Day: July 14, 2011

MEMORIES: Thinking about Bayonne

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

I was enjoying an adult refreshment last night at a local establishment. (Shocking I know.)

Comcast’s Cable12 News will be doing a local segment on Friday at 5PM about Bayonne. Heartbroken for my “Bayonne Girl”. Good thing I don’t have cable, it’d make me sad. And, she would have gone to great lengths to see it.

I wonder how our lives would have been different was it not for Jimmy Carter’s gas crisis when I got out of the USAF. I was working in Piscataway and we were up in Bayonne. Even odd. We had even; her brother had odd. I’d go to work and she’d take the other car to wait on the gas line.

We had to move closer to my work.

Hence we left Bayonne and settled in North Brunswick. Soon after, she was diagnosed with diabetes by Doc Ron who was kool, Pragmatically, he reassured her to enjoy life.

She knew from her brother’s life experience what she was in store for. She took it like a trooper. Stoically.

I, on the other hand, was the typical Type A. I wanted confirmation. (Even though intellectually I knew that diagnosis was right.) I wanted her to go to Joslin. I wanted specialists. I wanted experts. I wanted action. I wanted a cure.

She mollified me by going to a Joslin program at Saint Barnabas. They were just a bundle of bad news (i.e., shortened lifespan to age 45 to 50, complications, blindness, infertility, other associated diseases, organ failures). Upon reflection, I can now understand why she just didn’t want to be bothered with it. She knew they were going to tell her bad stuff. But she went to humor me.

The gas crisis eventually ended. But we never moved back to Bayonne. Wonder how it would have been different if we had? Can I blame it all on Doctor Ron? And, maybe if we had done more it would have ended differently.

Yup, she’d have strangled me!

:-)

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POLITICAL: Time magazine, “One Document, Under Siege”; just wrong!

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

http://bigjournalism.com/aworthing/2011/06/29/fourteen-clear-factual-errors-in-richard-stengels-essay-on-the-constitution-and-i-am-looking-for-your-help/

Fourteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengel’s Essay on the Constitution (And I Am Looking for Your Help)

Posted by Aaron Worthing Jun 29th 2011 at 2:49 pm in Featured Story, Mainstream Media, Time Magazine, corrections/retractions, media bias

*** begin quote ***

On June 23, 2011, Time magazine published an essay entitled “One Document, Under Siege” (one page version, here) by Richard Stengel. I consider the publication of this article to be nothing less than a scandal. Besides the deep philosophical disagreements I have with Mr. Stengel, the piece simply fails as journalism. As I will demonstrate in this post, there were fourteen objectively verifiable errors in Mr. Stengel’s piece, half of which could have been discovered simply by reading the Constitution itself.

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Here are the fourteen errors, in short:

1. The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.

2.The Constitution is not law.

3. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.

4. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans.

5. The original Constitution declared that black people were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.

6. The original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.

7. The Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to tax individuals based on whether they buy a product or service.

8. Inter arma enim silent leges translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”

9. The War Powers Act allows the president to unilaterally wage war for sixty days.

10. We have only declared war five times.

11. Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.

12. Social Security is a debt within the meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment.

13. Naturalization depends on your birth.

14. The Obamacare mandate is a tax.

*** end quote ***

I’m not a scholar of anything. Well, maybe of the bits of flotsam passing me by that cause me to react. Here are two bits that attract my eye, and now my keyboard.

When I saw the Time magazine article on the web, I read it.

I saw #1 and #5 in the original Time article and wrote the intire article off to “liberal media bias”. That’s why I never buy magazines and rarely buy a paper.

#1 was outrageous. I knew that from Reading Tom Woods’ stuff.

I spotted #5 thanks to Walter Williams eloquent writing about the “three fifths” as how the Dead Old White Guys dealt with balance in representation.

Impressive collaboration by this author to pull together others to refute the Time article.

Shame on Time for producing such drivel. The sad part is that folks have read it and think it’s correct.

Argh!

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