The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

A hot topic in our community right now is the city's interest in selling some water to a metroplex city (hereafter known as MC). Our city has the water rights to a fairly large reservoir, and they have been negotiating a water study with MC with the possibility of selling to them.

As of this writing, there is no proposal to sell water -- the city only entered into an agreement with MC whereby MC would provide the bulk of the funding for a study on the feasibility of selling. Yet every Bubba in town is downright panicky and screaming, "Our water is gold, you'll drain the lake, all you are interested in is the money!"

Most of the letters to the editor, and even a newspaper reporter in one article, have referred to selling our water rights. That is incorrect. The city is not considering selling water rights -- they are considering selling water. Big difference!

One lady said, " . . .the city is wanting to sell our water to MC only for the possibility of putting money into their pockets." Well, duh! Of course the city wants to sell the water for money! What other reason would there be to sell it? I bet this lady, if she works, goes to work only for the possibility of putting money into her pocket. Does she really think that the professionals who have come up with this idea don't know as much as she does about the capacity of the lake and whether this is a feasible option? Does she really think they sat around the table and said, "We don't care if we have no water in ten years -- let's get the money!" And all the Bubbas seem to think the money is going into someone's personal pocketbook. The city needs that money for infrastructure. The reservoir can be running over (as it currently is), but if the city doesn't have an adequate delivery system, all that "liquid gold" out there isn't going to be worth spit.

This lady further questions why the council should be allowed to "make decisions for us." That's the way the system works, Honey! It's a form of what this country set up more than 200 years ago. It's called representative government. You elect a representative, and if you don't like the decisions he makes, you elect another one the next time around. Methinks you show your ignorance a tad! She bemoans the fact that the citizens who live close to the lake moved there because of the lake, and "if the lake goes away, will they go away?" Number 1, the citizens who live close to the lake aren't citizens of the city, so they really have no say in the matter. Number 2, who said the lake was going away? As I understand the proposal, if the city agrees to sell water, the contract will include caps and drought provisions.

There was one Bubba who wrote in. He lived out in the county and was upset that county citizens haven't been included in the decision making process since the county water system buys water from the city. He's calling his lawyer! That's real logical. Say this Bubba has a pecan tree in his yard, and his neighbor buys 10 pounds of pecans from him every year. Bubba decides he wants to cut down his tree. But his neighbor says, "I'm calling my lawyer, because I buy pecans off that tree, and I should have some say in what happens to it." Bubba might think a little differently on the issue then!

One guy said he went out in his boat and "measured" the depth of the lake. I'm sure that was real accurate. Another calculated how much per gallon the city would receive for the water. He must be either Einstein or clairvoyant or both, because there has been no decision made on how much MC would be allowed to buy and at what price.

And the city officials and professional consultants who spent years in education and who do these types of studies for a living aren't adequate to bring a recommendation. Oh no! We have a Citizen Task Force appointed consisting of housewives, bakers, diaper producers, soup makers, etc. Aside from the one engineer and a retired utilities director on the committee, these people aren't qualified to make any kind of decision about selling water!

At any rate, all the city proposed was a study, and you would think MC had already sucked up every drop of water out there. These people need to get a grip and maybe read the story of "Chicken Little" again!

Well looky there -- there's ol' Billy Bob!

Have you noticed how political candidates always seem to spot someone they know in the crowd at their rallies no matter what little Podunk town they happen to be in?

I challenge you to find one piece of news footage from these events where the candidate's face doesn't, at some point, light up with recognition and he points into the crowd and waves like he's just found his long-lost brother. Do you really believe Barack and Hillary know someone in every town they visit? Do you think they really even know where they are half the time? I guess they do this to try to project the image of "Hey, I'm one of you -- why I see old Billy Bob over there."

Wouldn't it be fun on an interview show to bring up one of those newsreels and say, "Senator Clinton, this is footage from your visit to Bug Tussle, could you tell us who you saw here when you pointed and waved?" I know -- I bet it was one of the comrades who faced sniper fire with her on her trip to Bosnia!

OW, OW, OW, OW, OW!!!!

Mandi Hamlin, 37, is mad at the TSA, and she wants them to apologize! She was preparing to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas. When the security agent scanned her body with the hand wand, it went off as it passed Ms. Hamlin's chest. It seems Ms. Hamlin has a nipple ring.

Ms. Hamlin wanted to just show the jewelry to a female agent behind a privacy screen, but the order was that the jewelry would have to be removed. Ms. Hamlin was able to remove a bar-shaped piercing, but she informed the TSA officer that she would have to have pliers to remove a ring. The TSA obliged her with a pair of pliers, and she was able to remove the ring.

Ms. Hamlin says she heard snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and allowed to board the plane, she says, even though she still had a belly button ring. (I assume the belly button ring did not cause the scanner to go off.) Does this woman enjoy pain? Wonder how many other piercings she has? Ms. Hamlin wants an apology from TSA. Her attorney says, "After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove." NO JOKE! As far as the snickering, when you do something stupid, you have to expect to endure a little humiliation!

The TSA says that if an alarm does sound "until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it." So Ms. Hamlin, save yourself some pain and embarrassment -- wear your rings on your fingers like normal people do!

Can you say, "Greedy Pigs"?

This past Leap Day, CashTomato.com decided to do a promotional giveaway in Manhattan. Costumed workers were to hand out envelopes of cash and other items at 2:29 p.m. -- nothing was worth more than $29.

As the appointed time approached, the crowd of people began to shout, "Give me my money!" and general mayhem ensued. People grabbed money from the CashTomato reps, trampling others to wrest the prize packages away from them.

Anabel DeJesus, one of the prize-seekers, said, "Before I knew it, I was on the floor" and under a pile of people. "It's not worth it," she said. What a profound statement!

What has this world come to that people will risk life and limb and trample their neighbors for $29? A spokesman for CashTomato said, "It turned out to be a lot of aggressive people." I disagree -- it turned out to be a bunch of greedy animals!

How dumb does she think we are?

Hillary Clinton says she "misspoke" when she said last week, "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

She was speaking of a trip to Bosnia she made in 1996 while she was First Lady. She only realized she "misspoke" when the media dug up news footage of the event where Hillary and her entourage, smiling and quite calm, were seen shaking hands and posing for pictures.

I had not heard Hillary's tall tale until they started showing the 1996 film on the news. But if I had heard it, I would have known immediately the story was a fabrication.

1) Do you really think the Secret Service would have allowed her plane to land "under sniper fire"?
2) If they had allowed her plane to land, do you think they would have allowed her to disembark and dodge bullets to her car?
3) If they had allowed her plane to land, and allowed her to dodge bullets to her car, do you think CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and all the other media wouldn't have had 24-hour coverage of the First Lady of the United States being fired upon?

Remember when she told a reporter she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary? And how she had to backtrack on that when someone in the media said, "Wait a minute. Something doesn't add up. Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Everest in 1953 and Hillary was born in 1947." How dumb does she think we are? But then again, there are 25,993,202 people out there who have voted for either her or Barack. Maybe we really are that dumb!

Are you the pot or the kettle?

There was a letter to the editor in The Dallas Morning News from Anna Chandler of Lancaster. She says that when she went to vote late in the evening in the recent primary, the parking lot of her polling place was gridlocked. She circled the lot three times and still couldn't park her car, so she was unable to get to the poll by 7 p.m. when voting closed.

"I don't see why poor logistical planning should negate my right to vote," she bemoans.

Well, let's analyze her situation:

1) All predictions were for a very high voter turnout.
2) Early voting went on for at least a week or two prior to the actual election day.
3) Voting by mail is available for those who cannot make it to the polls.
4) Polls opened at 7 a.m. on election day.
5) She must have arrived at the poll no earlier than 6:45 p.m. if she had time to circle the parking lot only three times before the poll closed.

Yes, Ms. Chandler is correct -- she is guilty of very poor logistical planning! Ms. Chandler didn't say whether she was voting in the Democratic or Republican primary, but I'd bet my next paycheck that she's a Democrat. Only Democrats whine when the government doesn't hand them everything on a silver platter and say, "There, there," when they're victims of their own stupidity. Maybe she can get a law passed requiring valet service at the polls for the poor, downtrodden, who suffer parking discrimination.

Come worship at our happy hour . . .

We went to church yesterday, Easter Sunday. Easter used to be one of my favorite holidays. I loved going to church to listen to the glorious Resurrection story, hear the inspiring music, see the beautiful Easter lilies, and wear my new clothes and hat. It seems, though, that Easter has lost its meaning. Oh, I don't mean that the Resurrection story still isn't the most miraculous story in the Bible, or that the flowers still aren't as pretty, but the music and the worship are certainly different.

How sad it was for me when the choir sang a very nice Easter number and received a standing ovation as if this were high entertainment instead of a worshipful moment. How sad it was for me when we sang some ditty about "Celebrate Jesus, Celebrate" accompanied by hand clapping and general gyration and repeated umpteen times. How sad it was for me when "I Serve a Risen Saviour" was played on a steel guitar and drums instead of the grand pipe organ.

When I was a child, we entered the sanctuary (not the worship center, or as one church I know terms it "the wc") in a reverent manner. The organist or pianist would be playing softly, and children were admonished to get their drinks and their bathroom trips over with before the service began. We usually started our services with "The Doxology," and there was nothing like that to prepare you for worship. Our hymns were sung from the hymnal with real music, not from Power Point words flashed on a screen covering the stained glass window of Jesus. We never had the problem of the wrong words being on the screen because the projectionist couldn't keep up with the grandstanding music minister -- all the words were right in front of us. We knew whether to sing a quarter note, half note, or whole note, because the notation was right there in our hands. We sang songs with meaning -- "Oh, to grace, Lord, like a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above." Now we sing, "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, yes Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, yes Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Amen!" over and over and over again. (Mr. Essie May calls these 7-11's -- 7 words sung 11 times.) And I hear that the pastor at our local First United Methodist Church is lobbying to have the pipe organ removed and have it replaced with an electronic keyboard.

Those who espouse "church lite" as I call it, usually give two reasons:

1) The worship is all about God, not us.
2) We have to change our worship style to bring in the younger people.

Aren't those directly contradictory? If we change our worship style to attract more people, then it's not all about God, is it? It's about what appeals to the flesh. We can attract a whole bunch of people if we set up a bar and have a "Happy Hour Service," but I somehow think God wouldn't feel particularly honored by that.

I long for the days when church was different than anything else, when you went for worship instead of entertainment, when people still reverenced God's name and His buildings. I guess the whole point of this is that nowadays I feel more like I've been to a barn dance than church on Sundays!