A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by. He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, “Perfect timing. You’re just like Frank.”
Passenger: ‘Who?’
Cabbie: “Frank Feldman. He’s a guy who did everything right all the time.. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time.”
Passenger: “There are always a few clouds over everybody.”
Cabbie: “Not Frank Feldman He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy.”
Passenger: “Sounds like he was something really special.”
Cabbie: “There’s more… He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody’s birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, he could do everything right.”
Passenger: “Wow, some guy then.”
Cabbie: “He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman
Passenger: “An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?”
Cabbie: “Well, I never actually met Frank. He died. I’m married to his widow.”

***

Mess with Grammy at your own risk

(Watch video below.  The chuckling you hear is that of the photographer.)

***

The Department of Defense briefed the President this morning and told OBAMA that two Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq. To everyone’s surprise, all the color drained from Obama’s face. Then he collapsed onto his desk, head in his hands, visibly shaken, almost in tears.

Finally, he composed himself and asked, “Just how many is a brazilian?”

This is especially enlightening since he obviously has no understanding of billion or trillion either.

***

By: Scott Wheeler

Last week Republican Jim Tedisco conceded the race for the 20th District in New York to Wall Street Democrat Scott Murphy after some of the absentee ballots were counted in the special election held March 31st.

After the lead changed hands several times over the last three weeks, Murphy was leading by a few hundred votes out of the over 155,000 ballots cast.

Tedisco conceded with class compared to the way Democrats handle such matters. If Democrats are behind by a certain percentage they automatically assume they can find that number of votes one way or another. Oftentimes that means finding bags full of ballots in the trunks of cars, or attempting to disqualify absentee votes cast by members of the military.

There is nothing sacrosanct to a Democrat seeking power. It is a safe bet that if Murphy had been down by the number of votes that triggered Tedisco’s concession, the 20th district would be swarming with lawyers claiming vote fraud and accusing Tedisco of stealing the election and their fellow Democrats in the press corps would dutifully report whatever the Democrats needed them to say.

Obama is quickly trying to claim this as some kind of victory for himself. Obama said Murphy “courageously championed the economic plans we need to lift our nation and put it on a better path, and he will continue to do so in Congress.”

One of those “economic plans” was Obama’s nearly $1 trillion spending bill that no one read before voting for it.

Obama’s so-called “stimulus bill” contained a bailout for Insurance giant American Insurance Group (AIG), including the highly controversial bonuses for AIG executives. The facts staring back at Obama are that just five months earlier, the very same district gave Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand a 24-point margin of victory.

Now in an unusually high turnout for a special election, it ended in a statistical dead heat. Interestingly, Obama stayed out of the race fearing a Murphy loss would be seen as a referendum against his presidency. But on the day before the election when Obama saw that Murphy had a steady 8-point surge in the polls and was sure to win by a decisive margin, he jumped in with a last-minute endorsement and the White House, through the back door, was selling this through their surrogates in the press as a referendum on his presidency.

Then when it ended in a tie suggesting a dramatic rebuke of Obama, no one in the media considered it a referendum on his presidency any longer. If it had been a clear Murphy win, rest assured the media would be crowing about how popular Obama is and that the Democrats are unstoppable.

The thick irony about the special election is that Democrat Scott Murphy is the personification of what the Democratic Party says is wrong with the country.

He was a Wall Street financier; he had outsourced jobs to India; he lived well and paid himself and his top executives big bonuses; he was a real life Gordon Gekko.

Now, let me be clear, I absolutely support capitalism and free market economics — it is the Democrats who don’t. If Murphy had been a Republican, Democrats and the press would have savaged him for his big business background, and he couldn’t have gotten elected dog catcher. But liberals are duplicitous.

During the campaign, one of the New York papers called me for an interview to discuss the candidates and when I mentioned Murphy’s background to the reporter he asked, “What do you have against rich people?” I told him I have nothing against business people who do well for themselves, but these are the very people that Democrats tell us are what is wrong with America — this is about Democrat hypocrisy.

In the end, the special election in New York District 20 was less about the two people running and more about voters concern for their country and what Obama’s policies mean for our future. That is why a 24-point Democrat advantage in November was reversed. It is a clear message to Obama.

Arrogance, however, has desensitized him to such a loud outcry.

Scott Wheeler is executive director of The National Republican Trust PAC (GOPtrust.com), the nation’s third-largest political action committee.

( I have no words to add to this crystal clear analysis.)

“Songbird Susan Boyle sells out” reads a headline as news got out that Susan Boyle, overnight singing sensation on Simon Cowell’s “Britains Got Talent” show, had been through a makeover. Her hair has been cut and given a semi-permanent rinse, her abundant eyebrows have been shaped – all done in the local Miss Toner salon in Whitburn, Scotland, at a cost of 35 pounds ($51). She is currently reported to be wearing a fashionable leather jacket and a Burberry scarf.

Susan Boyle, 47, previously described as dowdy, lives alone with her cat, Pebbles. She cared for her ill mother until she died a couple of years ago. She said, “I wanted to make this a tribute to my mother, so it was  something I wanted to do, so I had to get on with it. That’s where the courage came from, my mother.”

Now, having survived the qualifying portion of the show and globally famous, we await her next appearance scheduled toward the end of May.   Also, Susan says: “I’m going to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS and other American networks. I didn’t realize this would be the reaction, I just went onstage and got on with it.”

TheStar.com reports from Jackie Russell, manager at the Happy Valley Hotel on the village’s main street, Bathgate Rd., where Boyle has sung karaoke on a regular basis, that  she’s “a very quiet person, very unassuming … just a normal down-to-earth girl.”

“People in the village – it’s just a village, there’s only 5,000 people in it – but everybody knew that Susan could sing,” said Russell. “It just took a while for the world to hear her sing.

Susan Boyle Sings “Cry Me A River”

My favorite review of Susan’s media splash comes from British author, Joanna Bogle, whose work I have long admired. She writes:

Now comes the best bit. Susan Boyle is middle-aged, unmarried, a practising Catholic, born the ninth child in a large family. She spent many years caring for her elderly mother. She is jolly, with an infectious grin and a great cheery laugh. She epitomises a way of life that is routinely despised: hard-working, chaste, cheerful in the face of life’s everyday difficulties. She developed her singing talents with persevering dedication. Her lifestyle and the belief system which has nourished it are absolutely the reverse of the angry, self-regarding, me-first mentality which is meant to be the way to get ahead in modern Britain. Instead, she’s been formed by faith, family, courage, good humour, and honest work.

One blog comment read: “ I wish her all the best and only one piece of advice, get a good decent lawyer to go over your contract. Don’t get taken for a ride by the Mu$ic Machine.”

Susan Boyle has the talent and now she has the recognition. I think that anyone who has suddenly acquired fame and influence needs prayer. Her life will never be the same. Let us pray that as she “gets on with it”  she will seek to please both her mother and her God.

Here is her tear-jerking performance on “Britains’ Got Talent.”

Usually when someone sits down at my computer they complain that the mouse is on the left side and that doesn’t work for them. Since I’ve been right-handed from Day One, what’s the scoop? The answer is simple: I’ve changed a habit. About ten years ago when the right side of my neck was annoying me, I thought maybe it was the result of too much right-handed computer use and I tried switching to the left. By now, left-handed clicking has become second-nature. The neck is still annoying but I learned something about habits. Even old dogs can change them.

Later, when troubled by a left hip problem, I thought perhaps it was because I always cross my left leg over my right. So, I switched.   Now I’m comfortable with my legs crossed either way. The hip problem did disappear and I’ve become fascinated by habits.

When I got my Jeep I had a whole batch of old habits that needed to change and I wondered if I was up to it.   Now, three months later, I have a whole batch of new Jeep habits (the old ones still lurk a little but are on their way out). The habit I’ve had to work hardest on was clicking my seat belt in place. On my old Olds it was easy. I could do it without looking. The Jeep was obstinate. It refused to cooperate and I would have to turn and look in order to click. Somehow, it has finally happened – it will usually click into place without my looking. I do not understand what I am doing different. My hands seem to have learned what my brain couldn’t. I am pleased but puzzled.

Habits can be useful – or not. I had never really studied them before. I have developed the habit of taking my morning medication right after I make my bed. It works for me. I squat when picking something up from the floor instead of bending over. I figure it is good for my quads.

Sometimes I wish I could go back and do my parenting over again. I would pay more attention to what my kids are learning from me. I read about a woman who suffered with a husband who always left doors and drawers open. When she finally visited his family, she understood. That was what was done in their home! I notice with pleasure that when grandson Jaime visits, he always takes his glass or plate and leaves it in the kitchen sink. Chalk one up for his mother, Mary!

Habits can work for us or against us. An ingrained undesirable habit can be very difficult to replace but it is worth the effort. I’m a firm believer in (a) the power of practice and (b) the power of prayer. “All things are possible with God.”

Lately I’ve taken to genuflecting in church on my left knee. Why? Because I can. Because for 85 years I’ve done it the other way.  I don’t want to grow up lopsided.

~~~

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. — Proverbs 22:6

Having already read five or six books about Mother Teresa, when I was offered Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire by Joseph Langford, M. C., I accepted it but doubted that I was going to learn anything new.  How wrong I was!  This is a marvelous book, abounding in insights into Mother Teresa and her prayer life.

Father Joseph Langford is the priest who founded with Mother Teresa the Missionaries of Charity Fathers.  Thirty years ago (1979) Mother won the Nobel Peace prize.  Before that, in 1972, Father Langford first “met” her when he chanced upon a book in a bookstore near St. Peter’s Square.  The picture of Mother on the cover of Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge drew him into a personal quest.  “Who was this woman?  How had she managed, in an instant, to touch the deepest part of me?  How had she suddenly brought me to the end of a lifelong search, when I wasn’t even aware that I was searching?”

From that time on Father Langford made it his business to learn as much as he could about Mother Teresa’s life, especially about her transforming encounter with Jesus on the train to Darjeeling (September 10, 1946) when Jesus  gave her the “call within a call” that caused her to leave the convent and start picking up people in the streets of Calcutta.  Father Langford was also especially intrigued by the signs Mother posted in the chapels in all her houses reading, “I thirst.”  What did these words mean to Mother Teresa?  What do they mean to us?

Following the great grace Mother received on the train, she also received in 1946 and 1947 a series of internal communications and tableaus showing her the poor and their neediness.   As Jesus explained to Mother, “They don’t know me — so they don’t want me.”   The poor, of course, were not only in Calcutta but in our modern society that does not know God. Mother Teresa was to show them God’s light.   However, anyone who has read the recent book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, by Father Kolodiejchuk, knows about the long, long years of spiritual darkness she herself suffered once her visitations by Jesus ceased.   Yet, as Jesus did not come down from the cross, “Mother Teresa never sought respite or escape – only the means to continue.”   “Her dark night was a school of the spirit, where she learned to cling to God even in her pain – all the while serving the pain of others, rather than being lost in her own.”

Mother Teresa chose to be poor herself, rising at 4:40 AM, with fasting and penances in order to share the plight of the poor.  She slept on a hard prison bed, with no fan, in a tiny room which was both sleeping space and office.  She had a table and stool for furnishing, without radio or TV.  She taught that silence was necessary for the prayer of the heart in which we can open ourselves to God.

Mother  recorded a conversation with Jesus following the life-changing event on the train.  She told him how sinful and weak she was, how afraid she was of suffering, how much she loved comfort.  She reports Jesus as saying: “You are I know the most incapable person – weak and sinful, but just because you are that – I want to use you for My glory.  Will thou refuse?”

She answered Christ’s question with her life.  In Father Kolodiejchuk’s recent book, mentioned above, it is said that when Mother was dying in the hospital she was overheard to say, “Jesus, I never refused you anything.”

God’s love for us is unconditional.  Our bad behavior does not cause him to love us less.  The “hound of heaven” is always seeking after us.  He always thirsts for our love.  “The only thing God ‘hates’ is sin (never the sinner); and that, too, is entirely out of love – as a grieving mother “hates” the cancer eating away at her dying child.”

I have often wondered how the God who is infinite and unchanging can be described as tender, compassionate,  longing, thirsting, or grieved.  Father Langford’s explanation goes thus:

There is something essential to the nature of love – and therefore to the nature of God – that makes the lover vulnerable to the one loved, not out of need or lack, but out of free and sovereign choice.  A mother does not “need” her newborn child in any essential way, but by her freely chosen love she makes herself vulnerable to the child, to his needs, to his pain, to his love.  Love and vulnerability, love and sensitivity, go hand in hand ….. Mother Teresa taught insistently the importance and significance of our poor human love to the heart of God – that God not only welcomes our love but yearns to be loved by us…In the words of St. Augustine, ‘Deus sitit sitiri” (God thirsts to be thirsted for.)

It is never too late to for God to use us.  I’ve been blogging for a year now and  I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised to find myself, an old lady, thinking maybe this is what God wants me to do for the time being.  As Fr. Langford writes:

When [Mother Teresa] first stepped out alone into the slums, leaving behind her familiar existence, she was almost forty years old.  Later, she would launch a pioneering network of AIDS shelters at the age of seventy.  And by the time our community of priests was approved, she was already eighty-two.

What does Jesus’ thirst mean to us?  “God is waiting for us; God is longing for us.   God is ‘lonely’ for us.  But remember, God waits for us in those who are helpless; God longs for us in those who seek for comfort; God is lonely for us in every human heart.”

Father Langford says writing this book was an effort to pay forward all that Mother Teresa gave to him.   He has included three beautiful meditations in the book as well as four appendices with quotes from Mother Teresa, Scripture, and other spiritual writers.  If I had  to choose only one book about Mother Teresa, this would be the one.

It’s all here.  This book contains the secret to becoming the saint that God calls you to be.

~~~

If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. – John 7:37

Be holy.  Holiness is the easiest way to satiate Jesus’ thirst – His for you and yours for Him. — Mother Teresa

Yesterday has gone; tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin.  – Mother Teresa.

Easter-time was coming up.  My tenant, Jon,  is Chinese so I am not very surprised when he comes back from the Assi Plaza in Flushing, NY,  with some unusual purchase.   This year is was a soccerball-sized fruit covered with spines that looked like this.

He called it a durian.   It has the reputation of smelling awful.

Naturally I looked it up on Google.  Durian is described as the King of Fruits.  I followed a link that described it as “having a succulent creamy filling but smelling like stinky socks.”  One person wrote that “some of us who held it on our tongues for a while tasted something sweetly strange, otherworldly, and inviting.”   Another link described it as being banned in public places such as subways, malls and hotels.   Hotels in Singapore actually post signs in the rooms forbidding bringing in durian.

As Good Friday approached I planned to attend the morning prayer service  and watch (again) The Passion of the Christ in the afternoon.   It was on Good Friday morning (after morning prayer) that Jon decided we needed to show our strange fruit to his friend, John, who runs a farmer’s market.  In the presence of his bemused friends Jon proceeded to separate the husk of the durian along its natural lines of cleavage.  A durian has five compartments, each containing the creamy flesh surrounding a large brown seed.  In a strange way the contents of each compartment were reminiscent of a fetus and delivering all five sections reminded me of delivering quintuplets.

We tasted the creamy flesh, of course.  Though it has been described as somewhat akin to vanilla pudding, it was oniony.  We had read that they make durian ice cream, but didn’t think  that a good idea.   However, we also read that Malaysians cook it with coconut milk and sweet rice, and we decided that was the route to go.  On the way home we stopped at the Asian market for the required rice and coconut milk.

On Good Friday afternoon Jon cooked it up – with lots of sweet rice, some honey, vanilla, nutmeg and the best coconut milk.   It turned out so-so, a custardy rice pudding.  With well over twelve dollars invested so far, it couldn’t go to waste.  He added sugar and lots of lemon zest. He took it home to his family for Easter.  It was still so-so and was eaten on tortilla chips — interesting but still not a big hit.

I must add that Jon has worked as a baker in the past.  He took a batch of his durian mix, added whole wheat flour, yeast, and fish sauce.  After much kneading,  he baked a bunch of little round rolls which smell like bread and with butter (Smart Balance) were actually quite good. The insides were moist (because of the rice) and they had a nice lemony taste.   Then came more rolls and a loaf of bread.  Also nice and quickly eaten.  Over the next two days he  produced another five loaves of bread, sliced them up and put them in the freezer.  What a comeback!  The durian had risen to new life!  It was like a miracle!

It is said that the durian seeds can be sliced and fried.   We have yet to try that.

ooo

Things I thought I’d never do but did:  I ate a handful of dried guppies, also courtesy of friend Jon.

A month or so ago,  Immaculée Ilibagiza was a guest on Sunday Night Live with Father Groeschel (EWTN, 7 PM).   Immaculée was a Tutsi in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide in which a million people are estimated to have been slaughtered. When she thought there was no hope of escape she says she heard a voice saying, “You’ve been praying all these years. You know he’s real. Why don’t you ask him to help you?” Faith arose in her and she prayed, “I trust you with all my heart. You are God Almighty and you are here.” Immaculée survived because she was hidden in a tiny bathroom with six other women for three months. Almost all of her family was killed.

Our Lady of Kibeho is Immaculée’s third book, but the first one I have read. She was eleven years old in Rwanda in the early 1980’s, a devout child in a Catholic family, when she first heard about the appearances of the Virgin Mary to the children in Fatima.   She took a girl friend and her little brother to pray the rosary on the top of a small mountain (imitating the three children at Fatima) and asked the Virgin to come to Rwanda. Mary didn’t appear and they soon gave up going to the mountain to pray. “Three weeks after Jeanette and I quit climbing he mountain to pray for the Virgin Mary to appear, my father arrived home from work and exclaimed in a loud voice that there had been a miracle in Rwanda.”

This was the beginning of a series of remarkable apparitions of Mary (and even Jesus) to teenage  children in Kibeho between 1981 and 1989. When Mary first appeared to 16-year-old Alphonsine in the school dining hall she identified herself with “I am the Mother of the Word”  (Nyina wa Jambo in their native language.)  In subsequent years she appeared to 7 other children, including one boy.

The thing I find most fascinating about the many apparitions in Kibeho is that they were recent, in-our-time happenings. There were microphones, tape recorders, and photographs. The apparitions were discussed on the radio and viewed by thousands. Though Immaculée did not personally go to Kibeho during  the apparitions, her father made frequent pilgrimages there and would bring home tapes. “As long as I live I will never forget the moment the Virgin Mary appeared to Alphonsine,” my father vowed to my mother, my brothers, and me. The girl was reciting a Hail Mary when her body suddenly convulsed, as if a jolt of electricity shot through her, yet the look on her face was one of total love. Her eyes were transfixed, locked on the sky, and brimming with tears of happiness. I knew she had to be looking at the Virgin-–nothing else could have created that expression.”   They talked together for a couple of hours, Alphonsine sang, danced, and “when she finished singing, Alphonsine fell flat on her face like a sack of stones,” Dad said.

Another time the Virgin told Alphonsine she was going on a journey over night during which she would seem to be dead.   Alphonsine left instructions that though she might appear to be dead she was not to be buried.   Examiners concluded that “the young woman was alive, but barely. Her pulse rate was impossibly slow, her blood pressure was low, and her breathing virtually non-existent.” They were unable to move her and her limbs “were so locked in position that if she hadn’t been breathing the nurse would have concluded that rigor mortis had set in.”  Eighteen hours later Alphonsine got up and went about her daily life. She said she was shown heaven, hell and purgatory.

And this is just a little about one of the visionaries!

You can imagine that over eight years with eight visionaries there are many stories and many messages. The Virgin asked people to repent, to pray the Rosary and the Seven Sorrows of our Lady, to build a shrine, and, of course, to follow her Son.

One seer reported a vision of what would happen in Rwanda if people would not believe and heed her messages — “people killing each other, blood running, fire burning on the hill, mass graves, beheaded bodies, skulls put apart.” A decade later, in 1994, a terrible civil war broke out in Rwanda in which millions were killed with machetes and the bodies dumped in the Kagera river.  Rampant AIDS was the result of the promiscuity the Virgin had warned about.

Seer Marie Claire received the message that the world  is at “the edge of catastrophe” because it has turned against God.

It was not until after the war the Catholic Church approved the first three visionaries (Alphonsine Murmureka, Nathalie Mukamazimpaka, and Marie Claire Mukangango.)   On 29 June 2002 in a 23-page report after study by both a medical and theological commission it was the judgement of
the Bishop Augustin Misago of Gikongoro, Rwanda, that “nothing that they said or did during the apparitions is contrary to Christian faith and morals. Their message is in conformity with the Sacred Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church.”

One of the original three visionaries, Nathalie Mukamazimpaka, now a cloistered nun, is seen in this present day video.

Kibeho today

There is just so much information available that I am not at all content with this sketchy blogpost about these little known apparitions in Africa.   There is much more to be found on the internet.   Too, I need to emphasize that Catholics are not obliged to accept such apparitions as from God regardless of their approval by church authority.

Immaculée Ilibagiza’s previous books are Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwanda Genocide and Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst
the Rwandan Holocaust (both with Steve Irwin). She was born in Rwanda and studied electronic and mechanical engineering at the National University.   She emigrated to the United States, worked at the United Nations in New York City and has been awarded the 2007 Mahatma
Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace. She is now a full-time public speaker and writer and has established the Left to Tell Charitable Fund to help support Rwandan orphans.

~~~

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. — 1 Corinthians 13.1

How long, oh Lord, how long, must we put up with the left dominating the media with their catchy slogans and their disdain for facts?  If they had their way, they would shut right-wingers down yesterday  –  which is exactly what the Fairness Doctrine aims to do:   stop Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, anyone who tries to counter the spin on the major networks. And they dare to call this intolerance Fairness.

But Fairness sounds good, doesn’t it.  Everybody is for Fairness.  Just as Choice sounds good.  Who can be against choice?  Everybody is for free choice.  But for the left Choice means the right to kill the unborn child – any time, any way.   Still choice sounds good on the face of it  – until you look into what they who have commandeered that term really want to do.

Along comes stem cell research and curing Parkinson’s disease.  Everyone wants to cure Parkinson’s (and cancer and Alzheimer’s and a myriad of other disastrous diseases.)   They talked Nancy Reagan (who has experienced Alzheimer’s up close) and Michael J Fox (with his acute Parkinson’s) into campaigning for them.   Despite the fact that all the progress thus far has come from adult stem cell research — despite the fact that embryonic stem cell research not only kills living human beings but is inherently dangerous because of the totipotency of the embryonic tissue – despite everything that a well-intentioned person can find out for himself with a little research.

But curing Parkinson’s sounds good, doesn’t it?  At last – finally –  a smidgen of truth on the subject has appeared on a major network.  And not only a major network but on Oprah!  I do believe that in spite of her track record  Oprah tries to be on the side of truth.  At last (see the video below) we see “America’s Doctor,”  Dr. Mehmet Oz,  telling Oprah and Michael J Fox that adult cell stem cell research is the real answer.  Of course, this is something we on the right have been saying all along! I pray Michael Fox is really listening and not only would like a cure for Parkinson’s but will want no further part in this deception, however inadvertent.

However, another video from the same show, from a different source and of a poorer quality, is still around.

Mehmet Oz, Michael J. Fox

And here, from the National Catholic Register, is another video clip from the Oprah show as Josh Brahm gives his take on Dr. Oz’s comments on the stem cell debate. Brahm appreciates that Dr. Oz is not toeing the party line when he writes:

Oprah looks on with a certain horror (she knows the political ramifications) as he explains: “The problem with embryonic stem cells is that embryonic stem cells come from embryos, like all of us were made from embryos. And those cells can become any cell in the body. But it’s very hard to control them, and so they can become cancer.

Obama’s recent executive order rescinded President Bush’s limitation on  funding for embryonic stem cell research and at the same time took away funding for other types of stem cell research, the only kind to have proven results!    This occurred after his ostentatious memorandum on scientific integrity just last month!

Michael Fox applauded Obama’s action:

Now that the President has taken this critical action, I am excited by the prospect of American scientists carrying human embryonic stem cell research forward toward better treatments and cures that will affect countless millions of lives.

Charles Krauthammer (who does not  believe that personhood is conferred at conception) writes:

Obama’s pretense that he will “restore science to its rightful place” and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand — this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically “scientific.”

Dr. Oz thinks the stem cell debate is dead.   Would that it were true.  The culture of death does not give up easily.   One does have to wonder what Michael J. Fox was thinking as Dr. Oz implied that he has been barking up the wrong tree.

REP. RANDY FORBES, (R-VA) asks for stem cell support.   Congressman Forbes’ father died with Parkinson’s disease and his brother now suffers from it.