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stay on our American currency. Please do it right
away, before NBC takes this off the web page. Poll is still open so you
can vote.

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RALEIGH, North Carolina - College presidents from about 100 of the best-known U.S. universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the U.S. drinking age, which is among the highest in the world.

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Read more here

This blogger (HolyCoast.com)adds some humor to his insight:

This is the same kind of misguided liberal logic that tells us that we have to give high school kids condoms because they’re going to have sex anyway.

Alcohol on college campuses is a huge problem already as we witnessed firsthand last year when my daughter’s roommate was kicked out of the dorm for multiple alcohol and drug violations. She was 18 and apparently these wise college presidents would rather her alcohol abuse was legal. Instead of having to sneak around, she could have just walked in with her bottles of booze and drank herself to insensibility.

In California the drinking age is 21, so it doesn’t really matter what the college president thinks since he’ll be bound by that law either way. Of course, he could just choose to have his police department ignore violations.

You know, some kids are going to cheat, too. Why shouldn’t we give them all A’s?

Photos Courtesy of Santafe.com

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Alliance Helps Needy With School Supplies

Albuquerque Journal: Alliance Helps Needy With School Supplies
By Polly Summar
“My kids are Catholic,” said the man answering the door at a La Loma Vista Apartments unit late Monday afternoon.
But that’s not a problem for Daniel Arellano and his youth volunteers with Hope for Youth Alliance. Canvassing the apartment complex, the group is simply looking for kids who are going to need backpacks and school supplies when school starts. It doesn’t matter what faith they or their parents are.
“Their faith is not a wall for us,” said Arellano, founder and president of the alliance and an associate pastor at The Rock Christian Fellowship.
The Hope for Youth Alliance has targeted five lower-income neighborhoods in Santa Fe and Rio Arriba counties and is going door to door this month finding the names, ages and schools of kids who need backpacks, from kindergarten through 12th grade. Six area banks have pledged their help — Century Bank in Española, Bank of America in Española, Community Bank in Española and Santa Fe, Zia Credit Union in Los Alamos and Española, Los Alamos National Bank and Valley National Bank in Española — and the alliance is also looking for individual donations of money and supplies.
“One local bank has an anonymous angel who has provided most of our needs for kindergarten through fifth grade,” Arellano said. “She’s dropped by over eight bags filled with supplies.”
Arellano knows that a filled backpack won’t solve all of a kid’s problems but said the alliance’s mission is to help kids succeed emotionally, spiritually and academically. He believes that being prepared with the right supplies for school is a start. Arellano said he’s read figures that a third of American families will not be able to afford school supplies this year.
His wife, Esperanza, operates the private academy at The Rock and has helped prepare lists for the various grades of what a backpack should hold, and the alliance has also contacted various schools for information.
Arellano comes by his interest in kids naturally.
“I have a heart for troubled kids,” said Arellano, 29, “because I was a troubled kid myself. I’m a graduate of the New Mexico Boys School.”
He describes bouts with truancy, drug use and incarceration.
“At the age of 13, a probation officer introduced me to Christ, and I started attending church and from there I started a whole new journey.”
Gradually working with kids at The Rock, Arellano was selected to attend a 15-month leadership initiative.
“That’s where my vision and my calling solidified to working with at-risk youth,” he said. With the creation of the Hope for Youth Alliance, a 501c3, Arellano now speaks to juvenile probation officers, local church and works with “some of their most incorrigible kids.”
The Hope for Youth Alliance has no paid staff, but Arellano’s salary is covered by the church as an associate pastor.
“Alongside my work as a pastor, I am doing this,” he said. “All our monies are generated for specific programs. Potentially, we’d like to be a premier mentoring organization.”
With many members of the group wearing T-shirts saying, “Got Mentors?” they say they like canvassing the neighborhoods.
“It’s pretty nice because we’re helping people,” said Daniel Martinez, 14.
In just 20 minutes of work on Monday, the some 25 volunteers had a list of 58 kids at the apartment complex who need backpacks. Arellano estimated that among the five neighborhoods, some 400 kids will need the filled backpacks.
The Alliance members will distribute the filled backpacks on Saturday and Sunday during parties in the various neighborhood with hot dogs, sodas, games and puppet shows.

See the Article as seen online here @ Santafe.com

By Daniel Arellano

I heard this stat this morning while we were preparing for this mornings coffee break on Radio KDCE.

Students with holes in your jeans or packs be warned: Better learn how to sew before school starts.

New back-to-school duds and supplies will be at the bottom of many family shopping lists this fall, with 71% saying they will spend less on back-to-school items this year than last, according to a national survey due out today from Deloitte, the consulting giant.

It gets uglier. Some 83% of those surveyed said they will cut back on clothes spending. Nearly half say they will spend less on shoes, and about one in three will spend less on backpacks, according to the online survey of 5,035 adults conducted July 11-14.

A full 90% of consumers say they will change the way they shop for back-to-school items. More say they plan to do back-to-school shopping at dollar stores than at department stores, office supply stores (such as Staples(SPLS)) or off-price stores (such as TJ Maxx (TJX)).

Read the full article Here

Is this another 2008 Presidential Election flip flop… again?

I just read this news here about Obama wanting to expand (this administrations) President Bush faith based initiative program efforts.

Isn’t this the same guy that has echoed many times “We don’t want 8 more years of this “administrations failed policies”…? I guess this is the only policy of the last 8 years that just might not fail him a few extra votes.

One of the biggest mysteries in the Bible concerns the timing of Jesus Christ’s return to earth. Although the Bible tells us no one knows the hour nor the day when the Lord will return, the Bible is filled with many indicators or conditions we can use to assess how close we may be to the season of His return.

+The Gospel will be preached in all the world before the physical return of Jesus Christ to the earth occurs at Armageddon, although exhaustive efforts are presently underway to accomplish this:
Matthew 24:14: And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

+There will be scoffers:
The Bible tells us one of the key signs of the end times will be people doubting the return of Christ will ever happen.

2nd Peter 3:3-4: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

+

Humanity will be able to cross the globe rapidly

and science will be advancing:
Daniel 12:4: But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

+Perilous times will come for mankind:
2nd Timothy 3:1: This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

+Mankind will deny God once flooded the earth:
2nd Peter 3:5-6: For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

+The earth will be swimming in a sea of violence:
As it was in the days of Noah (Luke 17:26), so it shall be at the end.

+There will be warfare all over the globe:
Mark 13:8: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:

+There will be wars and rumors of war.
Matthew 24:6: And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all [these things] must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

+Deadly diseases will be rampant:
Matthew 24:7: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

+Famines will be common:
Matthew 24:7: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

+Earthquakes will be occurring globally:
Matthew 24:7: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

+There will be violent weather:
Luke 21:25- And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

+Children will be disobedient and rebellious:
2nd Timothy 3:2: For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

+Mankind will be in a state of moral decay:
2nd Timothy 3:2-5: For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

+Religious cults will flourish:
2nd Peter 2:1: But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

+Rising food prices

6 And I heard a voice from among the four living beings say, “A loaf of wheat bread or three loaves of barley will cost a day’s pay.^{[a ]} And don’t waste^{[b ]} the olive oil and wine.” Revelation 6:6

HT "HatTip": Paul Lujan Thanks for the Source

Study finds 8.4 percent unemployment for Mexican immigrants

Nicole Gaouette | Los Angeles Times

6/4/2008 -
WASHINGTON — Unemployment among Hispanics, and particularly Hispanic immigrants, jumped in the past year, wiping out many of their economic gains, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Amid an extended housing and construction slump that has claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs, the Pew findings alarmed Hispanic leaders. They also indicated aggressive new enforcement raids by immigration officials might be having an effect.
Read more here

ATLANTA — Hispanic high school students use drugs and attempt suicide at higher rates than their black and white classmates, according to a new federal survey that shows a continuation of a disturbing trend.

The study is the latest in a series of surveys of U.S. high school students every two years. The new report noted that black and white students are reporting less sexual activity than in years past, but there was no decline among Hispanics.

In addition, Hispanic students were more likely than either blacks or whites to attempt suicide, ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, or use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy.

View the article here in the Santa Fe New Mexican