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Are you hero for seniors, or do you know one?

Dr. Mikol Davis & Carolyn Rosenblatt

By Dr. Mikol Davis & Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, Attorney

Here at AgingInvestor.com, we are sponsoring a contest through May to feature the best of the best folks in financial services who stopped or prevented elder abuse.

We want to highlight professionals who stepped up and took action.

We’re calling all financial planners, wealth managers, RIAs, CFPs, trust officers, lawyers and others who have protected elderly clients after they became aware of abuse or predatory practices.

Without a fiduciary standard, financial professionals selling inappropriate products create one kind of elder abuse. There are many ways people take financial advantage of aging people. And that doesn’t even address predators outside financial services who seek out elderly victims. They’re everywhere.

If you have put any financial abuse to a stop, please get credit! Let us know.

At AgingInvestor.com we are allies of the elderly, having spent years of our lives serving them.

Carolyn Rosenblatt blogs at Forbes.com (Aging Parents) and AgingInvestor.com to keep readers aware of both the scammers and now the heroes. We want to tell your stories. We hope to educate our community by highlighting the actions of courageous people who showed leadership and care for elders by going above and beyond to protect them.

Did you stop thieves and greedy players inside or outside the financial services field itself? We have a few great heroes already! We know you’re out there.

Please submit your own name and story or that of someone you respect for their abuse prevention efforts to hero@aginginvestor.com.

For those of you who have sent your stories already, you’re in the running and we thank you. If you need to remain anonymous for political or personal reasons, we will honor that and not use your real name, location or workplace. We’ll share your exemplary actions. And if what you did was leave a large organization so you wouldn’t be part of abusive practices there, we think that’s heroic too. Please tell us. We’ll put your name in the story only if you give us permission.

And we are going to feature you if you are willing. Send your photo and address too, if you like!

We’ll feature you and let our social media contacts know that you are a standout among the rest. We applaud you. We will choose the winners and each will receive a signed copy of Carolyn’s new book, The Family Guide to Aging Parents: Answers to Your Legal, Financial and Healthcare Questions.

Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Mikol Davis & Carolyn Rosenblatt

http://agingparents.leadpages.net/clrbook2/

An Easter Sunday message from the Rev. Tom Boles: Tomorrow!

 

Virginia and Tom Boles

Editor’s note: The following is an exact transcript of the Easter message The Rev. Tom Boles will deliver on Easter Sunday. The longtime pastor is co-founder of the Midnight Mission serving the homeless on Skid Row and is a proverbial icon in Whittier religious circles. He is a frequent contributor to this website. He and his wife, Virginia, live in La Habra.

Our search for tomorrow

MATTHEW 28:1-10; COLOSSIANS 3:1-4; JOHN 20:1 -10

By The Rev. Tom Boles

You know by now how the drama of Easter unfolds. It begins two day earlier, on Good Friday.

Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Roman authorities at the instigation of the religious authorities.

He was nailed to a cross and a sword pierced his side. The soldiers affixed a sign above his head which read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

Death came rather swiftly and mercifully, after only about six hours. Some crucified men lingered for days, which has led some writers to propose that Christ died of a broken heart. After a Roman centurion confirmed His death, Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect for that territory, granted permission to a man named Joseph of Arimathea to claim His body.

Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy and a pious man, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, who had become a follower of Jesus. Joseph was aided by a wealthy Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus. It was Nicodemus, you will remember, who had to come to Christ under the darkness of night to ask Him about His teachings. It was to Nicodemus that Christ said that in order for him to enter the kingdom of God, Nicodemus would have to be born all over again.

Evidently the message took, for when Jesus’ closest disciples had fled in fear, there was Nicodemus aiding Joseph of Arimathea in claiming Jesus’ body.

Carefully and with much effort they removed the nails from the Master’s hands and feet and lowered him to the ground. Along with a group of women who had remained close by through it all, Joseph and Nicodemus hastily prepared Christ’s body for burial.

Opening prayer:

Praise to you, ‘O God, for you have raised up your Son, our Savior, from the dead and gave Him glory, giving us faith and hope in You. Praise be to You, ‘O Christ, You are the resurrection and the life. And, by your glorious resurrection, you brought life and immortality to light. Praise to you, ‘O holy spirit, you shed abroad the love of Christ, in our hearts, and made us rejoice in the hope of glory. All praise, thanks, dominion, and power be unto you, blessed Trinity, now and forever more. Amen.”

Somebody ought to write a book titled, “Preachers are funny creatures.” It makes no difference if they are pastors, priests or rabbis, people who have the wonderful privilege as I do of standing in front of good Christians, each week are somewhat weird. Like the famous Rev. Eugene Magee. Magee is an enthusiastic pastor who does not wear a robe.

His sanctuary is plainer than most, adorned only by a cross and an American flag. Magee likes to wave his arms to emphasize important points in his sermons. Unfortunately, he is so animated that he has trouble keeping his shirttails in his trousers. To solve this he had developed the habit of periodically stuffing his shirttails back into his trousers as inconspicuously as possible. Even while he is preaching.

One Easter Sunday, while admonishing the faithful with great excitement, he fished around behind his back in the usual way, and found more material than usual to push out of sight. He persisted doggedly, however, on and on he preached and on and on he stuffed.

At the close of his sermon he discovered that he had about half of the American flag stuffed into his pants. He felt foolish, of course. But what would you expect? It was Easter Sunday! What pastor can help but get excited on Easter Sunday? We get excited because we see faces on Easter that we might not see on most Sundays of the year.

Just before the service today I heard one young fellow ask his dad: “Dad, where are the Christmas trees that were here the last time we were here? That’s a joke, of course, I’m really very happy to see each of you. Most everyone of you is a regular! And most of you have been here since last Easter. But it’s easy to get excited about the attendance on Easter.

What would Easter be without the great music, and I am sorry that we do not have our own choir for this first service. I’m reminded to a Family Circus cartoon. The family is leaving church, which has been packed with worshippers. The children are saying, “What a crowd, Daddy! Has our church been advertising?”

One of them says, “I like it when the choir sings about that guy named Ollie Looya.”

Well, I’m kind of fond of old Ollie Looya myself. What would Easter be without music?

Of course the main reason pastors get excited on Easter is because we get to tell once again the story of the first Easter.

On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the sepulcher, which had held Jesus’ body. It was early. John says it was still dark. I wonder if he was speaking literally or metaphorically. There was certainly darkness over all the Earth before Christ’s resurrection. And without His resurrection our lives would still be lived in darkness. If you and I are simply Earth-bound creatures with no promise of tomorrow, if aging, pain and death are all we have to look forward to, then this is a dark world indeed.

Mary Magdalene came to the grave while it was still dark. Certainly there was darkness in her soul. The one she loved most in all the world had been slain on the cross of Calvary. Her face, ashen with grief, was streaked with tears; her eyes were clouded with pain as she made her way into the garden. Imagine her confusion when she found the stone rolled away.

Blindly Mary began running. She found Simon Peter along with another of her disciples and she said, “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid Him.”

The disciples also ran, this time in the direction of the tomb. And they found the linen garments that Jesus was buried in, and the napkin that had been tied around his head lying in separate areas of the sepulcher. But there was no body, for He had risen as He said.

Then, according to scripture, the risen Christ began making appearances. Not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen by God. The reports are mysterious and confusing. The risen Christ passed through closed doors. Yet, on other occasions, he ate and drank with his disciples. What kind of body was this that the risen Lord was wearing? And how accurate are these reports?

No one would fabricate a story with as many troubling discrepancies. These are the jumbled eyewitness accounts of men and women who are experiencing something that never happened before.

Who could help but get excited reporting such news? Then to bring it to bear on our lives, let us not forget how the writer of Colossians sums up the meaning of the resurrection like this: “Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

Since you have been raised with Christ, Easter isn’t just about a historical event that took place more than 2,000 years ago. Easter is a way of living today.

Eric Butterworth tells about a young soldier who lost his legs in battle. Something died within this young man when he found he would never walk again. He lay in his hospital bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. He refused to talk to anyone who tried to help him. He refused to cooperate with doctors or nurses who wanted to help him to adjust.

One day another inmate of the hospital strolled in and sat down on a chair near the bed. He drew a harmonica from his pocket and began to play softly. The patient looked at him for a second, then back to the ceiling. That was all for that day.

The next day the player came again. For several days he continued to come and to play quietly. One day he said: “Does my playing annoy you?”

The patient said, “No, I guess I like it.” They talked a little more each day.

One day the harmonica player was in a jovial mood. He played a sprightly tune and began to do a tap dance. The soldier looked on but was apparently unimpressed. “Hey, why don’t you smile once and let the world know you’re alive.”

The dancer said it with a friendly smile. But the legless soldier said, “I might as well be dead as in the fix I’m in.” “OK” answered his happy friend, “So you’re dead. But you’re not as dead as a fellow who was crucified 2,000 years ago, and he came out of it alright.”

“Oh, it’s easy for you to preach,” replied the patient. “But if you were in my fix, you’d sing a different tune.”

With this the dancer stood up and said, “I know a 2,000-year-old resurrection is pretty far in the dim past, so maybe an up-to-date example will help you to believe it can be done.”

With that he pulled up his trouser legs and the young man in the bed looked and saw two artificial limbs. The tap-dancing fellow with the harmonica was not simply a Pollyanna. He once lay where that young soldier now lay. He himself had known the power of a resurrection. He had learned to live life abundantly, even without his legs, needless to say, the young soldier’s own resurrection began that moment.”

Easter isn’t just about dying. It’s about the power of belief in a world of lost hope. It is about knowing that no situation is beyond God’s redeeming power. Easter is confidence that God will never forget us nor forsake us.

“Since you have been raised with Christ!”

Easter isn’t just about an event that occurred 2,000 years ago. Easter is a way of living today.

“Since you have been raised with Christ,” writes St. Paul, “Set your hearts on things above.”

Easter is a day for reflecting on the meaning of life.

There was a Sunday last September when many churches were full like this. Do you remember? It was the Sunday after the terrorist attack (in Boston). We were all stunned, bewildered, grief-stricken. We needed help making sense of it all. And so we turned to the one place where help is to be found at such times. We turned to God.

J. Wallace Hamilton, the great preacher of yesteryear, once told the story of a group of American soldiers stationed in London during the first World War. They had received orders that the next day they would be going to the front lines.

The church where many of the men attended while away from home hastily gave them a dinner.

It was a joyous time and the conversation was light and upbeat. Before the pastor gave the benediction, one of the soldiers was selected to share words of appreciation. He was a man of charm with the gift of speech. As he brought his speech to a close he said, “Tomorrow we are leaving for France, and the trenches, and to die.”

He did not mean to say that. Looking around with embarrassment, struggling for some better words to say, he said, “Can anybody tell us how to die?”

And, nobody laughed or even smiled.

There was an awkward pause as through he had said the wrong thing, and then a period of strange silence in which nobody said anything.

Then someone walked quietly to the piano where they had been playing and singing fun songs and began to play and sing the old gospel hymns. In the quiet that followed, every man’s soul was forced to deal in a serious way with the question of life and death.

Without anybody planning it, a party became a prayer meeting in which they had to turn to God.

Easter gives us the opportunity, without being morbid, to reflect on the ultimate meaning of things. Are we mere creatures of the dust who are here only for a moment, or were we created for eternity?

On the southwest coast of Scotland lies the little town of Whithorn. In its ancient cemetery can be found a tombstone with an intriguing epitaph: “You think I’m forgot? I’m not!”

We are not forgotten by those who love us, or by God. It’s not enough, though, to live on as a vaporous memory. We want to know that we will continue to exist as real people when we have shed this body of clay. We want the joy of being reunited with those whom we love beyond the pale of death. We yearn to know that our lives really matter to God.

That’s why Easter is so important to us. Do our petty concerns really matter? Do our lives have any significance? Dare we live and love with vigor and vitality with the knowledge that our lives really count?

Life hardly seems to matter at all, if everything stops when we’re laid in the grave. This is why we gather here this day. This is why Easter is the most important day on the Christian calendar.

It is not simply a celebration of an event long ago. Easter is about the two most important periods in our life, today and tomorrow. Can we count on having a tomorrow? Always? Will we ever run out of tomorrows?

In late March 1993, a sudden, unexpected snowstorm blanketed the East Coast of the United States. In Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina, it was the snow of the century.

Many hunters and hikers were trapped in the park, cut off from their loved ones. Four medical doctors from Knoxville had chosen that weekend for a hunting excursion in the Smokies. Since they had expected to be gone only one night and did not expect any adverse circumstances, they did not bother to give their families or their staffs the exact location of their hunt.

They felt that their SUV could take them deep into the mountains and get them back out with no difficulty whatsoever. Imagine their surprise when the snow banked up around their vehicle and became so deep that their SUV refused to budge.

What were they to do? This was before cell phones became commonplace. No one in the outside world knew where they were. They hadn’t brought enough food for more than two days. They were frightened and bewildered as what to do next.

Evening fell on the second day. Still, they had no contact with civilization. Their SUV was as immoveable as on the day beore. They divided a stale doughnut that someone found in the back of the vehicle. They were cold, hungry and greatly discouraged. Would no one find them before they had either frozen or starved?

Then, suddenly, they heard a sound overhead. The unmistakable whrrrr of a helicopter. They jumped out of their vehicle and screamed and waved their arms to allow the pilot of the helicopter to locate them. And he did.

For a moment the helicopter hovered above them. They could see it was already filled with other hunters and hikers. Then they saw a basket being lowered from the helicopter. In that basket was a note. On that note was one word: “Tomorrow.”

Immediately those four sophisticated medical doctors made a chorus line. And they kicked their legs as high as the snow would allow. And they began to sing at the top of their lungs, “TOMORROW, TOMORROW, I LOVE YOU, TOMORROW, YOU’RE ONLY A DAY AWAY.”

Their fear was gone. Help was on its way. They would live to see another day.

“Tomorrow.” That would be a good song to add to our Easter repertoire. “Tomorrow.” For that is the Easter message. Because of what Christ has done, we don’t have to worry about today or tomorrow. Christ has conquered sin and death.

We can live resurrection lives beginning this moment. God loves us. Our lives DO matter. We will always have tomorrow.

Closing prayer:

“Eternal savior, we have seen in Your victory our hope realized, our faith confirmed, our strength renewed as we go from here, may the victory of the risen Christ be our victory.

“Amen.”

Frontier grad joins Trojan ranks

Former Frontier High School student Kathy Orozco developed the leadership and academic skills needed to find success at the USC Marshall School of Business.

By Juliette Funes

VMA Communications

WHITTIER – Continuation high school students often face significant challenges in their quest to graduate. But former Frontier High School student Kathy Orozco has been able to weather many unlikely twists and turns in her life to successfully take on the challenge, and is now attending an elite four-year university.

Orozco graduated from Frontier High School, Whittier Union’s continuation school, in 2013. She began her first year at USC Marshall School of Business this January after making a tough decision to switch her career trajectory, a choice she made after channeling guidance she received at Frontier: “Something that you love is easier to learn.”

“Attending Frontier High was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had,” said Orozco, the first in her family to attend college. “The teachers were all so supportive. Each one of them is so different and perfect for what they are teaching.”

Orozco credits Frontier High for helping her develop leadership skills and providing her the motivation to continue her education.

“Frontier has a long history of providing students like Kathy the specialized and individual support they need to achieve in high school and beyond,” Frontier High School Principal Margie Moriarty said. “We are very proud of Kathy and wish her the best of luck as she continues on this journey and hope that other students who are receiving an alternative education on our campus will follow in her footsteps.”

Orozco was a bright student with good grades in her first two years at California High School. Then she became ill and required hospitalization for two months. When Orozco was able to return to class, it was recommended she temporarily transfer to Frontier to allow her to catch up on her studies. Though Orozco was skeptical, from the moment she arrived on campus she knew right away she would want her stay to be permanent.

Frontier transformed Orozco from a good student into a school leader.

“Being at Frontier really shaped my goals and who I wanted to be and has led me to where I am today,” said Orozco, who was a member of the school’s Associated Student Body and Soroptimist Club.

Upon graduation, Orozco enrolled in a local health science school, where a counselor urged her to apply to the USC School of Business. Orozco said she was interested in business as it would enable her to be her own boss, develop entrepreneurial skills and, especially, be an inspiration to her own family.

“I was amazed when they accepted me, and I am so grateful for all the opportunities I have been given along the way,” said Orozco, who also plans to attend graduate school.

Still, wherever her higher education takes her, Orozco said she is still a Frontier High student at heart, enjoying life, eager to learn and ready for any challenges that come her way.

“It is wonderful to see the dedication and initiative displayed by Kathy and other exceptional students who successfully graduate from Frontier High,” said Sandra Thorstenson, superintendent of the Whittier Union Unified School District. “We are appreciative of the educators at Frontier who positively impact our students’ well-being and achievement and prepare them for university-level work.”

PHOTO CAPTION:

OROZCO: Former Frontier High School student Kathy Orozco developed the leadership and academic skills needed to find success at the USC Marshall School of Business.

School drops disclaimer, settles 1st Amendment lawsuit

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President

Pacific Justice Institute

SACRAMENTO — A Northern California school under fire for religious discrimination has agreed to change its policies and settle a student’s First Amendment lawsuit.

Under the settlement, which was finalized with federal court filings on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015, the charter school based in Loomis will no longer insist on putting a disclaimer on fliers or other invitations between students.

Attorneys with Pacific Justice Institute filed suit against the school late last year on behalf of a student identified as “Esther” who was called to the office multiple times and scolded for giving a fellow student an invitation to a Christian event. Because the invitation was given outside of classtime, the school had no involvement with the student-to-student interaction. After a parent complained, however, the school insisted that Esther bring any such invitations to the office to receive an official disclaimer.

“We are very pleased that this school eventually did the right thing and abandoned its unconstitutional disclaimer policy. Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, and those rights include the ability to invite each other to outside events without government interference.”

 

This week’s homily

Virginia and Tom Boles

By the Rev. Thomas M. Boles Phd., DMin., D.D.

Mark 8: 27-38

“Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted

wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed

a man of understanding.

At times, it is better to keep your mouth shut and

let people wonder if you’re a fool than to open it

and remove all doubt.”

Many years ago as Earl Nightingale was riding in a taxi, his driver commented that a friend of his, also a cab driver, had started to go into a business of his own. “But I talked him out of it,” he said, “I told him that 95 percent of all new businesses do not fail. And let me ask you this: if your friend had gone into a business of his own and failed, could he have got his cab driving job back?”

He said, “Oh, sure.”

“Then he didn’t have anything to lose by trying, did he?”

“He might have lost some money.”

“But what if he had succeeded?” Nightingale said.

The cab driver was silent.

“Giving advice to friends doesn’t require thinking,” Nightingale concluded. “All you

have to do is open your mouth, and all the clichés and myths

and half-truths just come pouring out. I heard it all as a kid.”

The cabbie asked, “Do you have your own business?”

“Yes, I do!”

There is no point in giving advice unless you are sure it is God’s advice.

 

Cancer treatment ‘egg’citing for La Serna grad

Photo courtesy of Steve Zylius
UC Irvine Chemistry major Stephan Kudlacek and UC Irvine professor Greg Weiss have developed a way of unboiling a hen egg.

By Juliette Funes

VMA Communications

WHITTIER When Stephan Kudlacek walked into a University of California, Irvine research lab and agreed to join a chemistry project looking for a faster way to unfold proteins, he never dreamed that he would soon become an Internet sensation.

The 2008 La Serna High graduate is part of the research team that successfully invented a way to “unboil” a hen egg, a breakthrough that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the global biotechnology industry, according to the team. Kudlacek, who has inadvertently become the face of the project, credits the astute guidance he received at La Serna for his achievements.

“Everything good that has happened to me is because someone taught or mentored me,” Kudlacek said. “All the teachers I had at La Serna were instrumental in some way to my success.”

Principal Ann Fitzgerald said she is proud to have a La Serna alumnus become a pioneer in the world of science and a role model for current students.

“To have one of our own make worldwide news for making innovative discoveries and shaping the future of chemistry and the sciences is such an honor for us,” Fitzgerald said. “We couldn’t be more excited for Stephan and his family and we look forward to learning about his future successes.”

Growing up in Whittier, Kudlacek always had a predilection for science, but he never seriously considered it a career path, as he wanted to be a graphic artist. Then one day, Kudlacek walked into Julie Fliegler’s chemistry class.

“The first day of class, Ms. Fliegler said, ‘My goal is to make you want to be a chemist,’” Kudlacek said.

One experiment at a time, Kudlacek became more fascinated with test tubes and, especially, chemical reactions. During one such experiment, he added calcium to a beaker of water and watched in amazement as the water smoked, bubbled and produced hydrogen gas.

“It was so cool. It got me hooked,” he said. “I told Ms. Fliegler, ‘You got me. I want to be a chemist.’”

After graduating, Kudlacek enrolled in the chemistry program at UC Irvine, studying biochemistry and molecular biology with Professor Gregory Weiss, who told him of a research project centering on a device that could take tangled proteins and allow them to refold. Kudlacek quickly joined the team.

As Kudlacek describes it, chemical molecules fold inside the body and form unique shapes that perform a variety of essential functions. Misshapen proteins that clump together in stones wreak havoc on the body and can be responsible for a wide range of illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Dialysis allows researchers to refold the proteins into their original shape, but it is expensive and time-consuming. For researchers, the question was whether they could find a more efficient method.

The key was finding an object that could easily have normal proteins turned into misshaped ones. Then to use a device to mimic the human body’s molecular process in returning the proteins back to their original shapes. The boiling of an egg did the trick. When Weiss’ team reversed this procedure – the now famous “unboiling” of an egg – they discovered that what once took days could now be achieved in minutes.

“The project is phenomenal,” Kudlacek said of the team’s finding, published last month in the journal, ChemBioChem. “That’s what I love about science. Crazy ideas are encouraged.”

Also a chemistry buff is Stephan’s younger brother, Clark, who is known on campus for having a knack for technology and being active as a student leader on the Associated Student Body Cabinet. Though he revels in the subject, Clark aspires to be a user interface designer for smart phones and computers. After graduating from La Serna, Clark is looking forward to attending Brigham Young University.

“My family is thrilled about what my brother has been able to accomplish,” said Clark, a junior. “They always knew he was going to do something great like this. It’s really great that he’s able to live up to that.”

Kudlacek plans to go to graduate school to study chemical biology and is also considering becoming a teacher. His advice to La Serna students is simple: “Find something that makes you want to run to work. Find something that makes you want to do good.”

“We are so pleased with students such as Stephan and Clark who instill pride in Whittier Union every day through their actions and accomplishments,” Whittier Union High School District Superintendent Sandra Thorstenson said. “Our former students are leaving lasting impacts on the world thanks to the inspiration of our teachers, and it’s very exciting to witness.”

Free tax help from Rio Hondo

WHITTIER – Community members who earned less than $53,000 per household in 2014 may obtain free income tax preparation assistance at Rio Hondo College on upcoming Fridays through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.

The college will also participate in a family resource fair in conjunction with a community partnership that includes the State Board of Equalization, Covered California, the California Public Utilities Commission, Employment Development Department, California Department of Insurance and the United Way. Appointments are required.

Tax help is slated from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 20, 2015; from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday, March 27 and April 10 in the Business Building, Room B-118, at Rio Hondo, 3600 Workman Mill Road.

The resource fair will be held on Friday, Feb. 27.

For tax assistance appointments call 562-463-7359.

Jackals in the henhouse, firebugs in the barn

Ferguson

By Alex Ferguson

Back in the good old days, a self-proclaimed Communist and enthusiastic “Truther” like Van Jones would have been anathema to our political and media elites. Today, however, under the Obama regime, he is the darling of the liberal left, a fixture on political television shows, and a one-time “Green Jobs Czar” in that same Obama administration.
Lest anyone be fooled into thinking that the soft-spoken, Brooks Brothers image that he projects today is the real Van Jones, they should hearken to his own words: “I am willing to forego the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”
In another notable quote, on Oct. 22, 2014, Jones told host Don Lemon on CNN’s “360” that, “Sarah Palin, people forget, she had the Democratic Party shaking in our boots in 2008. She came out. She gave that speech at the convention. That was hands down, one of the best convention speeches, not by a woman, by anybody in 2008. People were running for the hills.”
Of course, because they absolutely cannot tolerate a conservative woman – any more than they can tolerate a conservative black – the leftist media elite went into an attack mode that turned the usual “politics of personal destruction” to a level of slander, libel, and ridicule never before seen in American political life; comments by the likes of left-wing comedians David Letterman and Bill Maher rising to a level of depravity that would, as they say, gag a maggot.
One of the most pernicious of the false charges made against Sarah Palin was that she was not only ignorant but given to wildly inaccurate pronouncements. Subsequent analysis reveals that her pronouncements were much more often correct than not. A perfect example would be her 2008 contention that Barack Obama was “someone who sees America as so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Much has been made of Obama’s close relationships with Marxists like his parents, Frank Marshall Davis, and Jeremiah Wright – not to mention actual murderous Communist terrorists like Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers – but what about the people he has brought into his administration? Any terrorists?

VAN JONES

We have already cited Van Jones, an open Communist who has belonged to a laundry list of unsavory, Marxist organizations, some of which have advocated or at least praised acts of terrorism.

AL SHARPTON

Much more recently, Obama has moved the “Reverend” Al Sharpton to the front and center of his administration as point-man on race relations. Sharpton is a tax cheat ($4.5 million), a deadbeat ($65,000), an extortionist, a rabble-rousing racist, and an anti-Semite.
Given his aggressive support for the levelling of false rape charges against six innocent white men in the Tawana Brawley case, he is also a lying character assassin. (Note that, when Sharpton refused to pay a $65,000 judgement in the defamation lawsuit resulting from the Brawley case, the issue became moot when rich supporters picked up the tab.)
While such shenanigans hardly amount to terrorism, other escapades do.
For instance, in 1991, in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, a Jewish man accidentally killed a black child in a traffic collision. Local blacks rioted, resulting in the fatal stabbing of rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton made one incendiary speech after another, whipping up sufficient anti-Semitic violence for one wag to refer to the result as “America’s kristallnacht.” Some rioters chanted, “death to Jews,” while others attacked Jewish homes, which they identified by the mezuzahs on the door. Sharpton called Jews “diamond merchants” at Gavin Cato’s funeral, while others held up a banner which proclaimed, “Hitler did not do the job.”
Then, in 1995, Sharpton turned a simple landlord-tenant dispute into an anti-Semitic massacre that Goebbels and Himmler would have been proud of: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Or, “We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th St.”

It seems that, while Sharpton was leading protest marches demanding that Jews be driven from the neighborhood, Roland James Smith Jr., one of his followers, walked into Jewish-owned Freddy’s Fashion Mart (a business at the heart of the tenant dispute) with a loaded pistol.
He then ordered all the blacks – except the black security guard, who had been called a “cracker lover” and “traitor” – out of the store, poured paint thinner on bins of clothing, and lit the make-shift firebombs, burning up himself and seven innocent human beings.
And the difference between Al Sharpton and Charles Manson is what exactly? Oh, Al Sharpton has black privilege? Well, never mind then.
For Obama to appoint this race-hustling poverty pimp as his point-man on race relations cannot be condemned too harshly. The fruit of this poisoned tree did not take long to burgeon. For instance, one of Sharpton’s “Million Marchers” mobs chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”

Almost immediately, two New York cops were ambushed and executed in direct response to this disgraceful rhetoric.
Charles Manson rots in jail, while Al Sharpton dines in the White House and rides around in limousines.

ERIC HOLDER

That leads to Attorney General Eric Holder, who, as a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, joined a black separatist group called the “Student Afro-American Society” (SAAS). One of their first actions was a five-day armed occupation of a closed ROTC, demanding that it be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” (Later, Barack Obama used this same “lounge” as a hang-out spot, so apparently the brandishing of guns, the threats, and the intimidation were well worth it.) They also took over the office of the Dean of Freshmen, which they occupied until their demands were met.
Should anyone be confused regarding SAAS’s attitude toward the actual spilling of blood, “in March 1970, the group released a statement supporting twenty one Black Panthers charged with plotting to blow up department stores, railroad tracks, a police station, and the New York Botanical Gardens.” (Red State)
Naturally, with an undergraduate record like that, Democrats couldn’t wait to appoint Holder to the most powerful positions in government agencies and private law firms. It is worth noting that, in virtually every case, he used his newfound powers to release the most violent, bloodthirsty terrorists that American law enforcement agencies had managed to identify and incarcerate.
For instance, when Bill Clinton appointed him Assistant Attorney General in 1997, he became the “gatekeeper of presidential pardons.” Holder was a key figure entrusted with the task of vetting the Clinton Administration’s 176 last-minute pardons in 2001. The beneficiaries of those pardons included such notables as former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg (who was involved in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car) and Linda Evans (who used false identification to buy firearms, had harbored a fugitive, and was in possession of 740 pounds of dynamite at the time of her arrest in 1985.)” {DISCOVERTHE- NETWORKS.ORG}
“Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton’s August 11, 1999 pardon of 16 members of the Puerto Rican FALN acronym for the Armed forces of National Liberation … This violent, Marxist-Leninist, terrorist organization was active in the U.S. from the mid 1970s through the early 1980s.”{ibid} Their goal was political independence for Puerto Rico. In furtherance of that objective, they set off 130 bombs between 1974 and 1983, killing six people and wounding more than 80.
More than a dozen of these murderers (together with several members of Los Macheteros, another band of Puerto Rican terrorists) were sentenced to 35 to 105 years. They refused to participate in any clemency efforts, which would have ended the matter had the Justice Department not waved its usual contrition requirement.

Moreover, despite the form-letter clemency requests produced on their behalf, they refused to renounce violence. Meanwhile, victims’ relatives were never even notified of the impending hearings.
Sentencing judges, U.S. attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI all filed objections, but to no avail. Sixteen of these monsters were granted clemency (although four actually refused to accept it). The House of Representatives voted 311 to 41 against clemency, while the Senate followed suit with a vote of 95 to 2 against. Even Attorney General Janet Reno declared that their release “would ‘increase the threat’ of terrorism.”
Are we beginning to discern a pattern here?
As a result of the furor over Holder’s shepherding of Marc Rich’s pardon application through to Bill Clinton’s desk, Holder withdrew from public life and joined the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington and Burling. Among other questionable clients that this firm defended were no less than 17 Yemeni “enemy combatants” residing at Guantanamo Bay.
Radical attorneys working for Holder put in 3,000 hours of work on their cases – pro bono. As a result, at least one of these homicidal fanatics returned to the battlefield soon after his release. He subsequently blew himself up in a 2008 truck bombing that killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and seriously wounded 42 others.
Of course the average president-elect would have assiduously avoided a degenerate like Holder, but he fit Barack Obama like a well-used jockstrap. Consequently, Obama appointed this worm to the office of Attorney General of the United States of America.
Having endorsed and supported the Black Panthers’ political violence when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, Holder, as incoming AG, endorsed and supported political violence perpetrated by the New Black Panthers. It seems that, during the 2008 election that inflicted Obama on America, two New Black Panther Party members dressed up in black uniforms, armed themselves with nightsticks, and “intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats of violence at a Philadelphia polling place.”
Unfortunately for these two militant morons, their fascistic tactics were not only photographed, but witnessed by Bartle Bull, a former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to the late Bobby Kennedy. The Panthers didn’t even bother to answer the charges filed by the Bush Administration, so a federal judge entered a default judgement against them.
That should have been the end of the matter, but the incoming Holder Justice Department snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by dropping all charges. As a result, “in June of 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five year Department of Justice (DOJ) veteran, resigned to protest the ‘corrupt nature’ of the DOJ’s dismissal of the case … Adams gave damning public testimony about how the DOJ believed that ‘civil rights law should not be enforced in a race neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.” (DISCOVER- THENETWORKS.ORG)
“Christopher Coates – Voting Section Chief for the DOJ – testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and corroborated Adams’ contentions.” (ibid) This is an official endorsement of terrorism on the part of Holder’s DOJ, plain and simple.
While the injustices perpetrated by Holder’s Justice Department are legion, the present examination needs be limited to those that touch upon terrorism, and that takes us to the Fast and Furious scandal. Many have speculated on what could possibly have motivated Holder to allow more than 2,000 guns to be shipped to Mexican drug cartels in 2011. He claims that he wanted to track them and build cases against the recipients. Did he fail to make any arrangements to track them because he had made some secret deal with the narcotraficantes, or was he just too stupid to implement his own scheme?
(This is always the over-riding question when analyzing the antics of the Obama Administration. How much do we attribute to corruption, how much to treason, and how much to simple verticranial rectumitus?)
As usual, the cover-up is as bad as the crime. Remember that the Justice Department originally responded to congressional requests for information by supplying a document that even they later admitted was full of falsehoods. Rather than correct that abominable record, Holder flatly refused to to comply with subpoenas and was apparently unfazed when confronted with a contempt of Congress conviction. No other sitting cabinet member in American history has been so disgraced, but “Eric the Red” has nothing but contempt for Congress, just as he has contempt for American law enforcement officers like Brian Terry, the Border Patrol agent who was murdered by a Fast and Furious rifle.
Would anyone but a terrorist endorse and enforce Obama’s efforts to close Gitmo and release virtually every murdering terrorist that we have managed to capture? This is called “accessory after the fact.”

JOHN KERRY

That takes us to Secretary of State John Kerry. Having parlayed three minor scratches into three Purple Hearts, which qualified him for a hardship transfer out of Vietnam, Kerry took it upon himself to co-found an anti-war group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He had already falsely testifies before Congress about trumped-up atrocities supposedly committed by American soldiers overseas. Now, he and Jane Fonda put together a phony “Winter Soldier” propaganda orgy in which misfits who had never been anywhere near Vietnam confessed to crimes against humanity that never took place.
A perfect example was John Kerry’s second in command at the VVAW, Al Hubbard. Hubbard was a Black Panther and former Air Force sergeant who claimed to have been a captain and to have been wounded flying missions over Vietnam. In point of fact, Hubbard was a complete fraud. He had never been to Vietnam, and he had never been wounded. Check out the videos of those long-ago anti-war demonstrations, and you may notice a faction waving Vietcong Communist flags. That would be the VVAW. Far from being for peace, they were a Maoist revolutionary cadre dedicated to bringing the war home to America.
That takes us to a Kansas City VVAW steering committee meeting of Nov. 12-15, 1971, at which they voted on whether to kill pro-war American politicians or kidnap them and use them to extract concessions from the government.
Naturally, John Kerry lied about his participation in these diabolic deliberations, but author Gerald Nicosia located several witnesses who saw him there and unearthed FBI archives that ended all doubt.
Somewhat sympathetic toward Kerry and his activities, and being a man of integrity, Nicosia notified Kerry’s camp of the impending release of his discoveries in his upcoming book, “Home to War.” He even supplied a Kerry campaign messenger with copies.

“And then on March 25 approximately 4,000 of the FBI documents –
perhaps hundreds of them on Kerry himself, in folders that I had
already bookmarked – were stolen from my home; a burglary that
remains unsolved, but about which I have my own suspicions, and
which I definitely believe to have been politically motivated.”
(“Home to War”)

So, you tell me. Has Barack Hussein Obama packed his administration with terrorists,
or is that a vicious, racist rumor?

Alex Ferguson is a longtime Whittier resident and contributor to the Whittier Daily News. You can read more of Alex’s conservative thoughts at conservativecannonade.org

This week’s homily

Virginia and Tom Boles

Romans 13: 8-10

But I keep under my body, and bring it into

subjection: lest that by any means, when I

have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

By Thomas M. Boles, PhD., DMin., D.D.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

In “Sin, Sex and Self-Control,” Norman Vincent Peale

writes: “Martha took the kids away to the

mountains for a month, so I was a summer

bachelor. And about midway through that month

I met a girl, a beautiful girl looking for excitement.

She made it clear that I had a green light, so for one

weekend I put my conscience in mothballs and

arranged a meeting with her for Saturday night.

“I woke up early Saturday morning with a bit of

a hangover; I’d played poker until late the night

before. I decided to get up, put on my swimming

trunks, and take a walk on the beach to clear my

head. I took an ax along, because the wreck of an

old barge had come ashore down the beach, and

there was a lot of tangled rope that was worth

salvaging. There was something about the freshness

of the morning and the feel of the ax that made

me want to keep on swinging it. So I began to chop

in earnest.”

As he chopped, a strange thing began to

happen. He said, “I felt as if I were outside myself,

looking at myself through a kind of fog that

what I had been planning for that evening was

so wrong, so out of key with my standards and

my loyalties and the innermost me that it was

out of the question.”

He canceled the date.

Step back and take a good look at yourself. Is

there something you need to get a clear view on today?

‘Pleasure activist’ raises parents’ ire

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute

By Brad Dacus

President, Pacific Justice Institute

LAFAYETTE – Controversy is growing in a Northern California community as parents have learned disturbing new details about recent sex-ed presentations for freshmen in the Acalanes Union High School District.

For months, parents have pushed school officials for answers about who was involved and what was being taught by Planned Parenthood on campus. Just before Christmas, in response to a public records request from Pacific Justice Institute, the district finally identified some of the PP employees involved with the program. Parents are now more concerned than ever.

The parents started asking more questions and learned that one of the sex-ed instructors at Acalanes High School, when she is not working for Planned Parenthood, leads “pleasure workshops” demonstrating the use of sex toys for a sex toy porn shop in Berkeley called Good Vibrations. It is not yet clear what this instructor may have told students about the store’s offerings.

Parents also identified the public Twitter feed of another sex-ed instructor at Acalanes High School, the PP education manager for Northern California, where she calls herself a “pleasure activist.” She commented enthusiastically on attending the CatalystCon pornography conference for her continuing education along with other Planned Parenthood representatives, just prior to teaching at AHS this past fall.

This event attracts leading members of the porn industry and focuses on topics like using explicit instructional media for sex-ed, the history of sex toys and how to effectively share your sex life on the stage and on the page. Other tweets (since deleted) by this instructor are too vulgar to be included here.

PJI previously reported on the district’s use of racy sex checklists, a diagram of the “Genderbread Person,” and coaching students in asking each other if it’s OK to take their clothes off. In a letter sent to PJI in early January, a lawyer for the district strongly defended the program as “age appropriate” and claimed the sex checklists were merely “idea-generating worksheets” rather than illegal surveys or questionnaires.

Although the district is promising to continue the controversial program, there are signs it is beginning to feel the parents’ pressure. After being confronted with the backgrounds of the two instructors outlined above, Superintendent John Nickerson confirmed to parents that neither of those individuals would take part in the sex-ed program that began Jan. 5. The district has not disclosed, however, who would be teaching the class and has previously admitted it does not conduct background checks on PP instructors.

As president of Pacific Justice Institute, I commented, “It has become clear that Acalanes officials have breached parental trust at every turn. They have brought individuals into the classroom who should not be anywhere near a school campus, and they continue to defend an indefensible program. In light of these most recent revelations, we are renewing our call to the district to suspend its relationship with Planned Parenthood and make sweeping changes to comply with the letter and spirit of state law. We are also calling on responsible journalists to join us in asking tough questions and holding the district accountable for these serious lapses in judgment.”