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Grizzly Mama

There's a Grizzly who has escaped the City of Brotherly Love..(and she's going back to homeschooling!!)

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Location: Out of Philly, Pennsylvania, United States

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." Aristotle - Greek Philosopher.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Healthcare Hell

Courtesy of Mark Steyn.

Mark Steyn has received letters from citizens in countries with socialized medicine. It is not a pretty picture. Here are a couple of selections for your enjoyment:

ONLY 40 MONTHS IN THE QUEUE
"I am now in the queue for replacement surgery and have just another 7-10 months to wait! If I am lucky enough to receive the surgery in that time frame it will have taken nearly 40 months from the first referral to replacement surgery. Yippee!"

THREE DAYS ON A STRETCHER
74 year old Canadian woman dies after lying on a stretcher outside of an emergency room in Quebec for three days.

NEAREST ONTARIO HOSPITAL - IN BUFFALO NEW YORK
No Level 2 NICU available in Canada to accommodate these preemies when they were born. The babies are taken by ambulance to Buffalo, NY - where they stay for 6 weeks.

I found another interesting article over at A Tangled Web. The BBC reports that, as a result of the government demand for greater efficiency, proposals are being made to cut over 150 beds from Belfast's main hospitals. They want to put a hiring freeze on, too. The hiring freeze, of course, would affect front line workers only.







(GET RID OF THE HOSPITAL BEDS, THE WORKERS AND THE PATIENTS!!! THEY ARE TOO EXPENSIVE!!)




I cannot believe that anyone thinks this is a good idea. Billions of pounds are being poured into the NHS - who is getting all of that money? Not the front line workers and certainly not the patients. The bloated bureaucracy wouldn't think of cutting themselves out of the equation.

Socialized Medicine is a LOSER! It has NEVER worked. It NEVER will.

Link

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I Am The Mob

Link

Monday, September 14, 2009

9/12 March on Washington (and elsewhere..)

WAY cool time lapse video of the March on September 12 in Washington DC. You've got to watch this one from SophiaElena. She stands in the middle of the march and records everyone walking by. It's a must-see:


I'm sure you've all seen this time-lapse - but I never get tired of watching it:



AND FROM MY HOMETOWN OF DENVER,COLORADO! Where over 2,000 people showed up to make their feelings known. GO DENVER!!!!!


I will be uploading pics of the March in Washington DC this afternoon. My oldest daughter went with friends of ours. She said it was totally awesome, and the adults that she was with said there were hundreds of thousands there, and probably close to a million.

We must not forget that the Washington DC rally was not the only rally on 9/12. There were many all across the country, in most major cities and they drew thousands at every one.

Ignore us, minimize it, try to marginalize us - you do so at your own peril. Living in denial might work for you for short while, but I wouldn't recommend it as a long term strategy. It's unhealthy. We're not going away.

God Bless America!

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

I Remember Gregory James Malone



I'll start you off with a little haiku tribute to Gregory James Malone and to all of the victims of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001:

We are guardians
Our hearts crumbled on that day
Etched in memory



Gregory James Malone worked on the 84th floor of 2 WTC (South Tower). He worked for Maxcor/Euro Brokers. Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. between floors 77 and 85. I watched it as it happened. My husband called from work telling me to put the TV on. He was working at the airport in the little tower, and they had heard news that something had happened. Sure enough, the North Tower was on fire. I thought, 'There's been a terrible accident.' As we were talking, United Airlines Flight 175 appeared and slammed into the South Tower. I could not speak properly, trying to grasp it.


Greg was 42 years old and has been described as a man's man. He grew up in Rumson, New Jersey and lived in Hoboken. He went to Lehigh University and was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. A bachelor(who looked like he might have been getting ready to settle down..), he loved baseball, fishing and hockey. He joined Euro brokers in 2001 and loved life in the fast lane. He loved the thrill of taking risks, and was a funny and kind man. Survivors include his parents Lawrence and Helen, his sister and brother Jane and Lawrence, and his fiancee Fiona.

Here is the guest book for Gregory at Legacy.com. He is sorely missed by many who knew and loved him.

Here is the profile that Maxco/Euro brokers has online for Gregory. They also have profiles on all of the employees that they lost that day.

Eight years on, we still feel the devastating loss. We are determined never to forget the lives of the people that we lost that day.

Link

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Project 2996

I have signed up again this year to provide a tribute to one of the victims of 9/11. In 2006, DCRoe organized a massive blogburst - and more than 3,000 bloggers participated by each posting a tribute to the life of one of the victims of 9/11. They are doing it again this year. I encourage you to sign up. It was a great experience for me last time - very emotional but it is a way to connect with the fact that the people who died were innocent people whose death affected many who knew and loved them. The catch is: your tribute must celebrate their life. So far about 700 people have signed up - you can too!

I feel particularly compelled to do this now - as Van Jones has indicated his wish to make 9/11 a 'national day of service' celebration or something ridiculous like that. Van Jones, a card carrying member of communist associated groups (STORM, CCDS), also apparently signed a 9/11 Truther petition several years ago. (I see that Van Jones has resigned??)

Anyhoo - enough about that little Marxist. See what follows - an image of the new 'Arms of Project 2996' and the background on it.



Arms:
Per Pale Sanguine and Argent, a Zinnia ensigned in Chief by four Mullets in Fess enarched all counterchanged

Crest:
From a torse of the colors and issuant out of flames a Bald Eagle displayed Proper

Motto:
SEMPER (Always)

Herald (Designed by):
Sandy Turnbull

Artist:
Terry Sarros

The Story
When I decided that Project2996 needed some sort of logo I wanted something a little more dignified than a standard graphic design. I’ve been a fan of heraldry for many years, and recently have become an student of the field, it seemed a natural fit.

The Zinnia is a flower with a very specific connection to 9/11. Zoe and Dana Falkenberg were two of the youngest victims, and their surviving family has asked that people plant Zinnias (Zoe’s favorite flower) as a remembrance. My better half remembered Zoe, during the very first year of 2,996, and we have several Zinnias in our front yard to remember Zoe and her little sister. The four stars above the zinnia represent the four planes and four crash sites of 9/11. The coloring scheme where the shiled is divided into two colors with the charges inverted is called counterchanging, and is used to represent the stark change our country and world went through.


HT Always On Watch.
My tribute from 2006: I remember James Roux.

Link

Thursday, September 03, 2009

"Your Child Belongs to Us..."



Cartoon courtesy of Net Right Nation, which is a blog project of Americans for Limited Government.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

President Obama's Speech to American Students


For those not aware, President Obama's Department of Education is encouraging schools across the nation to play a speech to our kids during class time on September 8th, 2009. I strenuously object to this idea. Here is my letter to my kid's school principal on the matter:

We spoke on the phone earlier today, and I thought that I would provide you with a more detailed explanation as to my objections to the speech that President Obama is encouraging schools to show during class time. In addition, I wanted to correct my source of information. It is not whitehouse.gov, it is www.edu.gov that has the 'menu of classroom activities' on display.

I have several concerns about this, and I will list a few of them.

1. The menu suggests reading books about Barack Obama. We don't believe that the federal government should be in the business of suggesting any kind of reading material for anyone.

2. Several of the questions bother me. One is 'Why is it important that we listen to the President of the United States and other elected officials?' My husband and I don't agree that the federal government should be suggesting to children that listening to our elected officials as if they were authority figures is acceptable. We hold a different view, and that is that our elected officials work for us - not the other way around.

3. Another question is: 'What is the President asking me to do?' Our response is this: Why is the President asking us to do anything? Our children are being raised with our values and beliefs, we are capable of imparting those values to them, and we have chosen a school that holds and promotes the same values that are important to us. Our children already know that getting a good education is important - we don't need the President to tell them.

Furthermore, our beliefs and values do not coincide with those promoted by the Obama Administration. We are pro-life, Libertarian, Christian, and family oriented. We believe that President Obama's speech is an unprecedented intrusion into our children's learning environment.

Some have suggested that this speech can be used as an opening to discuss political events. My children do not need to view this speech as an opening to such. Our family is very politically active, we have many discussions with challenges presented to many sides of one issue and our children are included in many of those discussions. In addition to that, we always encourage our children to consider many different sources of information before forming conclusions of their own.

I hope that this email has made things clearer to you than they were before. I appreciate your time and attention to my concerns. I would appreciate it if you would let me know if any of the teachers are planning on using this video during class.

Sincerely,

Grizzly Mama


When I spoke to my principal about this, she shared that the Diocese had sent the information to her and she had subsequently distributed the material to the teachers. She was quite surprised that I objected. If I hear that they are showing the video, or if I don't hear anything at all, my kids are staying home on Tuesday.