Opinion

MAKING THE GRADE: F

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The Community Redevelopment Agency voted 6-0 at its May 13 meeting to approve up to $9,000 in spending for an artificial Christmas tree in Riverside Park.

Well, we're past 100 days since Barack Obama took the oath of office as the 46th president of the United States of America and made history as the first black to hold this office.
His platform was Change." The majority of the American voters where ready for a change, and change we got.

But in grading Obama, he deserves an F, in my opinion, for failure for changes that went in the wrong direction.

Here are Obama's biggest blunders:

1. His reverse funding on the abortion issue.

Lanshark surfing festival totally rad

Grade: A-plus

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Karen Clancy and dozens of other volunteers should be commended for their hard work in making the inaugural Landshark surfing festival such a success over the past five days.

Traffic heading east to the beach was well past the South Causeway Bridge on Saturday, a testament to the draw of the surfing contest that doled out $20,000 in cash prizes.

Dear Friends,

This week we have been celebrating Sunshine Week – recognizing Florida’s open government laws. We serve the people of Florida with openness and transparency every day. However, every year during this week, we strive to find new ways to make state and local government more accessible to the public. To achieve this goal, today we launched a new
Web site, www.FlaRecovery.com.

Dear Friend,

As we spend this Christmas season with our loved ones, we can celebrate the wonders of life, as seen in the miraculous birth of our Lord. This is a time when we enjoy the blessings of friends and family as we look back upon the previous year and prepare for the year ahead.

This season, I urge you to remember the brave service men and women, including those in the Florida National Guard, who are fighting overseas that we may continue to enjoy our freedoms. As they fight so nobly to bring peace and liberty to other parts of the world, we pray for their safe return.

We swore we’d never do it again! It’s too much trouble! It’s a lot of work!

But there we were again gathering the junk we have collected over these past 10 years since our last yard sale.

What were we thinking?

Unfortunately, we are collectors of "stuff," the preferred verbiage for junk.

Getting rid of stuff is almost impossible for us since “we just might need it one day,”or so we delude ourselves into thinking.

Stuff piles higher and higher in our two houses taking space and collecting dust until we finally decide that something has to be done and soon.

GRADE: F

The whole world of finance is agog about the $50 billion Ponzi scheme carried out by Bernard Madoff on Wall Street.

Madoff’s scheme is alleged to have bilked many big time financial players such as Real Estate magnate Mort Zuckerman and Foundation for Humanity director Ellie Wiesel.

For those not familiar with a Ponzi scheme, it consists of an organized plan that promises to pay unusually large “dividends.”

I would modestly propose that the days of American security have had it. No longer can we depend on George Bush and Company for the only hope their administration promised: To secure our country, our lives and our fortunes. The Obama regime will have to struggle with that accumulated Republican mess, one so prodigious that The Good Lord Himself might declare, “The hell with it!"