been contending with their modern weapons of limited but deadly destruction such as rpg’s, ied’s and other weapons of guerilla warfare furnished by Syria and Iran.

Now, lo and behold, they are upgrading, thanks to the United States. High-tech inclinometers, gyro chips, field-programmable gate arrays and GPS systems developed by our own military to battle their foes are being employed to more effectively cause havoc and kill our soldiers: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49354.

And why is that? “Technology that is legal to buy and sell within the U.S. but is illegal to export because of its potential military applications has been used to build weapons deployed against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because of loose export controls,” according to a GAO report.

So, because of lax enforcement of our laws and greedy exporters, the United States painstakingly and expensively develops technologies which are then illegally sent to our enemies to enable them to prolong the conflict and exact more punishment on America’s military.

Clintonesque Irony: Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, campaigning on a relative shoestring when contrasted with his chief opponent, Terry MacAuliffe, trounced the former Democratic National Committee Chairman and Clinton confidante in Virginia’s gubernatorial primary contest.

Despite his meager funding, a mere $3.7 million, half of fundraiser-extraordinaire McAuliffe’s haul, Deeds was able to whup the former Clintonite and an extreme leftist, Brian J. Moran. He scored almost 50% of the vote in a primary in which only 6% of registered voters bothered to make their voice heard. Deeds was so strapped for cash that he drove himself to campaign appearances in order to save money for television spots.

The wealthy late-starter McAuliffe was considered a shoo-in earlier in the race and stumped the state with his ace in the hole, former President Bill Clinton, hoping that some of Bubba’s charisma would rub off. Instead, some of Bubba’s dirt may have rubbed off as Dems showed once again that they have no loyalty to the past and especially to the Clintons and their henchmen.

Deeds, a middle of the roader, will face conservative Republican Bob McDonnell in 2010, to whom he had lost in 2005 in a run for Virginia attorney general: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49377.

His win over McAuliffe and Moran this time around is testimony to the fact that money and contacts count for little when it comes to Virgina voters. Those voters will have another shot at returning the state to the Republican column after 8 years of wild spending and wilder tax increases under Democrat Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

More ironically relevant, the Clintonistas have been handed their walking papers at the top of which it reads, “Your era and charisma have come and gone.”

Israeli Irony: The Jewish website Haaretz.com was almost giddy in its report on November 5th, 2008 that about 77% of American Jews had voted for Barack Obama over John McCain, according to exit polling. Alleging two years of smears, Jeremy Ben-Ami of the J Street lobby group said, “Surrogates and right-wing political operatives in our community stopped at nothing in their efforts to sway Jewish voters against Obama.” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1034574.html

Well, obviously, any swaying was ineffective at best and Jeremy got his wish in the election of Obama with the help of a near-record number of American Jews. Jewish voters . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)