"He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." Benjamin Franklin
"It's no longer surprising that those screaming most loudly against Christianity and its influence on public policy in America often employ the same tactics and represent the same dangers they falsely attribute to Christians. Christians have far more to fear from the secular thought police than the other way around."
"I can't decide which is more surprising in this story. The fact that Mexican truck drivers will be allowed to drive anywhere in the US or the hypocritical unions that suddenly oppose this measure ... even though they support amnesty for illegal immigrants."
Federal court upholds ‘ One State Under God ‘ in Texas Pledge of Allegiance
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott prevailed in federal court Tuesday, Aug. 28, where a North Texas couple tried to prevent schoolchildren from reciting the Texas Pledge of Allegiance.
A federal district judge ruled against David Wallace Croft and his wife, Shannon, who sought a preliminary injunction because the Texas Legislature recently added the words “one state under God” to the state Pledge. Solicitor General Ted Cruz argued on the state’s behalf.
“With today’s ruling, a federal judge denied the plaintiffs’ attempt to prevent Texas schoolchildren from pledging their allegiance to ‘one state under God’ - just as they pledge to ‘one nation under God,’” Attorney General Abbott said. “The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held patriotic acknowledgments of the Almighty such as these are completely consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Texans can rest assured that we will continue vigorously defending their children’s ability to recite the state Pledge of Allegiance each morning.”
The plaintiffs, both professed atheists, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Their children are students in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District.
There is one word that I look for in all of this, and will highlight it in the next quote. If this word is included then I never understand why people have a problem with things. The word is “voluntary”.
The voluntary, teacher-led recitation of the Texas Pledge typically follows the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms across the state. According to the state’s brief, the Legislature added the words “one state under God” to acknowledge the tradition and religious heritage inherent in America’s founding.
Voluntary means that you can include or exclude yourself from participation. It is your choice. The government is not forcing anything on you. I’m sure this is all very aggrevating to secularists.
Meanwhile, Castro offered a favorable assessment of only one of the 10 men who have been president during his regime - Jimmy Carter.
Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer theseThere you have it! Beware of those who espouse impossibilities and while you're thinking about it, replace those batteries in your B.S. detector.
questions:
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
And
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But ,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L-S-H -I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard Work
and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the
Bullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top.
Politicians learn this early!!!
Beauty of Math!
1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111
9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888
Brilliant, isn't it?
And look at this symmetry:
1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111=123456789 87654321
Now, take a look at this...
What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?
How about ACHIEVING 101%?
What equals 100% in life?
Here's a little mathematical formula that might help answer these questions:
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
If:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+ 15+18+11 = 98%
And:
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+ 12+5+4+7+ 5 = 96%
But:
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+ 21+4+5 = 100%
THEN, look how far the love of God will take you:
L-O-V-E-O-F-G-O-D
12+15+22+5+15+ 6+7+15+4 = 101%
Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that:
While Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, It's the Love of God that will put you over the top!
After a self-proclaimed pedophile was hounded out of Southern California over the weekend, bloggers sent up a nationwide call Sunday for help tracking his movements.
Jack McClellan, previously from the Snohomish County town of Arlington, in recent months had been living out of his car in Southern California. A judge there on Friday permanently barred him from going within 30 feet of places where children gather.
“I have to leave the state, really. I can’t live here under this Orwellian protocol,” Jack McClellan told television station KABC for a report that aired Sunday. “It’s nightmarish.”
McClellan did not say where he planned to go, and he did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone by The Associated Press.
Increasingly it seems Americans in different parts of the country have opened their morning newspaper or turned on the TV and learned about an act of violence carried out by someone who is living in this country illegally. Alarmingly, many of these individuals have had previous contact with local law enforcement officials. Such is the case in Newark, New Jersey, where recently three innocent young people were tragically murdered. In the aftermath of this tragedy, we learned that one of the suspects -- an illegal immigrant -- was previously arrested on multiple occasions and, rather than being deported, was set free only to victimize again.Be sure to read the entire piece. This trend is destroying the rule of law, and causing divisiveness with law abiding citizens, not to mention the contempt it foments for arrogant politicians and judges who take law into their own hands.
The situation in Newark didn’t happen in a vacuum. It isn’t new, nor is it relegated to just this one community. An alarming number of cities and towns throughout this nation have similar sanctuary policies on the books -- including both Minneapolis and St. Paul in my home state of Minnesota. In these cities, local law enforcement officials are barred from so much as inquiring about a suspect’s immigration status and passing along their concerns to federal authorities for follow up action. The rationale for this practice is as antiquated as the practice itself. Yes, it is important to maintain good relations between immigrant communities and local law enforcement, but we must not hide behind that as an excuse for letting lawbreakers off the hook. In a post 9/11 world, the evidence has shown the consequences of sanctuary city policies can reach beyond just one community. Take for example Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers. In 2001, he was stopped and ticketed for driving without a license in Florida. His visa was expired and yet he was simply allowed to continue on his way.
So why are cities allowed to place a gag order on their law enforcement officers? It’s simple: by exploiting a loophole in Sec. 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. While the law requires cooperation with federal officials on immigration matters, sanctuary cities get around it by employing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy, with sometimes devastating consequences.
"There is no one entity that is more responsible for the decline of our great country than our system of government education."While we're on the subject of government schools, Phyllis Schlafly's most recent column sheds a spotlight on the NEA and their list of goals. Not surprisingly, the dems agree.
The nation's top intelligence official is concerned that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, in the midst of regrouping and marshaling new recruits, are paying more attention to the Southwest border as they look for ways to enter the United States -- where their goal is to cause "mass casualties."Huh? Why is it, again, we're not working around the clock on a fence?
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has intercepted 178 Iraqis seeking asylum by crossing the Southwestern border so far this year, nearly triple the 60 captured in 2006, according to figures from the office of National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. None of those Iraqis have been linked to terrorist organizations.
McConnell, the member of the president's Cabinet who oversees all 16 of the nation's intelligence agencies, points to the recent declassified intelligence summary stating that al-Qaida is regrouping in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers, and they've got recruits," McConnell said last week in an exclusive interview with the El Paso Times after his talk at the Border Security Conference.
With only a small fraction of the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico complete, California congressman and Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter is warning President Bush the construction mandated by the Secure Fence Act is falling drastically behind schedule.President Bush has a lot of pluses and a lot of minuses. Illegal immigration and border insecurity are among his most obvious minuses.
"Unless construction is promptly accelerated," Hunter wrote in a letter to Bush, "deadlines for the completion of fencing will not be met."
The Bush administration's unwillingness to build a border fence, even when mandated by a law Bush signed as recently as Oct. 26, 2006, questions the credibility of Bush's denial, especially when the border with Mexico remains wide open today, nearly six years since the Bush administration declared war on terrorism.Be sure to read the entire piece at the above link. The fact that the fence has been and is such low priority for this administration is a major point of contention for otherwise supporters of President Bush.
Hunter's letter points out the Secure Fence Act calls for completing 392 miles of fencing from Calexico, Calif., to Douglas, Ariz., by May 30, 2008.
Additionally, the act mandates 30 miles of fencing be completed in the Laredo, Texas, sector by Dec. 31, 2008.
There’s a reason why one should be extremely wary of the computer models that are cited by the endless doomsday predictions of Al Gore, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, and all the other advocates of “global warming.”That's interesting and it's not something I've ever heard or read before. You would think that all variables would be taken into consideration when forecasting warming or cooling trends. If they can't be figured in then you would think an asterisk noting this would appear in every prediction or study.
The reason is clouds. Computer models simply cannot provide for the constant variability of clouds, so they ignore them.
In a July issue of The Economist there was an article, “Grey-Sky thinking” subtitled, “Without understanding clouds, understanding the climate is hard. And clouds are the least understood part of the atmosphere.” Since the increasingly rabid claims of Earth’s destruction from rising temperatures depend on computer modeling, how can they be regarded as accurate if they must largely exempt or deliberately manipulate the impact of clouds?
How can you make predictions, whether it’s a week or a decade from now, if you haven’t a clue why clouds do what they do?
Tim Garrett, a research meteorologist at the University of Utah, with refreshing candor has said, “We really do not know what’s going on. There are so many basic unanswered questions on how they (clouds) work.” And that is never mentioned in the great “global warming” debate, one we are continuously told is “decided” and upon which there is a vast scientific “consensus.”When organizations and government agencies (like the U.N., the Evironmental Protection Agency and so many others), who have the ability to change the way we live our lives, use incomplete and unsubstantiated data such as these computer models provide, it borders on fraud.
This is particularly significant because clouds act to both cool and warm the Earth. It is widely believed that high clouds can reflect solar radiation away from the planet, but they can also serve to trap heat in the atmosphere. New studies, however, have given some cause to reconsider this. Moreover, cloud droplets can last for less than a second while whole clouds can live out their lives in minutes or days. There is no way to integrate such massive, constant change into a computer model that divides the world into boxes up to sixty miles on a side, so they mostly do not.
This is why there are two new missions by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration involving highly sophisticated devices to measure and study the actions of clouds. This is also why, up to now, the computer models on which “global warming” claims have been made have actually been tweaked, adjusted, manipulated—take your choice of terms—to factor in the mystery of clouds.
How wide is the computer modeling gap when it comes to predicting the weather? The Economist reported that, “In a recent paper in Climate Dynamics, Mark Webb of Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change and his colleagues reported that clouds account for 66% of the differences between members of one important group of models and for 85% of them in another group.” Clouds simply defy the logarithms of computer modelers.
In short, “Too much still remains unknown about the physical mechanisms that determine cloud behavior,” said The Economist.
"While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas,"In other words, mind your own damn business!
Two hundred and 30 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a Europan (sic) monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes against our crimes."
On Tuesday the EU voiced "great regret" at Wednesday's impending 400th execution in Texas since the death penalty was restored in 1976 and urged the United States as a whole to stop all imminent judicial killings.
"The European Union strongly urges (Texas) Governor Rick Perry to exercise all powers vested in his office to halt all upcoming executions and to consider the introduction of a moratorium in the State of Texas," the EU's current Portuguese presidency said in a statement.
Texas is gearing up to execute murderer Ray Conner on Wednesday.
Bjørn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today. In contrast to other figures that promote a single issue while ignoring others, Lomborg views the globe as a whole, studies all the problems we face, ranks them, and determines how best, and in what order, we should address them. His first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, established the importance of a fact-based approach. With later books, Global Crises, Global Solutions and How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, this mild-mannered Danish statistician has steadily gained new converts. Not surprisingly, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.Sounds like the book takes a reasoned approach to global warming and climate change and the REAL problems we may be facing.
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming will further enhance Lomborg’s reputation for global analysis and thoughtful response. For anyone who wants an overview of the global warming debate from an objective source, this brief text is a perfect place to start. Lomborg is only interested in real problems, and he has no patience with media fear-mongering; he begins by dispatching the myth of the endangered polar bears, showing that this Disneyesque cartoon has no relevance to the real world where polar bear populations are in fact increasing. Lomborg considers the issue in detail, citing sources from Al Gore to the World Wildlife Fund, then demonstrating that polar bear populations have actually increased five fold since the 1960s.
Lomborg then works his way through the concerns we hear so much about: higher temperatures, heat deaths, species extinctions, the cost of cutting carbon, the technology to do it. Lomborg believes firmly in climate change--despite his critics, he's no denier--but his fact-based approach, grounded in economic analyses, leads him again and again to a different view. He reviews published estimates of the cost of climate change, and the cost of addressing it, and concludes that "we actually end up paying more for a partial solution than the cost of the entire problem. That is a bad deal."
In some of the most disturbing chapters, Lomborg recounts what leading climate figures have said about anyone who questions the orthodoxy, thus demonstrating the illiberal, antidemocratic tone of the current debate. Lomborg himself takes the larger view, explaining in detail why the tone of hysteria is inappropriate to addressing the problems we face.
In the end, Lomborg’s concerns embrace the planet. He contrasts our concern for climate with other concerns such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and providing clean water to the world. In the end, his ability to put climate in a global perspective is perhaps the book’s greatest value. Lomborg and Cool It are our best guides to our shared environmental future.
--Michael Crichton
No, I’ve never been a citizen of “The Savage Nation,” and I hardly count as an ardent fan of the bombastic, simplistic, perpetually enraged sort of talk radio exemplified by Michael Savage.
But regardless of my disagreements with the man’s style and substance, he’s absolutely right to stand up to bullying and intimidation by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Whenever a governmental official attempts to silence a journalist or commentator, then all those committed to free speech – whether conservatives, moderates or liberals – ought to protest vigorously against this clear-cut abuse of authority.
Name almost any subject, and this unhealthy pattern can be discerned.
If African Americans come to believe that America is a land of opportunity in which racism has been largely conquered, it would be catastrophic for the Democrats. The day that most black Americans see America in positive terms will be the day Democrats lose any hope of winning a national election. Whatever one believes about the extent of racism in America, one cannot deny that the Democrats need black Americans to feel victimized by racism. Contented black Americans spell disaster for the Democratic Party.
If women marry, it is bad for the Democratic Party. Single women are an essential component of any Democratic victory. Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 25-point margin (62 percent to 37 percent), while married women voted for President Bush by an 11-point margin (55 percent to 44 percent). According to a pro-Democrat website, The Emerging Democratic Majority, "the 25-point margin Kerry posted among unmarried women represented one of the high water marks for the Senator among all demographic groups."
After women marry, they are more likely to abandon leftist views and to vote Republican. And if they then have children, they will vote Republican in even more lopsided numbers. The bottom line is that when Americans marry, it is bad for the Democratic Party; when they marry and make families, it is disastrous for the party.
If immigrants assimilate, it is not good for Democrats. The Democratic Party has invested in Latino separatism. The more that Hispanic immigrants come to feel fully American, the less likely they are to vote Democrat. The liberal notion of multiculturalism helps Democrats, while adoption of the American ideal of e pluribus unum (out of many, one) helps Republicans. That is one reason Democrats support bilingual education -- it hurts Hispanic children, but it keeps them from full assimilation -- and oppose making English America's official language.
The older crowd were big fans of Merv Griffin when I was a kid...way older...like my parent's age. But because I was an incurably inveterate talk show junkie while still in diapers, I too, was one of his fans and life-long admirers. He was one of the good guys...smart, interesting, talented and a brilliant businessman.
Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA's Web site and look at the "U.S. surface air temperature" rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed.
Then again, you might not. They're not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The "hottest year on record" is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America's Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone's ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn't have a word to say about it.
And yet we survived.
Man, don’t cha love how mainstream media and their soft-brain disciples make Christians out to be fish-stickered, bug-eyed equals to incensed Islam? If you were to accept as true what some atheists, secularists and prattling gay activists say about Christians, you’d think the church is chomping at the bit to chop off some heads of unbelievers, glory to Gawd!
Yep, if you were to believe the barf belched out by the BS brokers on the Left, you’d stagger away Kool Aid drunk with the belief that there is little disparity between conservative Christians and militant Muslims.
As a matter of fact, you probably would be bamboozled into believing that Islam is a peaceful, Little House on the Prairie religion being temporarily hijacked by jihadist renegades, and Christianity . . . Christianity is the real charity-vacant, vicious cult that’s vying for the opportunity to seize the whip and whip us good.
• The Koran does not invite interpretation, and Muslim leaders refuse to discuss how to fit their beliefs into modern society.
• Political differences and unwanted international interference are not, in fact, the cause of the turmoil in Iraq and Middle Eastern antagonism towards the west.
• The most determined enemies of western civilization may not be the jihadists at all, but the leftists who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists.
Luke AFB is west of Phoenix and is rapidly being surrounded by
civilization that complains about the noise from the base and its
planes, forgetting that it was there long before they were.
A certain lieutenant colonel at Luke AFB deserves a big pat on the
back. Apparently, an individual who lives somewhere near Luke AFB wrote
the local paper complaining about a group of F-16s that disturbed
his/her day at the mall. When that individual read the response from a
Luke AFB officer, it must have stung quite a bit.
The complaint:
"Question of the day for Luke Air Force Base: Whom do we thank for the
morning air show? Last Wednesday, at precisely 9:11 a.m., a tight
formation of four F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall,
continuing west over Bell Road at approximately 500 feet. Imagine our
good fortune! Do the Tom Cruise-wannabes feel we need this wake-up call,
or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyns early bird
special? Any response would be appreciated."
The response:
Regarding "A wake-up call from Luke's jets" (Letters, Thursday): On June
15, at precisely 9:12 a.m., a perfectly timed four-ship flyby of F-16s
from the 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base flew over the
grave of Capt. Jeremy Fresques.
Capt. Fresques was an Air Force officer who was previously stationed at
Luke Air Force Base and was killed in Iraq on May 30, Memorial Day. At
9 a.m. on June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial
Park in Sun City to mourn the loss of a husband, son and friend.
Based on the letter writer's recount of the flyby, and because of the
jet noise, I'm sure you didn't hear the 21-gun salute, the playing of
taps, or my words to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques as I gave
them their son's flag on behalf of the President of the United States
and all those veterans and servicemen and women who understand the
sacrifices they have endured. A four-ship flyby is a display of respect
the Air Force pays to those who give their lives in defense of freedom.
We are professional aviators and take our jobs seriously, and on June 15
what the letter writer witnessed was four officers lining up to pay
their ultimate respects.
The letter writer asks, "Whom do we thank for the morning air show?"
The 56th Fighter Wing will call for you, and forward your thanks to the
widow and parents of Capt. Fresques, and thank them for you, for it was
in their honor that my pilots flew the most honorable formation of their
lives.
Lt. Col. Scott Pleus
CO 63rd Fighter Squadron
Luke AFB
It's been decided. If you don't agree with Al Gore's global warming scenario (oops, it's now global climate change because of the record breaking low temperature this summer around the world) then you're a polluting manipulator who is probably the recipient Big Money from Big Oil."There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community," Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little disagreement."While Gore demonizes Big Oil and Big Tobacco, he correctly assumes that most people will have forgotten or may have never known that the Gore family made one of their fortunes on the back of Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
Gore likened the campaign to the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of scientific debate on smoking's harmful effects.
"This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."
After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world's top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned that the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere," Gore said.
"They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools," he said.
He said Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is one of the major fuel companies involved in trying to mislead the public about global warming.
HOUSTON - Glenn McDuffie has claimed for years that he was the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in Life magazine's iconic photograph of the day World War II ended.So who's the babe?
If anyone just looked hard enough, he said, they would see that it was him in the shot.
Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson took up the challenge. And after what she called a detailed investigation, Gibson said she has concluded that McDuffie, 80, is the man in Alfred Eisenstaedt's Aug. 14, 1945 image.
