Elena LaVictoire's Bookmarks

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's
largest retailer, said it's ``optimistic'' about the holiday
shopping season even as declining consumer spending may send
the U.S. to the worst recession in at least three decades.

The retailer's outlook came as it reported today a 9.8
percent gain in third-quarter profit, beating analysts'
estimates, and lowered its earnings forecast for the year
because the stronger dollar is eroding overseas revenue.

Home births have been around as long as humans, but since the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of American women have chosen to give birth in hospitals, which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists identifies as one of the safest places for the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous process of childbirth. (The group has officially opposed home births since 1975, and this year the American Medical Association adopted a similar position.)

Recently, though, midwives and childbirth educators say, a growing number of women have been opting instead for the more intimate and familiar surroundings of home — even in New York City, where homes are typically cramped warrens of a few hundred square feet and neighbors often live close enough to hear every sneeze and footstep.

Elrod said her grandfather had to be careful to whom he gave credit and learned many smart business secrets along the way. He passed them along to Elrod:

1. Always do the right thing.
2. Take care of the customer.
3. Pay attention to details.
4. Know the people with whom you are doing business.
5. NEVER borrow money without a clear plan for how you will pay it back.

BALTIMORE -- The nation's Roman Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its
support for abortion rights, saying the church and religious freedom could be under attack in the new presidential administration. 

In
an impassioned discussion on Catholics in public life, several bishops said they would accept no compromise on abortion policy.
Many condemned Catholics who had argued it was morally acceptable to back President-elect Obama because he pledged to reduce
abortion rates. 

And several prelates promised to call out Catholic policy makers on their failures to follow church
teaching. Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton, Pa., singled out Vice President-elect Biden, a Catholic, Scranton native who
supports abortion rights. 

"I cannot have a vice president-elect coming to Scranton to say he's learned his values
there when those values are utterly against the teachings of the Catholic Church," Martino said. The Obama-Biden press office
did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Diocese of Kansas City
in Kansas said politicians "can't check your principles at the door of the legislature." 

No Elena. You and I and Lisa and many others in this country will have to live with the consequences of others’ actions as far as the voting and election of Barack Obama. Don’t come back here with the tone that Believers who did not vote for McCain are the reason that Obama is in office please. Have some respect for my [blog] home and my friends who visit.

If you want to come back and encourage us or urge us to pray and walk in God’s ways so as to avoid judgment like Barack Obama in the next election, then feel free, but do not place the responsibility of his election to the American Presidency on the backs of Christians who voted for a different [decidedly] conservative candidate.

I love Sarah Palin. I love how she knows her way around a Walmart, I love the pictures of her before the election showing her in real mom clothes, I love how she hugs her daughter, carries her baby and how she and her husband really love each other. I think she was smart, brave articulate and did very well for being thrust into the national spotlight.

Now, I cannot stand Tina Fey. SNL will become the dinosaur that it is and no one will care about it any more. 30 Rock will probably get canceled. Katie Couric and the rest can be really proud of themselves for tearing a good woman apart while they gave that knuckle head Biden a pass on many of the dumb things he said during the campaign.

You want to know why we don't have good people running for office? It's because no body with any sense wants to put themselves through this kind of crap.

I love Sarah Palin. I hope she stays in Alaska and lives a long, happy, productive life. We don't deserve anyone as good as her down here.

As Obama said, "the smallest" businesses will be exempt from fines for not "doing the right thing" in offering employer-based health care coverage. Health will not be nationalized in one fell swoop; they have been studying the failures of Hillary Care. Instead, a parallel system will be created, funded by surcharges on business payroll, which will be superior to many private plans.

The old system will be forced to subsidize the new system and there will be a gradual shift from the former to the latter. The only coercion will be the fines, not the participation. A middle-class entitlement will have been created.

It may not be health care first; it might be energy, though I suspect that energy will be nationalized much more gradually. The offshore drilling ban that was allowed to lapse legislatively will be reinstated through executive means. It may be an executive order, but might just as well be a permit reviewing system that theoretically allows drilling but with endless levels of objection and appeal from anti-growth groups. Wind and solar, on the other hand, will have no permitting problems at all, and a heavy taxpayer subsidy at their backs.

     Since the children were no longer enrolled in public
school, the three of them were able to fly to the eastern state where he
lived. They spent the next three months caring for him there. The children
were able to get to know their grandpa in a way that, up until then,
geographic distance had never allowed. My friend spent far more time with her
father than she had since leaving for college many years earlier. Those three
months were a tremendous blessing to all of them.

        Sadly, her father passed away shortly after Christmas.
Needless to say, she and her children did not “do school” that spring.
Instead, they grieved together by sharing thoughts and feelings about their
father and grandfather, and reliving the many memories they made during those
precious last three months with him.

        No, they di

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hired forensic accounting specialists to investigate more than $1 million in church funding to voter-registration group ACORN, fearing the money may have been spent in partisan or fraudulent ways that could jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status.

The investigation is "thorough, serious and ongoing," according to a July 11 letter to more than 200 bishops from New Orleans Bishop Robert Morin, chairman of the committee that oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

The CCHD sent $1,037,000 to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 2007, including a $40,000 grant to an ACORN affiliate in Las Vegas that was raided last month by the Nevada attorney general's office in a voter-fraud probe.

The Catholic aid agency has given more than $7.3 million to ACORN over the past decade for about 320 projects, according to the Catholic News Service.

In June, the Catholic Church froze a $1.2 million grant for 38 ACORN chapters after the community-organizing group was accused of voter fraud in 15 states.

Starting during President Johnson's term, our country tried spending our way to becoming a very compassionate country. Over three decades, our government invested 5.4 trillion dollars in welfare payments in our "War on Poverty." The investment would have been worth it, if it had worked, but it didn't eliminate poverty.

In fact, the results of this type of government-run compassion have been devastating, creating a debilitating dependence on the very programs that were designed to help. Ronald Reagan said it well: "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."