Hey Treepers!
Things have been a bit crazy lately here in the Tree, what with the influx of new faces and opinions.



The Tree is a welcoming place and we work hard to keep it that way. I know it’s hard to keep tempers in check when involved in what seem to be endless circular arguments (I myself called someone a dummy the other day), but I am asking that we all make an effort to keep a civil tone.
To that end, any poster referring to any other poster as “stupid” “a dummy” (or similar) or saying that any other poster has an inferior intellect will find themselves on the moderation list. This applies to long-time commentors and newcomers alike, and is effective immediately.
That is all. 🙂

(The New York Times) — NBC News has fired a producer who was involved in the production of a misleading segment about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.

The person was fired on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the disciplinary action who declined to be identified discussing internal company matters. They also declined to name the fired producer. A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment. (more…)

You can’t read a story like this and not think of the Fabian Socialists and George Bernard Shaw’s grand design for a society based on panels established to justify your existence.  Well, I can’t anyway.
Telegraph – Surgery bans elderly patient over her carbon footprint – An elderly woman was ordered to find a new GP [doctor] because the “carbon footprint”   of her two-mile round trips to the surgery where she had been treated for 30   years was too large.
Avril Mulcahy, 83, was told to address the “green travelling issues” over her   journeys from her home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to the West Road Surgery.   The surgery wrote to Mrs Mulcahy, telling her to register with a new GP   within 28 days.

I’m not sure where or how this new category of hyphenated caucasians originated;  I would guess, probably some frustrated lefty journalist type who was thrilled about the opportunity to write a race baiting narrative, only to discover George Zimmerman was not actually “white”.    So in some effort to keep the racially devisive slant within the narrative they created an entire new ethnicity, a White Hispanic.
While the first reaction to the new ethnic sub-category is one of oddity.  Strangely enough  it now appears the rest of the legacy media have caught on.   Witness the excerpt of this Reuters article just published:

A USA Today/Gallup poll published on Saturday showed that Americans are deeply divided across color lines in their opinions about Martin’s killing.
Seventy-three percent of blacks in the survey said they believed Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, would have been arrested if the person he shot dead was white. (more…)

People are poking fun at this video because of the President Obama joke fail with the ridiculous “dry cleaning” joke.   But I found the following sentence just as puzzling:

[:29] Later this year women will be provided new access to recommended preventive care, like domestic violence screening and contraception at no additional cost….

This article focuses on the racial divide in the polling, but that doesn’t appear the biggest headline to me.   With the full frontal assault by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Ben Jealous, the New Black Panthers, the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, Spike Lee and Hollywood, the entire legacy media machine and the President Of The United States, the race hustlers were still only able to get barely 51% of Blacks convinced of auto-guilt for Zimmerman.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the race-baiting industrialists will have diminished themselves with another new generational Tawana Brawley type shame.   Perhaps.

(Washington Examiner) Black Americans and Americans of other ethnicities have widely-divergent views of the Trayvon Martin case, according to a new poll that shows the black community overwhelmingly believes he was murdered and that police let his killer get away due to racism. (more…)

I started to think about a post for Good Friday, and I did some reading, and googled some images. Then I decided to check last year to see what we did. I had come up with almost the same post, so I am recycling last year’s post and adding a few new pictures. It is our wish here in the Tree that you all, so dear to us, and to each other, have a blessed and holy weekend, this most holy time of the year. May the lamb’s Good Friday sacrifice lead you to the joy we rightfully claim on Easter Sunday. This post mentions some things from my Catholic “language” or viewpoint, if you will. How I would love to have you share some of the traditions and customs from your church or family with us. Are there special observations and services at your church this weekend?
The Easter Triduum, the marking of the days of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, the  most important time of the church year, begins with the evening Mass of Holy Thursday, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes on Easter Sunday evening. After preparing during the days of Lent, we celebrate these holiest of days in the Church year. (more…)

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I saw this headline yesterday:  Marion Barry: ‘We’ve Got To Do Something About Asians’ And Their ‘Dirty Shops’ – It’s worth a read….
But initially it reminded me of this: