Here is my podcast on the education issue:

Education: A home-based business

To enroll your child in the Dallas area, click HERE.

Here are the point the are making through TV ads. What do you think?

Obama’s Ad:

McCain’s Ad:

References: www.johnmccain.com - www.barackobama.com - www.youtube.com

Do this sect’s moves seem like watching an Italian mafia movie?

And what about the free labor?

The IRS granted church status to these people. Is the IRS in it, too?

Almost 100% of today’s ad spots for the new TV screens, video games, movie services, and all sort of technology for your home are packed with vivid images of a happy family having fun together. Tech companies have for a while come ahead by blamelessly portray that their new screens, game consoles or video streaming services will get your family so close, they will be happier than the ones on TV spots.

But is it not an old sales trick to pick some existential problem or situation that people feel they need to improve on most and provide some sort of hopeful solution to the conflict? Is it not common for TV ads to tell you you should feel ridiculously ashamed if you fail to act right now and buy whatever these spots are showing you as the “miracle” product that will satisfy your need? How many times have you heard “more family time,” “family fun,” and the like during these commercials?

Yes, Americans’ most vulnerable pride is touched here: Family time and your kids. These companies know that and they are going to make the impossible to get something out of this problem. And they are not really interested in getting rid of the problem, because if they did, how are they going to sell their next tech gizmo?

According to a 2004 national poll released by the Center for a New American Dream, Americans are overworked, overspent and rethinking the American dream. At a time when Americans are divided politically, they seem to agree on one thing: we aren’t focused on what really matters. More than eight out of ten Americans believe that society’s priorities are “out of whack” and 93% agree that Americans are too focused on working and making money and not enough on family and community. Almost as many (more than 8 in 10) say they would be more satisfied with life if they just had less stress.

Advertising giant McCann-Erickson says advertisers now spend more than $230 billion a year, or $2,190 per household to target your family, and there is little question that much of that advertising is designed to effectively target kids. Kids 12-19 spent a record $155 billion of their own money in 2001, up from $63 billion just four years earlier. And according to kids marketing expert James McNeal, children aged 12 and under influenced more than $500 billion of their parents’ purchases in 2000.

A 2007 CareerBuilder.com survey, 37 percent of working dads say they’d leave their jobs if their spouse or partner made enough money to support the family. If given the choice, another 38 percent would take a pay cut to spend more time with their kids.

Nearly one in four (24%) working dads feel work is negatively impacting their relationship with their children. Forty-eight percent have missed a significant event in their child’s life due to work at least once in the last year and nearly one in five (18 percent) have missed four or more.

It is doubtful that these problems families face today are a result of not having enough family-fun gear or gadgets available at home to help us spend time together. Lack of family time is rather a reflection on many Americans’ vulnerability to shift their values and priorities due to work pressures or “trying to keep up with the Joneses.” It is a decision issue. It is a choice issue.

The question is: Are we going to let our values and priorities change so much that we will have to desperately “buy something” in order to spend more time at home?

Are all these new gadgets really going to solve the problem of not spending enough time with your family? Are we going to listen to the assumption that, in order to spend great family time, we have to get the next tech innovation or that new game console? One thing is for sure, if we listen to all those voices out there, we will be spending more time with the credit cards and in deep debt.

Simply and bluntly put: Just talk with your family, pray together, go to the park, play active games, eat together, DO THINGS together. THAT will solve the family problem!

Mitt Romney talked about faith today at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Tex. The candidate’s address ratified his commitment to freedom of religion and civil liberties.

The memorized speech included bible verses and references to the freedoms granted by the constitution to Americans to practice any religion.

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone,” he said.

“There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders,” Romney said.

Earlier this week, a senior Romney campaign official had said that the address would “not going to be a lesson in Mormon doctrine” but rather “an open discussion of how important and critical faith has been and is in Romney’s life” and “how faith is what shapes our values.”

Romney assured that his commitment to his own religion still stands strong. “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs,” he said, adding that if his faith hurts his candidacy, “so be it.”

However, the candidate also emphasized that his religion would not affect his presidential decisions. Romney quoted Kennedy to prove his point: “Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president,” - “Like him [Kennedy], I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.”

Romney said he thought some have taken the idea of separation of church and state beyond its original meaning by trying to remove any acknowledgment of God from the public arena. “It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong,” he said.

For those of you who would like to hear the speech, here is is Romney’s speech in mp3 audio file:

Romney on Religion

What do you think? Is he your guy? Please send me your email or audio comments.

Sure, we do and should believe all that, and I like the song very much; but…, please, let’s praise Jesus (instead?).

Do you have a dog? what does your dog mean to you? Are our pets just pets, or are they like kids and full members of our families?

Send me your pet thoughts, stories, testimonies, photos, etc.

Compare that to this:

What do you think?

Can we just be safe when driving? What’s the problem with so many jerks out there on the road? I think I know what’s wrong and how to solve this issue. Listen to my upcoming audio commentary and tune in by email or mp3 to express your opinion.

Subscribe to my iTunes podcast

There is no gender gap on this question and few demographic differences. From a politically partisan perspective, 88% of Republicans prefer “Merry Christmas” while just 57% of Democrats favor the saying.

Heading into Thanksgiving week, only 27% say they have begun their Christmas or holiday shopping . Consumer confidence among American consumers has been sliding in recent months, giving retailers a cloudy profit forecast in 2007. Most Americans say they plan to spend less on holiday gifts this year. Rasmussen Reports will be updating those figures throughout the holiday season.

Meanwhile, 57% of respondents say they will attend a Christian service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day this year. A little less than one-third (30%) won’t go to a special service. Women are more likely to attend a Christmas service than men.

Read the article explaining why 7 of 10 Americans prefer “Merry Christmas.”

Please send me your email or audio comments.

MP3 Audio Commentary

Since this delicacy is cooked in pure lard, it goes great with a small Diet Coke…

Burger

The Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, Ariz., introduces the Quadruple Bypass Burger, featuring 2 pounds of beef, four layers of cheese, 12 slices of bacon, and 8,000 calories.

As a side dish: Flatliner Fries, cooked in lard. A Triple Bypass is also available.

Fifty years have passed since he young singer began to delight audiences with Zarzuelas, a Spanish genre of operetta. “Around this time fifty years ago, I began to sing and to face audiences every four or five days, and sometimes more often,” said Domingo, speaking about the celebration. “It is difficult to arrive to a place, but it is even more difficult to remain in it. I give thanks to God for all these years because I am still singing, I mean, I don’t know what will happen, it is very uncommon,” he said.

in recent years, the opera icon has made incursions into conducting, career that he hopes to continue beyond the end of his singing activities. Domingo is the general director of the Los Angeles Opera, post he has held since 2000.

For much of his career Domingo has pursued a hectic schedule, singing 70 to 80 performances each year. The secret of his endurance lies partly in his musical intelligence and training, and partly in the natural musical ease that characterizes his singing. He learns parts quickly and needs no coach. While the highest notes do not come with complete ease, the smoothness of Domingo’s technique and his warm, golden sound are universally admired. He has a further asset as an opera performer in his physical appearance. Over six feet tall, darkly handsome, and a committed and conscientious actor, Domingo has been able to create tenor heroes who not only sound plausible but are visually compelling as well.

Early Years

Born in Madrid, Spain, Domingo moved with his family to Mexico in 1949 and began studying voice, piano, and conducting at the National Conservatory in Mexico City in 1955. His parents were both singers in zarzuela—a form of Spanish musical theater. The young Domingo appeared in his first role in 1957 as a baritone in zarzeula, not as a tenor. He sang his first baritone role with the Mexican National Opera in 1959 but was advised to become a tenor and made the switch later that year.

In 1961 in Monterrey, Mexico, he sang in his first major role, that of Alfredo in the opera La Traviata, by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The same year Domingo appeared in the United States for the first time, with the Dallas Civic Opera in Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. In 1962 he married soprano Marta Ornelas, and from 1962 to 1965 the two performed with the Israeli National Opera, singing mostly in Hebrew.

International Star

Domingo’s first appearance in New York City was with the City Opera in 1966, where he sang the role of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. His debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, in Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, followed three years later. Thereafter, he debuted in major opera houses around the world, establishing his international reputation in several performances in the early 1970s: Vasco da Gama in L’Africaine by Giacomo Meyerbeer in San Francisco; Arrigo in Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani in Paris and New York; and finally in the role he has made virtually his own, the title role in Verdi’s Otello. His performance in Otello was filmed by director Franco Zeffirelli in 1986, by which time Domingo had starred in several other opera motion pictures and videos.

During his career Domingo has commanded a remarkable range of roles—from the light, delicate sound of Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore to the fierce, dark demands of Verdi’s Otello. As his voice deepened and darkened over time, he turned in the late 1980s and the 1990s to the operas of German composer Richard Wagner, which require a more powerful tenor voice than Italian operas do. In 1992 he performed at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, where he sang the title role in Wagner’s Parsifal.

In popular music Domingo recorded Perhaps Love, an album of duets with popular American singer and songwriter John Denver in 1981. He has also made a number of recordings of popular Spanish songs, including Always in My Heart (Siempre en mi Corazón, 1983), which received one of the several Grammy Awards he has won. During the 1990s Domingo recorded bestselling Christmas albums with popular American singers Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick. In 1990 he joined Spanish tenor José Carreras and Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti in the first of the so-called Three Tenors concerts. The tenors have regrouped every four years since 1990 to sing at the World Cup soccer finals.

A busy performance and recording schedule has not prevented Domingo from taking on other responsibilities. He is noted for his charitable work, especially for raising millions of dollars to help victims of a 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. Since 1996 Domingo has served as artistic director of the Washington (D.C.) Opera, and in 2000 he undertook the additional post of artistic director of the Los Angeles Opera. In 2002 Domingo was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. That year he was also made a commander of the French Legion of Honor and awarded an honorary knighthood by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. In 2007 Domingo announced that after singing tenor roles for nearly 50 years he would fulfill a dream before retirement by taking on the demanding baritone role of Simon Boccanegra in Verdi’s opera of that name. Performances were scheduled in 2009 for Berlin’s Staatsoper, La Scala in Milan, and Covent Garden in London.

I just came across this interesting commentary. It is an audio podcast on the internet by Rabbi Eli Garfinkel, of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey. He mentions several comments by Paul Harvey and others about individuals and leaders and their deeds. I thought this may be good sermon material, so I took note and I may use it later in the future. This file is link to the audio file is below:

RabbiPod: Pinhas 5767 - The Custer Connection

The basic idea parts from the last actions of Moses and goes to the fact that most leaders or public figures, and even just plain unknown individuals are remembered by what they do last. What counts more in life? What you do in your younger years, or what you do in your later years?

Though the commentary does not have a Christian-based application, one can conclude that, as followers of Christ, we are commanded to persevere until the end, when our actions will be accounted for by God Almighty. I think you will enjoy this analysis.