The so-called Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, the one that hates everyone but themselves, which are 35 members of the same family, have made a video.

This is sickening but I want you to watch it and observe the hate in their faces except when they say “God hates the world.”

These people intend to disrupt Rev. Jerry Falwell’s funeral on Tuesday.

[Note: I had placed the video in this post, but I felt it was so Satanic I couldn't in good conscience post it here. If you want to see it go here. Warning: It will make you sick and weak-kneed.]

After seeing this, please tell me who you think is in Heaven and who will not make it if they don’t make a 180 degree turn.

These people call themselves a church only to get tax-exempt status and they are nothing but pigs and tools for Satan. I don’t call anyone by that name on purpose, but they are his tools.

Only a Satanist could believe God hates the world. He has done too many good things in my life for me to believe He hates anything but sin. Not even the sinner.

God doesn’t hate the world. He loves it so much and the people so much He sent His only Begotten Son to die in payment for our sins because that was the only sacrifice acceptable to Him. It had to be blood from the Perfect Lamb of God.

It’s not too late for anyone if you’re still alive—even these people who seem to be so possessed and are so full of their own hatred they draw pleasure from disrupting funerals of soldiers and now a man who dedicated his life to serving God.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced the Senate will delay final action on the Immigration Reform Bill.

Senate leaders agreed Monday that they would wait until June to take final action on a bipartisan plan to give millions of unlawful immigrants legal status.

The measure, which also tightens border security and workplace enforcement measures, unites a group of influential liberals, centrists and conservatives and has White House backing, but it has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. In a nod to that opposition, Senate leaders won’t seek to complete it before a hoped-for Memorial Day deadline.

“It would be to the best interests of the Senate … that we not try to finish this bill this week,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as the chamber began debate on the volatile issue. “I think we could, but I’m afraid the conclusion wouldn’t be anything that anyone wanted.”

The bipartisan compromise cleared its first hurdle Monday with a bipartisan Senate vote to begin debate on a separate immigration measure. Still, it faces significant obstacles as lawmakers seek dozens of modifications to its key elements.

Republicans want to make the bill tougher on the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. Democrats want to change a new temporary worker program and reorder priorities in a merit-based system for future immigration that weights employability over family ties.

The unlikely coalition that brokered the deal, led by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is plotting to protect the agreement from “deal-breaker” changes that would sap its support. The group will hold daily meetings starting Tuesday to determine whether proposed revisions would sink what they are calling their “grand bargain.”

“We have to try our very best to work together to get something that will actually pass,” Kyl said.

Among the first changes to be debated will be a proposal by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to shrink the temporary worker program created by the compromise plan. Some lawmakers in both parties consider the initiative, which would provide at least 400,000 guest worker visas annually, too large.

Others charge it’s impractical and unfair to immigrants, because it would allow them to stay only temporarily in the U.S. without guaranteeing them a chance to gain legal status.

“We must not create a law that guarantees a permanent underclass, people who are here to work in low-wage, low-skilled jobs but do not have the chance to put down roots or benefit from the opportunities of American citizenship,” Reid said.

I guess they heard an earful from their constituents on both sides of the issue and are now going to try to work out the major objections.

It remains to be seen if an immigration reform bill will pass in this Congress or any other in the near future.

saying this administration is the worst in history. This is what he says now:

ATLANTA (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday his remarks were “careless or misinterpreted” when he said the Bush administration has been the “worst in history” for its impact around the world.

Speaking on NBC’s “Today,” Carter appeared to retreat from a statement he made to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for a Saturday story in which he said: “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.”

Carter said Monday that when he made the comment, he was responding to a question comparing the Bush administration’s foreign policy to that of Richard Nixon.

“And I think Richard Nixon had a very good and productive foreign policy and my remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted. But I wasn’t comparing the overall administration, and I was certainly not talking personally about any president,” Carter said.

“I think this administration’s foreign policy compared to president Nixon’s was much worse,” he said, but he said he did not mean to call it the worst in history.

Deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto, with Bush at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, said Monday, “I think it just highlights the importance of being careful in choosing your words. I’ll just leave it at that.”

In audio posted Saturday on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Web site, an interviewer asked Carter: “Which president was worse, George W. Bush or Richard Nixon?”

Carter gave the broader answer, calling the Bush administration “the worst in history.”

Frank Fellone, deputy editor at the Democrat-Gazette, said Monday that the newspaper’s story was “accurate and also contextual.”

“If President Carter’s remarks are careless or misinterpreted, they are not misinterpreted by us,” he said.

You decide with your own ears and eyes.

It looks as though the Democrats are finally going to vote on a supplemental war funding bill that does not include time lines.

WASHINGTON (AP) - In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday.

The legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added.

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats in both houses are expected to seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush’s handling of the unpopular conflict.

Democratic officials stressed the legislation was subject to change. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss provisions before a planned presentation to members of the party’s rank and file later in the day.

Democrats in Congress have insisted for months they would not give Bush a blank check for his war policies, and officials said the legislation is expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society.

Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress.

Several officials said it was possible that Democrats would attempt to draft a second bill, to include much of the domestic spending that Bush and congressional Republicans have said they oppose.

Either way, Democratic leaders have said they hope to clear a war spending bill through both houses of Congress and send it to Bush’s desk by week’s end. They added the intention was to avoid a veto.

See? I’ll bet that didn’t hurt a bit, except for some pride.

The Captain is also talking about this development.

Not every illegal immigrant is Mexican. I know that probably surprises a lot of people—NOT! But a lot of people feel they are all Mexicans.

Many people from the poor countries in Central America sneak into the United States via Mexico, but they are not Mexicans.

The proposed immigration reform bill goes to the Senate floor for debate today, and you’d think the sky had fallen and it’s already passed in its virgin form.

We have squawkers on the right and I’m sure squawkers on the left. I read last night that Lindsey Graham was booed in SC at the Republican convention because he endorses the proposed immigration bill.

I would have booed him too because he is not the senator I thought I elected, but maybe this will be his wake-up call to serve those who elected him and stop being Arizona’s third senator.

A very reasonable question was posed on a Conservative site. Something to the effect of imagining you are an employer or farmer and think of the problems you face, then imagine you are Congress and what would you do to solve the problem to the good of everyone.

Here’s one answer that stood out to me as being so rigid there is no room for movement, and of course the president has caused the Republican Party to self-destruct all on his own:

We can’t send them all back. Given
We can’t pay for medical/social security for them. Given
Those in jail - need to be deported. Given
Employers need to be penalized for under the table employment - or should have the option of not paying benefits/social security/workman’s compensation - and pay citizens a flat fee just like they do illegals. Fix that one way or the other. Given.
No More. Shut down the border. Shut it down. Now.
No more spanglish options. English only. It’s my taxes that provide translations - I would rather used that money to send them home or build a fence.
Those who are here illegally must register, find a sponsor (one of those employers paying them for a job “Americans won’t do” - if this is true - then it shouldn’t be too hard.) and provide proof of gainful employment in order to stay. Their American citizenship status and that of their children cannot be achieved until after those who entered the country legally.

Anyone who migrates here must be in line for citizenship. No more “make the money here and send it home”. We are Mexico’s largest source of income. If they come here, they must register, get a job, and get in line for citizenship. If not- they should be stopped at the border.

Any Mexican who breaks the law here goes to jail in Mexico - or we take all of our convicted prisoners and turn them loose in Guadelahara with forged Mexican passports, train tickets to Mexico City, and 1000 pesos.

Make it a misdemeanor to shoot someone illegally entering this country. [A misdemeanor to possibly kill someone? A baby? A child? ED]

…. there’s more….

Make all the Senators who crafted this bill live in LA county for six months.

Someone needs to tell GWB that we would like to retain one branch of government… as much as he is trying to make it the last time a republican is trusted with the White House ever - we really would like to put another republican in there in 08 and he needs to work with us not against us. And then someone please ask republicans in the Senate if the NYT will ever generate votes for them. If any answer yes - deport them to Mexico.

… more later.

More later. I guess this person hasn’t vented enough. Since we are all armchair Congresscritters and presidents we talk a good game, but when it comes down to it how realistic is it to think you can get it all at one time?

Some of it sounds reasonable, but even though the New York Times is no friend of the Republicans, why say if you are endorsed by them to deport you? You can’t deport someone who has been born in this country. That statement doesn’t even make sense, but then we are on an issue that has everyone angry, and the fact the illegals marched with Mexican flags last year demanding “their” country back doesn’t help things.

Secure the borders first makes sense and I think that’s what the bill states.

Before we all get upset because our ice cream fell on the ground let’s wait for it to fall on the ground and act like adults on this issue.

I know the writers on this blog will.

When the Chinese are buying into private equity every investor in the world should take note.The Chinese government has agreed to pay $3bn (£1.5bn) for a 10% stake in US private equity company Blackstone.
The move will give Blackstone a head start in Chinese takeover deals and allow China’s government to tap into the global private equity boom.

The news, which is likely to create some political opposition in the US, comes just days before Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi visits America.

China is buying the stake through its newly formed state investment fund.

‘Enhancing access’

“For both China and Blackstone, it’s about enhancing access and developing deeper relationships,” said analyst Monte Brem, chief executive of advisory firm Leucadia Capital Partners.

“The Chinese government wants to increase its access and role in the global private equity market; Blackstone wants to increase its access and role in China.”

For Blackstone, the deal will bring an inevitable advantage when investing in China, where foreign companies often struggle to gain support from Beijing when trying to buy Chinese companies.

It’s here

The three women call themselves the All-Broad Fraud Squad.Nearly a decade ago, concerned that mortgage fraud was threatening their pastoral towns, the women — two full-time mothers and a mortgage executive then in their 40s — got together to write down license plate numbers of suspicious cars in their neighborhoods, scour public documents for housing titles and deeds and seek the help of local law enforcement. At first they were ignored, written off as bored housewives.

Today, the three women — Ann Fulmer, Alicia Sheppard and Julia Barrette — are helping train F.B.I. agents, speaking to lending associations across the country and lecturing college students on how to identify mortgage fraud.

“For us in the industry, we could deal with mortgage fraud during the day but go to our homes at night and forget about it,” said Matt Wade with Fannie Mae in Atlanta. “But for these gutsy women, it was personal.”

The women’s upper-middle-class neighborhoods have almost nothing in common with the places where mortgage fraud has recently made headlines — like the more than $40 million scheme uncovered last fall in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Indianapolis

Guts

Mr. Novak tells it all.

In routine party-line votes last week, both houses of Congress completed action on a Democratic-crafted budget containing the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. That this was overlooked attests to the legerdemain of Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Conrad, a 59-year-old third-termer from Bismarck, N.D., is a monotone orator whose use of statistical charts betrays his dozen years as a state tax collector. He seems so straight an arrow that it is hard to accuse him of the big lie. But that is precisely what he has done.

Conrad has repeatedly insisted his budget contains no higher taxes. But how, then, can it increase discretionary spending $200 billion over five years, while promising immense budget surpluses in the future? By raising taxes not only on upper-bracket earners but also on dividends and capital gains, affecting many more Americans.

Opinion

Good old Arnold.

It’s bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously, but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public’s health and welfare.

California, Connecticut and 10 other states are poised to enact tailpipe emissions standards — tougher than existing federal requirements — that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles by 392 million metric tons by the year 2020, the equivalent to taking 74 million of today’s cars off the road for an entire year.

Since transportation accounts for one-third of America’s greenhouse gas emissions, enacting these standards would be a huge step forward in our efforts to clean the environment and would show the rest of the world that our nation is serious about fighting global warming.

Yet for the past 16 months, the Environmental Protection Agency has refused to give us permission to do so.

Even after the Supreme Court ruled in our favor last month, the federal government continues to stand in our way.

Clean it up.

When David All, a former Republican congressional aide, launched a blog recently that he hopes will spur his fellow Republicans to bridge the digital divide, he did his best to sound upbeat. “Today our Revolution begins,” he wrote. “Tomorrow we fight.”But implicit in his cheerleading was the acknowledgment that there is a widening gap between Democrats and Republicans on the Internet, and that his party will have to scramble to catch up. “For the most part Republicans are stuck in Internet circa 2000,” he said in an interview.Another Republican — Michael Turk, who was in charge of Internet strategy for President Bush’s 2004 campaign — puts the problem his party faces more bluntly: “We’re losing the Web right now.”The most recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings provide one measure of the gap. Looking at the Web sites of presidential candidates from the two parties, it found that former senator John Edwards’s site had about 690,000 unique visitors in March, when the Democrat’s wife, Elizabeth, announced that she had a recurrence of cancer. That was more than the combined number of visitors to the sites of the three leading GOP contenders, Rudolph W. Giuliani (297,000), Sen. John McCain (258,000) and Mitt Romney (76,000).

There are other measures as well. No Republican comes close to matching the popularity of another Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, the social-networking triumvirate. The Democrats are ahead in the online money race. The top three Democrats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama and Edwards, amassed more than $14 million over the Internet in the first three months of 2007; in contrast, the top three Republicans, Giuliani, McCain and Romney, collected less than half of that, $6 million. Furthermore, ABC PAC, the conservative fundraising site, has raised $385 so far for Republican presidential hopefuls; Act Blue, its liberal counterpart, has collected about $3 million for Edwards alone.

It’s here

The past few days produced little news which left me feeling there was reason to tax my brain and attempt to write something intelligent. Perhaps after all the exhausting discussion on an illegal immigration bill which has not even come to either floor of Congress (while I still applaud the group of bipartisan senators who took the time to begin this process), I simply felt numb.

I turned my attention instead to the milblogs, several of which are daily reads for me and found myself grateful that they did not face the extermination feared a few weeks ago. Who else continuously tells the stories of our heroes both at home and abroad..certainly not the media, very seldom members of Congress and while the President praises the troops at every opportunity, somehow there is a void for those like me who feel our men and women in uniform deserve so much more.

When I read this, I felt compelled to see it was shared.

Cheers on Corridor Three
by LTC Bob Bateman
10:30 hours (local EST), Friday, 11 May 2007: Third Corridor, Second Floor, The Pentagon:

It is 110 yards from the “E” ring to the “A” ring of the Pentagon. This section of the Pentagon is newly renovated; the floors shine, the hallway is broad, and the lighting is bright. At this instant the entire length of the corridor is packed with officers, a few sergeants and some civilians, all crammed tightly three and four deep against the walls. There are thousands here. This hallway, more than any other, is the “Army” hallway. The G3 offices line one side, G2 the other, G8 is around the corner. All Army. Moderate conversations flow in a low buzz. Friends who may not have seen each other for a few weeks, or a few years, spot each other, cross the way and renew. Everyone shifts to ensure an open path remains down the center. The air conditioning system was not designed for this press of bodies in this area. The temperature is rising already. Nobody cares.

While that paragraph did not strike me as particularly newsworthy, what followed led to an emotional roller coaster.

10:36 hours (local EST):

The clapping starts at the E-Ring. That is the outermost of the five rings of the Pentagon and it is closest to the entrance to the building. This clapping is low, sustained, hearty. It is an applause with a deep emotion behind it as it moves forward in a wave down the length of the hallway. A steady rolling wave of sound it is, moving at the pace of the soldier in the wheelchair who marks the forward edge with his presence. He is the first. He is missing the greater part of one leg, and some of his wounds are still suppurating.

There was compassion and prayers for those receiving this tribute but also pride in knowing the “family” which is the US military continues to thrive.

Given this:

This parade has gone on, every single Friday, all year long, for more than four years.

I only wish I would have known long ago.

HT:Blackfive