c5's Christian/conservative monkeyhouse...

MOVED

2010-08-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

MOVED HERE:
http://c5c5c5.wordpress.com/

Hello.

2010-03-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

How about a whole bunch of Deceits from Michael Moore.

Discover the wonderful world of VAAPCON.

my other blogs about:

1. Abortion in Film

2. the Leftist content in the newest movies/dvds. [no longer updated]

Bible Prophecy.

Help Stamp Out PALLYWOOD!

Most important Posts

Ahmadinejad Wants the Bomb To Help Bring the Muslim Messiah

2009-09-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Ahmadinejad Wants the Bomb To Help Bring the Muslim Messiah

Little is said about President Ahmadinejad's background even his official biography lacks a lot of information. But by understanding who Ahmadinejad is, and where he comes from, we can see how dangerous this man really is. In the book, "The Bomb and the Koran," French journalist Michel Taubmann gives us some insight into the Iranian despot Ahmadinejad's biography.

Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei practice the Hojjatieh's interpretation of Shiism. This type of Islam has a very messianic and apocalyptic view of the world. It predicts a period of universal chaos before the return of the Mahdi (the 12th imam, also known as the hidden imam, a Muslim version of the Messiah). This version of Islam is so radical that even the leader of the revolution against the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini banned its practice in 1983.

Through the prism his faith, Ahmadinejad sees politics as the "continuation of war by other means." Once, when asked by students to define "what's the most beautiful for a Muslim on earth," he answered very matter of fact: "To kill and be killed."

Ahmadinejad believes that he has been chosen by Allah to hasten the return of this Muslim messiah. The way to achieve this goal for the Iranian president is the occurrence of a nuclear Holocaust. And this is why it is so vital for Ahmadinejad that Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

During his September 2005 speech at the United Nations, Ahmadinejad said that he saw all the heads of state gathered blinded by a divine light while angels were circling above his head! As reported in the Financial Times:

"A leading website in Iran has published a transcript and video recording of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad claiming to have felt "a light" while addressing world leaders at the United Nations in New York in September. Baztab.com - a website linked to Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of the Revolutionary Guards - said the recording was made in a meeting between the president and Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, one of Iran's leading Shia Muslim clerics.

According to the transcript, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad said someone present at the UN, possibly from his entourage, subsequently told him: "When you began with the words ‘In the name of God'... I saw a light coming, surrounding you and protecting you to the end [of the speech]." Mr Ahmadi-Nejad said he sensed a similar presence.

"I felt it myself, too, that suddenly the atmosphere changed and for 27-28 minutes the leaders could not blink," the transcript continues. "I am not exaggerating... because I was looking. All the leaders were puzzled, as if a hand held them and made them sit. They had their eyes and ears open for the message from the Islamic Republic."

Taubmann' book tell us that Ahmadinejad's mother's name is Sayeed Khanom, which indicates that she is a descendant of the Prophet; but his father's pedigree is much less glorious. His name was originally Sabarian, which is most certainly Arabic (or even worse an Armenian name) either way it is an insult for most Iranians. His father whose first name was Ahmad changed his family name to Ahmadinejad, which could translate in "of the race of the prophet" since Ahmad was one of the multiple names used by the prophet.

Think about that for a second, his mother has the glorious position of a descendant of Mohammad; dad had the inglorious position of marrying way above his station. Papa must have had a tremendous inferiority complex, and I am sure that little Ahmadinejad learned from his dad's insecurity (I believe it's called prophet-envy).

In his younger adult years, Ahmadinejad trained to be a terrorist. He was involved with the taking of the US embassy and it is rumored that he suggested taking the Russian one as well.

Ahmadinejad was a close associate of Ayatollah Malahati, who was among the people that set up Iran's terrorist activities.

Malahati reportedly supervised the Oct. 23, 1983 Beirut terror attacks against the U.S. Marines and French soldiers barracks that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French paratroopers.

In his new role Ahmadinejad allegedly planned assassinations in the Middle East and Europe of opponents to the regime, such as the Kurdish leader Qasselou in July 1989 in Vienna.

In other words the guy has a real taste for blood. But it's worse than that. You have a guy who's mother descended from the prophet, a dad trying to make up for the fact that he is the Iranian version of trailer trash and what you end up with is a nut job with a Messiah complex.

Are we scared yet? This guy thinks he is supposed to bring on the "end of days" and the only way to do that is to kill millions of people. So Senator Obama, what DO you want to say to him when you meet without conditions?

Except where indicated, the source for the facts in this article Ahmadinejad's Past Tells it All Olivier Guitta, FDD

Uninsured In America

2009-09-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

youtube clip

Valerie Jarrett connections

2009-09-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

from Glenn's show:

part1

part2

Please take another vacation, Obama

2009-09-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

Obama's Week:

Monday: President Obama gives speech on the economy in Troy, NY before traveling to New York City and appearing on the David Letterman Show.

Tuesday: The president speaks to U.N. secretary general's climate change summit and the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. He'll host African heads of state for lunch, a climate change dinner at night and in between hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

Wednesday: The president gives a speech to UN General Assembly, holds bilateral meetings with Japanese and Russian prime ministers; hosts meeting to talk about strengthening the peacekeeping function of the UN; attends a heads-of-state lunch; and hosts American reception in the evening with First Lady.

Thursday: The president presides over a UN Security Council summit on arms control, before the security council votes on a UN resolution on nonproliferation. Then he departs for Pittsburgh and the G-20 meetings.

Friday: Morning session of the G-20; working lunch; afternoon session; followed by a press conference.

source
=============================

Obama To Propose Radical Cuts In America's Arsenal

Obama Looking Forward to Nationalizing Newspapers

Brezinski fantasizes about US shooting down Israeli planes

Throwing Poland under the bus on missile defense on 70th anniversary of Soviet invasion

The Honduran People Will Pay for Our Shameful Behavior

Obama plays dumb on ACORN

Obama Lied About Insurance Case

Obama fudging another health-care horror story?

Promoting American weakness
What They Really Think

The Next Van Jones...
. . . will be none other than Valerie Jarrett, the confidante to President Obama who is so close to him that Obama described her in July to the New York Times, as “family,” adding “I trust her completely.” (Family, eh? Isn’t that how Obama described Jeremiah Wright — as like a “crazy old uncle” — until it was time to toss him under the bus?)
Other points of charm include Jarrett’s having ties to the radical Students for a Democratic Society and, ultimately, Bill Ayers, the man to whom all radical roads seem to wind.

Most Important Posts

2009-09-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

=============
Christianity:
=============

Christianity
Salvation
Biblical Prophecy

What is the emerging / emergent church movement?
Oprah: Spinner of New Age Spiderweb
some words of wisdom from Molotov Mitchell

God’s Simple Plan of Salvation

If Millions Have Disappeared, Watch This...

How To Know You Are Going To Heaven

=========
Politics:
=========

59 Random Michael Moore Deceits
VAAPCON: Clinton-era spying on pro-life/Christian groups and people
Help Stamp Out Pallywood!
Leftist Literary Frauds and Martyrs
Overthrowing the Capitalist System
Top 10 Reasons that I Hate the U.N.

so far, anti-Obamacare town hall protesters have been called:
Obama Thuggin' It
the [Obama - Ayers - Khalidi] nexus
Obama a Socialist?
Obama on Iran and Honduras
Obama, ACORN, community organizers and the Financial Crisis
DEATH PANELS
Obama and The Third Way
Obama's ACORN ties
Obama's ACORN connections
IG-GATE: The Inspector General Scandals
Obama and Rev. Wright
Obama and Infanticide
be an informant for Obama!
Obama flubs/gaffes/mistruths/lies
Obama's Rise to Power
Obama's insulting gestures

Obama's Many Czars
Obama Czar: Mark Lloyd
Obama Czar: Cass Sunstein
Obama Czar: Carol Browner
Obama Czar: Scott Gration
Obama Czar: John Holdren
Obama's (former) Czar: Van Jones

Leftist Horror Story: Jim Jones
Leftist Horror Story: Larry Grathwohl and the Weather Underground
Leftist Horror Story: Margaret Sanger

Leftist Outrage: Lynne Stewart
Leftist Outrage: Jamie Gorelick's Wall...
Leftist Outrage: the book "The Coming Insurrection"
Leftist Outrage: The John Adams Project
Leftist Outrage: Sandy Burglar and his pants
Leftist Outrages: Banning DDT/Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"
Leftist Outrages: Wade Rathke

an intro to Black Liberation Theology
FUNNY: Emotional Hippies - Crying Over Dead Trees
the Oklahoma City Bombing (more than the well-known story)
a couple of not-well-known Weathermen
Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?
"where along the radical leftist continuum" does Obama reside?
Leftist Tactics

Obama and Rev. Wright

2009-09-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

Rev. Wright's Greatest Hits:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God d##n America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people... God d##n America for treating our citizens as less than human. God d##n America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost."

"The government lied about Pearl Harbor. They knew the Japanese were going to attack."

"And they will not only attack you if you try to point out what's going on in white America, the U.S. of KKK A."

"The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment and purposely infected African-American men with syphilis."

"Black men turning on black men- That is fighting the wrong enemy."

"We cannot see that what we are doing is the same thing that Al-Qaeda is doing under a different flag. If they can't find the weapons of mass destruction then they are going to do just like the LAPD and plant them some weapons of mass destruction."

"The government lied about the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."

"Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky.
He was riiiidin' dirrrty."

=============

"Barack Obama would go on to call Reverend Wright his spiritual advisor, mentor, and friend,. He married Barack and Michelle Obama in late 1992, then baptized their children. Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Wright’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for nearly 20 years."

============

*** Obama in 1995: Rev. Wright is 'The Best of What the Black Church Has to Offer'

"In a 1995 interview, Barack Obama lavished praise on Reverend Jeremiah “G-D America” Wright, calling him a “wonderful man” and “the best of what the black church has to offer.”

youtube video

*** "Contrary to his claims, Barack Obama was obviously very close with the now thrown-under-the-bus Rev. Jeremiah Wright."
(Barack Obama, June 5, 2007, Praising Rev. Jeremiah Wright)

=============

"Obama says that rather than advising him on strategy, Wright helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated.

“What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice,” Obama said. “He’s much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I’m not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that’s involved in national politics.” …

In his 1993 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.

When Obama sought his own church community, he felt increasingly at home at Trinity...

Later he would base his 2004 keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention on a Wright sermon called “Audacity to Hope,” –also the inspiration for Obama’s second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.”

Though Wright and Obama do not often talk one-on-one often, the senator does check with his pastor before making any bold political moves.

Last fall, Obama approached Wright to broach the possibility of running for president. Wright cautioned Obama not to let politics change him, but he also encouraged Obama, win or lose..."

source

=============

Obama lies about Wright apologizing:

Let's Just All Agree That Wright Apologized And Move On

==============

Pastor Wright Erased From Obama’s Website

==============

Despite Campaign Claim, Obama Told Paper He Attended Trinity Church ‘Every Week’

(CNSNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 – while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat – that he attended services at Trinity United Church of Christ every week.

This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright’s comments.

==============

"Obama clearly lied about his relationship with Jeremiah Wright at his last April press conference. When Obama declared that this Jeremiah Wright, revealed by widely circulated videos, was not the man he knew and declared that they had never been close, he was not telling the truth.

David Mendell wrote a favorable-to-Obama book, From Promise to Power, for which he had wide access to Obama, his family members, Jeremiah Wright, and a number of other close associates of the candidate. Throughout this book, Jeremiah Wright plays a prominent role as mentor and counselor. At every decisive juncture of Obama’s rise from Trinity congregation member to the United States Senate, Jeremiah Wright provides counsel and mentorship to the rising Barack.

In a recent Newsweek article, “Finding His Faith,” Obama answers questions regarding his attendance at Trinity. He now says he and Michelle really didn’t attend Trinity very often at all. “At the beginning, we went fairly frequently . . . probably went two or three times a month. When we had Malia, our first child, we went less frequently, and that probably continued for a couple of years, just because — I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it’s not easy . . . As they got older, we would go back a little more frequently, probably twice a month.”

Unfortunately, Senator Obama gave a vastly different answer to the same question when he was running for his U.S. Senate seat. Here’s what he told Cathleen Falsani, in a face-to-face interview for the Chicago Sun-Times. In March 2004, Obama said this about his church attendance:

FALSANI: Do you still attend Trinity?

OBAMA: Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service. Ever been there? Good service. I actually wrote a book called Dreams from My Father; it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity."

source

==============

No surprise there, since back in June Kurtz pointed to evidence that Obama shared the black racism of the Trinity United Church of Christ. In this article Obama was reported as rejecting ‘integrationist assimilation’ and wanting to channel black rage more effectively into political organisation. Kurtz dug out a chapter in a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois in which Obama sketched out how radical black churches could be harnessed to help radicalise the black population. As Kurtz wrote:

so it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.

source

here's Kurtz's article:

No Liberation
Obama may have left Trinity, but he’s still on the Left.

==============

"Some people find inspiration and motivation from the tapes they buy from late night infommercial hucksters.

Whose motivational tapes did Barack Obama take to Harvard Law?

It [Trinity United Church of Christ] also helped give him spiritual bona fides and a new assurance. Services at Trinity were a weekly master class in how to move an audience. When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church. [my emph.]

Obama says he never heard the ugly, controversial Wright sermons in person. Which ones did he use to hone his oratory skills at Harvard Law?"

[...]

Be sure to read that whole New York Times piece from last year. Wright blessed Obama's house as well? The Rezko house? ohmydearlord."

==============

*** The Obama's donated $22,500 to this filthy church in 2006:

*** Wright, James H. Cone, and Black Liberation Theology:

*** "Barack Obama sat in church for a 1000 Sundays listening to this guy."

*** Wright and Hamas:

*** Obama, Wright, and the Christ Hospital connection

*** Obama's Pastor Slurs Italians in Latest Magazine

*** Surprise, There is a Difference Between Black Brains and White Brains: Obama's Pastor Explains It All to You

*** Jeremiah Wright's 'Trumpet'
The content of the magazine produced by Barack Obama's pastor reveals the content of his character.

*** Obama Church Published ‘Ethnic Bomb’ Claim

*** Obama’s Crackpot Mentor’s Crackpot Mentor

*** Mr. James H. Cone, who is Jeremiah Wright’s spiritual mentor, explains his “black liberation theology”:
"This is very crazy, very ugly stuff."

*** "White Man's Greed" (1st Rev. Wright Sermon That Obama Heard At Trinity United)
(Obama titled one of his books after this sermon)

*** Obama’s Racist, America-Hating Church

*** Wright on Farrakhan's Greatness

*** History of Wright and Farrakhan
(including their visit to Libya to meet with Gaddafi)

*** Farrakhan on Obama: 'The Messiah is absolutely speaking'
'Barack has captured the youth,' will bring about 'universal change'

*** Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan’s Wife Together in Photo
(that photo is gone now, but you can see a small version here:)

*** Obama, Farrakhan, and the million man march:

*** Rev. Wright Magazine Featured Obama on Cover with Farrakhan

*** In December 2007, Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, receives Jeremiah Wright Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer award

*** How Obama’s Church ‘Remembered’ 9/11

*** Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto
Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence

*** Obama Church Printed Pro-Hezbollah Articles

*** More On When Obama Met Jeremiah Wright

*** "This is the “Christianity” that Trinity Church sells in its book store."

*** "From A Black Theology Of Liberation, by (Mr. Obama’s spiritual mentor’s mentor) James H. Cone, pp v - 8 (in the 1995 paperback edition):"

*** Media: Obama's Church Promotes "White Church Is AntiChrist"

=============

Rev. Wright's 'War on Iraq IQ Test'

"LGF reader mcs emailed a link to yet another disturbing rant by Jeremiah Wright, this time in writing: The War on Iraq IQ Test.

After a series of viciously slanted pro-Saddam questions, the Reverend’s IQ test suddenly veers into Israel-hatred straight out of the Muammar Gaddafi playbook:"

=============

the guy who took over for Wright, Reverend Otis B. Moss III:

Jeremiah Wright's Apprentice

some other "spiritual mentors" of Obama:

1. Father Michael Pfleger:

Obama’s buddy Father Pfleger rants race at Trinity United

Obama's Reverend Pfleger threatens to snuff out shopowner:

2. Reverend James Meeks:

Obama: It Looks Like There’s More Where Wright Came From

3. Jim Wallis:

Barack Obama’s Newest Spiritual Advisor

More problematic pastors for Obama

How To Know You Are Going To Heaven

2009-09-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

How To Know You Are
Going To Heaven
==========================
"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life."
John 5:24
==========================

Security! The common denominator of all the aspirations of the human heart. Mankind has longed for it since time began. We have built walled cities, made treaties, sought after power and wealth. Indeed we have tried by every means possible to be secure in freedom, provisions and in relationships - especially in our relationship to God.

But according to the Bible, God's word, there is only one way to true security: Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of John we read, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me (John 14:6)." He can satisfy every need for security because He provides membership in God's family for now and eternity: "As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who trusted in His name (John 1:12)."

Why is Jesus the only way to true security? The Bible provides the answer. We cannot find security on our own because we stand condemned before God for sin. The Apostle Paul's statement in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and do fall short of the glory of God." lets us know that every person in the world is a sinner. What's more this refers not only to so-called "bad sins" such as murder but to anything which falls short of God's perfection and excellence.

This sinfulness of mankind means that we lack the righteousness God requires and, indeed, can never achieve it. Concerning this requirement, Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:20)." Paul puts it bluntly: "There is none righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10)." Again, that includes everyone. Absolutely nothing a person can do on his own can ever earn or merit anything from God, as the prophet Isaiah notes: "All our righteous works are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6)." To Christians Paul said, "He did not save us on the basis of works which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy (Titus 3:5)." The consequence for mankind of this sinfulness and lack of righteousness is spiritual death - separation from God: "The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23a)."

How then is it possible to have that righteousness necessary for acceptance by God? The answer is surprising and wonderful: Christ has provided it for us! The Bible points this out in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin in our place in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." Jesus, who was perfectly righteous and therefore, did not deserve to die, took the penalty which we deserved (death, the wages of sin) upon Himself. Romans 5:8 says, "God proves His love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Peter proclaims, "[Christ] Himself offered up our sins in His body on the cross" (1 Peter 2:24), and, "Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous in place of the unrighteous, in order that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18a)." Then Christ was resurrected from the dead to guarantee resurrection for the righteous (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). In this way God was able both to punish sin - thereby remaining consistently holy - and to forgive the sinner - thereby remaining consistently gracious. As Paul puts it in Romans 3:26: "[He did this] in order that He might be righteous and pronounce righteous the one who has faith in Jesus." God gives salvation as a gift: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23)."

There is, however, a condition. That is, salvation is not automatic, for when the Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas, "What must I do to be saved?," the reply was, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved (Acts 16:30-31)." Paul says it this way in Romans 4:5, "To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is reckoned as righteousness." The Greek work translated "believe" indicates that the facts about Jesus must be accepted (that He was God in the flesh, etc.) and means that He must be depended on for salvation. In other words, there are two aspects to the meaning of the word - belief in facts and trust in a person.

Therefore, if you think that your sins are not bad enough to condemn you or that you can save yourself by church membership, baptism, etc., you must change your mind about those incorrect beliefs, believe what the Bible says about your sinful and separated condition and trust Christ to save you personally. Then, and only then, will you be saved and secure - when you take God's route to security.

For those who reject God's remedy for sin, the condemnation for sinfulness stands and results in permanent separation from God and punishment in the lake of fire: "The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him (John 3:36);" "and if anyone was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15)." This is the scriptural destiny for all those who reject Christ.

Well, what about you my friend? Will you try to find security your own way and regret it for eternity or will you accept God's free gift of eternal life and have real security - now and forever? It is my prayer that you will place your trust in Christ as your Savior right now, wherever you are - and live forever secure in God's family.

Obama and Infanticide

2009-09-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

for the best overview of the Infanticide/"Born Alive Infant Protection Act" issue, please read these:

Obama in His Own Words: There Is No Doubt He Supported Infanticide

Links to Barack Obama's votes on IL's Born Alive Infant Protection Act

=================================

Obama's 10 reasons for supporting infanticide

Barack Obama and the Comfort Room

Obama, Wright, and the Christ Hospital connection

=============

Never Forget: Obama was the lone obstacle to BAIPA:
"passed unanimously, but only in the absence of Senator Barack Obama."

=============

2 youtube videos featuring Jill Stanek... the woman who brought the infanticide story into the light...

number 1
number 2

==============

an interview with Alan Keyes...

==============

from February 2008:

Obama's biggest mistake:

"Senator Barack Obama debated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night and said his biggest mistake was voting with a unanimous Senate to help save Terri Schiavo. Terri is the disabled Florida woman whose husband won the legal right to starve her to death."

===============================

*** Audio of Obama arguing against giving medical care to abortion survivors

*** Index of documents relating to Barack Obama
and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act

August 2008:

*** Breaking news: New documents show Obama cover-up on born-alive survivors bill

Obama Lied About Abortion Record

==============================

December 6, 2006:

Obama not fazed by Jill Stanek's testimony:

"Jill Stanek, a registered delivery-ward nurse who was the prime mover behind the legislation after she witnessed aborted babies’ being born alive and left to die, testified twice before Obama in support of the Induced Infant Liability Act bills. She also testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

Stanek told me her testimony “did not faze” Obama.

In the second hearing, Stanek said, “I brought pictures in and presented them to the committee of very premature babies from my neonatal resuscitation book from the American Pediatric Association, trying to show them unwanted babies were being cast aside. Babies the same age were being treated if they were wanted!”

“And those pictures didn’t faze him [Obama] at all,” she said.

At the end of the hearing, according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek for being “very clear and forthright,” but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested “doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.” He told her, “That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.”"

===========================

Were there "already" laws protecting premature infants, as Senator Obama has at various times stated in defending his vote against the born-alive bill?

"The answer is that no law was protecting them. We know this for certain because the Illinois attorney general at the time, Jim Ryan — the man charged with enforcing state laws — wrote a letter on July 17, 2000, expressing his finding that Christ Hospital was breaking no laws in leaving premature babies to die after they survived abortions.

Ryan wrote:

While we are deeply respectful of your serious concerns about the practices and methods of abortions at this hospital, we have concluded that there is no basis for legal action by this office against the Hospital or its employees, agents or staff at this time.

So again: according to the state's chief enforcer of the law, Christ Hospital was doing nothing illegal when they left premature babies to die after they had survived abortions. Note that this is this is the very reason legislators were trying to pass the born-alive bill in the first place."

===========================

August 21, 2008:

Audio from 2002 of Obama Defending Opposition to the Born-Alive Bill

Erick Erickson links to some audio purportedly of Barack Obama on the floor of the Illinois State Senate in 2002:

youtube vid

Erickson says "I cannot vouch for the authenticity of it, but I trust the friend who sent it to me." According to the State Senate's online transcript database, the quote is real. While the database is password protected to prevent cut-and-paste, here's a screenshot of Obama's substantive statements during the debate:

[...]

It looks like abortion wasn't above Obama's pay grade back in 2002. He had full faith and trust that an abortionist would make an accurate decision as to whether the child he failed to kill was "viable". That's to say nothing of Obama's blithe disregard for the born-alive non-viable fetuses who gasped for air during the few hours they lived after birth."

==================================================

*** The Obama Debate Every American Should See

*** In 2002, Barack Obama Supported Infanticide and I've Got the Transcript of His Words

============================

"So, we are content to rely upon a law that would require an abortionist to save the life of a life that is living because he failed in his attempt to kill for pay.

We are supposed to rely upon the weight of the Hippocratic Oath upon a person who can be sued for malpractice in their failure to kill a baby, to risk further liability for negligence in saving the baby's life he, seconds ago, tried to snuff out?"

=============================

"The Post further presents as fact the Obama position that the Illinois bill he opposed was solely about “pre-viable” babies. The testimony of former nurse Jill Stanek, who witnessed babies surviving botched abortions at Christ Hospital just outside Chicago, discussed babies past 20 weeks, including into the third trimester — thus not “pre-viable.”"

=============================

Obama's biggest lie about supporting infanticide

The Story Of Barack Obama

2009-09-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

youtube: Glenn Beck's "The Story Of Barack Obama"

be an informant for Obama!

2009-09-16T15:29:00.001-07:00

from August 2009:

** Call For Informants: If You Oppose Obamacare, Even in ‘Casual Conversation,’ the White House Wants to Know About It

** Lanny Davis wants you photographed and investigated

** "...But wait ... there’s more. Imagine, if you would, cross referencing those forwarded emails to the White House with another database the Obama Administration has ordered set up."

** Obama's dissident database could be secret -- and permanent

** Who’s behind the Internet Snitch Brigade

** Obama Not Flinching On Snitch Central

** DNC admitting flag@whitehouse.gov operation collected data?

** DNC Admits Barack Obama WAS Collecting Information on People Via Flag@Whitehouse.gov

** Modified Limited Hang-Out: DNC Seems to Implicitly Admit Obama Vaccuumed up Emails from Snitch Line

Israel’s Miraculous Rebirth Proves the Bible

2009-09-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Israel’s Miraculous Rebirth Proves the Bible

One of the best proofs that the Bible is true is the fact that the Bible prophesies the history of the Jews before it happens. This Jewish history is surely the most improbable history of any nation and yet the Bible prophesied it flawlessly thousands of years in advance.

Some of this Jewish history is history you know. You know Jews are found scattered throughout the world;1 you know Jews have suffered great persecutions,2 and you know there is now a young Jewish nation called Israel,3 but did you know that the Bible prophesies all this history. God Himself foretold this very improbable history before it happened. Folks, the fact that God’s own words are in the Bible foretelling Israel’s improbable history and the fact that this improbable history happened is compelling evidence that the Bible is supernaturally inspired by God Himself. In other words the Bible is absolutely true, and you can confirm its truth for yourself because you know some of Israel’s recent history but you probably haven’t considered how very improbable this history is.

Consider; the Jews are an ancient people like the Phoenicians or the Philistines, but the Phoenicians and Philistines, like almost all ancient peoples, have lost their ethnic identity while the Jews have not. The Jews kept their ethnic identity despite being utterly defeated and dispersed by the Romans;. Jews were dispersed world wide; their language was no longer spoken, but incredibly, they kept their ethnic identity. Even more incredibly they reclaimed their original homeland and relearned their original language two thousand years after being dispersed. Impossible! but God said it would happen and it happened just as God said.

As improbable as was the re-establishment of Israel, the survival of Israel was even more improbable because the day Israel was reborn4 it was attacked by five modern, well equipped Arab armies which outnumbered Israel’s tiny army forty to one. Israel’s tiny improvised army was so poorly equipped it had no tanks and its air force was two Piper Cubs. Many Israeli solders were untrained, spoke only foreign languages and some didn’t even have rifles.

Until Israel was declared a state it was a British protectorate, protected by the British Army, but the British would leave as soon as Israel was declared an independent state and those five modern, well equipped Arab armies would attack. They would attack the ill-equipped, improvised, ragtag Jewish Army which they outnumbered forty to one. The horrible outcome of that attack was so obvious the British pleaded with Jewish Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion not to declare Israel a Jewish state. They told Ben-Gurion “If you declare a Jewish state, there won’t be one Jew left alive in all of Palestine in forty-eight hours.”

Most news items about this situation did not report this utter hopelessness of the Jewish position. We Americans knew the Jews were outnumbered and the news spoke of bloodbath but we did not know the Jews faced imminent total massacre. Even so Bible-believing Christians everywhere knew the restoration of Israel as a nation was the great Bible prophesy to be fulfilled in our time so the compelling question was could God make it happen despite the hopeless odds?

Of course God did make it happen and I think God deliberately created those hopeless odds in order to show that the restoration of Israel was His supernatural act.5 Every step in the restoration of Israel as a nation was very improbable, but when that ragtag, ill-equipped Israeli Army beat five combined modern well-equipped Arab armies it was nothing short of a miracle.6 By the way that ragtag army not only won the war, it doubled the size of Israel.

God said in His Word, in the Bible, that He would restore Israel and He did. Therefore we conclude God’s Word, the Bible, is inspired by God and is absolutely true. God’s plan of salvation is also in the Bible so it is also inspired by God and it is also absolutely true.

1 Leviticus 26: 33

2 Deuteronomy 28:64-67

3 Leviticus 26: 44,45; The covenant referenced is God’s Promise of land: The Promised Land. See Genesis 17: 7-8. Ezekiel 36: 24

4 Isaiah 66:8

5 Ezekiel 36:11,23; 37: 12-13

6 Despite heavy Arab representation in the United Nations, the United Nations still voted nationhood for Israel.

Even though there were five Arab nations poised to attack Israel if Israel should become a state, these Arab nations were not opposed to the United Nation’s declaring Israel a state. The Iraqi U.N. Ambassador even demanded statehood for Israel on the grounds that the United States U.N. Ambassador had set a deadline for the statehood decision which deadline had passed. The Iraqi Ambassador argued that the United States U.N. Ambassador had said that if a decision about Israeli statehood had not been reached by six o’clock on the day of debate, then Israel should be declared a state.

The reason that Iraqi Ambassador and other Arabs favored Israeli statehood was that the Arab forces arrayed against Israel were so utterly overwhelming. The five Arab nations were so powerful they outnumbered Israel forty to one in solders, and they had modern, well equipped tanks and aircraft while Israel had none. Therefore the Arabs with this super overwhelming modern, well equipped army assumed they would so easily crush the improvised ragtag Jewish Army that they were eager for Israel to be declared a state. They figured that as soon as the United Nations declared Israel a state that declaration would remove the British protectorate over Palestine. Without that British protection, the Jews would be left virtually defenseless. Five modern Arab armies would then attack these virtually defenseless Jews, would wipe them out and the nation of Israel would die on the day of its birth.

To show how utterly hopeless this situation was for the Jews, let me draw a picture of their situation. The year was 1948, just three years after the end of World War II. Remember World War II was the war of the anti-Jewish Holocaust where six million Jews were murdered and many more were made unwelcome refugees in Europe.

Many of these poor European refugees fled to Palestine where there were already some Jewish communities because of a movement called Zionism.

Zionism was a movement of Jews back to their original homeland and Palestine as a British protectorate provided a place where poor homeless Zionist Jews could flee. Of course these Jewish refugees were very poor. They spoke different languages; they were not yet a real nation. They were still in the process of organizing a society so they were in no condition to fight a war against any kind of army, much less against five modern armies attacking them from all sides. They had a very informal improvised army. They had no tanks; no military aircraft; they didn’t even have enough rifles to supply the few solders they could field. Many of these solders were untrained and did not even speak a common language.

Even if these Jews had had a modern well trained, well equipped army, they were outnumbered forty to one. For every Jewish solder there were forty Arab solders: five well equipped, well trained Arab armies which were poised on the borders of Israel eager to attack as soon as Israel was declared a state

The Jews not only had very few solders, they had very few weapons, and the British protectorate would not let Jews ship weapons into Palestine. Nor would Britain allow Jews to manufacture weapons. These British prohibitions would end when Israel was declared a state, but the moment Israel was declared a state, five large, well equipped Arab armies would attack.

To defy this British prohibition one Jewish genius bought weapons-making machinery from American junk yards and scrap metal dealers. This genius assembled the machinery he had bought on a farm to insure it would work. There he disassembled it, labeling every part, and shipped these 75,000 disassembled parts to Israel. Since the British could not recognize these disassembled parts as a weapons factory, they let them into their protected land which would soon become Israel, but the Jews still could not reassemble these parts and produce weapons until the British left.

Of course the Jews also needed money to buy arms. After one fund raiser had totally failed to raise funds in the United States, Golda Meyer, a future Israeli prime minister, volunteered to try. She arrived in New York with ten dollars. However, she learned that there would be a convention of prominent Jews (many of them rich) in Chicago. She flew to Chicago and talked her way onto the speaking schedule.

She spoke, and her speech was so effective she got promises for over a million dollars that very day. Furthermore the Jews got Golda Meyer more speaking engagements so that by the end of the month she had fifty million dollars.

Israel’s problem was that even though they could now buy weapons, they could not import them to soon-to-be Israel as long as the British were present. Of course the British left as soon as Israel was declared a state, and as soon as Israel was declared as state, five Arab nations attacked. Egypt attacked from the south. Jordan and Iraq attacked from the east and Syria and Lebanon from the north.

The few Israeli solders fought bravely, bombing the Arabs with their air force of two captured piper cubs by dropping hand grenades. When they ran out of grenades, they dropped crates of beer bottles with shrieking whistles on them.

Amazingly, no, miraculously, the Arab armies seemed paralyzed, so the ragtag Israeli Army, some of it under siege in Jerusalem, fighting on starvation rations, held the Arab armies for a month until the Arabs agreed to a truce.

It was during this truce that Israel imported all the weapons it had bought. Starting June 15, 1948: 29 canons, 10 tanks, 4 antiaircraft guns, 45,000 mortar shells, 110 tons of TNT, and 200,000 detonators. From Mexico, 36 canons, 500 machine guns, 17,000 shells and 7 million rounds of ammunition. From the U.S. 2 ships with war surplus jeeps, trucks and half tracks, machinery for manufacturing bazooka rocket launchers. From Italy 30 surplus German tanks and on and on. The Israeli air force got real fighter planes and bombers,

Israeli President, David Bengurian knew that with these weapons Israel could now win, but he also knew that he would be vilified if he refused to push for a continuation of the truce, but he thought the Arab nations would insist on renewing the fighting. He was right.

The Israeli Army now won victory after victory so that in just ten days they had won so much the U.N. called another truce, but by this time the nation of Israel was miraculously secure.

It was a real miracle when Israel won the war against all five Arab armies, and secular historians could not bring themselves to deal with it, so they made excuses for the Arabs. They made excuses like the Egyptian Army had not been tested in war or their commander was too much of a playboy or the Arab solders were suffering from mental stress.

Actually, by reading the secular historical accounts very carefully, we can surmise some of the reasons why the Arabs lost the war. For example, an Arab propagandist, a Doctor Kaleegee tried to incite Arab fighters against the Jews by falsely claiming Jewish solders were committing atrocities. That false claim backfired because instead of inciting Arab fighters against the Jews, it caused the Arabs to flee. There were multiple occurrences of things like Arabs fleeing in response to their own propaganda that caused them to lose the war. For instance when an unseasonable rain occurred during the normally dry season, a rumor spread among the Arab solders that this unseasonable rain was caused by nuclear fallout. (Hydrogen bombs were being tested by super powers, so nuclear fallout was in world news.) The Arabs escalated this fallout rumor to reports that the Jews had nuclear weapons and many Arab solders fled in terror. Another serious Arab problem was the fact that Arabs stole many of their own army’s military supplies. Supplies would be sent to the battle front but they would be stolen en route and would never arrive at the battle front.

On the Jewish side there was massive heroism. Jews destroyed or captured Arab tanks by climbing onto moving tanks and throwing bottles of flaming gasoline (Molotov cocktails) into their hatch.

Of course the real explanation for the Jewish victory was due to God’s divine intervention. The Jewish victory was truly a miracle of God.

a few more articles:

Israel, nation of miracles
by Hal Lindsey

Gaza's place in Bible's prophecies

Why God won't allow Israel to perish

Obama's Rise to Power

2009-09-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

"How many Americans have heard of Alice Palmer, Blair Hull, or Jack Ryan?"

all info copy/pasted from: here

"Obama, with the help of his cultlike followers whom I call "Obamites", has somehow positioned himself as "above the fray" of dirty politics, perhaps in conjunction with his "change, hope" feel-good platform.

His rise to power shows many interesting, even odd, turns of events that led him where he is today. In some cases, he himself acted to attain victory. In other cases, strange events occurred which do not seem to be directly linked to him, but the sheer coincidence is compelling: 2 campaigns were essentially won by late-breaking scandals from released court records.

In his one and only true test, in the 2000 US Representative primary, Obama lost by a huge margin.

This is a work in progress.

I. 1996 ILLINOIS STATE SENATE 13TH DIST. PRIMARY: Unopposed by challenging opponent’s petitions and having them forced off ballot.

Obama won the 1996 primary unopposed after knocking four opposing Democrats off the primary ticket by challenging their petitions, including the incumbent, Sen. Alice Palmer who had stepped down to run for Congress, informally endorsed Obama, lost, and re-entered the race for the 13th District seat.

A. Ruthless Technicalities.
“The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.”

B. Alice Palmer, et al.
“Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews. But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.

Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.

Another candidate he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights. "Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"

In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."

But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.

"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."”

“Had Palmer survived the petition challenge, Obama would have faced the daunting task of taking on an incumbent senator. Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.

And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: "If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."” Source generally: Obama knows his way around a ballot, David Jackson and Ray Long, Chicago Tribune, April 3, 2007

II. 1996 ILLINOIS STATE SENATE 13TH DIST. GENERAL ELECTION: Unopposed
After forcing out his fellow Democrats in the primary, Obama was elected unopposed to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 representing the 13th District, comprising the university neighborhood of Hyde Park in south Chicago.

III. 2000 U.S. Representative Primary: Lost against Incumbent.

In Obama's first real test as a politician, he lost handily (by approximately 30% of the vote) to the incumbent and fellow African-American Bobby Rush.

Obama Adviser and former Congressman Abner J. Mikva was quoted as saying "“Bobby Rush had not been the most active member of Congress from Illinois, but there was no issue that made him particularly vulnerable,” Mr. Mikva said. “He hadn’t robbed a bank or beaten his grandmother or things like that. In that respect, I was concerned.” NY Times, September 9, 2007.

IV. 2004 U.S. SENATE PRIMARY: Unopposed due to “late-breaking” scandal resulting from divorce records being unsealed.

"In early polls leading up to the March 16, 2004, primary election, candidate Blair Hull enjoyed a substantial lead and widespread name recognition resulting from a well-financed advertisement effort." Then ironically scandal took out Blair Hull. Obama was once again unopposed in the primary.

A month before the primary elections a news story broke out regarding his divorce from his ex-wife. She had sought a restraining order against him during their divorce in 1998. Hull tried to keep the divorce records sealed, but pressure from journalists and his opposing candidates forced him to release them.

The papers claimed that his ex-wife alleged that during a physical fight between them he had threatened to kill her, this led to his arrest for battery, however no charges were ever filed. Source: The Rise and Fall of Blair Hull, William Voegeli, The Claremont Institute, March 19, 2004

Axelrod paved the way for Obama

There was a question that came up yesterday about Blair Hull’s difficulties here in Illinois, and what in the heck precipitated it? We all have our theories, right? What I’m looking for is some kind of documentation to attest to the facts in this; bearing in mind that Obama’s chief media advisor at the time was David Axelrod, who was an advisor to the Clinton campaign. Axelrod, in fact, railed against the politics of personal destruction in the 1990s, and was also once a columnist for the Tribune and an advisor to Mayor Daley. Lynn Sweet at the Sun Times shows us Obama’s 2008 Whitehouse team, and at the top of the list is:

David Axelrod, media strategist. Founder of Chicago-based AKP Media. Handled Obama’s 2004 Senate race. “A” client list: consults for Mayor Daley, Rep. Rahm Emanuel.

According to CBS Radio, he’s even more accomplished than that:

David Axelrod, Chicago-based Democratic Media Advisor/Strategist for U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and presidential campaign for Senator John Edwards.

It just seems to be too great of a coincidence that Obama, who wasn’t backed by the kind of money Ryan and Hull had, ended up benefiting from the misery of two men who appeared to have been set up; one a democrat, the other a republican. Still, if you look at it from one viewpoint, they both could have been considered his political rivals. I have often voiced deep concerns about George Soros’ candidates which include Hillary, Kerry and Obama. But it’s not like we haven’t been aware of setups for scandal before.

There was a campaign the gay activists were putting together in order to crucify republicans in sex scandals, and we saw evidence of that with list that David Corn obtained in Washington regarding the Foley incident.

The scale was tipped on purpose.

In this piece from 2004, when I was about a week-old as a blogger and was still on blogspot, I wasn’t familiar with citing work, and using the blockquotes, and hadn’t mastered blogging 101 yet. Here’s the passage that prompted the inquiry:

…..the Tribune finally admitted that it was Axelrod and the Obama campaign that brought pressure on the press to demand the unsealing of M. Blair Hull divorce records, which had had their contents leaked to media outlets by the Obama campaign even earlier. The Obama campaign also helped orchestrate a demonstration by women’s groups demanding Hull’s withdrawal from the race. Coincidentally, this was the same weekend Obama’s first commercials hit the airwaves. Interestingly (or maybe not), the same exact thing happened to another of his rivals–Jack Ryan. Certainly gives one pause.

Certainly does. It was WLS-Channel 7 TV and the Chicago Tribune that filed suit to open Hull’s sealed divorce records. To be fair, the Chicago Tribune exposed Jack Ryan’s past, too, so this was a case of bipartisan snooping. Brent Bozell at the Media Research Center is right, though; journalists don’t cover liberal political scandals in quite the same way as conservative ones.

There’s not a whole lot else to say about this except that we’re looking for validation and citing beyond this blog; from the Tribune itself or some other source, into the veracity of that claim. I don’t recall how I stumbled upon that, and I’m sure that a lot of bloggers can relate to surfing the web, and not saving something into favorites, and ending up somewhere, not being able to retrace your steps.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In the Democratic primary, Obama found himself the overwhelming beneficiary when the campaign of former securities trader Blair Hull crashed in the aftermath of Hull’s release of court files from a messy divorce. Though Obama has been a passive beneficiary of Ryan’s latest problems, the Democrat’s campaign worked aggressively behind the scenes to fuel controversy about Hull’s filings.

Zenpundit:

Memogate is an aberration you say ? Did not Clarence Page’s own Chicago Tribune and local Chicago newsman Chuck Goudie give unusually heavy coverage of the divorce records of Democrat Blair Hull and Republican Jack Ryan to the benefit of a previously invisible, underfunded, candidate with the slenderest of legistative records, named Barack Obama? Was it accidental or a coincidence that the two opponents with the financial resources to bury Mr. Obama in the primary or general elections were relentlessly hammered on ” scandals” by the Trib while the same paper ran multipage ” puff ” pieces on Saint Obama ? If we searched the email database and phone records of senior editors at the Tribune how many messages would we find from the staff of David Axelrod ? Who happened to slip Chuck Goudie an ( allegedly) anonymous letter detailing Mr. Ryan’s many year old attempt to bring the then Mrs. Jerri Ryan to a sex club ? Did these two men do anything to deserve having their careers destroyed by a local media that had placed themselves so obviously in Mr. Obama’s corner that no Illinois politician dared to step into Mr. Ryan’s shoes ?

If the rest of the mainstream media does not come out front and center with strong ethics policies mandating nonpartisanship ( outside of the op-ed. page) they will find the public regarding the CBS fiasco as merely the tip of a liberal iceberg.

V. 2004 U.S. SENATE GENERAL ELECTION: Scandal knocked out Republican candidate due to divorce records being unsealed.
The Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, withdrew due to a sex scandal on June 25, 2004, and other potential draftees (most notably former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka) declined to run. On August 8, 2004 – with 86 days to go before the general election – the Illinois Republican Party drafted Alan Keyes to run against Democrat Barack Obama for the U.S. Senate.
Ryan and actress Jeri Ryan divorced in 1999 in California, and the records of the divorce were sealed at their mutual request. Five years later, when Ryan's Senate campaign began, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Ryan and his wife agreed to make their divorce records public, but not make the custody records public, claiming that the custody records could be harmful to their son if released.

On June 22, 2004, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider, a Democrat, agreed to release the custody files. The decision to release these files generated much controversy because it went against both parents' direct request and because it reversed the earlier decision to seal the papers in the best interest of the child. In those files, Jeri Ryan alleged that Jack Ryan had taken her to sex clubs in several cities, intending for them to have sex in public.
At the time of the release, Jeri Ryan, issued had a conciliatory statement, saying that she considered her ex-husband "a friend" and had "no doubt that he will make an excellent senator." She also said that "there was never any physical abuse in our marriage -- either to myself or to our son -- nor, to my knowledge, was he ever unfaithful to me."

The allegations were never proven, and in fact, Ryan was awarded additional custody rights at the end of the hearing, suggesting the allegations were not deemed reliable by the judge.

Obama flubs/gaffes/mistruths/lies

2009-09-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

just a handful of Obama flubs/gaffes/mistruths/lies... from when he was running for President...
=====================

1. 57 states:

From The "If McCain Did This" Files

"Obama, below, is tired, nothing more."

youtube clip

"But if John McCain did this -- if he mistakenly said he'd visited 57 states -- the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying...."

2. McCain Wants 100 Years of War

McCain Wants 100 Years of War?
Even in politics, it's seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

3. No Applause for Barry?

Obama’s Tuzla Dash? Er, maybe

4. Selma birth

Some Obama fabulism as well?

5. the Kennedy airlift

WaPo reports on Obama-Selma-Kennedy birth myth

6. meet personally and without precondition with Iran

Obama campaign lies

7. $250,000 lie

"When Obama’s connection to Rezko first came to light, he initially told reporters that Rezko didn’t raise any more than $50,000. Chicago reporters then dug up almost $150,000 in fundraising last summer, and Obama was forced to admit that he underestimated Rezko’s contributions. Now he’s telling us that it’s over $250,000. How many more revisions on this story can he make?"

Obama woes continue at Rezko trial

8. oil money

Oily Obama: Some of his best friends are oil executives

9. Kennedy/Krushchev

"When Kennedy Met With Khrushchev, We Were On The Brink Of Nuclear War."

10. Life magazine

Rookie Mistakes Plague Obama

11. Tornado deaths

Obama Overstates Kansas Tornado Deaths

"Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died.

The death toll was 12."

12. Obama's poverty

Multiple choice quiz

13. the "Pastor Wright apologized" lie

Barack Obama: Lying Again

14. Obama's Evolving Positions On His Pastor

Change: Obama's Evolving Positions On His G-Damning Pastor

15. McCain/Hamas

Obama Repeats Jamie Rubin's Lie On McCain (Video)

DEATH PANELS

2009-09-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

Rush Limbaugh: Obama's Government Will Decide If You Deserve Medical Treatment?

"...Next question. Member of the audience. Jane Sturm: "My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, 'I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.' I said, 'Go for it.' She said, 'Go for it.' But the specialist said, 'No, she's too old.' But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, 'I'm going for it.' That was over five years ago. My question to you is: Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?"

Obama: "I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know -- and your mom know -- that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller." Do you realize how cold and heartless that answer is? This woman is asking about her mother. And everywhere she went, except one doctor, refused to put in the pacemaker. "Nah, she's too old; she's going to die anyway."

So they found a specialist: "Maybe this woman really loves living. I'll put it in." She's lived five years with the pacemaker, and still Obama: "Maybe you're better off to tell your mother to take a pill, take a painkiller." See, we have to have rules. "We have to have rules. Your mother should have died five years ago, lady. She would have been better off taking that painkiller." Who says we have to have his rules? The President of the United States is not a king. He's not an autocrat. He's not a ruler. He doesn't get to set the rules. Obama has taken it upon himself to do so. This woman found a way to get her mother a pacemaker. With Obamacare, you just heard the answer: It wouldn't have happened. I know how this stuff works.

The hospitals are under pressure to free up beds. If they think somebody's terminal, get them out of there. I understand how all this works. But we're not talking about a terminal woman. We're talking about a woman who needed a pacemaker. "I don't think we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making." Maybe not if the government's in charge. That's the whole point. What about if families... Do not families have the right to judge the spirit of their fathers and mothers and family members? Of course! Do we want to have a cold, cruel, unfeeling government saying, "Spirit doesn't matter to us"? That's exactly right. Obama wants you... The best way to put it, and it's working, is he's trying to kill spirit. All this hope and change? He's trying to kill it. [...] The point is there are a lot of people whose spirit is just broken. They're fed up with it and saying, "To hell with it. I don't want to fight it anymore. I just want to get away from it," and here's Obama admitting: "Well, we can't start making judgments based on people's spirit." Imagine if we had had presidents in the past who said we couldn't make judgments on any number of political issues using "people's 'spirit.'" It's the American exceptionalism the spirit-can-doism that built the country. Spirit's everything. Energy, desire, get-up-and-go. Ambition! The woman's mother had ambition to live. She just needed a pacemaker. It didn't matter. She should take a painkiller! I'm telling you, this is a coldhearted, ruthless guy. Not a cool, calm, and collected one.

===========================================

*** Did Obama Say We Should Kill the Old Folks to Save Money Last Night?

*** Making treatment decisions for the "temporarily alive"

*** Obamacare is rationing

*** 'Death panel' is not in the bill... it already exists
...in the Stimulus Bill...

==========================================

whatta guy...
no care for babies who survive botched abortions.
and now no care for the inconvenient elderly?

There really are two kinds of people

2009-09-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

"There really are two kinds of people: those who see human beings as "maggots," "imbeciles," and "monsters" and those who see human life as precious and sacred. There's no common ground here. And these are the people we're going to put in charge of life and death health care decisions?"

=======================================================================

1) maggots:

"Update: The plot thickens. I've been too easy on Holdren. Michelle Malkin writes this morning that Holdren's self-avowed greatest influence was himself a avowed eugenicist. I hate to ruin your breakfast, but this quote is for real:

"Harrison Brown’s book — the book that inspired Obama science czar John Holdren — also infamously likened the world’s growing population to "a pulsating mass of maggots."

Sickening. But we need to know the enemy."

========================================

2) imbeciles:

"If Ginsburg does see eugenic culling as a compelling state interest, she'd be in fine company on the court. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a passionate believer in such things. In 1915, Holmes wrote in the Illinois Law Review that the "starting point for an ideal for the law" should be the "coordinated human effort ... to build a race."

In 1927, he wrote a letter to his friend, Harold Laski, telling him, "I ... delivered an opinion upholding the constitutionality of a state law for sterilizing imbeciles the other day -- and felt that I was getting near the first principle of real reform." That was the year he wrote the majority opinion in Buck vs. Bell (joined by Louis Brandeis) holding that forcibly sterilizing lower-class women was constitutional. In recent years, openly discussing the notion of eugenic aspects of abortion has become taboo. But as Ginsburg's comments suggest, the taboo hasn't eliminated the idea; it's merely sent it underground."

=========================================

"In 1992, Ron Weddington, co-counsel in the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court case, wrote a letter to President-elect Clinton, imploring him to rush RU-486 -- a.k.a. "the abortion pill" -- to market as quickly as possible.

"[Y]ou can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country," Weddington insisted. All the president had to do was make abortion cheap and easy for the populations we don't want. "It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it. ... Think of all the poverty, crime and misery ... and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario. We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don't have a lot of time left."

==========================================

3) monsters:

"To be sure, some heterodox liberals speak up. The writer Nicholas von Hoffman has written: “Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense. To save ourselves from being murdered in our beds and raped on the streets, we should do everything possible to encourage pregnant women who don’t want the baby and will not take care of it to get rid of the thing before it turns into a monster.”

it's leftist catch-phrase day

2009-09-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

man, i just love these leftist words/phrases...

first, we have the word "Heteronormativity"

Team of Researchers Blames Children's Films for Perpetuating "Heteronormativity"

and then we have the phrase "Gender is just a social construct."

Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment

"In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, a Swedish couple said they are refusing to disclose whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child, called "Pop" in the media, is a boy or a girl. They said that their decision, made at the time of the child's birth, was based on the feminist theory that "gender" is a "cruel" "social construct" that forces children into artificial roles."

========================================

"Gender is just a social construct."

"A woman would have to be the queen of denial to cling to that notion after pushing a baby out of her birth canal."

-- Pundette (mother of seven children)

a couple of old Obama articles

2009-09-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Don't Be Frontin': The Radical New Party Obama Was Once a Member of and Project Vote, Whom Obama Admits Working For, Share Same Office with... ACORN

Another Communist in Obama’s Orb
Meet Michael Klonsky, Obama's "social justice" education expert.

Obama, ACORN, community organizers and the Financial Crisis

2009-09-15T20:07:00.001-07:00

** Obama, Acorn & Their Starring Role in the Mortgage Crisis

** O's Dangerous Pals
Barack's "Organizer" buds pushed for bad mortgages

** The Greenlining Institute: Does the financial crisis have its origins in Berkeley?

If Millions Have Disappeared, Watch This...

2009-09-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

"If Millions Have Disappeared, Watch This..."

(click here and go to the 9/20/2008 entry)

==========================

Preacher Paris Reidhead [...] shares a vision he had about appearing before the "Bema" (Judgment) seat of Christ and having his works tried in the fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God!

Obama and The Third Way

2009-09-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

here's the majority of a good article from Stanley Kurtz:

No Liberation
Obama may have left Trinity, but he’s still on the Left.

"...By providing us with an in-depth picture of Obama’s political worldview on the eve of his elective career, Hank De Zutter’s, “What Makes Obama Run?” lives up to its title. The first thing to note here is that Obama presents his political hopes for the black community as a third way between two inadequate alternatives. First, Obama rejects, “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation — which helps a few upwardly mobile blacks to ‘move up, get rich, and move out. . . . ’ ” This statement might surprise many Obama supporters, who seem to think of him as the epitome of integrationism. Yet Obama’s repudiation of integrationist upward mobility is fully consistent with his career as a community organizer, his general sympathy for leftist critics of the American “system,” and of course his membership at Trinity. Obama, we are told, “quickly learned that integration was a one-way street, with blacks expected to assimilate into a white world that never gave ground.” Compare these statements by Obama with some of the remarks in Jeremiah Wright’s Trumpet, and the resemblance is clear.

Having disposed of assimilation, Obama goes on to criticize “the politics of black rage and black nationalism” — although less on substance than on tactics. Obama upbraids the politics of black power for lacking a practical strategy. Instead of diffusing black rage by diverting it to the traditional American path of assimilation and middle-class achievement, Obama wants to capture the intensity of black anger and use it to power an effective political organization. Obama says, “he’s tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up — at the speaker’s rostrum and from the pulpit — and then allowed to dissipate because there’s no agenda, no concrete program for change.” The problem is not fiery rhetoric from the pulpit, but merely the wasted anger it so usefully stirs.

Obama’s Network

De Zutter gives us a clear glimpse of Obama’s radicalism. Obama is called “progressive,” of course, and is said to yearn for “massive economic change.” That could simply mean an end to widespread poverty, rather than social restructuring. Yet Obama is also described as holding “a worldview well beyond” his mother’s “New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.” De Zutter lays out Obama’s ties to radical groups like Chicago Acorn, as Acorn’s lead organizer, Madeleine Talbott, is quoted affirming that: “Barack has proven himself among our members . . . we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.” In “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” I explore Obama’s links to this radical group, and to Talbott, who practices the sort of intimidating and often illegal “direct action” Acorn is famous for. (For more on Talbott’s affinity for “direct action,” see “Where Do We Begin?”)

De Zutter also touches on some other key elements of Obama’s network. Obama’s early organizing work for the Developing Communities Project was “funded by south-side Catholic churches.” Clearly, this early work cemented Obama’s close ties to Father Pfleger, whose support formed a critical component of Obama’s grassroots network. Precisely because of this early link, Pfleger threw his considerable support behind Obama’s failed 2000 bid for Congress. By the way, Pfleger’s political influence in Chicago is such that Mayor Richard Daley actually declared his 2002 candidacy for a fourth full term as mayor at Pfleger’s St. Sabina church. In “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” I explore the possibility that Obama’s seat on the boards of a couple liberal Chicago foundations may have allowed him to direct funds to groups that served as his de facto political base. De Zutter quotes Woods Fund executive director, Jean Rudd, praising Obama for “being among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen — not just pay salaries.” No doubt, Obama was sincerely supportive of the sort of leftist organizations favored by the Woods Fund. However, if Obama was in fact looking to some of the groups supported by the Woods Fund as a personal political base, his unusually active board service would make all the more sense.

Black Churches

The threads of this political network are pulled tighter as Obama turns to a “favorite topic,” “the lack of collective action among black churches.” Obama is sharply critical of churches that try to help their communities merely through “food pantries and community service programs.” Today, Obama rationalizes his ties to Wright’s Trinity Church by citing its community service programs. Yet in 1995, Obama was highly critical of churches that focused exclusively on such services, while neglecting the sort of politically visionary sermons, local king-making, and political alliance-building favored by Pfleger and Wright. Obama rejects the strictly community-service approach of apolitical churches as part of America’s unfortunate “bias” toward “individual action.” Obama believes that what he derogates as “John Wayne” thinking and the old, “right wing...individualistic bootstrap myth” needs to be replaced: “We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”

Obama sees the black church as the key to his plan for collective social and political action: “Obama . . . spoke of the need to mobilize and organize the economic power and moral fervor of black churches. He also argued that as a state senator he might help bring this about faster than as a community organizer or civil rights lawyer.” Says Obama, “We have some wonderful preachers in town — preachers who continue to inspire me — preachers who are magnificent at articulating a vision of the world as it should be.” Obama continues, “But as soon as church lets out, the energy dissipates. We must find ways to channel all this energy into community building.” Obama seems to be holding up people like Wright, Pfleger, and James Meeks (who he has listed as his key religious allies) as positive models for the wider black church — in both their rhetoric, and in their willingness to play a direct political role. If anything, Obama would like to see the political visions of Wright and Pfleger given greater weight and substance by connecting them to secular leftist political networks like Acorn.

End Run

By the end of De Zutter’s piece, Obama’s distinctive vision comes clear. While in his years as a Chicago organizer and attorney, Obama took care to maintain friendly ties to the Daley administration, in Obama’s campaign for state senate, he specifically avoided asking the mayor or the mayor’s closest allies for support. Obama’s plan was to make an end-run around Chicago’s governing Democratic political network, by building a coalition of left-leaning black churches and radical secular organizations like Acorn (perhaps with de facto help from liberal foundation money as well). This coalition would provide Obama with the flexibility to play out a political career some distance to the left of conventional Illinois democratic politics. And sure enough, Obama’s extremely liberal record in Illinois vindicated his strategy.

The De Zutter story sheds considerable light on the debate over the significance of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright. For the most part, that debate plays out with a relatively apolitical notion of church membership in mind. Obama’s defenders say that he should not be held responsible for the occasional political excesses of his preacher. Critics point out that the extremism of Wright and Pfleger is long-standing and well known. At some point, this line of thinking goes, the radicalism of such preachers ought to become intolerable. And what does it say about Obama’s judgement that he actually built his own national reputation by pointing to his appreciation of Wright’s sermons? Obama’s critics also see his decision to join Wright’s church as an opportunistic move by a politically ambitious secular humanist in search of a respectable religious home.

I agree with all of these criticisms of Obama. Yet De Zutter’s article shows us that the full story of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright is both more disturbing and more politically relevant than we’ve realized up to now. On Obama’s own account, the rhetoric and vision of Chicago’s most politically radical black churches are exactly what he wants to see more of. True, when discussing Louis Farrakhan with De Zutter, Obama makes a point of repudiating anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-Asian sermons. Yet having laid down that proviso, Obama seems to relish the radicalism of preachers like Pfleger and Wright. In 1995, Obama didn’t want Trinity’s political show to stop. His plan was to spread it to other black churches, and harness its power to an alliance of leftist groups and sympathetic elected officials.

So Obama’s political interest in Trinity went far beyond merely gaining a respectable public Christian identity. On his own account, Obama hoped to use the untapped power of the black church to supercharge hard-left politics in Chicago, creating a personal and institutional political base that would be free to part with conventional Democratic politics. By his own testimony, Obama would seem to have allied himself with Wright and Pfleger, not in spite of, but precisely because of their radical left-wing politics. It follows that Obama’s ties to Trinity reflect on far more than his judgment and character (although they certainly implicate that). Contrary to common wisdom, then, Obama’s religious history has everything to do with his political values and policy positions, since it confirms his affinity for leftist radicalism.

Sense of Mission

It could be argued that the new and supposedly moderate, “bipartisan” Obama of 2008 is the real Obama. Unfortunately, that argument is unconvincing. Again and again, De Zutter reports that Obama’s true passion, deepest calling, and most authentic sense of mission is to be found in his early community organizing work. Obama’s own vision for himself as a legislator is as a kind of super-organizer/activist, extending the “progressive” quest for “social justice” to society as a whole.

I see no reason to doubt Obama’s self-account, and many reasons to accept it. As De Zutter notes, Obama gave up a near-certain Supreme Court clerkship to come to Chicago and do community organizing. It’s also easy to imagine Obama joining one of the many other less radical black churches on the south side of Chicago, if that was all he needed to launch a political career. Clearly, given his good relations with the Daley administration, Obama could have asked for its support in his bid for the Illinois State Senate. Yet at every turn, Obama took a riskier path. That suggests he was operating from conviction. Trouble is, the conviction in question was apparently Obama’s belief in the sort of radical social and economic views held by groups like Acorn and preachers like Wright and Pfleger.

Obama was certainly more rhetorically smooth, and no doubt less personally embittered than some of his mentors. Yet what stands out after a consideration of Obama’s larger personal and political history is the general convergence of political orientation between Wright, Pfleger, Acorn, Chicago’s “progressive” foundations, and Obama himself. Obama in Chicago was a man of the Left, doing his level-best to assemble a coalition free from the constraints of conventional, middle-ground Democratic politics.

Obama Speaks

If there is any doubt about the accuracy of De Zutter’s detailed account, we get the same message from this too-little discussed but revealing and important piece by Obama himself. This chapter from a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois was originally published in 1988, just after Obama joined Trinity. The piece is called, “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City,” and it shows exactly what Obama hoped to make of his association with Pfleger and Wright.

Obama begins by rejecting the false dichotomy between radicalism and moderation:

The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and boardroom negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never been simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.

Of course, even James Cone, the radical founder of black-liberation theology, sees himself as synthesizing the moderation of Martin Luther King Jr. with the radicalism of Malcolm X. Obama here seems to be calling for an inside/outside strategy like the one he would have learned working with Chicago Acorn. Note Obama’s reference to the controversial tradition of “direct action” favored by Acorn (and earlier by Saul Alinsky, whose tradition of radicalism the book is meant to carry on). Obama offers radicalism with a moderate face.

Obama sketches out a vision in which a politically awakened black church would ally with “community organizers” (like Obama and his friends from Acorn), thereby radicalizing the politics of America’s cities:

Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and — most importantly — values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago.

After expressing disappointment with apolitical black churches focused only on traditional community services, Obama goes on to point in a more activist direction:

Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as the Developing Communities Project in the far south side [where Obama himself worked, and first encountered Pfleger, SK]...as a powerful tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders. Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of thousands that exist in cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained and organized staff, enormous positive changes could be wrought....

Give me 50 Pflegers or 50 Wrights, Obama is saying, tie them to a network of grassroots activists like my companions from Acorn, and we can revolutionize urban politics.

Mystery Solved

So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.

Lucky for Obama, this political background is unfamiliar to most Americans. There are others who share Obama’s approach, however. Take a look at this piece by Manhattan Institute scholar Steven Malanga on “The Rise of the Religious Left,” and you will see exactly where Obama is coming from. Malanga ends his account by noting that religious-left activists often partner with groups like MoveOn.org and attend gatherings featuring speakers like Michael Moore. After the 2004 election, there was some talk of the Democratic party “purging” MoveOn and Moore. Far from purging its radical Left, however, the Democratic party is now just inches away from placing it in the driver’s seat. That is the real meaning of the fiasco at Trinity Church.

A medical explanation of what Jesus endured on the day He died

2009-09-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

The Crucifixion Of Jesus
A medical explanation of what Jesus endured on the day He died
By Dr. C. Truman Davis*

A Physician Analyzes the Crucifixion.
From New Wine Magazine, April 1982.
Originally published in Arizona Medicine,
March 1965, Arizona Medical Association.

Several years ago I became interested in the physical aspects of the passion, or suffering, of Jesus Christ when I read an account of the crucifixion in Jim Bishop's book, The Day Christ Died. I suddenly realized that I had taken the crucifixion more or less for granted all these years - that I had grown callous to its horror by a too-easy familiarity with the grim details. It finally occurred to me that, as a physician, I did not even know the actual immediate cause of Christ's death. The gospel writers do not help much on this point. Since crucifixion and scourging were so common during their lifetimes, they undoubtedly considered a detailed description superfluous. For that reason we have only the concise words of the evangelists: "Pilate, having scourged Jesus, delivered Him to them to be crucified ... and they crucified Him."

Despite the gospel accounts silence on the details of Christ's crucifixion, many have looked into this subject in the past. In my personal study of the event from a medical viewpoint, I am indebted especially to Dr. Pierre Barbet, a French surgeon who did exhaustive historical and experimental research and wrote extensively on the topic.

An attempt to examine the infinite psychic and spiritual suffering of the Incarnate1 God in atonement for the sins of fallen man is beyond the scope of this article. However, the physiological and anatomical aspects of our Lord's passion we can examine in some detail. What did the body of Jesus of Nazareth actually endure during those hours of torture?

Gethsemane

The physical passion of Christ began in Gethsemane. Of the many aspects of His initial suffering, the one which is of particular physiological interest is the bloody sweat. Interestingly enough, the physician, St. Luke, is the only evangelist to mention this occurrence. He says, "And being in an agony, he prayed the longer. And his sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground" (Luke 22:44 KJV).

Every attempt imaginable has been used by modern scholars to explain away the phenomenon of bloody sweat, apparently under the mistaken impression that it simply does not occur. A great deal of effort could be saved by consulting the medical literature. Though very rare, the phenomenon of hematidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process alone could have produced marked weakness and possible shock.

Although Jesus' betrayal and arrest are important portions of the passion story, the next event in the account which is significant from a medical perspective is His trial before the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas, the High Priest. Here the first physical trauma was inflicted. A soldier struck Jesus across the face for remaining silent when questioned by Caiaphas. The palace guards then blindfolded Him, mockingly taunted Him to identify them as each passed by, spat on Him, and struck Him in the face.

Before Pilate

In the early morning, battered and bruised, dehydrated, and worn out from a sleepless night, Jesus was taken across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia, the seat of government of the Procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. We are familiar with Pilate's action in attempting to shift responsibility to Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Judea. Jesus apparently suffered no physical mistreatment at the hands of Herod and was returned to Pilate. It was then, in response to the outcry of the mob, that Pilate ordered Barabbas released and condemned Jesus to scourging and crucifixion.

Preparations for Jesus' scourging were carried out at Caesar's orders. The prisoner was stripped of His clothing and His hands tied to a post above His head. The Roman legionnaire stepped forward with the flagrum, or flagellum, in his hand. This was a short whip consisting of several heavy, leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached near the ends of each. The heavy whip was brought down with full force again and again across Jesus' shoulders, back, and legs. At first the weighted thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as the blows continued, they cut deeper into the subcutaneous tissues, producing first an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles.

The small balls of lead first produced large deep bruises that were broken open by subsequent blows. Finally, the skin of the back was hanging in long ribbons, and the entire area was an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. When it was determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner was near death, the beating was finally stopped.

Mockery

The half-fainting Jesus was then untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement, wet with his own blood. The Roman soldiers saw a great joke in this provincial Jew claiming to be a king. They threw a robe across His shoulders and placed a stick in His hand for a scepter. They still needed a crown to make their travesty complete. Small flexible branches covered with long thorns, commonly used for kindling fires in the charcoal braziers in the courtyard, were plaited into the shape of a crude crown. The crown was pressed into his scalp and again there was copious bleeding as the thorns pierced the very vascular tissue. After mocking Him and striking Him across the face, the soldiers took the stick from His hand and struck Him across the head, driving the thorns deeper into His scalp. Finally, they tired of their sadistic sport and tore the robe from His back. The robe had already become adherent to the clots of blood and serum in the wounds, and its removal, just as in the careless removal of a surgical bandage, caused excruciating pain. The wounds again began to bleed.

Golgotha

In deference to Jewish custom, the Romans apparently returned His garments. The heavy patibulum of the cross was tied across His shoulders. The procession of the condemned Christ, two thieves, and the execution detail of Roman soldiers headed by a centurion began its slow journey along the route which we know today as the Via Dolorosa.

In spite of Jesus' efforts to walk erect, the weight of the heavy wooden beam, together with the shock produced by copious loss of blood, was too much. He stumbled and fell. The rough wood of the beam gouged into the lacerated skin and muscles of the shoulders. He tried to rise, but human muscles had been pushed beyond their endurance. The centurion, anxious to proceed with the crucifixion, selected a stalwart North African onlooker, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the cross. Jesus followed, still bleeding and sweating the cold, clammy sweat of shock. The 650-yard journey from the Fortress Antonia to Golgotha was finally completed. The prisoner was again stripped of His clothing except for a loin cloth which was allowed the Jews.

The crucifixion began. Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh, a mild analgesic, pain-reliving mixture. He refused the drink. Simon was ordered to place the patibulum on the ground, and Jesus was quickly thrown backward, with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire felt for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drove a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist and deep into the wood. Quickly, he moved to the other side and repeated the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flexion and movement. The patibulum was then lifted into place at the top of the stipes, and the titulus reading "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" was nailed into place.

The left foot was pressed backward against the right foot. With both feet extended, toes down, a nail was driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees moderately flexed. The victim was now crucified.

On the Cross

As Jesus slowly sagged down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shot along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain. The nails in the wrists were putting pressure on the median nerve, large nerve trunks which traverse the mid-wrist and hand. As He pushed himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, He placed His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again there was searing agony as the nail tore through the nerves between the metatarsal bones of this feet.

At this point, another phenomenon occurred. As the arms fatigued, great waves of cramps swept over the muscles, knotting them in deep relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps came the inability to push Himself upward. Hanging by the arm, the pectoral muscles, the large muscles of the chest, were paralyzed and the intercostal muscles, the small muscles between the ribs, were unable to act. Air could be drawn into the lungs, but could not be exhaled. Jesus fought to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, the carbon dioxide level increased in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided.

The Last Words

Spasmodically, He was able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. It was undoubtedly during these periods that He uttered the seven short sentences that are recorded.

The first - looking down at the Roman soldiers throwing dice6 for His seamless garment: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do."

The second - to the penitent thief: "Today, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

The third - looking down at Mary His mother, He said: "Woman, behold your son." Then turning to the terrified, grief-stricken adolescent John , the beloved apostle, He said: "Behold your mother."

The fourth cry is from the beginning of Psalm 22: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

He suffered hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, and searing pain as tissue was torn from His lacerated back from His movement up and down against the rough timbers of the cross. Then another agony began: a deep crushing pain in the chest as the pericardium, the sac surrounding the heart, slowly filled with serum and began to compress the heart.

The prophecy in Psalm 22:14 was being fulfilled: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels."

The end was rapidly approaching. The loss of tissue fluids had reached a critical level; the compressed heart was struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood to the tissues, and the tortured lungs were making a frantic effort to inhale small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues sent their flood of stimuli to the brain. Jesus gasped His fifth cry: "I thirst." Again we read in the prophetic psalm: "My strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou has brought me into the dust of death" (Psalm 22:15 KJV).

A sponge soaked in posca, the cheap, sour wine that was the staple drink of the Roman legionnaires, was lifted to Jesus' lips. His body was now in extremis, and He could feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. This realization brought forth His sixth word, possibly little more than a tortured whisper: "It is finished." His mission of atonement had been completed. Finally, He could allow His body to die. With one last surge of strength, He once again pressed His torn feet against the nail, straightened His legs, took a deeper breath, and uttered His seventh and last cry: "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit."

Death

The common method of ending a crucifixion was by crurifracture, the breaking of the bones of the leg. This prevented the victim from pushing himself upward; the tension could not be relieved from the muscles of the chest, and rapid suffocation occurred. The legs of the two thieves were broken, but when the soldiers approached Jesus, they saw that this was unnecessary.

Apparently, to make doubly sure of death, the legionnaire drove his lance between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart. John 19:34 states, "And immediately there came out blood and water." Thus there was an escape of watery fluid from the sac surrounding the heart and the blood of the interior of the heart. This is rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Jesus died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium.

Resurrection

In these events, we have seen a glimpse of the epitome of evil that man can exhibit toward his fellow man and toward God. This is an ugly sight and is likely to leave us despondent and depressed.

But the crucifixion was not the end of the story. How grateful we can be that we have a sequel: a glimpse of the infinite mercy of God toward man--the gift of atonement, the miracle of the resurrection, and the expectation of Easter morning.

3 important articles from the great Stanley Kurtz

2009-09-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

Inside Obama’s Acorn
By their fruits ye shall know them.

Senator Stealth
How to advance radical causes when no one’s looking.

Wright 101
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright’s anti-Americanism

Salvation

2009-09-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

source

COMPARISON
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 3:23 (NASB)

It’s a basic part of human nature to compare ourselves to others. We do it all the time, including when talking about whether we’re “good enough” for salvation. Many people feel they’re not good enough and don’t measure up – they haven’t done enough good deeds or have done too many bad ones (compared to other folks they see). Guess what? They’re right! They don’t measure up, but then, none of us do when measured against God’s perfection. That’s just a simple fact. Think of it this way – let’s say I can jump four feet. Well, compared to many of the residents at the nursing home who can’t even jump an inch, I’m a stud, a jumping machine. The pride of my prowess may be quite short lived though if I then compare myself to an Olympic long jumper. Now I find I’m a Class A ZERO. But what if the goal was to jump all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to England?? I don’t care who you are, it’s just not humanly possible. Period. It’s laughable to even consider it and all the squabbling we do with each other about who’s a better jumper is meaningless. OK, but let’s say you really want to get over there. Well, you could try swimming or rowing a boat, but only if you want to spend lots of time with the fishes. Honestly, if you really want to get to England, I don’t care how hard you try or what you do, nobody is going to be able get there under their own power. So now what?

FAITH
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 (NASB)

Most people would probably opt to fly in a commercial jetliner. Trouble is, first you need a ticket, but you can’t afford one. Fortunately, a very wealthy patron has an unlimited number of tickets available for free and you’ve been offered one. Woo hoo!! Now you’re ready to go and there is nothing stopping you, right? WRONG!! There’s still something you absolutely have got to have if you’re going anywhere - Faith. That’s right, faith. First of all you have to truly believe in the airline company. You have to have faith that their big hunk of steel and aluminum can actually get up into the air and fly. You also have to take it on faith that they’ve hired competent pilots and mechanics and perform maintenance as required and that they’ve put enough fuel in, etc., etc., etc.

IF YOU DON’T TRULY BELIEVE THAT THE AIRLINE HAS ALL THIS IN PLACE, YOU WON’T STEP ONE FOOT ON THAT PLANE. Even though it’s all true, none of it matters if you won’t believe it. You’ve got a free ticket, your bags are packed and the plane is ready to go, but because of your lack of belief, you are not going anywhere. Not because of the airline, but because of you.

19 So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
Heb 3:19 (NASB)

WHAT’S MY PART – I
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Eph 2:8-9 (NASB)

Now let’s say I have the faith to board the plane. What else does the airline expect me to do to help the flight safely make the crossing? NOTHING! Do you think the airline might expect me to advise the pilots? Not a chance! Would they expect me to help with the navigation? Only if they don’t care where they end up. All they really expect of me is to sit in my seat and relax. So upon landing, what bragging rights do I have for the successful flight? ZERO, NADA! I didn’t do anything nor could I nor was I expected to. All I can truly do is accept the free ride and be thankful.

WHAT’S MY PART – II

The ticket to ride has been given free of charge and without conditions. That’s been made clear in the literature. What if I’ve got faith to board, but when I go to get my ticket, the ticket agent, on his own, tells me “The ticket’s free, but you are required to assist in the flight. Here’s the deal, to insure the flight will make it, on a rotational basis, each passenger has to stand in the aisle for five minutes flapping their arms like a bird while reciting ‘I think I can, I think I can, I know I can, I know I can’ over and over. This is the only way you can make it.”? What??? I’d tell the guy to buzz off because it’s completely unnecessary. Even if the agent himself actually believes it, he’s wrong. To paraphrase one of my favorite Bible teachers, Les Feldick, “it’s the airline plus NOTHING!!!!” There is nothing more expected or required of me. It’s not the airline plus my efforts, it’s the airline plus nothing. That really is how simple it is.

THE JOURNEY
27 "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27 (NASB)

One last thing I’d like to share. Now we’ve boarded and we’re in the air. If you look around, you’ll probably notice some passengers cool, calm and collected and others with white knuckles who are putting permanent indentations in the armrests. Why the difference? Fear. The passenger calmly reading her newspaper has experience with the airline, knows they can handle the program and that the plane will arrive just fine. No problem. The other passenger’s faith doesn’t extend that far. You’ll also see passengers that are good and relaxed until the plane hits some turbulence and then, Hoo Boy! Meanwhile, the more experienced traveler maybe steadies his computer and then just keeps on unfazed. He knows that there’s always going to be some turbulence, some worse than others, but that, in the plane, he always gets to his destination just fine. The real lesson is that we’re all going to get there whether we make ourselves miserable during the trip or not. The plane is going to make it regardless of what we think so, in faith, we may as well relax and enjoy the trip. The quicker we learn and accept that fact, the easier it all becomes.

33 "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." John 16:33 (NASB)

CONCLUSION

9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; Romans 10:9 (NASB)

I hope this helps take some of the confusion out of salvation in Jesus. It’s an incredibly fantastic gift, but it’s not “mysterious”. The simple fact is we are saved by our trust and faith in Jesus and His finished work on the cross. Period. It’s not “Jesus plus….”, it’s Jesus ONLY. When we believe, we are placed in Him and begin the journey. One problem with airplanes is, occasionally they do crash. The Good News is Jesus never fails. In fact, once we’re in Him, the trip is so assured that the Bible says we’re already in heaven! There’s no “if” about it, just when. It’s somewhat like dropping a steel anvil – as soon as you let it go, you could say it’s on the ground even if it takes a few seconds to get there.

5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus Eph 2:5-6 (NASB)

Go in His Peace.

Obama's ACORN ties

2009-09-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

1. "Even though Obama never took part in a trial, he was part of a team of attorneys who represented the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995 to make it easier for the poor and others to register as voters."

2. "Obama trained ACORN activists. A 1995 Chicago Reader article on Obama stated "Obama continues his work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons."

3. ACORN endorsed his presidential campaign.

4. In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote.

5. Obama’s campaign paid more than $800,000 to ACORN for get-out-the-vote efforts, but “mistakenly misrepresented” what ACORN was doing to The Federal Election Commission. Some found this "mistake highly suspicious:

"Barack Obama's failure to accurately report his campaign's financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign's interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud."

6. According to Donors Forum website [ifs.donorsforum.org, accessed 6/10/08], during the time Obama served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund (1993 to 2002), ACORN received thousands of dollars --$45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), And $40,000 (2002) -- in grants from the fund.

7. "that Obama's long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama's early political campaigns - his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000... With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were "old friends," says Foulkes."

8. Obama told ACORN and other community organizing groups (like the Gamaliel Foundation) that they will help shape his presidential agenda:
youtube video

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

2009-09-15T10:58:00.001-07:00

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?
by Jim Bramlett

The ark was used by the Israelites for hundreds of years and suddenly it was no longer mentioned in history. Scholars believe that it was lost when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 586 B.C. But what was its fate? Was it destroyed, or was it kept and hidden by its captors? Or did something else happen? Because it was so holy, would God actually allow its desecration and destruction?

Because it was so revered, it is very strange that no one mentioned it again. And, of course, it reportedly has never been found by archaeologists. It has been a great mystery for over 2,500 years.

Popular theories. The whereabouts of the ark is not without many opinions, theories, and speculations. Below are some of the more popular ideas where it may be:

1. Some claim the ark is presently known by Israeli authorities to be in a tunnel beneath the historic Temple Mount in Jerusalem, hidden there by temple priests just before the Babylonian invasion. A Muslim mosque currently sits on that site and they say the ark cannot presently be revealed due to the sensitive political situation. Orthodox Jews have, in fact, already made specific plans for a new temple on that historically Jewish sitethe Third Templeand the ark supposedly will be brought forth at the appropriate time. But if revealed now, they say, Muslims would go ballistic at the suggestion their mosque would be destroyed and replaced by a temple for the Jews. Muslims even deny that the Jews ever occupied that piece of real estate, sacred land the use of which goes back about 4,000 years in Jewish history, whereas Islam itself only goes back about 1,400 years, with no interest in that area until years later.

2. In his 1988 book, Armageddon: Appointment With Destiny, author Grant R. Jeffrey claims to document that the ark has been in Ethiopia since Solomon’s day, taken there by Solomon’s son from the Queen of Sheba, Menelik, to preserve it during a time of apostasy in Israel. In its place, the book says that Menelik left behind a replica. Jeffrey provides some interesting documentation, with photos. (It is possible, of course, that Menelik unknowingly took a replica himself.) By the way, black Jews comprise a large community in Ethiopia, referred to as Beta Israel (the house of Israel), and many have emigrated to Israel. Operation Solomon, a two-day Israeli airlift of 14,310 Ethiopian Jews to the Holy Land, occurred in May 1991. This is all very interesting history. This aliyah (emigration of Jews to Israel) is part of a modern-day, world-wide phenomenon foretold by the ancient prophets, such as Ezekiel, when he wrote to “the house of Israel” about something that never happened until the 20th century:

For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land (36:24).

This Ethiopian connection reminds us of the story in the New Testament about the Ethiopian eunuch visiting Jerusalem to worship and was encountered by Philip, as recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 8.

3. Author and publisher J.R. Church of Prophecy in the News magazine also has said that the ark has been in Ethiopia, but Church believes the ark was taken there through Egypt and a different route by exiled Jews.

(I have the highest respect for the scholarship of both Grant Jeffrey and J.R. Church)

4. The apocryphal book, 2 Maccabees, chapter 2, verses 4-8, records that the prophet Jeremiah hid the ark in a cave on Mount Nebo, the place where Moses had been allowed by God to look into the Promised Land. The passage says that Jeremiah’s companions later went back to mark the location but could not find it. It is recorded that Jeremiah then made a most interesting prophetic statement:

The place shall remain unknown until God finally gathers His people together and shows mercy to them. Then the Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud…

While 2 Maccabees is not generally accepted or canonized as inspired Scripture, it does not mean the information about the ark is necessarily incorrect. That reported prophecy by Jeremiah is intriguing, especially since God has been gathering His people Israel together in the land for the past few decades for the first time in almost 2,000 years.

5. Some believe the Roman Catholic Church has the ark hidden in the Vatican, but I am not aware of any evidence of this.

6. The most bizarre claim, as mentioned in my last message, is that of the late archeologist Ron Wyatt, who claimed that he found the ark while digging beneath Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. Below the location of the cross, he claimed, is a crack in the rock structure through which Jesus’ blood seeped, and blood was found on the Mercy Seat below, where it had dripped. Blood tests reportedly show the blood to be a person without a human father, which of course would have been the virgin-born Jesus, the Lamb of God. If the ark is there, Israeli authorities probably know about it. This is a fascinating claim, believed by many, but frankly I do not know whether or not it is credible. Wyatt’s materials are available at Wyatt Archeological Research, Inc. in Cornersville, Tennessee. Since my message the other day I have had communications with a friend I respect who knew Ron Wyatt, who traveled with him to Israel, observed his operation, and who is absolutely persuaded that he and his claims were genuine.

The Islamic Mahdi. The devil always has a counterfeit! Some Islamic scholars believe that when their messianic figure, the Mahdi, comes, he will locate the ark. According to a leading Islamic authority, “The coming of the Mahdi is established doctrine for both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and indeed for all humanity.” One Islamic source states that the discovery of the ark will help the Mahdi win converts from both Christianity and Judaism prior to “eradicating” the remainder who do not convert to Islam, a part their plan of world conquest. Some Christian scholars believe this Mahdi may be the antichrist of the Bible, or connected with him. If so, that explains the “eradication” attempt probably during the Great Tribulation prophesied in the Bible to occur at the end of the age. At this writing, Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believes the Mahdi will arrive in the very near future and he hopes to start a world conflict to trigger his arrival.

A heavenly possibility?

There is one more interesting and compelling possibility. All the above theories notwithstanding, I may have discovered the actual location of the famous ark! If so, it is cared for, specially preserved, and in absolutely perfect condition.

What is this location?

I have evidence that the ark is actually located in heaven!

This is not just a personal opinion. I discovered it in the Bible. I was shocked when I found this, but it’s very clear. The Book of Revelation tells us:

God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant (Revelation 11:19)

How did it get there? It could have been literally “taken up” into heaven the same way that Enoch and later Elijah were suddenly taken up from earth to heaven.

The ark just might be in heaven, right now, and not just later! That would explain why it has been considered “lost” and why it is such a mystery. No wonder it hasn’t been found. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be found.

One of the above theories 1 through 6 may also be correct, but even so, I know we will eventually see it in heaven.

Even if there are claims that the ark has been found, we may never know if it is the original, genuine ark, or only a replica, as Jeffrey posits in his book mentioned above.

I once shared this opinion of the ark’s whereabouts with a friend who had an advanced degree in biblical studies. He replied, “But I always thought that verse was metaphorical and not literal.”

I said, “Well, maybe, but I’ll tell you what. Let’s just see. I’ll bet you that when you get to heaven you will find the ark there just like it says.” He didn’t have an answer or take the bet. Of course, I was joking about a bet, but it made my point. I have no reason to suspect that the description is not literal. I know we will see the ark in heaven.

Why would God take the ark and its contents directly to heaven, or why will we eventually find it there? Well, no one knows, but I have a good idea. First, I believe it is because the ark and its contents, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, are so sacred. But more importantly, I believe it is God’s plan for the presence of the ark to be an eternal testimony for the citizens of heaven - a testimony of the eternal blood covenant. It will be a reminder that He gave His own blood to “cover” the accusations of the law against His people. Not a bad reminder.

I hope it is there, for whatever reason. I want to see it. Then I want to say, “Thank you, Lord, for all that you did for us. It’s really great to be here.”

'Temple Mount points to location of lost Ark'
New best-selling prophecy book claims resting place is Mt. Nebo

IG-GATE: The Inspector General Scandals

2009-09-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

IG-Gate is made up of 4 different scandals:

1. AmeriCorps/Walpin IG scandal

Probe finds new clues in AmeriCorps IG scandal
by Byron York

After seven weeks of trying, investigators looking into President Barack Obama’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin are still unable to answer the most basic question of the whole affair: Why did the president do it?

They know the reasons the White House has given: That the 77-year-old Walpin was addled and not up to the job, that he had too many conflicts with the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, that his office had once distributed a parody newsletter that contained an allegedly sexist remark.

They know all that. But they also know that AmeriCorps is one of Obama’s favorite federal programs. They know that AmeriCorps gave an $800,000-plus grant to Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif., who just happens to be an influential friend and supporter of the president. They know that Walpin investigated Johnson’s misuse of that federal money. They know that as a result of Walpin’s probe, Johnson was suspended from receiving any new federal grants, a fact that caused controversy in Sacramento when leaders realized it could prevent the city from receiving millions in federal stimulus money. They know that, amid the local uproar over the Johnson affair, the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento, Lawrence Brown, made a deal to let Johnson off the hook, and then took the unusual step of denouncing Walpin. They know that Walpin vigorously objected to Johnson’s getting off easy. And they know that after Walpin protested, the president fired him.

Common sense suggests that’s a suspicious series of events. During the time his case was under review, did Johnson, or anyone acting on his behalf, ever get in touch with the White House? Did the White House get in touch with him? And did Johnson’s relationship with Obama, plus the Sacramento political establishment’s desire to get the stimulus cash, play any role in Brown’s actions?

Those are the key underlying questions in the AmeriCorps affair, but investigators have been stymied by the White House’s refusal to answer any inquiries about any communications or other dealings it might have had on the subject. Brown has also refused to answer questions.

Now, investigators are trying a new route, examining the role of the Justice Department. Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, for a hearing on the AmeriCorps/Walpin affair, focusing specifically on the role of Brown and his bosses at Justice.

According to a senior Republican aide, Sessions’ interest was piqued by a statement made in a late March television interview by Rep. Doris Matsui, the Democratic congresswoman who represents Sacramento. Asked whether Johnson’s problems could prevent the city from receiving stimulus funds, Matsui said that, at Johnson’s request, she had “been in conversation with officials at the White House and OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and others to ensure that we don’t lose any money at all.”

Within days of Matsui’s statement, a settlement was reached. Johnson was unsuspended, and in a particularly unusual move, acting U.S. Attorney Brown issued a press release hailing the arrival of stimulus funds. “The lifting of the suspension against all parties, including Mayor Johnson, removes any cloud whether the City of Sacramento will be prevented form receiving much-needed federal stimulus funds,” Brown wrote.

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee want to know why a U.S. attorney was touting his own actions in bringing stimulus money to the city. That’s not the normal role of prosecutors. “We need to hear whether the settlement in this case was tainted in any way by political influence or political factors,” says the senior Republican aide.

So far, Brown has refused to answer any questions. In June, Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a list of 20 questions to Brown and received no response. A follow-up in July was similarly ignored. “Your unwillingness to be cooperative with our investigation raises further questions about your role in this matter,” Issa wrote Brown.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that the only person who objected to the Johnson deal, who said it shouldn’t be done, was Gerald Walpin. And for his efforts, he was fired.

A growing number of lawmakers want to know why.

2. Neil Barofsky/Geithner:

Did the White House interefere with more Inspectors General?

"...The second example ... was Neil Barofsky, TARP IG, and while it’s the less immediately worrisome of the two newly-publicized incidents it’s also the more sensitive. There aren’t many details on this available yet, but the dispute seems to be over how much oversight Treasury should have over the IGs assigned to monitor specific functions of the department - and how quickly and easily IGs should be given the documents that they need for their investigations. The answer should be ‘almost none’ and ‘as quickly and easily as can be arranged’… at least, that’s my opinion. More importantly, it’s also Senator Grassley’s. Barofsky apparently hasn’t lost his job over this, though. Yet."

3. Judith Gwynne:

"The third incident came last week at the International Trade Commission, where Judith Gwynne worked independent of the White House, and which will be a critical position as Obama reshapes trade arrangements around the world. An ITC employee earlier this year “forcibly removed” paperwork from Gwynne. Rather than back the IG after Grassley wrote a letter demanding answers, the political appointees at the ITC dumped her.

We are seeing a pattern, no longer just a single data point. IGs work independently to protect taxpayers from corruption and abuse from its own government agencies. A coordinated attack on IGs certainly suggests hostility to that mission, which isn’t the Hope and Change Obama promised on the campaign trail."

source

4. Fred E. Weiderhold/Amtrak:

Questions raised as top Amtrak inspector resigns

The inspector general of Amtrak unexpectedly resigned Thursday night, becoming the third such federal official to leave prematurely since the Obama administration took office and the latest in a string of potentially controversial moves involving government watchdogs.

Fred E. Weiderhold, a 35-year veteran of the agency who was responsible for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, is the most high-profile change among the group of senior government officials who have responsibility to conduct independent investigations of federal agencies and institutions.

[...]

Cliff Black, an Amtrak spokesman, confirmed that Weiderhold has been replaced by acting Inspector General Lorraine A. Green, saying only that Weiderhold “retired.’’

But several officials who asked not to be identified raised questions about the development, which set off alarm bells among some close Amtrak watchers.

His Unfamiliar Face

2009-09-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

His Unfamiliar Face
by Chuck Missler

After Jesus' resurrection, why did people always seem to have difficulty recognizing Him? We can't help but notice something strange about Jesus' post-resurrection appearances.

Sunday Morning

That early Sunday morning, even Mary fails to recognize Jesus at first.[1] She mistakes Him for the gardener-until she hears His voice. She was no casual acquaintance: a few days earlier she washed His feet with her tears! Why didn't she know who He was until she heard His voice? It seems that "Mary!" prompted her recognition.[2]

Sunday Afternoon

Later that afternoon, Jesus joined two disciples on the Emmaus Road, and for seven miles He gives them an Old Testament Bible study.[3]

Although "their eyes were holden that they should not know Him," the Bible doesn't really explain what this means.[4] In any case, they did recognize Him when He broke the bread at dinner. (This itself is odd, since it was the role of the host-not the guest-to break the bread.) Their tip-off was in viewing the nail prints in His hands. (They confirmed this later that evening.)

Sunday Evening

These two disciples join the gathering that evening in the upper room and confirm His appearance, emphasizing that it was in the breaking of the bread that they realized who He was.[5] Why not during the seven-mile walk? What is going on here?

When Jesus ultimately emerges in their midst, we find them all terrified.[6] Astonished, of course, but why frightened? For some reason they don't recognize Him until they examine His wounds! Why?

The Galilean Breakfast

Perhaps the most puzzling thing occurs later at the Sea of Galilee.[7] When they join Him for that early morning breakfast on the seashore, John makes the strangest remark: "And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord."[8] What does that mean?

A Possible Clue

We should remember that the Bible is a single, integrated message -- 66 books, penned by over 40 authors over thousands of years, but in which every detail is there by supernatural engineering. Thus, we also need to recognize that:

the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed;

the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed.

There are many surprising insights and details in the Old Testament which amplify the New, including some astonishing physical descriptions.

A familiar example is Psalm 22, which reads as if it were dictated by Jesus Himself as He hung on the cross. He describes His pain, the piercing of His hands and feet;[9] He quotes the taunts of the crowd[10] and observes the parting of His clothes,[11] etc. The Psalm even opens and closes with His first and final words from the cross.[12]

Another such passage is Isaiah 53.[13] This passage, sometimes called "The Holy of Holies of the Old Testament," highlights the implications of the cross as eloquently as any of Paul's epistles. In Isaiah 52:14, however, it specifies that the extent of the abuse left Jesus hardly even looking human.

Yet another most disturbing detail appears a page earlier:

"I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair." Isaiah 50:6

This seems to indicate that the Roman soldiers ripped off His beard! No wonder His friends had trouble recognizing Him!

I had an occasion some years ago to work with a software specialist who wore a very full beard. One day he came to work with it shaved off. I almost didn't recognize him! It is surprising what a difference a single feature like that can make.

(And this didn't involve any scar tissue or other evidences of abuse resulting from treatment received at the hands of vicious Roman soldiers.)

An Emblem of Love

I am reminded of a young mother whose face was badly disfigured. Her little girl was continually ridiculed by the children in school because of her mother's appearance. (You know how cruel children can be.)

When the little girl was old enough, the mother explained to her that when she was a baby there was a dreadful fire in the apartment and, although the mother was able to save the little girl, the mother herself suffered very severe burns in the process. From that day on, the little girl was no longer embarrassed about her mother. Every time she looked into her mother's face it was a reminder of just how much she was loved.

Is it possible that, in addition to the nail prints, there were additional scars-perhaps where His beard used to be-that caused their difficulty in recognizing Him? Are they still there? Does Jesus still bear the marks of His humiliation?

In the Book of Revelation, John is propelled forward in time some several thousand years and is granted a vision of the throne of God. In Revelation 5 we find "the lamb as it had been slain," apparently still bearing the scars of the cross.[14] They say that the only man-made things in heaven are His scars.

When Jesus returns to rule Israel, He proclaims, "And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced."[15]

The marks of His humiliation are also the marks of His glory. Furthermore, I'm sure the most significant aspects of the cross were not the physical or physiological aspects. I believe it will take us an eternity to even begin to understand what it cost Him that we might be with Him.

He was born of a woman so that we could be born of God.

He humbled Himself so that we could be lifted up.

He became a servant so that we could be made co-heirs.

He suffered rejection so that we could become His friends.

How precious our Redeemer is! Have you really thanked Him lately?
==================
**NOTES**

1. John 20:11-18.
2. John 20:16.
3. Luke 24:13-32.
4. Luke 24:16, 31.
5. Luke 24:35, 39.
6. Luke 24:36, 37.
7. John 21:1-12.
8. John 21:12.
9. Psalm 22:16.
10. Psalm 22:7, 8.
11. Psalm 22:18.
12. Psalm 22:1: "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" (The only time He didn't call Him Father!) Cf. Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34. Psalm 22:31: "He hath done this"; or, better, "It is complete," "It is finished." Tetelestai: "Paid in full." John 19:30.
13. Beginning, actually, at Isaiah 52:13ff.
14. Revelation 5:1-5.
15. Zechariah 12:10.

Obama Czar: John Holdren

2009-09-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

Obama's science Czar, John Holdren

======================
The ghoulish spirit of Margaret Sanger lives

Looks like Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn’t the only one who’s been channeling abortion champion/eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Internet sleuth Zombie has a new report on John Holdren, President Obama’s science czar:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

Zombie’s got all the goods. Read the whole thing.
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/

***

Remember, kids: Being a progressive means never having to say you’re sorry for advocating the racist, mass abortion of the “undesirables.” Refresher course

=======================

"Holden's proposed cures to warming are, well, interesting. In that Harvard speech last November, he presented a "top 10" list of options. No. 1 was "limiting population," as if man was a plague upon the Earth, a major tenet of green dogma.

Never mind that with more bodies come more minds and more ideas for cleaner and more efficient technology. He does not say how we would do that. Adopt China's one-child policy perhaps?

Second on his list was reducing per capita GDP. Holden's long term goal is "equal per-capita emissions rights," meaning that a country may only emit an amount of carbon commensurate to the number of its persons, not on the basis of its production.

For example, the U.S. would be allowed to release only about 20 times as much carbon as Ecuador, although the U.S. produces 144 times the goods and services.

Interestingly, he puts nuclear power at No. 7, calling it a risky waste-producing option that includes the danger of proliferation. Never mind that here and around the world nuclear power has reduced the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by billions of tons. France gets 80% of its electricity from the atom, recycles its waste, and no one in the City of Lights glows in the dark.

And after the U.S. economy tanks, he says America and the rest of the developed world must pay "the up-front costs, offering assistance to developing countries," as they move to the new, green economy. This would be a global redistribution of wealth, but we have to spread the green around."

source

=======================

Johnson outlined the book’s ugly eugenics plan and neo-Malthusian vision of enviro-crats engineering the population. Yet, there was scant mention of Holdern’s stomach-churning proposals during his confirmation hearings in February. Holdren’s defenders might have comforted themselves by claiming that the quotes were taken out of context. But last week, another online investigative journalist scanned copious pages from the book to show that his words had been unedited and accurately transcribed. The disturbing documents can be found at http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/.

There, you’ll find Holdren musing about how to infect the nation’s water supply to make women infertile for the benefit of Mother Earth:

"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control…No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock."

Holdren’s planetary regime would also breed out undesirables “who contribute to social deterioration” and “insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone.”

Single mothers who wanted to keep their children would be “obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it.”

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=======================

The Ehrlichs also issued this challenge through the White House: “(A]nybody who actually wants to know what we and/or Professor Holdren believe and recommend about these matters would presumably read some of the dozens of publications that we and he separately have produced in more recent times.”

Well, I have indeed read one of Holdren’s recent works that reveals his clingy reverence for, and allegiance to, the gurus of population control authoritarianism. He’s just gotten smarter about cloaking it behind global warming hysteria. In 2007, he addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. Holdren served as AAAS president; the organization posted his full powerpoint presentation (you can download the whole thing here.)

Take a gander at the opening slide that set the tone for his entire speech. Holdren admitted that his “preoccupation” with apocalyptic matters such as “the rates at which people breed” is a lifelong obsession inspired by scientist Harrison Brown: [see photo at link]

Who is Harrison Brown? And what’s in “The Challenge of Man’s Future?” Holdren’s hero was a “distinguished member” of the International Eugenics Society. And, lo and behold, Harrison Brown advocated the same population control-freak measures Holdren put forth in Ecoscience.

Surprise:

Harrison Brown, writing to us from the year 1954 in his book, “The Challenge of Man’s Future,” suggests a method that would strike us as a crass violation of the rights mentioned above:

Let us suppose that in a given year the birth rate exceeds the death rate by a certain amount, thus resulting in a population increase. During the following year the number of permitted inseminations is decreased, and the number of permitted abortions is increased, in such a way that the birth rate is lowered by the requisite amount. If the death rate exceeds the birth rate, the number of permitted inseminations would be increased while the number of abortions would be decreased. The number of abortions and artificial inseminations permitted in a given year would be determined completely by the difference between the number of deaths and the number of births in the year previous.

But that wouldn’t be all. If we are to maintain a worldwide sustainable industrial society, we will need to control population across current borders. If we don’t, many members of overpopulated societies will soon be knocking at our doors asking for assistance or even entry.

Brown also suggests that such control over reproduction might be used to slow down the deterioration of the human species. This has occurred in industrial society because humans are no longer subject to natural selection to the same degree that they have been in the past. Those who are healthy and able might be encouraged through incentives to have several offspring, while those who have deficiencies, say, of sight or hearing or mental ability might be discouraged. The problem, he notes, is in deciding what really constitutes “fit” or “unfit” and overcoming our revulsion to such a eugenics scheme. Still, he adds, when one considers the bald evolutionary facts, it behooves human societies, if they want to remain resilient in the face of changing conditions on Earth, to somehow replace nature’s cruel hand in pruning the so-called “unfit” with something less drastic. It’s that or face eventual extinction.

Brown acknowledges that none of this will seem acceptable to the vast majority of his readers. But, he is concerned that unless population stability and other problems are addressed head on, arrangements that are far more restrictive and objectionable than the ones he proposes may be implemented in their place.

Harrison Brown’s book — the book that inspired Obama science czar John Holdren — also infamously likened the world’s growing population to “a pulsating mass of maggots.” Don’t just believe me. Believe your own eyes: [see photo at link]

A Time magazine profile of Brown published when his book came out in 1954 reported: “Scientist Brown is not confident that anything can be done, but he insists that population control is the first and essential measure; only by cutting their birth rates drastically can the crowded agricultural countries hope to enjoy the benefits of industrialization.”

If, as the White House claims, Holdren no longer believes that “that determining optimal population is a proper role of government,” then why does he still pay homage to one of the country’s most renowned population control advocates and plug his half-century-old tome advocating better-living-through-engineered-abortions? Don’t just take my word. Believe your own eyes: [see photo at link]

Maybe Holdren will adopt the Sotomayor strategy and chalk this all up to a “rhetorical flourish” that “fell flat.”

And yes, this is just one more reason to feel very, very nervous about the specter of Obamacare.

source

=======================

*** In the 70s, Obama's Science Adviser Endorsed Giving Trees Legal Standing to Sue in Court

*** Christopher Neefus writes about Holdren’s views on “de-development” in the 1973 book, “Human Ecology:”

*** Barack Obama adviser wants uranium enrichment under international control

*** "There really are two kinds of people: those who see human beings as "maggots," "imbeciles," and "monsters" and those who see human life as precious and sacred. There's no common ground here. And these are the people we're going to put in charge of life and death health care decisions?"

*** Obama science czar: Redistributionism as the cure for American exceptionalism

*** Obama Science Czar: baby only a potential human

======================

When Barack Obama nominated John P. Holdren as his Science Adviser last December 20, the president-elect stated "promoting science isn’t just about providing resources" but "ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology." In nominating John Holdren, his words could scarcely have taken a more Orwellian ring.

Some critics have noted Holdren's penchant for making apocalyptic predictions that never come to pass, and categorizing all criticism of his alarmist views as not only wrong but dangerous. What none has yet noted is that Holdren is a globalist who has endorsed "surrender of sovereignty" to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime" that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits. He has castigated the United States as "the meanest of wealthy countries," written a justification of compulsory abortion for American women, advocated drastically lowering the U.S. standard of living, and left the door open to trying global warming "deniers" for crimes against humanity. Such is Barack Obama's idea of a clear-headed adviser on matters of scientific policy.

source

======================

Lots more here:

Must Read!

http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/

Obama's Biggest Radical

Go ahead – be heavenly minded

2009-09-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Go ahead – be heavenly minded
by Greg Laurie

When you have had someone close to you die, especially a child, everything changes. You see life much differently. Although it has been one year now since my son Christopher's departure to heaven, the sadness lingers. His absence is very pronounced, perhaps even more so. Like a blanket, it covers everything.

While there are things still very, very hard to deal with, there are blessings as well. I have a much better perspective on life and what really matters. It has made me long for heaven more, and that cannot be a bad thing, because Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21 nkjv). Thinking deeply about heaven helps a lot, and more than ever, I have a great interest in knowing and talking about heaven.

Although heaven is more personal, real and nearer than it has ever been before, I still have questions about heaven. I want to know more about heaven, because it is the future dwelling place of every follower of Christ. In fact, the Bible tells us to give some serious thought to the topic: "Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth" (Colossians 3:1-2 nlt). Another way to put it is, "Think heaven!" Our feet must be on Earth, but our minds must be in heaven.

Yet sadly, many of us go through an entire day, even a week, without one thought of heaven. As writer and Bible commentator Warren Wiersbe observes in his book, "Be Victorious," "Heaven is more than a destination; it is a motivation."

But how can we be thinking about and seeking heaven? Answer: from the careful study of Scripture. We have heard it said that a person can be so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good. But I would suggest that many people today are so earthly minded, they are no heavenly good. Those who are truly heavenly minded always have done the most for Earth. Think of the relief agencies, universities and schools that have been founded by Christians. In contrast, how many atheist relief agencies are in existence today? Those who think the most of the next world do the most for this one.

Heaven can be hard to wrap our minds around. People can think of heaven in a mystical way, with clouds, more clouds and people floating around. To some, like the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, heaven even sounded boring. He said, "I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." But that is not a statement a person who knows something about heaven would make.

Heaven is a real place for real people. It helps me to think of heaven in this way, because I live in a place now, and the Bible tells me I will live in another place later. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2 nkjv).

The Bible uses many images, ideas and words to describe heaven. One of those words is "paradise." Jesus told the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43 nkjv). The apostle Paul, who died, went to heaven, and then came back to life, described heaven using the same word: paradise (see 2 Corinthians 12:4).

Heaven is also described in the Bible as a city: "For [Abraham] waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10 nkjv); and "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come" (Hebrews 13:14 nkjv). Cities have buildings, culture, art, music, goods, services and events. So instead of trying to imagine some weird city that is situated on a cloud, think about a city you have visited. Certain cities, like Jerusalem, Rome, Paris and New York City, have unique qualities to them. Heaven will be the best of the best cities you have ever visited, yet so much better.

Another way the Bible describes heaven is as a country: "But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them" (Hebrews 11:16 nkjv).

So heaven is like a paradise, a city and a country. We tend to think of Earth as the real thing and heaven as the surreal thing. But as C. S. Lewis put it, Earth is "The Shadowlands." Lewis was speaking of heaven as the real thing. So Earth is a pale version of heaven, not the other way around. It is all just a taste of better things to come. Heaven is the real deal, the eternal dwelling place, while Earth is the copy, the temporary dwelling place. We start with Earth and reason up toward heaven, when we ought to start with heaven and reason down toward Earth.

Heaven is real, and it is a prepared place for prepared people. Are you prepared? If you want to go to heaven, it is a deliberate decision. It is a choice you make to accept the forgiveness of God and put your faith in Jesus Christ, and him alone, to give you eternal life.

The last thing God wants is for you to spend eternity separated from him. And that is why he paid such a great price by sending his son to die in your place. You can know today, and know with certainty, that you are going to heaven by putting your faith in Jesus Christ. The choice is yours.

Obama's (former) Czar: Van Jones

2009-09-14T18:55:00.001-07:00

Obama's former "Green Jobs" Czar, Van Jones

Thanks to Trevor Loudon, Glenn Beck, WND's Aaron Klein, and Gatewaypundit for bringing us the resignation of Van Jones!!

==========================

Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones (whose birth name was Anthony Jones) attended the University of Tennessee at Martin. As an undergraduate aspiring to a career in journalism, he founded an underground campus newspaper as well as a statewide African American newspaper. After earning his BA degree, Jones abandoned his plan to become a journalist and instead enrolled at Yale Law School, where, as an angry black separatist, he first arrived wearing combat boots and carrying a Black Panther bookbag. "If I'd been in another country, I probably would have joined some underground guerrilla sect," he reflects. "But as it was, I went on to an Ivy League law school.... I wasn't ready for Yale, and they weren't ready for me."

Failing to develop a passion for legal studies, Jones contemplated dropping out of Yale. Realizing, however, that a law degree would furnish him with perceived credibility as a critic of the criminal-justice system -- which he believed was thoroughly infested with racism -- he persevered and earned his Juris Doctorate.

During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and "champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans."

Jones says he became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the now-infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th," says Jones, "and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."

In early May 1992, after the L.A. riots had ended, Jones was dispatched by LCCR Executive Director Eva Patterson to serve as a legal monitor at a nonviolent protest (against the Rodney King verdicts) in San Francisco. Local police, fearful that the event would devolve into violence, stopped the proceedings and arrested many of the participants, including all the legal monitors. Jones spent a short time in jail, and all charges against him were subsequently dropped.

Recalling his brief incarceration, Jones says: "I met all these young radical people of color. I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."

After leaving Yale in 1993, Jones relocated to San Francisco, where he helped establish Bay Area Police Watch, a hotline and lawyer-referral service that began as a project of LCCR and specialized in demonizing local police. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which, claiming that the American criminal-justice system was infested with racism, sought to promote alternatives to incarceration. According to the Baker Center:

"Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it's even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind."

Between 1999 and 2009, the Baker Center received more than $1 million from George Soros's Open Society Institute.

By the late 1990s, Jones was a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who viewed police officers as the arch-enemies of black people, and who loathed capitalism for allegedly exploiting nonwhite minorities worldwide. He became a leading member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a Bay-Area Marxist-Maoist collective that was staffed by members of various local nonprofits, a number of whom had ties to the Ella Baker Center. STORM would grow in influence until 2002, when it disbanded due to internal squabbles.

Jones helped organize an October 1999 rally in Oakland, California, calling for a retrial on behalf of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal. Around 2002, Jones, who had experience as a record producer, produced (for the Ella Baker Center) an album that starred Abu Jamal. Among the lyrics on this album were the following:

"The American way manufactured by white folk in office, by these rich men here to mock us. The United States; a piece of stolen land led by right-wing, war-hungry, oil thirsty ... And when it's all said and done, still can't [garbled] the wrong place cause they got people of color playing servant to do that sh** for them; mother f***ers ready to wipe out soft targets on territories harboring terrorists? Tragedy. The true terrorists are made in the U.S."

In 2000 Jones campaigned aggressively against California Proposition 21, a ballot initiative that established harsher penalties for a variety of violent crimes and called for more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults. Jones' efforts incorporated a hip-hop soundtrack that aimed to attract young black men clad in such gang-style garb as puffy jackets and baggy pants, who would call attention to the alleged injustices of the so-called "prison-industrial complex." But infighting and jealousies between various factions of Jones' movement caused it ultimately to fall apart. "I saw our little movement destroyed over a lot of sh**-talking and bullsh**," said Jones.

After the demise of his anti-Prop 21 movement, Jones decided to change his political tactics. Specifically, he toned down the overt hostility and defiant rage that he previously had worn as badges of honor. "Before, we would fight anybody, any time," he said in 2005. "No concession was good enough; we never said 'Thank you.' Now, I put the issues and constituencies first. I'll work with anybody, I'll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward.... I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends."'

Added Jones: "I realized that there are a lot of people who are capitalists -- shudder, shudder -- who are really committed to fairly significant change in the economy, and were having bigger impacts than me and a lot of my friends with our protest signs."

Jones' new approach was modeled on the tactics outlined by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky, who stressed the need for revolutionaries to mask the extremism of their objectives and to present themselves as moderates until they could gain some control over the machinery of political power. In a 2005 interview, Jones stated that he still considered himself a revolutionary, but a more effective one thanks to his revised tactics.

Just hours after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Jones stood in the streets of Oakland, California with his fellow STORM members to denounce the United States for having brought the disaster on itself. In October 2004 he joined a host of notable leftists in signing the 9/11 Truth Statement (signature #46), which called for a federal investigation into whether President Bush had been privy to advance knowledge of - or perhaps had colluded in - the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In the early 2000s, Jones and STORM were active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER, a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party and it revered Amilcar Cabral, the late Marxist revolutionary leader (of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands) who lauded Lenin as "the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples." (In 2006 Van Jones would name his own newborn son "Cabral" -- in Amilcar Cabral's honor.)

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Take it from Obama’s own political godmother Michelle and Barack’s consigliere and Chicago powerbroker Valerie Jarrett took full credit at the nuttroots dKos blogger conference last month (August 15, 2009) for recruiting him and closely following his career:

JARRETT:. You guys know Van Jones? [Applause. Moderator injects: "This is his house apparently."]

JARRETT: Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him, uh, really, he’s not that old, for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House."

source...youtube clip
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Van Jones Joins the Global Struggle Against America

"Who's the real terrorists? Uncle Sam." That according to a record put out by Freedom Fighter Music, a label created by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which Van Jones founded. There are a number of different voices on the record, including that of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal and Van Jones himself. One of the voices accuses the United States government of "Fighting terror with terror, bombing babies in the night." And then Van Jones appears for his cameo (at the 3:50 mark). Jones rants against the "Israeli occupation," calls for the right of return of the Palestinian people and then puts himself squarely on the side of America's enemies: "This is now a global struggle against a U.S.-led security apparatus and military agenda that impacts people here, it impacts people around the world, and I think that we need to see our problems as linked."

Is Van Jones part of a "global struggle against a U.S.-led security apparatus"? Maybe, or maybe like the 9/11 Truth petition he signed, he simply didn't read the lyrics too closely before he read them into the microphone, produced, and then distributed the record below. It must be a great comfort to the uniformed personnel serving in the White House that they are serving alongside a man who, before he arrived in the White House six months ago, was accusing them of murdering babies, calling them terrorists, and fancied himself part of the global struggle against them and their comrades.

Listen to the whole thing (via the indispensable Gateway Pundit):

youtube video

=================

To this author’s knowledge, it has not yet been reported that Van Jones also popularized the belief that Hurricane Katrina was a conspiracy. The organization Color of Change, which he co-founded after Katrina, waged a campaign to censure President George W. Bush, claiming: “He knew about the levees, and he knew about the Superdome. But he did nothing.”(Emphasis in original.) In 2006, Color of Change worked with MoveOn.org Civic Action to screen Spike Lee’s film When the Levees Broke, which features allegations the federal government dynamited the levees. As one report puts it, “Lee took no side on the issue” – originally popularized by Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan – but Lee made it clear in other media that he believes in the theory.

The conspiracy would be consistent with Jones’ statement last January, that “white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities, because they don't have a racial justice frame.”

In a 2005 blog on the Huffington Post, Jones wrote the hurricane had been exacerbated by Bush’s environmental policies and “deep contempt for poor African-Americans.”

source

Jones has not repudiated his Hate America views, has shown no remorse, nor even registered comprehension that the agenda Maoists and other revolutionaries advanced was insidious. As recently as two years ago, he hoped his own youthful rage would inspire other “racial justice activists.” In response to Hurricane Katrina, he posted an essay he wrote following the Rodney King riots in the hope “that somehow the observations from my own generation's struggles – 15 years ago – will be of some aid and comfort to the newer generation of racial justice activists who are now mounting history's stage.”

On the contrary, Jones has made clear he is switching tactics, not goals. “I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends,” he said.

Further, Jones has made clear he intends to use his position in a Fabian manner, to incrementally socialize the U.S. economy:

Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that's a process and I think that's what's great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.

source
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At the time of his appointment as the President’s “Green Jobs” czar – and despite a very recent 10-year history of “revolutionary” activity – Jones was a member of two key organizations at the very heart of what might be called the executive branch of the Democratic Party. The first is the Center for American Progress which was funded by Soros and is headed by Podesta. The second is the Apollo Alliance, on whose board Jones sits with Podesta, Carol Browner and Al Gore. This is a coalition of radicals, leftwing union leaders and corporate recruits, which had a major role in designing Obama’s green economy plans, including the “cash for clunkers” program. The New York director of the Alliance, who will be writing its applications for tens of millions of dollars in “stimulus” funds, is Jeff Jones (no relation) who was a co-leader of the terrorist Weather Underground along with Obama’s close friend and political ally William Ayers.

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At a February 11, 2009 speaking engagement, Jones was asked by an audience member to theorize as to why the Bush administration had been so effective at passing legislation even though Republicans (under Bush) had not held anything even remotely resembling the types of majorities that Democrats eventually (in 2006 and 2008) would establish in both Houses of Congress. "How were the Republicans able to push things through when they had less than 60 senators," asked the questioner, "but [now] somehow [President Obama] can't?" To loud applause, Jones replied:

"Well, the answer to that is, they're a##holes. That's a technical political [inaudible] term. And [President] Barack Obama's not an a##hole. Um, now, I will say this: I can be an a##hole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."

source
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*** Perfect: Van Jones also a Mumia supporter; Update: Michelle and Beck discuss Mumia connection

*** A Truther Czar?... Obama's Green Czar Van Jones Believes Bush Government was Behind 9-11

*** Busted. Van Jones Linked to 9-11 Truther Movement Back in **January 2002**

==================

some fun Van Jones quotes:

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."
***
"I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary,"
***
"This movement is deeper than a solar panel. Deeper than a solar panel. Don't stop there. Don't stop there. No, we're going to change the whole system. We're going to change the whole thing. We're not going to put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system."
***
"The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities because they don't have a racial justice framework."
***
"I'll work with anybody, I'll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward," he told the left-leaning East Bay Express in a 2005 interview. "I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends."
***
"Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that's a process and I think that's what's great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society."
***
[In a July 2009 interview with Newsweek magazine, Jones said he could not explain exactly what a "green job" is:]

"Well, we still don't have a unified definition, and that's not unusual in a democracy. It takes a while for all the states and the federal government to come to some agreement. But the Department of Labor is working on it very diligently. Fundamentally, it's getting there, but we haven't crossed the finish line yet."
***
"Now I'm gonna tell you this: All that clean coal stuff ... We could have clean coal. I'm for clean coal. But I'll tell you what. If we're gonna have clean coal, let's have a couple other things.... We could power the country with clean coal, or we could have unicorns pull our cars for us ... Equally fictitious, equally fantastical, equally ludicrous. You know, so, we could have the tooth fairy bring us our energy at night. I mean, equally ludicrous. There is no such thing as a tooth fairy. There is no such thing as unicorns. And there is no such thing as clean coal, so let's be clear about that."
***
"We began to drill more, to drill off shore, to drill here, to drill there, to liquify coal ... to do whatever you can to get more petroleum into the system. And we heard our president saying just that. That's what he wants to do. And I hate to say this and I hope I don't offend anybody, but the president of the United States sounded like a crackhead when he said that. [Mimicking a crack addict:] Just, a little bit mo,' just a litlle bit mo,' a little mo', a little mo', a little mo' … Like a crackhead trying to lick the crack pipe for a fix.... I'm sorry, I'm gonna speak some ebonics up here. Good luck with the translation."

Obama and Friends (youtube vids)

2009-09-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

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Sean Hannity - Obama & Friends - History of Radicalism
=======================================================

part 1: College Years

part 2: Community Organizer

part 3: Bill Ayers

part 4: Jeremiah Wright

part 5: Israel

part 6: ACORN

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Bill O'Reilly - The Obama Chronicles
=======================================

part 1: Obama mentors: Frank Marshall Davis, Emil Jones Jr., Rev. Jeremiah Wright

part 2: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn

part 3: Obama the community organizer

Funny: Steven Crowder's conservative youtube videos

2009-09-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

Crazy Pete's Abortion Barn

ObamaCare Yay Or Nay? The Truth About Canada!

Happy Prayer Day! (Featuring the ACLU)

The Qur'an CHALLENGE!

The OBAMA Song!

Illegal Aliens! (Featuring the Jimenez Brothers)

Are you Hindu yet?

2009-09-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

This week, Lisa Miller of Newsweek penned an article titled "We Are All Hindus Now" in which she advanced on President Obama's statement that America is not a Christian nation.

In the editorial, she wrote that "conceptually, at least, we (Americans) are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, ourselves, each other and eternity." She noted that Americans are "no longer buying" Jesus' statement: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

My first response to this column was disgust. I don't want to think about our nation further abandoning the biblical principle of salvation. But the fact is that Ms. Miller may have a point. In fact, as she noted, 65 percent of respondents in a Pew Forum survey last year said they believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life."

This may be good news to multiculturalists, but I see this as further troubling evidence that our culture is losing more and more understanding into who Jesus is and what He proclaims.

The fact is that the Bible tells us that the salvation Jesus offers will be rejected by many: "Because narrow is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it" (Matthew 7:14, NKJV).

That verse is certainly pertinent today. People think Jesus was probably a nice guy, but many have no idea that He claims to be the only way to heaven.

Consider this: If Jesus stated that He is the only way to eternal life, we have either of two choices in how we respond to this claim.

1. We accept it as truth and embrace Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

2. We reject this claim and assert that Jesus was a liar.

Everyone needs to understand that they stand at this crossroads.

I wrote several months ago about a lecture at Thomas Road Baptist Church by Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, which I think is crucial for our evangelistic efforts in the modern culture. Ken pointed out that America today is like the Greek culture found in Acts chapter 17, which was lost in pagan worship.

I think this is a very important observation.

You see, we can no longer presume that Americans have even a basic understanding of Jesus and Scripture, maybe as we could assume 50 years ago. We cannot conduct our evangelistic activities with an assumption that we are in an Acts 2 culture (wherein people understood who Jesus is). This means that we, as Christians, must be fully grounded in Scripture so that we can be productive apologists for Christ.

As Ken stated, "You've got to have prepared ground to have a harvest." He means by this that we must understand our present culture (1 Chronicles 12:32) in order to offer the biblical alternative and thus effectively carry out our efforts of winning people to Jesus Christ.

This may mean that we have to examine some of our activities that might have worked 50 or even 20 years ago. Tradition cannot stand in the way of being effective.

So how do we reach our culture that, according to Lisa Miller, has become more Hindu than Christian?

Two ways:

1. We passionately and compassionately proclaim the truth of the Bible. Romans 10:17: "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."

2. We emulate Jesus Christ in our lives at all times. Luke 6:40: "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher."

Our culture is swiftly turning away from the Gospel, my friends. Americans are ignorant and ill-informed about Jesus, probably as never before. We must therefore become increasingly wise and attuned to the leading of the Holy Spirit as we reach out to those we know and love with the message of Jesus Christ.

source

some Obama phrases that will go down in history...

2009-09-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Punished With A Baby

Bitter Clingers

Above My Pay Grade

Spread the Wealth Around

creepy Weather Underground video

2009-09-13T17:34:00.001-07:00

(language warning)

some Obama youtube videos

2009-09-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Obama the smooth-talker away from his teleprompter

"Barack Obama: There Will Be Bamboozling"

"IN 52 SECS WHY BARACK OBAMA CANNOT WIN A GENERAL ELECTION"

"Hannity to pro-Obama focus group: Name one accomplishment"

Hannity to pro-Obama focus group: Name one accomplishment — the sequel

God’s Simple Plan of Salvation

2009-09-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

God’s Simple Plan of Salvation
by Pastor Ford Porter

My Friend: I am asking you the most important question of life. Your joy or your sorrow for all eternity depends upon your answer. The question is: Are you saved? It is not a question of how good you are, nor if you are a church member, but are you saved? Are you sure you will go to Heaven when you die?

God says in order to go to Heaven, you must be born again. In John 3:7, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.”

In the Bible God gives us the plan of how to be born again which means to be saved. His plan is simple! You can be saved today. How?

First, my friend, you must realize you are a sinner. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Because you are a sinner, you are condemned to death. “For the wages [payment] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). This includes eternal separation from God in Hell.

“ . . . it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

But God loved you so much He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to bear your sin and die in your place. “ . . . He hath made Him [Jesus, Who knew no sin] to be sin for us . . . that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus had to shed His blood and die. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11). “ . . . without shedding of blood is no remission [pardon]” (Hebrews 9:22).

“ . . . God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Although we cannot understand how, God said my sins and your sins were laid upon Jesus and He died in our place. He became our substitute. It is true. God cannot lie.

My friend, “God . . . commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). This repentance is a change of mind that agrees with God that one is a sinner, and also agrees with what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

In Acts 16:30-31, the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas: “ . . . ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ And they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved . . . .’ ”

Simply believe on Him as the one who bore your sin, died in your place, was buried, and whom God resurrected. His resurrection powerfully assures that the believer can claim everlasting life when Jesus is received as Savior.

“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12).

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).

Whosoever includes you. Shall be saved means not maybe, nor can, but shall be saved.

Surely, you realize you are a sinner. Right now, wherever you are, repenting, lift your heart to God in prayer.

In Luke 18:13, the sinner prayed: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Just pray: “Oh God, I know I am a sinner. I believe Jesus was my substitute when He died on the Cross. I believe His shed blood, death, burial, and resurrection were for me. I now receive Him as my Savior. I thank You for the forgiveness of my sins, the gift of salvation and everlasting life, because of Your merciful grace. Amen.”

Just take God at His word and claim His salvation by faith. Believe, and you will be saved. No church, no lodge, no good works can save you. Remember, God does the saving. All of it!

God’s simple plan of salvation is: You are a sinner. Therefore, unless you believe on Jesus Who died in your place, you will spend eternity in Hell. If you believe on Him as your crucified, buried, and risen Savior, you receive forgiveness for all of your sins and His gift of eternal salvation by faith.

You say, “Surely, it cannot be that simple.” Yes, that simple! It is scriptural. It is God’s plan. My friend, believe on Jesus and receive Him as Savior today.

If His plan is not perfectly clear, read this tract over and over, without laying it down, until you understand it. Your soul is worth more than all the world.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Be sure you are saved. If you lose your soul, you miss Heaven and lose all. Please! Let God save you this very moment.

God’s power will save you, keep you saved, and enable you to live a victorious Christian life. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Do not trust your feelings. They change. Stand on God’s promises. They never change. After you are saved, there are three things to practice daily for spiritual growth:

Pray -- you talk to God.
Read your Bible -- God talks to you.
Witness -- you talk for God.
AFTER you are saved, you should be baptized in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ as a public testimony of your salvation, and then unite with a Bible-believing church without delay. “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord . . . .” (2 Timothy 1:8).

"where along the radical leftist continuum" does Obama reside?

2009-09-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

Is Barack Obama a Communist?

"It is reprehensible that we are this deep into a U.S. presidential election run and this question is on the table, but that is what can happen when political parties and the media anoint a candidate based upon rhetoric and marketability instead of vetting him for substance.

A blog called The Obama Report has passed along an Accuracy in Media account that cites Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis as Barack Obama's mentor:

In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

Ace notes:

Barack Obama has been swimming in a sea of left radicalism all his life, from his communist dad to his firebrand America-hating preacher to his terrorist buddy Bill Ayers.

Barack Obama is very vague about his actual politics and few have bothered asking.

So I'm asking: What are Barack Obama's politics?

Is Obama "merely" another radical leftist like another one of his mentors, Saul Alinsky?

Is he a Marxist, as would befit his continued 20-year association with a church founded on the Marxism underlying Black Liberation Theology?

Is he a socialist revolutionary with Maoist tendencies that wants to wage war against the United States like his close friend, fellow Woods Fund board member, and domestic terrorist William Ayers?

Is he a communist, like his mentor Davis, his father, his ethic-cleansing, Islamist-coddling cousin, and even his own wife Michelle Obama, who insisted just yesterday the thought that, "someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

At this point we simply do not know where along the radical leftist continum Barack Obama's thoughts reside, because no one has ever pressed him on his beliefs or his meager record.

For the media, it might be nice to know these things before Obama sews up the Democratic nomination."

Is Temple Mount God's time bomb?

2009-09-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Is Temple Mount God's time bomb?
New book sees Jerusalem real estate as roadmap to future events

Was the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem more than a place of worship?

Was it, indeed, a roadmap to future events – a kind of prophetic landmark whose significance is only now revealed through the development of satellite imagery?

That is the contention of an explosive new book, "Temple at the Center of Time: Newton's Bible Codex Deciphered and the Year 2012," by David Flynn, a book that has risen dramatically to No. 1 among unexplained mysteries, No. 1 in world history and 73 overall on Amazon.com.

The book asserts it has "deciphered Isaac Newton’s greatest paradox: None other than 'the unified field theory' of Bible prophecy."

Sir Isaac Newton was not only a great thinker in physics, the book explains, but had extensive knowledge of the Scriptures with a special interest in prophecy. Newton believed there was a hidden code, a type of time-encrypted language. He believed the key to deciphering this code was the Temple of Solomon. He wrote extensively on the length measurements of the Temple and suggested it intersected time and dimension, serving as a prophetic and supernatural structure.

According to Flynn, although Newton never cracked this code, he was on the right track and was limited only by the lack of sophisticated satellite technology.

"The description of Jerusalem as a terrestrial center point, situated in the center of the world, is found in Philo's Legatio and Gaium," Flynn notes. "The world is like a human eyeball. The white of the eye is the ocean surrounding the world, the iris is this continent, the pupil is Jerusalem, and the image in the pupil is the Holy Temple."

To make his case, Flynn starts by illustrating what the reader soon learns is the first of numerous extraordinary time-distance anomalies.

The prisca sapentia framework of Newton suggests that the distance between the temple of Jerusalem and the capital city of any nation historically effecting the chronicles of Jerusalem would be supernaturally connected. This relationship would be significant with respect to units of time, expressing meaning in line with God's divine plan as recorded in the word of his prophets.

Newton and Flynn point out how Ezekiel recorded the dimensions of the future temple in chapter 40 of his book, starting with the lengths of the temple gates, chambers, courts, walls and its exterior. After this, calibrations of weights and measure for the temple functions were given in detail. Finally, the distance of land outward from the temple was measured.

And he brought me thither, and, behold, [there was] a man, whose appearance [was] like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate. (Ezekiel 40:3)

The measure of distance away from Jerusalem in this text implies a spiritual significance, says Flynn. A relationship between Jerusalem and the nations existed from the foundation of the temple, but was not completely perceived – and could not be fully known until the conventions of modern science.

For instance, if a measurement is made from the point of the temple of Jerusalem's foundation stone to the palace of Balthazar – the political center of Babylon and the exact location where the writing on the wall occurred – the distance should relate to the period in which Babylon most influenced Jerusalem.

Such a relationship exists and is the important distance of 539.86 statute miles.

What makes this measurement unusual is that Babylon, which played such a significant role in Hebrew antiquity, was measured and numbered in its relationship to Jewish history in Daniel chapter five during the famous handwriting on the wall. When the prophet interpreted the manifestation, he proclaimed in verses 25-28:

And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE, God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting; PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

That very night King Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Mede became king.

Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians on the 16th day of Tishri of the Jewish calendar, which correlates to Oct. 12, 539 B.C. Curiously, the number 539 is also the distance in statute miles between the temple of Jerusalem's foundation stone to the palace of Balthazar, as confirmed by modern satellite measurement.

Does this give insight to the handwriting on the wall or the dating and measuring of Babylon's affairs in the history of Israel? Does this imply that Babylon's influence over Israel was supernaturally predated and measured, or foreknown? Or was this just a fascinating coincidence? As the first of such discoveries made by Flynn, he wondered the same thing.

So Flynn studied epic moments having to do with the sovereignty of Israel and the nations that played key roles in Hebrew and Jewish history. Over and over he found fascinating date-measurement anomalies connecting pivotal moments in time to the temple in Jerusalem. He went through annals, considering when acts by world leaders had influenced the development of the Jewish state. He continued to find more.

A case in point was the relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte
and the Jews.

Napoleon had previously encountered the prophecies of the Old Testament in the Jewish community of Malta, which he liberated under French law in 1798. For hundreds of years, the Knights Hospitalier of Saint John of Jerusalem had oppressed the Jews by enslaving them and preventing open worship. One of Napoleon's first acts after banishing the Knights was to allow the Jews to build a synagogue, and the community
of Jews on Malta welcomed Napoleon as a conqueror equal to Cyrus the Great. They believed their liberation by him was the fulfillment of the "king of the North" prophecy in Daniel 11.

This was followed on the first day of Passover, April 20, 1799, when Napoleon issued his proclamation of a Jewish state of Palestine. On May 22, 1799, the Paris newspaper, Moniteur Universel, announced: "Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo."

Although the proclamation did not come to fruition, it increased a drive for Jews worldwide to pursue a sovereign state in Israel. Napoleon's ideas were also embraced by many who viewed them as a fulfillment of ancient prophecy, even some belonging to the Church of England.

This is important because Paris was named after the Paris, a Celtic people who settled on this central island in the 3rd century B.C. The city later spread outward from this point along the banks of the Seine River. This island is considered the birthplace of Paris and was the site of the city's earliest settlements. It was home to the French Kings from A.D. 400 to A.D. 1300. The royal palace and parliament were located on the western side of the island. Extending a measuring line from this historical center of Paris to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem shows the distance in nautical miles, 1,799.

The intriguing connection to Flynn's book is clear: Napoleon made a proclamation of historical importance to the Jewish nation in the year 1799, and perhaps not coincidently the distance from Paris to the Temple Mount in nautical miles corresponds perfectly at 1,799.

As findings like these stack up and the mathematical improbability of Flynn's disclosure increases, one of the most extraordinary parts of the book is unveiled when we learn how the year 1948 is marked by time-distance relations to the Temple location and several other mind-boggling dates and places, both past and future, which we will not divulge here. However, a peek into this section of the book finds discussion of how Britain was the nation that was "friendly to the Jews" and enabled them to return to Israel over 200 after Newton's death. The British defeated the Ottoman Turks and became administrators of the land of ancient Israel in 1917. Through mandate after World War I
and World War II until 1948, London was the heart of the governing intellect over the region.

London's original location at its founding is an important point in establishing the exact value of time and distance between it and Jerusalem's Temple.

The Romans established Londinium in about A.D. 47. It was a civilian settlement built where the Thames became narrow enough for a bridge to be built across it but was still deep enough to admit large ocean vessels. In the 16th century, William Camden believed that the "London Stone" was a Roman milestone from which all distances were measured in the province. In the 17th century, Christopher Wren was able to observe the foundations of the London Stone underneath Cannon Street during the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. With this information, it is possible to extend a measuring line from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the exact center of ancient London, and by fixing a point on the site of the temple mount, a measuring line extended over Jerusalem to the center of London produces 1,948.40 nautical miles.

Therefore, incredibly, recorded in the earth between the Temple Mount of Jerusalem and the historic center of London is what Flynn sees as the fulfillment of Newton's own prediction: Israel became a nation again May 14th, 1948, corresponding perfectly to a distance between the temple and London of 1948 nautical miles.

As the reader moves through Temple at the Center of Time, these time-length correlations accumulate quickly, including numerous ancient dates such as 1441 B.C. when the Exodus from Egypt occurred. It turns out is 1,441,000 feet from the Jerusalem Temple to the Great Pyramid in Giza. Flynn finds dozens of other key dates in the past through similar satellite mapping measurements including some related to the United States, Russia and Rome.

Before it is even officially released, Flynn's book is causing a sensation in some circles where it is being compared to "The Bible Code."

Leftist Tactics

2009-09-13T14:49:00.001-07:00

1. Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals"

"... the community organizer ... must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.'

-- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

"Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." --Letter from L. DAVID ALINSKY,

-- son of Saul Alinsky

*** Quotes and Excerpts from Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky

Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):

1. "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."

2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat.... [and] the collapse of communication.

3. "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."

6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time...."

8. "Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose."

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

"...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments.... Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target...'

"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (pps.127-134)

*** Barack Obama and Alinsky's Rules for Psychopaths

*** Beck, Alinsky, Satan and Me

"Alinsky's tribute to Satan as the first radical and model of radicals to come should cause us to reflect on how Satan tempted Adam and Eve to destroy their paradise. If you rebel and violate the law that has been laid down for you, "You shall be as gods" the serpent told them. You think Rahm Emmanuel was listening?

Oh, and let's not forget this -- the kingdom that the first radical "won" was hell."

*** "The more the [Alinsky] virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective."

*** Figures. Michelle Obama Quotes Lines From "Rules For Radicals" In Her DNC Convention Speech

2. The Cloward-Piven Strategy

*** The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

*** The Cloward/Piven Strategy of Economic Recovery

*** Manufactured Healthcare Crisis

The "Lifehouse Everything drama"

2009-09-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

youtube video of the original...

my favorite variations:

number 1
number 2
number 3

here's the background behind the skit...

Obama's ACORN connections

2009-09-13T13:45:00.001-07:00

The left-wing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a national umbrella group of, well, community organizers, sits at the intersection of Obama's ties to extremists and his ties to machine politics. ACORN is indisputably Sixties-style "New Left" in its orientation, pursuing what Sol Stern describes as an agenda of "undisguised authoritarian socialism." The group has both money and foot soldiers, as it "uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive 'donations' that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives." See here for a more thorough description of the mischief ACORN plays in forcing banks to make subprime loans. And:

In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN, Organizing Urban America, Rutgers University political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group... as "oppositional outlaws." Swarts, a strong supporter of ACORN, has no qualms about stating that its members think of themselves as "militants unafraid to confront the powers that be." "This identity as a uniquely militant organization," says Swarts, "is reinforced by contentious action." ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker's home to intimidate his family, or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers. According to Swarts, long-term ACORN organizers "tend to see the organization as a solitary vanguard of principled leftists...the only truly radical community organization."

ACORN's rap sheet for voter fraud alone is extensive. This is "an organization that has a "decade long history of voter fraud, embezzlement and misuses of taxpayer funds" that Consumer Rights League Chief Public Advocate, James Terry testified about last month to the House Judiciary." For example: flagrantly fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada; "5,000 ACORN registrants in St. Louis were sent letters by election officials asking the recipient to contact them. Fewer than 40 responded"; "In Kansas City, 15,000 ACORN registrations have been questioned and in November, 4 ACORN employees were indicted for fraud. Additionally ACORN officials have been indicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and there are on-going investigations in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee." * * * * * * * * * * * *

Obama could not be more closely tied to ACORN if he was an oak tree:

Meeting last November with the leaders of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) - the nationwide network of left-wing community groups that taps government money for a host of causes - Obama declared: "I've been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career," including representing Acorn in a court case in Illinois. Acorn members apparently reciprocated by working hard to turn out voters for Obama's Illinois campaigns, according to a 2003 piece in the magazine Social Policy by a Chicago-area Acorn organizer. After the candidate's November appearance, Acorn's affiliated political action committee endorsed Obama for president.

youtube: "OBAMA CAUGHT SAYING ACORN AND FRIENDS WILL SHAPE HIS PRESIDENTIAL AGENDA"

What he now admits to is having been their lawyer: "the Obama campaign has sought to distance the Senator from the radical organization, claiming Obama merely represented ACORN in a lawsuit enforcing the Illinois 'Motor Voter' law." * *

A sampling of Obama's ties to ACORN, and specifically to the aspect of ACORN - its voter registration drives - that are at the heart of its criminal activity:

Obama trained ACORN activists. A 1995 Chicago Reader article on Obama stated "Obama continues his work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons." Obama also ran Project Vote, known for widespread voter fraud, which Time magazine called "a non-partisan arm" of ACORN.

+++
During the Democrat primary, the Obama campaign paid Citizen Services Inc., a subsidiary of ACORN, more than $800,000.

A payment that Obama's campaign somehow managed to misreport to the FEC. * Obama's "Fight the Smears" website likewise falsely denied his role in training ACORN activists until confronted by evidence contradicting his denials. *

Project Vote was, in fact, an important part of the groundwork for getting Obama ingratiated with Chicago Democrats barely a year after leaving law school:

In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter- registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls

Conveniently enough, it appears that at one point, ACORN, Project Vote, and the New Party all listed as headquarters the same address in Brooklyn. Obama is, of course, ACORN's favorite politician:

[ACORN] Founder Toni Foulkes enthusiastically backed Obama's U.S. Senate run in 2004, declaring: "ACORN is active in experimenting with methods of increasing voter participation in our low and moderate income communities to virtually every election. But in some elections we get to have our cake and eat it too: work on nonpartisan voter registration and GOTV, which also turns out to benefit the candidate we hold dear [Obama]."

By Foulkes' own admission, ACORN's ties to Obama run straight through Obama's career in Illinois:

Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama's representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with [former Chicago ACORN leader] Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama's post-law school role organizing "Project VOTE" in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama's yearly service as a key figure in Acorn's leadership-training seminars.

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama's role in training Acorn's leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama's long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama's early political campaigns - his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000... With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were "old friends," says Foulkes.

Of course, Foulkes' article has since disappeared from the web.

And like Ayers - and sometimes through Ayers - ACORN was a recipient of money from Obama's tenure as a director of the charitable Woods Fund:

Chicago ACORN Received Grants Of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), And $40,000 (2002) From The Woods Fund.

source
=========================
*** ACORN and Alinsky's Rule #13
"ACORN uses these fundamentals in order to harrass, manipulate and ultimately extort money from powerful people and organizations."

*** O'S DANGEROUS PALS
BARACK'S 'ORGANIZER' BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES

*** ACORN Watch, Pt II: Obama hid $800,000 payment to ACORN through "Citizen Services, Inc."

*** Cloward-Piven, ACORN And AIG Witch Hunt
"Indeed, as previously noted, ACORN was itself born out of the Cloward-Piven tactic to throw our system of government into crisis in every conceivable way."

Comparing Biblical and Modern Love

2009-09-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

Love is a big word in everyone's vocabulary, but not everyone means the same thing when we use the word. Indeed, the modern world has adopted a notion of love that is completely different from the love taught and modeled by Jesus Christ.

Modern Love:

Based on experience- happens to a person when the "chemistry is right"

Biblical Love:

Based on a decision- We can decide to invest ourselves in another by giving of ourselves to meet his or her needs. Christ decided to die for us before we even existed (Ephesians 1:3)

Modern Love:

Defined by feeling- "I love you" means I feel a certain warmth, desire, or affinity for you

Biblical Love:

Compatible with feeling- "I love you" may sometimes mean a feeling, but it always means a commitment to serve. Jesus may not have felt desire or warmth toward the soldiers who flogged him, but he died for them anyway

Modern Love:

Can't be controlled- Love has to happen, so I can't be expected to choose to love someone. Therefore, love, or lack of love, is not a moral issue-

Biblical Love:

Can be controlled- Christian love is based on personal choice and commitment. Therefore, it is a moral issue (Mark 12:28-31)

Modern Love:

Depends on the other person- He or she must be attractive or lovely enough to elicit a love response in me

Biblical Love:

Depends on God and me- I can love the unlovely, like Christ did when he died for us while we were enemies of God (Romans 5:10)

Modern Love:

Self-affirming- Love is a good feeling and must be two-way. If a relationship is not rewarding to me, I have the right to leave and find another.

Biblical Love:

Self-sacrificial- Christian love is seeking to give victoriously and keeps no record of whether the other person gives back. (I Corinthians 13:5)

Modern Love:

Meets others' desires- Effort is extended to please or pacify others by doing what they want.

Biblical Love:

Meets others' needs- Christian love is concerned with doing what is good for another, not with what the other wants. This love recognizes that what people want and what they need are often different. The other person may need confrontation even if he or she doesn't want it.

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=======================

THE BIBLICAL MEANING OF LOVE
1 JOHN 4:7-10

Introduction: The primary meaning of the word "love" in Scripture is a "purposeful commitment to sacrificial action for another." In the Bible it is a fact that loving God is equated with obeying His Word. The two are inseparable.

In our day, most define love as some type of feeling. We "fall in love," or two people meet and it is "love at first sight." But the world's love is a selfish matter. If you are attractive to me, be nice to me, meet my needs and love me I in return will "love" you. The world's love is based on getting something from some else. The world does not give love where is does not benefit themselves. If you do not please me then I have no love for you. Thus for the world love must be earned by making someone else feel good.

Powerful emotions may accompany love, but it is the commitment of the will that holds true biblical love steadfast and unchanging. Emotions may change, but a commitment to love in a biblical manner endures and is the hallmark of a disciple of Christ. Sadly, the opposite is also true.

Emotions will vary, but a commitment which has its basis in biblical love will not be affected by the whelm of emotion or of one's circumstances.

Our example of true love is shown in God's love for the sinner. Romans 5:8 says ". . .commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The lost sinner living in rebellion and sin is still loved by the Lord. He loved us enough to die for us and pay our sin debt while we were sinning against Him. This shows that true biblical love is a matter of will....not of emotion. God choose to love us and His love was not based on our meriting it in any way.

1 John 4:8 tells us that ". . . God is love."

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Leftist Outrages: Banning DDT/Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"

2009-09-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

If there is any one man who defined the word "environmentalist," it is the recently deceased J. Gordon Edwards. Edwards was an author, a park ranger, a legendary mountain climber, and an esteemed entomologist.

In 1962, when Rachel Carson published her breakthrough book on the environment, "Silent Spring," Edwards was delighted. The young scientist eagerly raced through the first several chapters, but as he did, his anticipation eroded into uneasiness: "I noticed many statements that I realized were false." Attracted by Carson's message, Edwards tried to overlook the misstatements or to rationalize them away, but increasingly he could not. "As I neared the middle of the book," he adds, "the feeling grew in my mind that Rachel Carson was really playing loose with the facts."

In 1962, however, Edwards was doing fieldwork in Wyoming. He was scarcely in a position, either through prestige or geography, to challenge Carson's book, one that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was hailing as "the most important chronicle of the century for the human race."

Rachel Carson, however, had little interest in that race. There is no mistaking her position on man or his attempts to assert his mastery over nature. "The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance," writes Carson, "born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man." Today, Carson's geocentric smugness is the stuff of science fairs and after-school specials, but then it had the power to shock the system.

Carson derived much of that power from her Gothic literary flair. The title of the book derives from an opening "fable" in which a "strange blight" has crept over an imagined American town, casting its "evil spell" and spreading a "strange stillness" across the land. Throughout the book, Carson uses words like "toxins," "contaminants," "hazards," "death-dealing materials," and the inevitable "poison" where others might use "chemical" or "insecticide." And she never lets up.

As Edwards and others have argued, millions of people might be alive today – who aren't – if Carson had turned her talents to fiction or identified her work as such. For the one "poison" that truly provoked her literary rage was dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane or, as it is more commonly known and reviled, DDT.

A German chemist by the name of Othmar Zeidler had first composed this chemical compound in 1874, but did not suggest a use for it. In Switzerland, in 1939, Dr. Paul Muller was looking for chemicals that might kill insect pests when he came across Zeidler's written directions for preparing DDT. Muller perfected it, applied it, and in 1948 received the Nobel Prize for his work with it.

Had Gordon Edwards been in a position to cast a vote that year on Muller's behalf, he surely would have done so. While on duty in Italy in 1944, he and the other soldiers in his company had been plagued by body lice. This lice was spreading typhus among the troops, a disease that had killed 3 million people in Europe during and after the previous war. To check the developing epidemic, the chemists at Merck & Company in New Jersey produced the first 500 pounds of American-made DDT, rushed it to the airport, and flew it to Italy.

There, Edwards got the order to dust every soldier in his company with the DDT powder. For two weeks straight, he did just that, breathing the fog of white dust as he did so. Much to everyone's relief, the DDT worked, and the epidemic was checked. The surgeon general estimated that the DDT had saved the lives of 5,000 soldiers. After the war, inspired by this experience, Edwards went on to get his Ph.D. in entomology from Ohio State University and eventually headed out to San Jose State University where he taught medical entomology courses for more than 30 years.

Carson's iconic status never slowed Edwards down. In a series of articles and very public presentations, he exposed Carson and others like her who would deceive the public to advance their cause.

When Carson alludes to increased bird deaths during the DDT era, Edwards responds, "Is it possible that Carson was unaware of the great increases in mammals and game birds." Her claim that robins were on the verge of extinction because of DDT and related chemicals he reveals to be transparently untrue. Observers, he points out, spotted 12 times more robins in the DDT era than before. As to her claim that DDT was originally tested as an "agent of death" for man, this he calls "despicable." At the end of the day, beyond all reasonable doubt, Edwards revealed Carson's claim that DDT is "deadly" to be "completely false."

Not afraid to put his mouth where his moxie was, Edwards took to swallowing a tablespoon of DDT on stage before every lecture on the subject. In September 1971, Esquire magazine pictured Edwards doing just that. The accompanying text explained that Edwards had "eaten 200 times the normal human intake of DDT." He did not even consider this gesture risky. In the one year of 1959, for instance, unprotected workmen had applied 60,000 tons of DDT to the inside walls of 100 million houses. Neither the 130,000 workmen or the 535 million people living in the sprayed houses had experienced any adverse effects.

Today, more than 40 years after Carson's death, the struggle over DDT use continues. One Western country after another followed America's lead and outlawed the chemical. In his bold and meticulously documented 2004 novel, "State of Fear," Michael Crichton describes this ban as "arguably the greatest tragedy of the 20th century" and provides the mortality statistics to back up his claim.

Like Crichton, J. Gordon Edwards was not afraid to tackle the naturalist establishment. He cited the 500 million saved lives that the National Academy of Sciences attributed to DDT. He echoed the World Health Organization's affirmation that no substance had ever proved more beneficial to man. And then he dared to question publicly why Rachel Carson and her followers chose to ignore the undeniable human benefits of DDT.

In Carson's case, the answer is apparent on every other page of "Silent Spring." Straightforward as always, Edwards describes the Carson philosophy as a "lack of concern for human lives." She could vividly describe the death of a bird, notes Edwards, but nowhere in the book does she even think to describe the death of a human by an insect-borne disease.

For the record, the research activities of this DDT-eating scientist finally caught up with him. Edwards died of a heart attack while climbing Divide Mountain at Glacier National Park, where he held the unofficial title as the patron saint of climbing. He was 84 years old.

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supernatural hatred of the Jews

2009-09-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

why is Israel singled out and never allowed to defend itself?

"The so-called "enlightened and responsible nations" have developed a formula for exclusive use against Israel. This formula determines under what circumstances and in what manner Israel is allowed to defend itself against terrorist attacks. First, the provocation must be many times more serious than would be necessary for other nations. Simple acts of war, such as hostage-taking or continuous missile attacks against civilian population centers, are not sufficient provocation to permit defensive measures.

Since 2005, more than 6,000 rockets have rained down on Israeli cities from Gaza. In a display of remarkable restraint, only after three years and thousands of unprovoked attacks did Israel finally feel sufficiently justified to launch a defensive response."

(i forget the source of this)

================================

why does the fighting in Israel seem to go on forever?

"What is it about Israel that makes it the world's pariah state? How can it be that no insult to the Arabs is too slight to justify wholesale murder, whereas no atrocity, no matter how outrageous, justifies an Israeli defensive response? It matters not how reasonable and legitimate the defensive action would be for any other nation. But leaders from around the world have streamed into the U.N. to defend the "Palestinian democracy" – as if such an entity exists.

It makes absolutely no sense in the natural. Only the Bible can explain the mystery behind the supernatural hatred of the Jews. Bible prophecy predicted that Israel would be miraculously reborn in "the last days." The Bible also predicted that a supernatural hatred against Jews would grow worldwide. This will be soon followed by Armageddon and the return of Jesus the Messiah.

All of this is being fulfilled to the letter before our eyes. So don't be surprised or afraid. Christ's return to deliver those who have believed in Him is coming very soon."

"BIBLE PROPHECY -- "I will make JERUSALEM a cup of trembling unto all the people round about ... And in that day will I make JERUSALEM a burdensome stone for all people ..." [Zechariah 12:2-3; "In that day" refers to End of the Age; Emphasis added]

No small capital of such a small nation as Israel should ever capture and hold the attention of all the major, and many of the minor, nations of the world the way Jerusalem has done since Israel has come back to her land in 1948. The only reason Jerusalem has so captured the attention of so many national leaders, and is the focus of so many news headlines weekly, is that God's prophecy concerning Jerusalem in the End of the Age is being fulfilled, right in your Daily News, right in front of your eyes!"

(i forget the source for this)

============================

About 150 years ago, the King of Sweden was having personal doubts about the Bible's divine nature. He called for Count Von Zinzendorf, who was the bishop of the Moravian Church, to provide evidence that the Bible is inspired by God. When the Count arrived, the King told him he had set aside 10 hours to be enlightened on this matter. Zinzendorf said that much time would not be necessary because all he needed to do was to say two words. The King, skeptical, asked, “What words might those be?” Count Von Zinzendorf replied, "The Jews."

One of the greatest miracles of God is the preservation of the children of Israel. No other group of people has ever been completely annihilated as a nation and then later reborn. The rebirth of Israel in 1948 is the key indication that we are in the end times.

"Therefore behold the days are coming, says the Lord, that they shall no longer say 'As the Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt', but 'As the Lord lives who brought up and lead the descendants of the house of Israel from the north country and from all the countries where I have driven them' (Jer. 16:14-15).

The regathering of Israel is a remarkable task alone, but what makes one have to admit that the hand of God was involved is how the Jews managed to overcome unbelievable persecution. Each of the following nations and tribes has failed in its attempt to destroy the Jews:

Amalekites
Arameans
Assyrians
Babylonians
Canaanites
Edomites
Egyptians
Germany
Hittites
Midianites
Moabites
Persians
Philistines
Romans
Spain
The whole Muslim world

Of course, God is not finished preserving the Jewish people. During the tribulation, Satan will inspire several genocidal attacks against Israel. Anyone reading this article near the end of the tribulation will be able to add a few more names to this list of defeated foes.

(i forget the source of this)

===============================

Israel, A Nation of Miracles

The new born state of Israel was 50 years old in 1998. What a 50 years! To start with—the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948 was a miracle of history (Ezek.37:1-11; Luke 21:29,30). Never before has a nation been destroyed, its people dispersed to the ends of the earth, and then, nearly two thousand years later, re-gathered to their homeland and re-established as a nation.

When Israel declared itself an independent state on May 14, 1948, still another miracle occurred. The armies of seven Arab nations marched on the newborn State, boasting that they would "push the Jews into the sea." Outnumbered 100 to 1, Israel not only repelled the invaders but acquired more of Palestine than was granted in the UN partition plan. Yigael Yadin, Israel’s commander of operations in that war, had a terse explanation of Israel’s victory. "It was a miracle!"

Five Examples of Miracles

A Syrian column of 200 armored vehicles—including 45 tanks—attacked Degania, the oldest kibbutz in Israel. What a psychological blow this defeat would be! Without artillery, Jewish forces were helpless to block the Syrian advance. Until then the only heavy weapons available in all Israel were four howitzers of the type used by the French army in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Two of these ancient fieldpieces were promptly dismantled and rushed to Degania. The local commander, Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Dayan, had them reassembled at the very moment the first Syrian tanks rumbled through the kibbutz perimeter, and they scored a hit on the advance tank. Had the Syrians known that these two obsolete weapons represented half the arsenal of fieldguns in all Israel, they would have pressed the attack. Instead, the armored vehicles swung around in their tracks and clattered back up the mountain road.

At Safed, near the Sea of Galilee a small unit of Israeli defenders were holding off thousand Arabs. A sudden tropical storm broke loose. The Israelis in desperation took their remaining gasoline, poured it over 50 empty drums, set them afire and rolled them down the hill. The flaming barrels flying down the slopes, the rumble of hollow barrels striking rocks—together with the tropical storm—created such an illusion that the bewildered Arabs imagining some sort of secret weapon took to their heel and fled.

In December 1948, the Egyptians were harassing Israeli settlements in the Negev while advanced columns were moving north. Yadin used the Bible for strategy. It mentioned an ancient road forgotten for centuries, which ran almost directly to Mushrafa, the Egyptians’ central garrison. Heavy boulders were pushed aside with bulldozers. Soldiers in armored vehicles, jeeps and supply trucks sped under cover of darkness along the ancient road and surprised the Egyptians. Taking this garrison destroyed the Egyptian defense system and ended the war 14 days later.

To liberate the airport at Lydda the tactics of Gideon were employed. Seven thousand Arab troops were ready to attack. Sixteen Israelis dressed as Arabs infiltrated into the city of Lydda. Like Gideon’s band of 300 they made such a commotion during the night that the Arabs, totally confused, fired upon each other. Finally the majority fled back across the border.

The Syrian Army had regrouped east of the Galilee. A Jewish column of 24 homemade armored trucks and cars, on the way to relieve a besieged Kibbutz, took the wrong road and crossed the border into Lebanon. Before they discovered their mistake, they ran head-on into a column of supplies for the Syrian Army in Galilee—dozens of trucks of ammunition, a string of light artillery and 20 new armored cars. The Israelis fired point blank at the first truck—a tanker loaded with gasoline. It exploded and set on fire the following truckload of hand grenades. Rapid repeating explosions were heard for miles around. Terrified, the Syrians abandoned their cargo. The Israelis scarcely had enough men to drive the captured supply train back into Galilee. Finally they reached the beleaguered Kibbutz, only to learn that the Arab besiegers heard rumors that the Jewish army had invaded Lebanon, therefore, the Arabs fled Israel.

The victory of the 1948 War was a big miracle composed of a series of little miracles. Why? Over 2500 years ago the prophet Isaiah made a remarkable prophecy concerning Israel regathered back in her land. "They that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought…for I will help thee." (41:12,13).

The Bible Helped Build Israel

The miracles continued. Trees, fruits and vegetables grow over what was once shifting sandy wastes or malaria swamps. New industries fringe historic cities. Highways and pipelines stretch across a energetic nation that had slept for centuries.

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s dynamic first Prime Minister, was an ardent student of the Bible as an accurate history of Israel and its land. He dispatched engineers, horticulturists, botanists, etc., with the Bible in one hand and research tools in the other.

Miracles happened!

Following Bible clues, copper and iron mines were established. One mining engineer, Abraham Dor observed that at the richest veins of copper —"we come upon the slag and furnaces of ancient Israel. We often get the feeling that someone has just left." Deuteronomy 8:7-9 was often framed on the walls of mining offices:

For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest dig copper.

Reclaiming the Wasteland

Barren land transformed to the fertility of ancient Israel is a miracle predicted in Scripture (Amos 9:14-15; Ezek. 36:34-35). It was long assumed that most of Palestine was wasteland, irreclaimable for agriculture. But archaeologists discovered the presence of more than 70 ancient settlement sites in one 65-mile stretch of the Jordan Valley alone, each with its own well for water. Lot, over 3,000 years ago, was not exaggerating when he "lifted up his eyes, and he saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord" (Gen.13:10).

New agricultural settlements—from Dan to Beersheba—have risen beside ancient sites reidentified by Biblical archaeologists. Concrete pumping stations were set over ancient springs or wells. A well from Abraham’s day, now supplies water for residents on the outskirts of Beersheba.

One of the basic necessities in that arid country is reforestation. Ever since Jews began returning, they have been planting forests, naming them in honor of such leaders and friends of Israel as Chaim Weizmann, Lord Balfour, George V and scores of others.

The Bible has helped them decide what kind of trees to plant and where to plant them. Debating whether a certain barren hillside would be a suitable location for Israel’s immense "Forest of Martyrs," Israelis found the answer in Joshua, which proved that a forest had existed there. "Knowing that trees grow more easily where trees have flourished before," explained Professor Zohary of Hebrew University, "we rely on the Good Book."

"The first tree Abraham put in the soil of Beersheba was a tamarisk," said Israel’s outstanding authority on reforestation, Dr. Joseph Weitz. "Following his lead, we put out two million in the same area. Abraham was right. The tamarisk is one of the few trees we have found that thrives in the south where yearly rainfall is less than six inches."

The writer personally knew the Boyko Family who pioneered in developing Biblical principles of agriculture that helped the Aravah and the Negev blossom as a rose. The Bible made Israel the agricultural giant it is today exporting its products worldwide. It took another miracle to make this possible. In Bible times there were two copious rainy seasons in Palestine—the "early and the latter rain." But for the past many centuries the "early rain" has been minimal while the "latter rain" and dew have disappeared completely. Since 1878, the "latter rain" is falling again. The precipitation of both has spiraled over the decades just as predicted in Joel 2:23,24.

The Miracle of Immigration

Jews from the four points of the compass heard the call to come home (Isa. 43:5,6). Israel’s Declaration of Independence stated that Israel "will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion."

Even as war still raged and the little State faced possible destruction or bankruptcy, the newcomers poured in. During the first three years of statehood, the average reached 18,000 a month and in some months the figure exceeded 30,000. Between May 15, 1948, and June 30, 1953, the Jewish population of the country doubled. By the end of 1956, Israel’s population had nearly tripled, reaching 1,667,000. Imagine the economic shock of absorption!

Jews kept pouring into Israel over the decades. In 1984 - 1985 and again in 1991 harrowing airlifts brought Ethiopian Jews from utter despair to a Land of hope. Finally, the long-expected prophetic fulfillment of Jews from Russia began in 1991. By 1998 over 800,000 have returned from the former Soviet Republics (CIS) and they are still coming. Over a million are expected. Israel’s population increased from 650,000 in 1948 to nearly 6,000,000 in 1998. The miracle of absorption continues.

The Miracle of the ’67 War

The Arabs boasted that they would destroy Israel. However, in six days Israel overran the combined forces of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and took the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, the West Bank (Samaria and Judea), and the Sinai—one of the greatest military feats in history. To many Orthodox Jews worldwide, especially in the United States, it was a wake-up call from God. Thousands poured into Israel and settled in Samaria and Judea to stake Israel’s eternal claim to the so-called West Bank—the heartland of Israel. They are certain the Messianic Age is near at hand. As Biblical Zionists, they oppose any give-away of land in the peace process.

A Hi-Tech Leader

Ezekiel 38:12, 13 predicts that Israel will become an economic envy of the nations. The immigration of Russian Jews is literally paying off. This year has witnessed an explosion in both hi-tech developments and the number of contracts Israeli hi-tech companies have signed with manufacturers worldwide. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "The failure of Soviet communism to capitalize on the outstanding R & D skills of the Russian Jews was a stroke of good fortune for Israel. We now have the highest per capita of scientists in the world. This has put Israel on the cutting edge of technology." The New York Stock Exchange lists more hi-tech companies from Israel than any other nation… Ezekiel also predicts the sanctification of God’s name when Israel’s enemies would threaten His people (38:16-23).

Leftist Outrages: Wade Rathke

2009-09-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

check out this blog post for info on Wade Rathke...

such as: how he founded not only ACORN... but SEIU, as well...

or how about: the connection between Obama, Citizens Consulting, and ACORN...

as well as: the "Six Degrees of Separation for Socialists" and the mysterious "Elysian Fields" location...

===================================

ACORN Founder Wade Rathke Wanted Terrorist Attack on Republican Convention to Succeed

ACORN founder Wade Rathke didn't have a problem with domestic terrorists trying to kill delegates at the Republican Party's national convention in 2008, former radical community organizer Brandon Darby suggests at Andrew Breitbart's new website Big Government.

Darby, who got to see how the ACORN crime syndicate operates up close in New Orleans, writes that after he acknowledged that he helped the FBI foil a plot to attack the RNC convention in Minnesota Rathke denounced him on his blog. Darby writes
What does any of this have to do with ACORN? I wondered the same thing on January 31st of 2009 when I was reading an ACORN blog that is run by Wade Rathke (the man who claims credit for founding ACORN). He devoted an entire page to my work with the FBI. How did he describe the FBI's effort and success in preventing innocent Americans, local police and federal agents from being burned, maimed and/or possibly killed by firebombs? He wrote that it's "one thing to disagree, but it's a whole different thing to rat on folks." That is what ACORN's founder had to say about my role in stopping a bomb plot.

Indeed Rathke did write that. He described Darby as "an FBI-informer who had fingered some folks for mayhem designed for the Republican National Convention in 2008 in the Twin Cities." Added Rathke, "It seemed so, how should I say it, sixties?"

There it is in black and white. ACORN founder Wade Rathke resented Darby working with the authorities to disrupt a left-wing terrorist plot.

Here's another way to look at it: if you oppose ACORN's agenda, you deserve to be murdered.

some Christian youtube videos

2009-09-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

A Powerful Lesson From ER

Archaeological evidence for the bible?

How did Jesus die for our sins?...exactly?

Dolly Parton - He´s Alive

Abortion Survivor Gianna Jessen

2009-09-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

"A powerful and moving testimony from Saline Abortion Survivor Gianna Jessen at the West Coast Walk For Life on Saturday 19th January 2008 in San Francisco, CA"

Leftist Horror Story: Margaret Sanger

2009-09-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Eugenics:

Even before the progressive era when most states instituted eugenics laws, the American Left had agitated for state controls over procreation. John Humphrey Noyes’ Bible Communists lamented that freedom of marital choice “leaves mating to be determined by a general scramble, without attempt at scientific direction” and devised the first eugenic experiment in the U.S.—“stirpiculture”—that produced dozens of children and prevented hundreds more. In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy dreamed of “race purification” to “preserve and transmit the better types of the race, and let the inferior types drop out.” Other proponents included Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously decreed in Buck v. Bell, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” State governments ultimately sterilized upwards of 60,000.

concentration camps:

A year before Hitler came to power in Germany, Margaret Sanger called for a vast system of concentration camps for the United States. The Planned Parenthood founder demanded “a stern and rigid policy of segregation or sterilization” for “dysgenic” Americans who “would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.” The 1932 speech concluded that “fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense—defending the unborn against their own disabilities.”

Bible Prophecy and The Television

2009-09-13T04:44:00.000-07:00

Revelation 11:9 And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. (10) And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

The background of Revelation 11:9 is the death of two prophets just prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They are God’s witnesses and hated by most people on earth as they are warning mankind of the judgment for rebellion against God. These witnesses are given special powers as proof they are true prophets from God. They are able to cause droughts, turn water into blood, and send plagues.

Revelation 11:6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.

These witnesses are specially protected by God and cannot be killed until a certain time. The Beast, commonly known as the Antichrist, is allowed to kill them in Jerusalem . For three and a half days, their bodies lay unburied on the street. The prophets’ deaths cause a world-wide celebration for these three and a half days. Because of the intense hatred against the two witnesses, people all over the world are going to be happy and send gifts to each other.

Revelation 11:9 clearly states that people all over the world will see the prophets’ dead bodies lying in the street in Jerusalem . There will be a world celebration all at the same time. This means that a way of world-wide communications has to be in place for the entire world to simultaneous witnesses this event.

In years past, scoffers of the Bible would cite Revelation 11:9 as proof the Bible was wrong. Their minds could not conceive how the entire world could simultaneously witness an event in Jerusalem . In their day, information took months to cross the Atlantic Ocean , so how could the entire world witness this event? To these scoffers, Revelation 11:9 was proof that the Bible was full of wild tales and exaggerations.

Television, Satellites and the Internet.

It was utterly impossible until after WW ll for the entire world to simultaneously watch an event. This was impossible until the invention of the television and world-wide communications. Modern technology has made the possible fulfillment of Revelation 11:9 very easy.

The idea of the television is much older than most people realize. The Scientific American Magazine first introduced the idea of a television in the 1880s. The first known use of the word was in 1900 at the Paris Word Fair. There was no one person credited with inventing the television rather it was several people who each put together a part of the puzzle. In 1927, Philo Farnsworth, an American, was the first inventor to transmit a television image, and in 1927 he received the first patent for a television. Farnsworth’s invention became the foundation for the modern television.

One of the earliest TV’s 1932 Jenkins Radio-TV, Model JD30

The BBC began the world’s first public, regular, high-definition television station in 1936. By WW ll, there were only 8,000 television sets sold. The progress in developing the television was very slow prior to WW ll.

After the war, the technology and sales of televisions exploded. By 1950, over 8 million homes had a television. In 1951, the first live coast to coast broadcast took place in America . This meant that now everyone in the US could simultaneously watch an event. In 1954, color television was introduced to the public. Today, over 1 billion televisions have been sold world-wide.

Through television all the people throughout the world can simultaneously watch an event; however, a mechanism was needed to allow for the entire world to simultaneously watch an event. The mechanism would be the satellite and the Internet.

In 1962, the communication satellite Telstar was launched. This was the first satellite to carry TV shows which allowed for the international relay of broadcasts. The beginning of direct satellite broadcasting was 1983. Computer technology advanced very quickly, so that starting in 1996 the television could be directly connected to the Internet. Today with the Internet and communication satellites a person can have instant visual communication with anyone in the world at any location.

To fulfill Bible prophecy, the television was needed for the entire world to simultaneously watch an event. But, other media was also needed to alert the entire world. Now, modern technology provides this media which includes the radio, Internet, telephone, television news sources, and newspapers.

The 2008 Olympics is a great example to show how the entire world can simultaneously watch an event. The opening ceremony was broadcast live from China , and an estimated two billion people from all over the world simultaneously watched. The Nelson rating company said the following:

“August 14, 2008, Beijing: Based on television audience data collected from 38 markets around the world, The Nielsen Company estimates that just over 2 billion people - almost one third of the world’s population - watched the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony.”

This is a perfect example of how all the world can watch the death of God’s two prophets in Jerusalem . The 2008 Olympics can be viewed as a trial run for the entire world’s simultaneously viewing an event.

Revelation 11 does not indicate if this confrontation between the prophets and the Beast is scheduled or spontaneous, but people world-wide are able to respond and watch the confrontation and events for three days. When this confrontation takes place, the world’s news sources will announce it. The Internet websites will be buzzing over it. There will be an enormous amount of emails and telephone calls discussing this event. Even in the remote places of the world, people with some distance to travel can watch. If over two billion people simultaneously watched the opening of the 2008 Olympics, easily 90 percent or more of the world’s population are now able to watch this coming confrontation between God’s prophets and the Beast.

Revelation 11:9,10 now can easily be fulfilled with modern technology. The only thing missing is the cast of characters which might appear in the very near future. The prophetic events in the Bible are literal. Modern science and technology are now enabling prophecies to occur that were impossible not many years past. It appears that the world now is racing to fulfill these events. Remember, this confrontation occurs just prior to the awesome Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I see this teaching complete and do not intend to add information or articles to show additional technological development in this area.

source

Leftist Outrage: Lynne Stewart

2009-09-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Raise your voice against jihad lawyer Lynne Stewart

"Radical left lawyer Lynne Stewart, convicted of helping terrorists by smuggling messages of violence from imprisoned Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman...

[...]

Stewart has described the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an "armed struggle." This is a reminder of exactly what she did to aid and abet jihad via Middle East Quarterly:

"On February 10, 2005, another New York court found Stewart, now 66, as well as the sheikh's court-appointed translator, Mohammad Yousry, 48, and his former paralegal, Ahmed Sattar, 46, guilty of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for their part in enabling communications between the imprisoned sheikh and his network.
Stewart and her coconspirators flouted their agreement with the Justice Department and helped the sheikh circumvent the communications ban. According to government recordings of their prison visits, Yousry, who also served as an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York, conveyed messages to and from the sheikh while Stewart created what the prosecution called "covering noises." On some surveillance videos, Stewart could be seen shaking a water jar or tapping on the table while Yousry and the sheikh exchanged communications that were then later disseminated to the sheikh's followers via the former paralegal. The prosecutor argued, citing a letter written by the U.S. attorney's office to Stewart after she delivered the message to Reuters, that it was not in the sheikh's legal rights "to pass messages which, simply put, can get people killed and buildings blown up." They argued that the case was equivalent to a "jail break," in which the defendants extracted Abdel Rahman from prison, "not literally, of course, [but] figuratively, in order to make him available to other terrorists."

One of the most incendiary communications was a message Stewart herself gave to the Reuters news service in June 2000 in which the sheikh announced his withdrawal of support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian government. The truce had been in place since 1997, just after his followers in Egypt had opened fire on tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, killing 58 foreigners and 4 Egyptians. Subsequently, high-casualty Islamist terrorism resumed in Egypt on October 7, 2004, with a series of bombings that killed 34 in and around the Egyptian Sinai resort of Taba. On July 23, 2005, three bombs exploded in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing at least 64.

Government investigators searching Stewart's law offices found a draft of the sheikh's fatwa that bin Laden later said inspired him. In it, Abdel Rahman enjoined his fellow Muslims everywhere to kill Americans, even children, "to treat them with brutality," and to "drown their ships, shoot down their airplanes, kill them on earth, in the sea or in the sky, kill them everywhere you find them" in order to obtain his release from U.S. prison.

The jury also found Sattar guilty of additional charges of conspiracy to kidnap and murder. In this case, he ghostwrote and issued a fatwa under the sheikh's name in which he urged Muslims to kill Jews and their supporters. He also recruited a terrorist, at the time a fugitive in Egypt, in order to carry out the fatwa. Sattar, who has been held without bail since his arrest, faces life imprisonment."

This woman and her legal helpers are traitors...

============================

The Lynne Stewart-Bin Laden Connection

from 2007: Convicted, disbarred, disgraced jihad lawyer Lynne Stewart to teach ethics class

Terrorists' Lawyer Stewart at Hofstra U: 'I Would Do It Again'

THE OPPOSITE OF CONTRITE

=============================

LOTS MORE HERE... READ IT ALL... EVERY LAST SICKENING WORD...

=============================

** Why The War On Terror Can't Be A Law Enforcement Action

**

"...Murtha can’t see any reasons for keeping Gitmo detainees from flooding our regular prisons and preventing them from exploiting our civilian court system because he is willfully blind and stone-stupid. John Murtha, meet Lynne Stewart. She’s the disgraced jihad lawyer convicted last year of abetting her terrorist client and 1993 World Trade Center bombing/NY landmark bombing plot mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman.

[...]

Now, imagine a traitorous bleeding-heart Lynne Stewart assigned to each and every one of the 250-odd Gitmo detainees. Imagine the risk of similar jailhouse collaborations to innocent men, women, and children at home and abroad..."

source

** Lynne Stewart Gets 28 Months for Aiding Terrorists
Welcome back to September 10th.

** Lynne Stewart Sentence Offers Window on the Democrat Approach to Terrorism

Obama's Czar: Scott Gration

2009-09-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

Obama's Sudan Czar: Scott Gration

Our Creepy Envoy to Sudan

"Susan Rice is one of my dear friends. There are few women in the world that I would say, 'I love you' to, and Susan is one of them. I love Susan Rice," he added.

That was Scott Gration, the Obama administration's envoy to Sudan, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The response came after one of the committee members questioned the discrepancy between Gration's assessment last month of the situation in Darfur ("What we see is the remnants of genocide") and the assessment of Susan Rice just 48 hours earlier in which the U.N. ambassador accused the Sudanese regime of "ongoing genocide." According to Gration, we shouldn't get too hung up on definitions:

"I am not saying that the genocide is over," he said. "I am focused on what we are doing to help. It doesn't matter what we call it in my view. What matters is that we have people living in desperate conditions. To get involved in a debate that is not required is not as important as fixing the situation, which is required."

Indeed, one shouldn't get bogged down in word choice, as Susan Rice once did. "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" she famously asked at an NSC meeting as the Clinton administration struggled to respond to events in Rwanda.

If Rice was only being ruthless, Gration has all the marks of a complete sucker. He's declared the genocide over on nothing but his own authority. He told the committee that it's time to drop sanctions against Sudan ("we are going to have to unwind some of these sanctions"), and he wants Sudan taken off the state sponsors of terror list maintained by the State Department ("There is no evidence in our intelligence community that supports [Sudan] being on the state sponsors of terrorism list. It's a political decision"). But Sudan is still supporting terror to the point that earlier this year Israel bombed a convoy bringing weapons from Iran to the Gaza strip via Southern Sudan. The Sudanese alleged at the time that it was U.S. jets that carried out the raid. When pressed on the point, a government spokesman responded:

"We don’t differentiate between the U.S. and Israel. They are all one."

Which is exactly what one would expect a state sponsor of terror to say. How Gration can come back to Washington and defend this regime -- even lobby on its behalf -- seems a testament only to his lack of qualification for the task he was given. And that he would profess his love for Susan Rice before a Senate committee further suggests that he might even be a little unbalanced. Not that we needed any more proof of that.

Obama Czar: Carol Browner

2009-09-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Obama's Energy/Climate Czar, Carol Browner...

Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect’s choice for “energy czar.” But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner’s EPA legacy. It doesn’t take a team of Ivy League-degreed lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn’t need.

In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let me dust off the cobwebs and help out all the smarty-pants vetters on the Obama team with a little background on Browner’s stained past:

On her last day in office, nearly eight years ago, Browner oversaw the destruction of agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve its records. This from a public official who bragged about her tenure: “One of the things I’m the proudest of at EPA is the work we’ve done to expand the public’s right to know.”

Asked to explain her track-covering actions, the savvy career lawyer Browner played dumb. Figuratively batting her eyelashes, she claimed she had no clue about a court injunction signed by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth on the same day she commanded an underling to wipe her hard drives clean. Golly gee willikers, how could that have slipped by her?

According to testimony in a freedom of information lawsuit filed against EPA by the Landmark Legal Foundation, a Virginia-based conservative legal watchdog group, Browner commanded a computer technician on Jan. 19, 2001: “‘I would like my files deleted. I want you to delete my files.” Not coincidentally, the Landmark Legal Foundation had been pressing Browner to fully and publicly disclose the names of any special interest groups that may have influenced her wave of last-minute regulatory actions. Two days before she told her technician to purge all her records, EPA had gone to court to file a motion opposing the federal court injunction protecting those government documents.

Plausible deniability? Not bloody likely.

Incredibly, Browner asserted that there was no work-related material on her work computer. She explained she was merely cleaning the hard drive of computer games she had downloaded for her son, and that she wanted to expunge the hard drive as a “courtesy” to the incoming Bush administration. How thoughtful. Later, her agency admitted that three other top EPA officials had their computers erased despite the federal court order and ongoing FOIA case (the record is silent on whether Browner’s son was playing games on their desktops, too). A further belated admission revealed that the agency had failed to search Browner’s office for public documents as required by Landmark’s public disclosure lawsuit.

Not only were all the top officials’ hard drives cleared and reformatted, but e-mail backup tapes were erased and reused in violation of records preservation practices.

After a two-year legal battle, Judge Lamberth finally held the EPA in contempt of court for the systemic file destruction – actions Lambert lambasted as “contumacious conduct” (obstinate resistance to authority). As is typical in Washington, Browner weaseled out of any serious repercussions. Lamberth inexplicably decided that slapping the agency as a whole with contempt – rather than any individual – would deter future cover-ups.

Is this a gamble the Obama administration wants to take? Browner has crossed the line and violated public trust before in her capacity as eco-chief. Early in her first term as EPA head, Browner got caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to over 100 grassroots environmental lobbying organizations. Browner exploited her office to orchestrate a political campaign by left-wing groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform. These are the very same groups – anti-business, anti-sound science, pro-eco-hysteria – that Browner would be working arm in arm with as Obama’s “energy czar.”

This is regression we can’t afford.

source
=========================================
Browner is an environmental radical – and a socialist (seriously)

No, it’s not the President-elect, at least not explicitly. Conservatives are often accused of scaremongering when they claim left-wing environmentalists are actually socialists hiding behind green disguises. But with Carol Browner, incoming President Barack Obama’s freshly appointed Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change – the so-called White House “Climate Czar” - there is no question about the socialism. Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of the Socialist International. Oddly enough, the group’s web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner’s picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. The Socialist International is no group of woolly-headed idealists. It is an influential assembly of officials from across the international community whose official Statement of Principles describes an agenda of gaining and exercising government power based on socialist concepts.

Browner’s CSWS is similarly open about the economic costs it is willing to impose, across national borders to achieve its environmental utopia. On Sept. 5-6, 2008, the commission noted that the costs of its proposals would “rang[e] in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two decades,” and it called for a “redesign of the international rules on intellectual property.” That is international bureaucratese for compelling an inventor to surrender property rights in order to “share” technologies with less-developed countries.

At the Congress of the Socialist International held last June 30-July2, the CSWS officially resolved that “market solutions alone are insufficient and will not provide the financial support and resources necessary to achieve the required combination of deep emission reduction, adaptation to already changing climate conditions, energy security and equitable and environmentally sound economic development.” Again, that’s bureaucratese. It means that international taxes should be imposed to provide the “resources necessary” to impose what the CSWS repeatedly refers to as a ‘regime” against “global warming.” By appointing Browner to a White House post, Obama has at the least implicitly endorsed an utterly radical socialist agenda for his administration’s environmental policy. The incoming chief executive thus strengthens critics who contend environmental policies aren’t really about protecting endangered species or preserving virgin lands, but rather expanding government power and limiting individual freedom.

==========================================

Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner’s conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."

source
=========================================

Obama Czar: Cass Sunstein

2009-09-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

Obama's regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein:

"Cass Sunstein supports outlawing hunting, phasing out meat eating, giving animals the right to file lawsuits"

"We ought to ban hunting"

- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University

"Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives …"

- 2004 book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily
in the interest of citizenship and
self-government."

-Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the
Internet in his book, Republic.com 2.0 (page 137).

http://stopsunstein.com/

==============================

Everyone knew that Cass R. Sunstein was an extreme “progressive,” a socialist, and an adversary of the US Constitution as actually written, but one particularly dangerous aspect of Sunstein’s personal political philosophy is not particularly well known.

The Center for Consumer Freedom has issued a press release reminding Americans that Cass Sunstein is additionally an Animal Rights activist and extremist.

How extreme?

Well, in The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer, 2002, later recycled into the introduction to Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, an anthology he co-edited in 2004, he argues:

"Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf."

Sunstein, who is soon likely to be gifted with extensive powers as “regulatory Czar,” has argued in favor of bans on animal cosmetics testing, hunting, greyhound racing, and… meat eating!

source
======================

"...Sunstein's other writings are equally alarming. Big Brother government is not good enough for Sunstein. He prefers authoritarian father figures. Written with Richard H. Thaler, "Libertarian Paternalism Is Not An Oxymoron," holds that, "Often people's preferences are ill-formed" and "paternalism cannot be avoided," and "libertarian paternalists should attempt to steer people's choices."

Their libertarian paternalism example involves a "cafeteria at some organization," where the director has noticed customers choosing more of the items presented earlier in the line. How to order the lineup?

The paper posits four possibilities, with #4 being the cafeteria director putting items earlier in the line she thinks consumers would choose on their own. The authors' dislike that. Option #1 is Sunstein and Thaler's choice.

The director should "make the choices that she thinks would make the customers best off ... to promote their welfare, all things considered." Even under market pressures, they maintain the director would have "a great deal of room to maneuver." In other words, they believe it is the director's job to change customers' tastes and preferences! Lovely philosophy for a federal regulator, that!

source
=====================

Barack Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar" has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period.

[...]

Sunstein also has argued in his prolific literary works that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing.

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government," he wrote. "Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name."

Sunstein first proposed the notion of imposing mandatory "electronic sidewalks" for the Net. These "sidewalks" would display links to opposing viewpoints. Adam Thierer, senior fellow and director of the Center for Digital Media Freedom at the Progress and Freedom Center, has characterized the proposal as "The Fairness Doctrine for the Internet."

"Apparently in Sunstein's world, people have many rights, but one of them, it seems, is not the right to be left alone or seek out the opinions one desires," Thierer wrote.

Later, Sunstein rethought his proposal, explaining that it would be "too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns." He also acknowledged that it was "almost certainly unconstitutional."

Perhaps Sunstein's most novel idea regarding the Internet was his proposal, in his book "Nudge," written with Richard Thaler, for a "Civility Check" for e-mails and other online communications.

"The modern world suffers from insufficient civility," they wrote. "Every hour of every day, people send angry e-mails they soon regret, cursing people they barely know (or even worse, their friends and loved ones). A few of us have learned a simple rule: don't send an angry e-mail in the heat of the moment. File it, and wait a day before you send it. (In fact, the next day you may have calmed down so much that you forget even to look at it. So much the better.) But many people either haven't learned the rule or don’t always follow it. Technology could easily help. In fact, we have no doubt that technologically savvy types could design a helpful program by next month."

That's where the "Civility Check" comes in.

"We propose a Civility Check that can accurately tell whether the e-mail you're about to send is angry and caution you, 'warning: this appears to be an uncivil e-mail. do you really and truly want to send it?'" they wrote. "(Software already exists to detect foul language. What we are proposing is more subtle, because it is easy to send a really awful e-mail message that does not contain any four-letter words.) A stronger version, which people could choose or which might be the default, would say, 'warning: this appears to be an uncivil e-mail. this will not be sent unless you ask to resend in 24 hours.' With the stronger version, you might be able to bypass the delay with some work (by inputting, say, your Social Security number and your grandfather’s birth date, or maybe by solving some irritating math problem!)."

source

GAG THE INTERNET!
AN OBAMA OFFICIAL'S FRIGHTENING BOOK ABOUT CURBING FREE SPEECH ONLINE
===================================
ON END OF LIFE ISSUES and RATIONING HEALTH CARE:

"I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people."

****

President Obama’s New "Regulatory Czar" a Believer in "Quality of Life" Health Care

This could be bad. Cass R. Sunstein, just appointed by President Obama to be “regulatory czar,” is a big “quality of life” guy in determining the cost/benefit ratio of government regulations. This is the executive summary of a paper he wrote back in 2003 for the Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, entitled “Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay.” From the paper:

In protecting safety, health, and the environment, government has increasingly relied on cost-benefit analysis. In undertaking cost-benefit analysis, the government has monetized risks of death through the idea of “value of a statistical life” (VSL), currently assessed at about $6.1 million. Many analysts, however, have suggested that the government should rely instead on the “value of a statistical life year” (VSLY), in a way that would likely result in significantly lower benefits calculations for elderly people, and significantly higher benefits calculations for children. I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people. The hard question involves not whether to undertake this shift, but how to monetize life-years, and here willingness to pay (WTP) [what one would pay to obtain a good] is generally the place to begin…In fact, a focus on statistical lives is more plausibly a form of illicit discrimination than a focus on life years, because the idea of statistical lives treats the years of older people as worth far more than the years of younger people.

The paper dealt broadly with how to measure the cost/benefit aspect of government regulations generally, and illustrates how bureaucrats and their enablers are the real kings now. But that aside, its applicability to regulations in a regime of national health care law are obvious and frightening: If regulatory policy is to be based on granting the lives of elderly people a lesser value, it begs for health care rationing that would be supported by terms such as “value of statistical life year,” “willingness to pay”–and other such euphemisms that will no doubt be coined–as bureaucrateze cover for blatant medical discrimination.

===============================

“Sunstein is an advocate of something called libertarian paternalism, which means give people the choice to make their own decisions, but instead of just laying out the facts, control the number of choices, then use knowledge of behavioral sciences (like psychology) to guide them to do what you want.”

*****

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (released in paperback last month), Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler explain how enlightened “choice architecture” can close the gap between hedonism and wisdom though “libertarian paternalism”: a kind of minimalist interventionism designed to remedy some of the America’s greatest collective action problems.
===========================

** Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People’s Organs Without Explicit Consent

** Nudging toward Bethlehem: Organ donation without consent

** "Nudging" America to Give Up Meat

** Nudging Us to Better Food Choices?

** Libertarian Paternalism

** Obama chief: Embryos are 'just a handful of cells'
Argues cloning ban 'silly,' scoffed as those who find it morally repugnant

**Sunstein: Obama, not courts, should interpret law
'Beliefs and commitments' of nation's leader should supersede judges

==============================
From the December 13, 2004, issue of National Review

You owe your life — and everything else — to the sovereign. The rights of subjects are not natural rights, but merely grants from the sovereign. There is no right even to complain about the actions of the sovereign, except insofar as the sovereign allows the subject to complain. These are the principles of unlimited, arbitrary, and absolute power, the principles of such rulers as Louis XIV. Intellectuals have assiduously promoted them; think of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes.

A new intellectual champion of absolutism has now emerged. Mild-mannered University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein has been advancing the radical notion that all rights — including rights usually held to be "against" the state, such as the right to freedom of speech and the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned or tortured — are grants from the state. In a book co-authored with Stephen Holmes, The Cost of Rights, he argued that "all legal rights are, or aspire to be, welfare rights," that is, positive grants from the state. There is no difference in kind between the right not to be tortured and the right to taxpayer-subsidized dental care.

In his new book, The Second Bill of Rights, Sunstein seeks to give constitutional status to welfare rights. The title comes from Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address, in which he proclaimed that "necessitous men are not free men" and proposed a "second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all." Among the rights FDR proposed were the rights to "a useful and remunerative job," "a decent home," "adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health," "adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment," and "a good education."

The mere assertion of those rights isn't enough for Sunstein; he wants to endow them with constitutional status, like the rights that are actually mentioned in the Constitution. He admits that "the founding document does not refer to them, and it is not seriously argued that they are encompassed by anything in the Constitution" — yet on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself" (emphasis added). Later on, he asserts that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments. Roosevelt's speech proposing the second bill deserves a place among the great documents in the nation's history. Indeed, it can be seen as occupying a place akin to the Declaration of Independence, or perhaps somewhere between the Declaration and the Constitution."

Article V of the Constitution, which specifies how it may be amended, doesn't include "migration," but perhaps "migration of amendments" has itself migrated into the Constitution. As a theory of constitutional law, that is remarkably thin. But let's pass on to other problems with Sunstein's approach.

First, Sunstein's fundamental insistence — that all rights are grants from power — is incoherent. In The Cost of Rights, Sunstein and Holmes argued against the idea of "moral rights," or rights that are valid by virtue of something other than force: "When they are not backed by legal force . . . moral rights are toothless by definition. Unenforced moral rights are aspirations binding on conscience, not powers binding on officials." Thus, "the right against being tortured by police officers and prison guards" is simply another welfare right, a right that the state hire monitors to monitor the police and guards, for "duties are taken seriously only when dereliction is punished by the public power drawing on the public purse." This theory generates an absurdity, for it rests on an infinite regress. For me to have a right not to be tortured, the police would have to fear punishment by monitors above them. But for me to have a right not to be tortured, I would have to have a right that the monitors punish the police if they torture me. Do I have that right? I would have it only if the state hired monitors above the monitors, to punish the monitors if they failed to punish the police if the police tortured me. Do I have a right that the monitors of the monitors punish the monitors? Only if there were monitors to monitor the monitors who monitor the monitors who monitor the police, and so on, ad infinitum. The flaw is entirely internal and completely fatal to the theory: If we were to accept the theory, all it would show is that no one has any rights, for the demands of the theory could never be satisfied.

Second, Sunstein insists that without government protection no one would enjoy anything of value, and therefore that all value must be attributed to the action of the state: "Government is 'implicated' in everything people own. . . . If rich people have a great deal of money, it is because the government furnishes a system in which they are entitled to have and keep that money."
The problem here is that Sunstein's economic theory of value is stuck in the period of the classical economists, who tried to attribute all value to one necessary factor of production; for them, that was labor. Sunstein merely substitutes what he has decided is the one necessary factor: the state. But after the "marginal revolution" in economics (circa 1871), no serious thinker should make such a mistake. It is now recognized that we make choices across a great many margins, and that value is not created by a single necessary factor. If that were not so, we could say that farmers produce all value, since without food none of the rest of us would produce anything else; likewise, for other groups and factors of production. The theory of value on which Sunstein rests his case for the welfare state is remarkably naive and primitive.

Third, the ethical implications Sunstein draws from his theory of value do not withstand scrutiny. He says that "to believe that people have a right to their current holdings, so that any diminution of those holdings amounts to a violation of their rights . . . is an utterly implausible position. Those who possess a great deal do so because laws and institutions, including public institutions, make their holdings possible. . . . In the state of nature — freed from the protection of law and government — how well would wealthy people fare?" Let's see what else this theory would entail: If a doctor were to save my life, then, since the doctor would be responsible for my existence, and therefore for all of the liberty and wealth that I might enjoy or create henceforth, the doctor would have the right to decide what should happen with that liberty and that wealth, since without the doctor neither I, nor the liberty, nor the wealth would exist. In short, Sunstein's ethical theory is just silly.

The Second Bill of Rights may rest on a logical fallacy, a primitive economic theory, and a silly ethical claim, but it is instructive nonetheless. Sunstein's treatment of the problem of how to use the judiciary to enforce welfare rights shows what a radical departure they are from the rule of law, how they introduce arbitrariness into government policy, and how, ultimately, the contradictions and incompatibilities generated by welfare rights undermine the very idea of rights itself — for when "rights" conflict, the state must decide whose "rights" are to be respected, but, since it has been stipulated that both of the conflicting parties are in the right, the state's decisions must be on the basis of something other than right.

Sunstein's work represents a return to the governmental theories of absolutism — of power, rather than of right. Welfare rights are incompatible, not only with property rights, but with law and with the very concept of rights. Professor Sunstein, meet Louis XIV.

==============================
'Death panel' is not in the bill... it already exists

"...The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.

What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.

H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.

Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."

McCaughey goes on to explain:

"Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free." Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."

Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on elderly care as follows:

"Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years."

On average 25-year-olds require very few medical services. If they are to get the lion's share of the treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his Council increasing power to push such recommendations.

Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.

How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.

Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

Maybe we should ask the Associated Press and New York Times if they still think we shouldn't be concerned about a federal "death panel."

Leftist Outrage: The John Adams Project

2009-09-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

Bill O'Reilly: The John Adams Project

When I think of the terrorist atrocity that happened eight years ago, I feel deeply for people like Vic and Christina Colaio.

These two fine Americans lost their sons Stephen and Mark, who both worked in the World Trade Center. Along with their daughter, Jean, the elderly couple suffers their loss on a daily basis. Time does not heal those kinds of wounds.

That is why I am so enraged by the John Adams Project, a group of subversive Americans affiliated with the ACLU who are sneaking around taking pictures of CIA agents who may have interrogated captured al-Qaida guys in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack.

This insidious outfit believes the CIA tortured casually and the U.S.A. is a “human rights violator.”

After taking the surreptitious photos, the Adams Project then passes them on to lawyers representing incarcerated terrorists, hoping that an accused man will, in turn, accuse a CIA agent of torturing him.

This nasty business is now being investigated by the Justice Department, but the Obama administration has kept very quiet about it and, strangely, so have the media.

Very few newspapers have reported on the John Adams Project, and there is something quite disturbing about that.

Remember Valerie Plame? She was the CIA operative publicly exposed by columnist Robert Novak in an Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction controversy.

After that happened, the left-wing media went wild with indignation. How could anyone name a CIA person, thereby putting him or her in danger?

The New York Times was on fire over the story. But when faced with the facts about the John Adams Project, the Times buried the story on page A-20.

By exposing CIA agents to accused terrorists and their lawyers, the John Adams Project is obviously putting lives in jeopardy.

This is a thousand times worse than the Plame affair, which saw top Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby convicted of a felony while the press largely celebrated.

But where is the coverage of the Adams story?

Where is President Obama on the issue?

Why are these people being allowed to terrorize the Central Intelligence Agency?

Relevant questions. We await the answers.

the Oklahoma City Bombing

2009-09-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

Part I:
The Oklahoma City bombing
by Jack Cashill

1993-1995

This story begins with an evil genius named Ramzi Yousef or "Rashid the Iraqi," his nom de guerre when he comes to Jersey City in 1993. He arrives on an Iraqi passport to show the aspiring local Islamic terrorists how to build a truck bomb. His target is the World Trade Center. His goal is to kill 250,000 people when one of the twin towers topples into the other, and the bomb discharges its cyanide gas.

Fortunately, the cyanide evaporates in the blast, and the towers hold. A disappointed Yousef boards a plane that afternoon and heads back to the Middle East. His accomplice, Abdul Rahman Yasin, takes off for Baghdad where he lives under Saddam's protection for the next 10 years.

In November 1994, in a time of relative peace and prosperity, the Democrats lose a shocking 53 seats in House, eight in the Senate, and control of both. The blame falls on the Clintons' doorstep. The loss sets the president and Hillary Clinton on a quest to retain the White House so desperate that they will knowingly sacrifice national security to advance their own cause. If this means tailoring investigations into likely terrorist acts to first fit their political needs, so be it.

That same November, Yousef applies for a visa to the Philippines. On the next day, Terry Nichols of Oklahoma City fame receives a visa for the Philippines.

On the way to the airport two weeks later, Nichols unnerves his ex-wife, Lana, when he hands her a sealed package and tells her, "If I'm not back in 60 days, open it and follow the instructions." Curious, Lana opens the package only to find a will, Nichol's life insurance policy, and instructions that lead her to $20,000 in cash.

Two weeks after Nichols' arrival, Ramzi Yousef boards a Philippines Airline flight in Manila and plants a small practice bomb. The bomb kills the Japanese tourist who takes his seat after Yousef had disembarked in – of all places – Cebu City ... the city where Terry Nichols was staying.

A month later, January 1995, Yousef has to flee his Manila apartment after setting it on fire while building bombs. When his roommate – a Pakistani pilot, Abdul Hakim Murad – returns to the apartment to retrieve Yousef's laptop, he's arrested.

Under intense questioning, Murad reveals Yousef's Bojinka plot, a plan to blow up a dozen American airliners over the Pacific. He also reveals a post-Bojinka plan to hijack commercial airliners or use small planes filled with explosives to attack specific American targets, the pilots for which are in training at American flight schools. The Philippine police even make a flow chart connecting many of the key players together, including Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef and 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle. Philippine authorities turn over all of this information to U.S. authorities by early 1995.

The authorities nab Yousef in Pakistan a few weeks later.

As to Terry Nichols, he beats it back to the United States. When Lana asks him why he had come back so soon, he tells her cryptically, "Somebody could get killed down there."

In "Against All Enemies," the much-celebrated Richard Clarke has this to say about the visits of these two terrorists to the same city in the same country at the same time: "We do know that Nichols' bombs did not work before his Philippine stay," writes Clarke, "and were deadly when he returned."

April 16-18, 1995

After his conviction, Timothy McVeigh told his story to two reporters from his hometown Buffalo News, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, and they in turn retold it in a useful book published in 2001 called "American Terrorist."

The McVeigh that one meets in "American Terrorist" is a powerful and crafty fellow. He somehow teaches himself how to build a massive truck bomb and is even prepared to assemble the 7,000-pound monster himself.

As McVeigh tells it, Terry Nichols shows up at his Kansas storage facility when he's half way through the loading process and then only because he's afraid of what McVeigh will do to his family if he does not. The pair then drive to a nearby lake and spend the next three hours mixing 13 500-pound barrels of explosives.

A Washington Post article from a week after the blast – when the truth is still being shared and reported – suggests the improbability of this story:

Law enforcement sources said the 4,800-pound bomb that caused the explosion probably required at least two to three people to construct and considerable patience and planning. Building such a device would be extremely labor-intensive.

The bomb proved to be half again bigger than that, but for McVeigh, it was all in a morning's work – at least according to McVeigh and, alas, the prosecutors. After mixing the bomb, McVeigh allegedly drives alone toward Oklahoma in the loaded truck, crosses the Oklahoma border, and stops for the night at a small gravel lot near an anonymous "roadside motel." By his own timeline, however, McVeigh would have reached this motel about 2 p.m. This makes for a long and pointless night.

April 19, 1995

The next morning, April 19, as he tells it, McVeigh drives into Oklahoma City alone, sees no one, and no one sees him. He lights the fuses and then parks the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building. He then grabs the thick packet of anti-government materials he brought with him, jumps out of the truck, and walks and runs with packet in hand to his yellow Mercury Marquis parked nearby.

In her stunning book, "The Third Terrorist," Jayna Davis documents beyond all doubt that McVeigh is telling only half the story. As Davis argues, McVeigh and Nichols had help from Islamic terrorists, not only in the Philippines, but also in Oklahoma City. In her role as a reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, Davis interviewed more than 20 reliable eyewitnesses who identified the crew of Iraqi nationals who had helped McVeigh assemble and deliver the bomb.

Twenty minutes before the blast in downtown Oklahoma City, employees at a tire store spot McVeigh and a short Middle Eastern-looking man, in the Ryder truck, and even give the pair directions to the Murrah building intersection.

Another eyewitness, Daina Bradley, cries out to the rescuers who are trying to extricate her after the blast – and they have to amputate her leg to do so, "It was a Ryder truck. It pulled up, a foreign looking man got out, and then before long, everything went black."

The FBI traces the truck's vehicle identification number to Eldon Elliot's body shop in Junction City, Kan., where the Ryder truck was rented. There, several witnesses tell the agents that McVeigh came in with a short, swarthy guy. This is where the search for John Doe No. 2 begins in earnest.

Jayna Davis also identifies and interviews numerous eyewitnesses at the Cactus Motel in Oklahoma City who see – and smell – the Ryder Truck on the night of the 18th. On the morning of the 19th, these witnesses watch as the yellow Mercury Marquis and a brown late-model pickup leave the motel with the Ryder truck in a convoy of three vehicles.

Five minutes before the blast, printing operator Jerry Nance notices an unusual car in the downtown Oklahoma City parking lot near where he works. It's a dilapidated yellow Mercury Marquis. Behind the wheel is a dark-skinned, Middle Eastern-looking man in a ball cap.

Nance remembers the car well. When he walks back toward it, after he gets some stuff from his own car, the Mercury Marquis almost runs him over. Now, however, the Middle Eastern man sits in the passenger seat, and a tall white man is driving the car out of the parking lot, recklessly at that.

Two minutes later, the Murrah building blows. Nance informs the FBI of this incident before anyone knows McVeigh has been apprehended in a yellow Mercury Marquis.

Three hours after the blast, the FBI issues an all-points bulletin for a brown Chevy pickup, with tinted windows, seen speeding away from the area, with two Middle Eastern-looking men inside.

A week later, the FBI quotes Nance and the tire store employees in its request before a federal judge to hold McVeigh over for trial. One of the tire store employees picks McVeigh out of a line-up of look-alikes even before he sees McVeigh on television. The Washington Post of April 28 confirms the same:

The magistrate, Ronald L. Howland, ordered McVeigh to be held without bail after listening to four hours of testimony from FBI Special Agent John Hersley in which he described eyewitness accounts of a yellow Mercury with McVeigh and another man inside speeding away from a parking lot near the federal building.

For the next six weeks, John Doe No. 2 is the most hunted man in the world until, without explanation, he just kind of goes away. The fix is in – the mother of all political fixes ... the Mega Fix.

====================

Part II:
The Oklahoma City aftermath

In the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, as we will see in the investigation of TWA Flight 800, the Clinton Justice department's most dazzling sleight of hand was to make the eyewitnesses disappear. The FBI refused to even look at the material Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis had gathered. Rather than put a single witness on the stand who could place McVeigh in or near Oklahoma City on April 19, the prosecution chose to build an entire case on circumstantial evidence.

Much as with TWA 800, the FBI lost all interest in the eyewitnesses as soon as the White House had established its talking points. The fault here, too, lies less with the FBI than with the White House. The political fix was in – the mother of all fixes ... the Mega Fix. To understand why America did not respond to terrorist attacks in the 1996 election cycle one has to understand the politics of the era.

I know something about this from personal experience. On April 19, 1995, I was co-hosting a point-counterpoint radio show on Kansas City's leading AM station, KMBZ. My partner and I followed developments closely. Early police reports and intelligence briefings led us all to believe that the bomb was the work of Islamic terrorists.

But when the police identified McVeigh as a suspect two days later, my partner was absolutely gleeful. This fellow is a wily and well-connected Democrat strategist. He went on the air and issued an all-points bulletin for McVeigh's "co-conspirators, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich." He claimed that their hate speech and talk of revolution had inflamed the allegedly right-wing McVeigh.

My partner was simply following the DNC's nationwide strategy. Democrats – the president included – were spreading this same message all across America. Clinton was subtler than his supporters. He merely blamed the "purveyors of hate and division." His supporters filled in the blanks.

This president was a master of strategic grief counseling. He descended on Oklahoma City with an approval rating in the low 40s and left town with a rating well above 50 and the Republican revolution buried in the rubble. Late in the 1996 campaign, he confided to reporters that his road back to the White House began in Oklahoma City.

"Could the al-Qaida explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for America?" writes Richard Clarke of Nichols' visit to the Philippines in his book, "Against All Enemies." "We do not know, despite some FBI investigation."

"Some FBI investigation?" Why was there not a massive FBI investigation? On Ramzi Yousef's laptop seized from that burning Manila apartment were plans for Operation Bojinka, a plot to blow up a dozen American planes over the Pacific. The following excerpt from a classified Republic of the Philippines intelligence report speaks to a subset of those plans:

The document [from Yousef's computer] specifically cited the charter service of a commercial type aircraft loaded with powerful bombs to be dive-crashed by SAEED AKMAN. This is apparently intended to demonstrate to the whole world that a Muslim martyr is ready and determined to die for the glorification of Islam.

Planes as bombs. Remember that concept. The reason Islamic terrorist links were ignored has more to do with politics than with security. Once arrested, McVeigh and Nichols served as poster boys for the natural progression of the "Republican revolution." If, however, they proved to be mere "lily whites" – that is, stooges recruited by Islamic terrorists to take the fall – they would lose their political value.

What's more, from Oklahoma City forward, our progressive friends were able to scold those who had publicly presumed that Islamic terrorists were behind the bombing. This included not only the political right, but also non-partisan terrorist experts like Steven Emerson, who had already been upbraided for "bigotry and misrepresentations" and "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs" for his prescient PBS documentary, "Jihad in America."

In fact, to the detriment of our national security, the orchestrated Democratic reaction to Oklahoma City shamed reporters and investigators from pursuing Islamic terrorism aggressively. This, Jayna Davis documents all too painfully from her personal experience in "The Third Terrorist." And the scary thing is the left is still trying to shame us.

=====================

Jayna Davis website

Jayna Davis interview with Bill O'Reilly

this is a neat dvd documentary

2009-09-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Star of Bethlehem

http://thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/
http://bethlehemstar.net

watch the trailers here:
http://thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/trailers.php

CBN news report...

interview...

some guy's review...

Leftist Outrage: Sandy Burglar and his pants

2009-09-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Sandy Burglar's Big Secret

Ronald Cass, author of The Rule of Law in America, is right to wonder just how big a secret Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Burger is hiding, in light of his recently agreeing to give up his law license rather than let us know just what was in the terror-related classified documents he stole from the National Archives and destroyed.

Burglar had already gotten off with a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail and to keep his law license. But now he's giving up the precious license, to stop an investigation into the contents of the missing documents.

The stolen information may indicate that Clinton could have done a whole lot more to prevent 9/11. This is obviously a sore spot, considering how Slick Willie went ballistic when Chris Wallace touched on this subject in a Fox News interview.

Very probably, information is being hidden that would be useful to Bush in his efforts to combat al-Qaeda. There also might be something that would explain why both Clintons were in favor of going to war against Saddam.

Whatever Sandy Burglar's sitting on, it's big. My guess is that Shrillary doesn't want us to know about it either, lest we be reminded how appallingly irresponsible it would be to allow the Clinton gang back into the White House.

The Sandy Burglar story revisited

More amazing details of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's theft and deliberate concealment of classified documents emerged last week – just before the Christmas holiday, at a time few Americans were watching the news.

In a report by National Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfeld, we learn, more than three years after the crime against the American people and the laws of the land, that Berger hid some of the documents under a construction trailer.

We also learn that at first no law enforcement agencies were even notified of suspicions about the crime.

We learn that his first "cover story" was that he might have inadvertently thrown the papers
in the trash.

We learn he admitted retrieving the documents he stashed under the construction trailer and brought them to his office.

We learn the reason he was not confronted earlier – and that law enforcement authorities were not notified – was because of Berger's high-level position in the Clinton White House.

And let's remember what Sandy Burglar was doing rummaging through classified materials in the National Archives. He was on assignment for former President Clinton, to help prepare him for upcoming testimony before the 9/11 commission as well as to prepare himself for impending testimony before the Senate and House intelligence committees.

Specifically, he was reviewing National Security Council documents about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and Sudan. Now, as you might recall, if you have a very good memory, the Clinton administration was offered bin Laden's head on a platter by the Sudanese government – an offer spurned by the White House.

As you also might recall, the 9/11 commission was investigating the mistakes that led to the biggest attack on American soil in history...

(cont'd at link)

Hollywood Christians

2009-09-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Stephen Baldwin interview

Kirk Cameron interview

a couple of not-well-known Weathermen

2009-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

1. Jeff Jones

NY's Tax-Funded Ex-Terrorist

VAN Jones resigned as White House green-jobs czar after the public got a look at his history of radical activism, including his time building the so-called Apollo Alliance -- a coalition of left-wing interest groups unified around the green-jobs concept. But another, even more radical Jones (not related) is leading Apollo's New York state activities.

Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the late '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s -- yet now he's a leader of an influential, taxpayer-funded group.

Jones was a fugitive from justice for 11 years. His own account at his Web site says: "As a leader of the Weather Underground, Jeff evaded an intense FBI manhunt for more than a decade. In 1981, they finally got him. Twenty special agents battered down the door of the Bronx apartment where he was living with his wife and four-year-old son."

With Mark Rudd and Bill Ayers, Jones in 1969 co-founded the radical Weatherman, which orchestrated the violent "Days of Rage" riots in Chicago, and later undertook an anti-government bombing campaign. Three of its members died when a bomb they were constructing to attack Fort Dix accidentally detonated in Greenwich Village.

And Jones is still proud of his terrorist activities -- saying as recently as 2004: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to try to do."

Now, Jones is back to revolutionary organizing -- but with taxpayers footing the bill. He's the director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group.

Apollo unifies the three most powerful elements of the political left -- environmental groups, labor unions and street organizers like ACORN -- and points them toward a common goal that enriches all of them under the banner of "green jobs." (Van Jones was an Apollo board member until he joined the White House staff.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently credited Apollo with helping write the stimulus bill and getting it passed. Yet the stimulus' "green jobs" provisions funnel federal tax dollars to unions, green groups and community organizers -- that is, the organizations that make up Apollo.

Green jobs serve a political purpose, but not an economic one. The evidence from Spain and elsewhere is ample -- each green job created destroys more than two other jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Jeff Jones counts among his consulting clients (along with Apollo) a half-dozen state and local environmental groups and the Workforce Development Institute (WDI), a union-controlled organization ("developed in partnership with the NYS AFL-CIO," it says) that works with state and local government and universities.

WDI's mission is to support union influence on state and local governments. It gets state tax dollars to do it -- to the tune of $4.8 million in this year's Education, Labor and Family Assistance budget bill.

WDI is so tightly integrated with Apollo that it features a full page of Apollo information on its Web site (wdiny.org), which appears to be the primary Web presence of Apollo's New York branch. WDI encourages its members and program participants to attend Apollo Alliance events.

As a consultant to WDI, Jones is helping write the grant proposals for federal stimulus funds -- funds authorized in the bill Apollo helped write, presumably ensuring that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo's political agenda.

Anyone should be entitled to spend his or her own money on political organizing, but Apollo and WDI are spending taxpayer dollars to organize a coalition of extreme environmentalists, labor unions and social-justice street organizers.

That's bad enough in itself, but to have the effort spearheaded by an unrepentant domestic terrorist is a true outrage.

=============================

2. Mark Rudd

UNDERGROUND: MY LIFE WITH SDS AND THE WEATHERMEN

Older New Yorkers will remember Mark Rudd as the enfant terrible of the 1968 Columbia University strike, when radical members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) occupied administration buildings and President Grayson Kirk's office. Their stated rationale: To protest the university's plans to build a new gym in Harlem, thereby expropriating land and homes belonging to poor African-Americans and to end any research connected to the war effort. But their real goal, Rudd writes, was "not just ending the war [in Vietnam] but ending the capitalist system that had caused the war."

From the start, then, Rudd defined himself as a revolutionary, a leader of the SDS "Action/Faction," that was devoted to smashing the state, to overturning the government and even to defeating liberal enemies like "peace candidates" Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Columbia's then-Vice President David Truman called Rudd "a combination of a revolutionary and an adolescent having a temper tantrum." Reading Rudd's new book "Underground" it's hard to conclude otherwise.

After the Columbia strike, when seeking to up the ante, Rudd and his comrades transformed SDS into the group first known as The Weathermen, and later, as The Weather Underground. Unlike his comrade Bill Ayers, who is both unrepentant and who distorts and lies about the Weathermen's goals and activities, Rudd is reflective and truthful. He does not depict himself, as does Ayers, as someone who was part of the broad peace movement.

Back then, Rudd, Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn favored "the necessity for violence in order to end the war and also to make revolution." They were fighting "a revolutionary war from within the United States," Rudd explains. When successful, the Weathermen would then build a new revolutionary army staffed by young defectors from the US armed forces.

To achieve these ends they adopted "armed struggle," as the only way to achieve their revolutionary goals. Instead of a loose organization of campus chapters, they now built a "highly centralized, clandestine revolutionary party," modeled, Rudd admits, on the strategy and organization of the Communists. A showdown came at the June 1969 SDS national convention in Chicago. Rudd left the convention as the elected leader of the SDS, with Ayers and Dohrn in subordinate positions.

Their goal was to build "the American arm of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam." Rudd led events like the Chicago "Days of Rage," in which hard-line Weather cadre fought the police. Rudd would recruit others saying, "The pigs have to be wiped out. We're going to fight violence with violence and wipe out Chicago." The guy had lofty ambitions. They injured 26 policemen and succeeded in paralyzing one Chicago official, which they then celebrated in song.

At some level, Rudd knew that all he was doing was a terrible mistake, but, he writes, "I felt like a member of the crew on a speeding train, dimly aware of disaster ahead but unable to put on the bakes." Rudd even acknowledges he was part of a "classic cult, true believers surrounded by a hostile world that we rejected .ñ.ñ. We had a holy faith, revolution, which could not be shaken."

Their attempts at guerrilla warfare ended with the 1970 New York City town house bombing, which Rudd and Ayers and Dohrn all approved. Rudd is honest about its intent, emphasizing how the bomb they built was meant to kill hundreds of GIs and their dates at a Fort Dix dance. It was, he now knows, a "fantasy of revolutionary urban-guerrilla warfare," done on their own, without police agents provoking them. He and his associates, he ruefully reflects, killed a broad and powerful movement opposed to the Vietnam War, all in the name of a fanciful goal.

Being truthful about his own madness and the crazy path he and his comrades took, Rudd does not go along with what he calls the convenient cleansing of their history carried out by Ayers, who after the town house bomb exploded, still favored "the overall strategy of clandestine armed struggle."

Rudd went into exile, slowly became disillusioned, turned himself in and surfaced publicly in 1977. He ends the book with the 2008 SDS reunion at Columbia University. Seeing his old comrades he finds himself still a man of the Left. Even while facing up to the delusions of his revolutionary youth, he still believes the United States is evil, and that he and his comrades spent years working "to continue the idealism inherent in our rebellion." The facts he presents speak otherwise. His "idealism" led to catastrophe. He and his "comrades" ruined much of their lives, including their marriages.

Despite Rudd's failure to re-evaluate his left-wing politics, he shatters the romantic myth of the Weather Underground, exposing them as a dangerous group committed to terrorism.

a few songs with Christian lyrical content by Sufjan Stevens

2009-09-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

"Abraham" (live)
youtube clip

"Abraham.
Worth a righteous one.
Take up on the wood. Put it on your Son.
Lake or Lamb.
There is none to harm.
When the angel came you had raised your arm.

Abraham.
Put off on your son.
Take instead the ram.
until Jesus comes."

"To Be Alone With You" (live)
youtube clip

I'd swim across lake Michigan
I'd sell my shoes
I'd give my body to be back again
In the rest of the room

To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you

You gave your body to the lonely
They took your clothes
You gave up a wife and a family
You gave your ghost

To be alone with me
To be alone with me
To be alone with me
You went up on a tree

To be alone with me
You went up on the tree

I've never known a man who loved me.

"Seven Swans" (live)
youtube clip

We didn't sleep too late.
There was a fire in the yard.
All of the trees were in light.
They had no faces to show.
I saw a sign in the sky:
Seven swans, seven swans, seven swans.
I heard a voice in my mind:
"I will try, I will try, I will try.
I will try, I will try, I will try."

We saw the dragon move down.
My father burned into coal.
My mother saw it from far.
She took her purse to the bed.
I saw a sign in the sky:
Seven horns, seven horns, seven horns.
I heard a voice in my mind:
"I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord."
He said: "I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord."
He said: "I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord."

He will take you. If you run,
He will chase you.
He will take you. If you run,
He will chase you.
Cause he is the Lord.

"The Transfiguration" (live)
youtube clip

When he took the three disciples
to the mountainside to pray,
his countenance was modified, his clothing was aflame.
Two men appeared: Moses and Elijah came;
they were at his side.
The prophecy, the legislation spoke of whenever he would die.

Then there came a word
of what he should accomplish on the day.
Then Peter spoke, to make of them a tabernacle place.
A cloud appeared in glory as an accolade.
They fell on the ground.
A voice arrived, the voice of God,
the face of God, covered in a cloud.

What he said to them,
the voice of God: the most beloved son.
Consider what he says to you, consider what's to come.
The prophecy was put to death,
was put to death, and so will the Son.
And keep your word, disguise the vision 'till the time has come.

Lost in the cloud, a voice. Have no fear! We draw near!
Lost in the cloud, a sign. Son of man! Turn your ear.
Lost in the cloud, a voice. Lamb of God! We draw near!
Lost in the cloud, a sign. Son of man! Son of God!