Originally posted 4/19/2007 @ 15:04

In a post 9/11 world you would think that the media and that government intelligence agencies would have learned a lesson, paid more attention to learning about eastern and Islamic culture and not be so easily distracted .

In researching a few points on the Jesus Camp movie and the fact that many people truly believe that President Bush is here to lead us into the final days leading to our Lord’s return, and then reading quite a few articles quoting beliefs that Bush was in fact God’s messenger, other things started to make more sense.

But the disconcerting thing that has me wondering how blind we are and how we could be on the verge on another major attack without any call to the American people to be vigilant, be aware of what is going on around them is what is going on in Iran that has been under the radar, so to speak.

An official state media website in Iran predicts the coming of both the Imam Mahdi, the Shiite messiah, and Jesus by the spring equinox. 'Imam Mahdi (may God hasten his reappearance) will appear all of a sudden on the world scene with a voice from the skies announcing his reappearance at the holy Ka'ba in Mecca,' the message says.

In a program called 'The World toward Illumination,' Iran's broadcasting website said the Mahdi will form an army to defeat Islam's enemies in a series of apocalyptic battles, overcoming his archenemy in Jerusalem.

The message also claims the Mahdi will reappear with Jesus: 'We read in the book Tazkarat ol-Olia, 'the Mahdi will come with Jesus son of Mary accompanying him.' ... Imam Mahdi will be the leader while Prophet Jesus will act as his lieutenant in the struggle against oppression and establishment of justice in the world. Jesus had himself given the tidings of the coming of God's last messenger and will see Mohammad's ideals materialize in the time of the Mahdi.'

In a greeting to the world's Christians for the coming new year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he expects both Jesus and the Mahdi to return and 'wipe away oppression,' WND reported earlier this month.

'I wish all the Christians a very happy new year and I wish to ask them a question as well,' said Ahmadinejad, according to an Iranian Student News Agency report cited by YnetNews.com.

'My one question from the Christians is: What would Jesus do if he were present in the world today? What would he do before some of the oppressive powers of the world who are in fact residing in Christian countries? Which powers would he revive and which of them would he destroy?' asked the Iranian leader.

'If Jesus were present today, who would be facing him and who would be following him?'

Ahmadinejad's mystical obsession with the coming of the Mahdi raises concerns that a nuclear-armed Iran could trigger the very conflagration he envisions for the end of the world.

In a videotaped meeting with Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli in Tehran, Ahmadinejad discussed a paranormal experience he had while addressing the United Nations in New York last September. He says he found himself bathed in light from heaven throughout the speech.

In a transcript of his comments obtained and translated by Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, one of his aides brought the unearthly light to his attention. He recalls being told by one of his aides, 'When you began with the words 'in the name of Allah,' I saw a light coming, surrounding you and protecting you to the end.'

Ahmadinejad said he sensed the same thing. 'On the last day when I was speaking, one of our group told me that when I started to say 'Bismillah Muhammad,' he saw a green light come from around me, and I was placed inside this aura,' he says. 'I felt it myself. I felt that the atmosphere suddenly changed, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, all the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn't move an eyelid, I'm not exaggerating. They were looking as if a hand was holding them there, and had just opened their eyes - Alhamdulillah!'

Ahmadinejad sees his main mission, as he recounted in a Nov. 16 speech in Tehran, is to 'pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance.'

Shiites believe the 12th imam disappeared as a child in 941 a.d. and when he returns, will reign on earth for seven years before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world. Ahmadinejad urges Iranians to prepare for the Mahdi's coming by turning the country into a mighty and advanced Islamic country and avoiding Western corruption.

Compare his religious view to the American dispensationalists view of eschatology and predictions of American evangelical leaders such as Pat Robertson.

Many Christian faiths believe and teach about a future, end-times event when all true believers who are still alive before the end of the world will be taken from the Earth by God into Heaven. The term describing this event is "the Rapture."

Although the term "rapture" is not found in the Bible, through the teachings of Darby beginning in the mid 1800’s , the Scofield reference Bible, Hal Lindsey, .And most recently the Left Behind Series, most evangelicals today adhere to this eschatological view.  Those who accept the Rapture theory believe that all non-believers on the Earth at the time will be left behind for the tribulation period. Most Bible scholars agree the tribulation period will last for seven years, the final seven years of this age, until Christ returns to set up his earthly kingdom during the Millennium.

Scotsman.com News reports:
PAT Robertson, an American Conservative Christian broadcaster says God told him a terrorist attack will result in "mass killing" in the United States in the second half of 2007.

"I'm not saying necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn't say nuclear," Mr Robertson said on his television show The 700 Club. "It'll be mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities.

"The evil people will come after this country and there's a possibility, not a possibility, a definite certainty, that chaos is going to rule."

Mr Robertson told viewers they should not be afraid because "if you get blown up or something, you go to heaven; that's the worst thing that will happen to you".

When societies start to envision their leader as messianic in nature and they adhere to eschatology’s that could fit current world circumstances (headline eschatology) many can proceed in a devil may care mode in an effort to just bring it on and get it over with so we can get this over with and go to heaven.

In comparison, When George W. Bush ran for President in 2000, he said the United States must be "humble" in the world. Now he has cast humility aside and replaced it with hubris. Supremely confident in his gut instincts, wrapped up in a fundamentalist belief system, endowed with the most powerful military of all time, and unchecked by Congress, Bush feels he can "rid the world of evil"--at the barrel of a gun.

A picture emerges from the President's public statements--and even from such adulatory accounts as Bob Woodward's Bush at War and David Frum's The Right Man--of a President on a divine mission.

Writes Woodward: "It's pretty clear that Bush's role as politician, President, and commander in chief is driven by a secular faith in his instincts--his natural and spontaneous conclusions and judgments. His instincts are almost his second religion."

God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." –The President of The United States of America, George W. Bush

I certainly have no problem with having a President who is a man of deep religious faith. I voted for him twice. But, I am not convinced that he is a man who is discerning in between what “he feels and what God is saying” We see it in religion all the time. In Proverbs we are told twice There is a way that seems right unto a man and that way leads to death.To trust one man's instinct to be infallible is too much to ask of any supporter, especially a Christian.

I suspect that many Americans, especially the Christians who voted for him, hoped that President Bush would be a humble leader, "the uniter, not divider" – a person whose fundamental simplicity would allow us to achieve generous compassion while retaining traditional American values. Bush appeared to many as the model of humble leadership.

As it is becoming increasingly clear, President Bush is the opposite of the humble leader. He has morphed into a hubris leader – apparently lacking self-awareness (does he really believe he made mistakes?), dividing people and even driving away former friends, and reacting to situations instead of leading proactively. The most telling contrast between the humble leader and the hubris leader is, however, the contrast of personal sacrifice. Bush's leadership is not about God's dream for justice; it is not even about the American people. It appears to be about saving his presidency and creating his legacy. Even with all the criticism and defeats, he seems doggedly committed to his vision for the world.

Michael Klare, professor of world security studies at HampshireCollege, believes what motivates Bush is "a combination of the empire and the messianic. He grasps the practical need to control oil, for which the Administration is willing to go to any lengths, and he fuses it with messianic fervor."

Like other Presidents before him, Bush believes the United States is the greatest country in the world, and he is not afraid to use theological language to justify the empire, says Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. "The ideology is there to cover the militarism," says Johnson.

Lee Quinby, professor of American Studies at Hobart and WilliamSmithColleges in Geneva, New York states,. "It does follow the logic of apocalyptic thought, which has a religious base but is now secularized in the militaristic mode. Apocalyptic thought always has an element of instilling helplessness and promising victory in the face of that powerlessness. In this instance, Bush plays up the vulnerability we feel because of terrorism or Saddam Hussein and then accentuates the military as the assurance that our helplessness will be transformed." This kind of thinking, says Quinby, is "dangerous because it prepares a nation for war without thinking about the impact on civilians and on the U.S. soldiers."

There's also the risk that Bush is so convinced that God's on our side that he may commit a blunder of horrifying proportions.

In a representative republic, the fateful decisions of war and peace are not supposed to rest in the hands of one man. Today, they do. And what a man to entrust them with. Lacking intellectual curiosity, he boasts of an infallible gut. Desperate not to be trapped by "the vision thing" that ensnared his father, Bush embraces a huge global mission and couches it in fundamentalist language. And he has assigned the Pentagon the primary role in carrying out this mission.

George W. Bush has the arrogance that comes with such power. "I do not need to explain why I say things," he told Woodward. "That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

An objector may ask: Separating off the kingdom of God from the kingdom of Caesar is all well and good for the "heavenly minded," but what about us here on earth? Wars and conflicts erupt. How do we handle them? What about the verses in the New Testament that talk about the sword? Or is the New Testament so spiritual that we should retreat from the world, not to mention from conflicts?

 God ordains that the State—law enforcement and the military—may wield the sword (Rom. 13:1-7). And individual Christians may gladly join these honorable institutions, thus becoming servants of God. But publicly and officially, they serve the State. Privately, they serve God in their individual relationship with him.

And God ordained the Church as an institution (also distinct from the kingdom of God, which creates the Church) and it follows the dictates of the kingdom of God, her active rule and dynamic reign. That is, following its Lord, it wages only spiritual warfare. Therefore, church leaders in the name of the Church or of God should never convene a council or general assembly in order to raise an army to fight battles and to coerce heretics and opponents to conform. However, being salt and light, the Church may also counsel the State.

 Further, understanding the separate kingdoms of God and Caesar (the State) and the fact that Jesus never set out to rebuild the theocratic kingdom of Israel (Acts 1:6-7) If we merge the two realms, we will witness religious atrocities that the Church committed in its history. May we never again see the Church raise an army or militia to attack sinners and nonconformists (as the church with the army defines them)!

When his crusade goes terribly wrong, as it is likely to do, Bush will owe a lot of people an explanation. Meanwhile, we must do whatever we can, nonviolently, to oppose this military messianism.

When Ron Suskind wrote a article in vanity fair that the white house didnt like, in talking to one of the white house aides, the aide said that 'guys like Suskind' were ''in what we call the reality-based community.'' He defined this as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' He  nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut Suskind off.

''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' the aide continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Original Post 4/18/2007

I am now back in college and recently we studied the ban on DDT. I figured I would repost this so I can refer back to it.

John

Today’s headlines from Reuters tell us President Bush is making a commitment to bring malaria under control in Africa. Good jntentions, just a terrible methodology.One must remember the true history of this to understand if President Bush wants to end the genocide or just appear compassionate and line some pockets.  Lets remember the history:

In the 1960’s the World Health Organization sentenced children in African to death by malaria in the name of population control. Intentional Calculated Genocide . Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.“ 

Zero Population Growth

In effect, banning DDT was a zero population growth tool used on third world
Africa by the World Health Organization in the name of environmentalism.  Lapkin sees these questions through the prism of a new form of First World vanity. “The anti-DDT crusade is made all the more outrageous by the distinct taint of neo-colonialism that is its indelible accompaniment. In a way, the push to ban this insecticide represents the ultimate in modern Eurocentric arrogance, the newest form of imperialism.”

He likens it to the “we know what’s best” Kipling version of taking up the white man’s burden imposing a green, insecticide-free colonial ideology of primal, untainted nature. Given the Herodian consequences, it seems to me that the more fitting analogy is with the Belgian than theBritish empire, and with Joseph Conrad’s Mister Kurtz. Still there can be no doubting his conclusion that “hubris, folly and ethnocentrism…spawned this unnecessary tragedy”.

Crichton says the most imperative of contemporary challenges is to retrieve responsible environmentalism from the clutches of those zealots for whom it has become a substitute faith and return to scientific discipline.   He said, “I am thoroughly sick of politicised so-called facts that simply aren’t true. It isn’t that these ‘facts’ are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organisations are spinning their case… in the strongest way. Not at all — what more and more groups are doing is putting out lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false. This trend began with the DDT campaign and persists to this day.”

False Concern for cancer

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), DDT is classified as Group 2B carcinogenicity; that is, there is an admitted insufficient evidence of carcinogenicity.  On the other hand, a report issued  by the IARC classified combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives, the most widely prescribed contraceptive on the market, as Group 1 carcinogenicity.In other words, oral contraceptives, which the WHO claims over 100 million women worldwide regularly ingest, are by this classification defined as definitely carcinogenic. The WHO therefore justifies downplaying the immediate risk to hundreds of millions of women worldwide because “it is possible that the overall net public health outcome may be beneficial.” No again, population control is at the core.DDT has saved millions of lives, and the ban, based upon long disproved claims of carcinogenicity, is perpetuating the annual death of millions. Talk about a beneficial “overall net public health outcome”! “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.” *According to
Africa News, January 27. 1999, “It is believed that [malaria] afflicts between 300 and 500 million every year, causing up to 2.7 million deaths, mainly among children under five years”. False Solutions are diversions

What Africa needs is water and DDT, not bed blankets and vaccines.

In Graham Greene’s 1949 thriller classic, The Third Man, Harry Lime — “the dirtiest racketeer who ever made a dirty living” — peddles diluted penicillin through the sewers of occupiedVienna.

During the film’s famous scene atop the city’s Great Wheel, Harry’s friend Holly Martins, played by Joseph Cotten, asks, “Have you ever visited the children’s hospital? Have you ever seen any of your victims?” “Victims?” replies Orson Welles as Harry, pointing to the tiny figures moving far below them. “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving — forever? If I said you can have £20,000 for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money — without hesitation?”
Africa needs clean water, food and drugs for diseases like malaria and cholera, yet Bill Gates and Gordon Brown want to vaccinate them all, while the WHO wants to give them AZT & Viramune (nevirapine). Go figure

Environmentalism as a Religion

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism. Environmentalist many times have convictions immune to rational scrutiny. The question becomes whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Environmentalists must be so proud. They are. Their heroine’s propaganda material and their own efforts managed to kill more people than Hitler and Stalin combined.The Green having long ago bested the Red’s murder of innocents high score, they now turn their attention to the biggest achievement of all: eliminate humans.

 No, the time for bolder self-sacrifice has arrived. The only real, long term hope for the eco-sphere is a massive human population collapse, hopefully leading to the voluntary extinction of the human race. Already, a new urgency and groundswell of support is building for the idea that humans are a type of super toxin which the planet cannot sustain or support in the longterm. Cogent support for the voluntary extinction of the human race is well-articulated in all its ramifications and implications here : www.vhemt.org.

It is ironic that the industrialized world has eradicated malaria at home, and got the benefits of DDT, before we banned it and then campaigning to have it banned everywhere else. The leadership of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund unconscionably turned a blind eye to an African malaria catastrophe that was a direct outgrowth of their own advocacy  which costs millions of human lives each year in a completely preventable epidemic.

Smoke and Mirrors

Paul Driessen, (Green Power, Black Death) remarks, They show incredible disregard for the rights, aspirations, and even lives of the world’s poorest people. They constantly hammer on the supposed risks of using chemicals, fossil fuels, and biotechnology—and never mention the far greater risks that those technologies would reduce, or the lives they can save. And they have tax-exempt status, and get literally billions of dollars a year from foundations, and even government agencies, to promote their agendas and lies, despite their lethal consequences.

Their disregard for the poor, especially dark-skinned people in developing countries, is frightening. They’ve never apologized once for the deaths their anti-DDT policies have caused, never even admitted they were wrong, never offered any form of aid or compensation to victims or their families, and certainly they’ve never been held accountable.

During the World Trade Organization conference in Cancun a few years ago, the head of a major Mexican environmental group told a friend of mine: “We don’t care at all about the poor. We don’t want them to become rich or middle class, because then they will become consumers and that means you have to take more resources out of the ground to meet their demands, and that’s bad for the Earth. It’s better to keep them poor.”My Zero Population Growth days involved a lot of concern about the supposed population bomb, and then I started reading things from Julian Simon and other people, who raised questions that Paul Ehrlich [author of The Population Bomb and other environmentalists just couldn’t answer.

It became apparent that there was an environmental agenda that I was very uncomfortable with: keeping poor people poor, being so concerned about population that they were promoting anti-DDT, anti-biotechnology, anti-fossil fuel development, anti-economic development policies, that ultimately meant the poor were going to be kept poor, diseased, and dying prematurely.

Jacques Cousteau said we have to find a way to “eliminate” 350,000 people a day to stabilize global populations. And Prince Philip said he wanted to come back as a particularly deadly virus, and take out large segments of the Earth’s population. Club ofRome co-founder Alexander King wrote, “My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.” And former Sierra Club president Mike McCloskey said, “by using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countries without considering how to support the increase in populations.”

Offer Real Hope

I am all for offering Africa real hope and real help and ending the genocide in
Africa.  Lets start a malaria eradication program with spraying DDT and killing the malaria at its source. Constant pressure from concerned scientists and public interest groups appears to be paying off for the people of Africa, as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has endorsed the indoor spraying of DDT to battle malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.

Let’s help them drill wells so they can drink clean water. You start by helping people with the basics.I would encourage you personally to support charities like Blood Water Mission : http://www.bloodwatermission.com/ and to urge congress to lift the ban on DDT.

************

Edit:  I am for environmental responsibility. I have lived in Estes Park, CO (Rocky Mountain National Park), I have lived in Old Florida in fragile areas  (Homosassa, Crystal River and Ocala) and I live a couple miles from the Eastern Continental Divide in the mountains of Pennsylvania because of my affinity for nature.  

Respecting , enjoying and admiring God's creation in nature does not mean you accept everyones solution to perceived problems. I do not accept that the solution to third world country populations is death by malaria by removing products that fight malaria. I do find pantheism is dangerous and misleading and many fall victim to the misinformation given to the well meaning.

More on the subject:

1.Kenney, Richard, “What Kills More: Ideology or Religion?” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1411041/posts, 2005.
2. Kristof, Nicholas, “It’s Time To Spray DDT”  http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12FE355D0...">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12FE355D0..., 2005.
3. Seavey, Todd, “The DDT Ban Turns 30 — Millions Dead of Malaria Because of Ban, More Deaths Likely”  http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_deta..., 2002.
4. Makson, Lisa, “Rachel Carson's Ecological Genocide” http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169">http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169, 2003.
5. Crichton, Michael, State of Fear, (Harper Collins, 2004) Pg. 487
6. Edwards, J. Gordon, “DDT: A Case Study In Scientific Fraud” http://www.fightingmalaria.org/pdfs/Edwards%20-%20DDT%20Frau..., 2004.
7. Hayes, W. 1956. JAMA 162:890-897.
8. Cashill, Jack, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450...">http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450..., 2005.
9. IARC, “DDT and Associated Compounds” , http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol53/04-ddt.htm, 1997.
10. IARC, “IARC Monographs Programme Finds Combined Estrogen-Progestogen Contraceptives and Menopausal Therapy are Carcinogenic to Humans”, http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr167a.html, 2005.
11. Tren, Richard and Bate, Roger, "Malaria and the DDT Story" . IEA Research Paper No. OP 117. http://ssrn.com/abstract=677448.
12. Cashill, Jack, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450...">http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=450..., 2005.
13. Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. (New York: Harmony Books), 1991.
14. Shellenberger, Michael and Nordhaus, Ted. “The Death of Environmentalism” http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmental..., 2004.
15. Galton, Francis, Memories Of My Life, http://www.mugu.com/galton/books/memories/galton-memories-1u..., 1908. (Emphasis mine)
16. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/9/173940/4293
17. http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm

18. What the World Needs Now is DDT http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9F0DEEDA1738F932A25757C0A9629C8B63

Reflecting back to when I was "Uprising Youth" here on Xanga and theological positions I argued so intensely.

Comparing them to today as I am on the ministry path in another denomination, back to my roots.

Never say never.

Glad to see Xanga is still here and that xanga honored their commitments to LIFE users. Life has changed so much, it is hardly recognizable. And that is a good thing. Look forward to interacting in the community once again!

More to come soon.

For the past year we have heard rumblings in Republican circles about "one term Tom", countered by the PA GOP leaderships plan to support Gov. Corbett in 2014.

"Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce Castor sent the Pennsylvania political community into a frenzy when he announced he was considering a primary bid against incumbent Governor Tom Corbett. It was hailed by some as the “most serious” primary challenge to any Governor in the history of the Commonwealth."

"Immediately after being sworn in as Governor, Tom Corbett demurred on the possibility of making Pennsylvania a Right to Work state and promptly went into hiding. As the fight for School Choice raged in the capitol, the Governor seemed to be in the Witness Protection Program."

The article outlines the Governors failure to lead and act on  Privatization of state liquor stores, Right to Work legislation, Strike Free education, School vouchers and Property Tax elimination.. 

It also recounts the Governor's political stunt last year: " the Governor summoned each state committee member, one by one, to a closed door meeting where he strong-armed them to support his choice for Senate. Some were threatened with primary challenges, others were told that they would not receive government contracts for their business. It was back room, machine politics at its worst." To say that this action resulted in the alienation of many of the state party members would be an understatement.

In fact, the Governor himself became an issue in the 2012 elections, 

" During the fall election season, the Democratic statewide row office candidates all campaigned on one thing: holding Tom Corbett accountable. The election was framed as a referendum on the Governor. The Democrats won by a healthy margin statewide and the Republicans lost three seats in the State Senate."

This can not be overlooked or under stated.  In the 2012 Primary, Democratic  primary voters were less than entused with their candidates for President and US Senate. President Obama had a 13% under vote (no challenger) and Senator Casey had a 20.7% under vote against an unknown challenger who spent $5000. on a statewide race.  

The race of interest which drew the most votes in the primary was for Attorney General.  The winner of the primary, Kathleen Kane, who had President Clinton stumping for her, made holding Governor Corbett to account her central theme.  And this race inspired voters to turn out in November and carried the ticket to victory.

What was Governor Corbett doing in the meantime? Alienating those who supported him.  In September, one of Corbett's big money donors came out slamming the Governor for his lack of leadership. 

 "Tom Corbett came to Harrisburg with no practical business experience," Wagner wrote. "He is an attorney who methodically worked his way through the political ranks by gaining favor with party leaders.

He continued: "The bottom line is this. There is no substitute for leadership. Successful business owners provide leadership every day. For the sake of PA’s prosperity, Gov. Corbett had better figure this out, or else a historic opportunity for our state will be lost, and he will be a one term governor."

The Governor's office turned around and issued the following statement to the press:

“In the last year and a half, Tom Corbett has closed a $4.2 billion budget deficit, passed two on-time state budgets, saved the unemployment compensation system, passed tort reform, saved the Philadelphia refineries, made strides in securing the first-ever ethane petrochemical plant in the northeastern United States, presided over the first growth in manufacturing jobs in a generation, and overseen an economy with 73,000 new jobs, all without tax increases."

If the response ended there, I would understand the "defensive strategy/damage control"  But it did not. My jaw hit the floor at the following line, a personal attack on his donor. This was beneath the office.

“Scott Wagner’s inability to see this as progress," said Harley, "raises valid questions about his ability to identify leadership.”

If it was only the state party rank and file and a major donor, you may be able to shrug it off as acceptable collateral damage. But the Governor has also created his share of riffs with his intervention in negotiations in the Legislature on key pieces of legislation. One such example was with the Marcellus Shale Impact Fee legislation when the Governor came in to the negotiations and went straight to the bottom line.

Add in the firing of Joe Paterno and any part that voters may believe the Governor had, his role as Attorney General and the Sandusky case and you have Penn State alumni of all political stripes irate at the Governor for how they perceive he handled or mishandled the case. Understand , the facts in the how he handled the case are very secondary to the public perception.  Again, Mrs. Kane's promise to investigate his actions leave a perception that he bungled it.

In conclusion, the Pennsylvania Conservative cites a very relevant fact, "In mid January, Public Policy Polling found 49 percent of Republican Primary voters preferred someone other than Corbett to be their standard bearer."

This this high of a percentage of Republican voters dismayed with the Governor on the rebound of the 2012 election, I anticipate there to be serious grass roots efforts to gain control of the Republican State Committee in 2014.  If the party endorses the Governor in a strong arming display similar to 2012's, look for Chairman Gleason to be the next target.

The stage is set for a serious primary challenge to the Governor.  Whether it will be Bruce Castor or someone else remains to be seen.  Whomever it is, if anyone, will first need the cash to be able to run a statewide campaign complete with media. Until that occurs, there is no serious challenge, just rumbling and grumbling.