J's Cafe Nette

Archive for June 21st, 2007

What makes this our America?

Is it our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which may at times seem archaic and difficult to interpret, yet we cherish the very paper on which they are written.

Is it our National Anthem and Old Glory, both causing a stir of emotion in each of us although for different reasons and at perhaps the most unexpected moment.

Perhaps for some it is our capacity to see those most in need, either at home or abroad ,and dig deep to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Maybe it is our ability to accept those of all persuasions, even in times when we may feel angered or threatened by their presence.

When we see a member of our US Military do we find ourselves thankful that so many would give their very life for a land we cherish?

How many National Treasures we have which define this as our nation. Each state is unique in its laws, people and culture, yet each has a precise story in relation to our history.

In our country, children are given opportunities to experience life at its fullest and their possibilities for success are limitless. Their lives are not predetermined by law or religion, they are guided by their parents, churches and educators.

Our America allows us to elect our leaders of free will and without coercion. It is such a gift we have been given to dissent, protest and disagree with those we may or may not have had a hand in placing in office.

I can think of dozens of other examples which make this our country .

We hear often of divisions due to race, religion, culture and party affiliations. Many times those driving the separations have a personal motive be it money, fame or power. This is our country, and we owe these individuals or groups no allegiance.

Americans, while we do not live in a perfect society, have much to be grateful for. Open and honest discussion encouraged at this site is not all that common these days. I find it refreshing that the writers and those who comment here have the ability to admit they may have been in error or simply had a bad day and had gotten a bit testy. That is real and part of what this America we love was built upon. If all would remember that we can agree to disagree and still part friends, imagine what could be accomplished.

This little experiment and dream of J’s had its rough moments to be sure, but the civility and diversity of those participating here ranks right up there with why I am proud to be an American. **==

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Take a look at this site which shows political contributions of people in the news business along with some newspapers and tell me what it tells you.

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Christianity has been under attack since the very beginning. There’s nothing bold or shocking about that statement. When the “lost” Gospel of Judas was published to much fanfare early this year, I sighed. I thought, “Here we go again.”

This “lost” gospel was never lost. It was thrown away, as astute critics of the new publication and accompanying National Geographic TV specials have said. The Gospel of Judas, like the similar gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary Magdalene, etc., are all Gnostic tracts. Gnosticism was—is—an offshoot of Christianity that is hard to define precisely, as there have been various sects, but they all deny the deity of Christ and His oneness with the Father. All of them were never accepted as inspired scripture because they describe Christ in terms that fly in the face of the rest of scripture. Judas is particularly odious because it makes many villains in the Bible out to be a misunderstood heroes, including the first murderer, Cain.

Gnosticism, in its various forms, treats flesh as evil and the spirit world as supreme, so to them, Christ could never be the Word become flesh—which directly contradicts the rest of scripture.

Many scholars and journalists hailed the “lost” Gospel of Judas as a new interpretation of Christ, and said it raised a whole new set of questions.

No, it didn’t. It dredged up old questions and issues that had been successfully slapped down by lions for the faith in the first, second and third centuries.

You may ask, “what’s the harm?” There is serious harm for Christians who are new to the faith and don’t know what scripture really says about Christ. There is serious harm if apostates—snakes who claim to be Christian but really aren’t—teach Gnosticism as if it were accepted Christianity.

Christians are called by God to “contend earnestly for the faith” (see the letter of St. Jude), which means that we are to fight for the truth of who Christ is. That does not mean, and never means, fight with bombs and fists and guns, but with words and by actually speaking out. By remaining silent in the face of Gnosticism because we’re afraid of what others say, we are not contending earnestly for the faith—but hiding.

But even these outside attacks on the faith are nowhere near as damaging as the internal attacks on the faith. I’ll write more on Jude next time. Thanks for reading, and thanks again to ~J~ for letting me post these thoughts.

– Truman

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Here’s an interesting article to ponder today.

The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.

The new report — entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” — raises serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public radio airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:

– In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.

– Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

– 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

I don’t know about you but I’m not a big radio listener. If I’m making a short trip to the store or the doctor’s office I’ll probably have the local talk radio station on, but if I’m going on a trip of any extended driving time I put in a few CDs and listen to them.

If people are upset about conservative talk radio they need to realize these shows wouldn’t be on if they didn’t have the listeners to make them profitable.

I think Air America is still on the air, but it seems people would rather listen to the conservative shows for whatever reason than the liberal shows.

If someone doesn’t like it they should see how many people of like mind they can persuade to contact the radio stations to offer an alternative.

We don’t need more regulation.

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I don’t know if you’ll be able to view this AP story from my homepage or not, but I’m going to post it anyway.

A New Zealand couple wants to name their newborn son 4real.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton said they decided to name their new baby “4real” shortly after having an ultrasound and being struck by the reality of his impending arrival.

“For most of us, when we try to figure out what our names mean, we have to look it up in a babies book and … there’s no direct link between the meaning and the name,” Pat Wheaton told TV One on Wednesday. “With this name, everyone knows what it means.”

But when the parents filed the name with New Zealand’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, they were told names beginning with a number were against the rules.

The government office has opened negotiations with the parents about the name under a policy that says all unusual names must be given case-by-case consideration.

“The name has not at this stage been rejected,” Registrar-General Brian Clarke said in a statement Thursday. “We are currently in discussions with the parents … to clarify the situation.”

Clarke said the rules are designed to prevent names that are “likely to cause offense to a reasonable person.” Satan and Adolf Hitler were proposed names that have been declined, he said.

If no compromise has been reached by July 9, the baby will be registered as “real,” officials say.

New Zealand law requires all children born in the South Pacific nation to be registered with the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry within two months of birth.

Let them name him whatever they want to name him, but they should consider how it will affect him when he gets old enough to realize what they did.

I have a cousin who named her daughter “Buffy” back in the mid-sixties. Today that girl goes by her middle name of Rene and when I’ve asked her mother about it she just sheepishly says she was young and foolish when she named her.

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Take a click over to Michael Yon’s current report from the battle called “Operation Arrowhead Ripper”.

It seems Yon and New York Times reporter Michael Gordon are the only reporters actually in the thick of the battle.

Civilian casualties are occurring, despite much discretion being used on the firing. I saw three MLRS rockets hit targets downtown today (June 20) and more were fired. Watched the video feed from the TOC as some of them hit. The targeting was perfect. Our guys had cleared out the civilians, but the enemy starts shootouts using civilians as cover. American officers are trying to account for civilian casualties; media is asking and command is still unable to answer, which of course looks like a cover-up. From what I see on the ground, there is no cover-up. The number is unknown but certainly there must be some.

By the end of the first day (June 19), about 30 enemy had been killed, 1 U.S. killed and 5 WIA. At least two soldiers were heat casualties, including one who was with my group.

The combat has only just begun, and media has now figured out this is serious business. During the morning brief (June 20th), Major Robbie Parke mentioned that CNN, TIME, Reuters and some others, are trying to get out here now. Problem is space. Looks like Gordon and I are mostly alone for now. Others are said to be in Baqubah, but if they are here, they are missing some of the most important parts, and if they were at the important commander’s meetings, I would have seen them.

The heat is intense for the enemy and for us. Soldiers, during any chance, would lay-down during the heat of day, and in complete body armor and helmets, fall asleep in the dirt. I took photos of course. Our guys are tough. The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.

Go over and read the rest, view what photos he has been able to take and if you have a mind to, give a contribution so he can continue to report first-hand from the front.

He doesn’t hold back, but does unabashedly support our troops. If he sees something as wrong politically he calls a spade a spade and I like that.

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I’ve been reading some editorials about the immigration bill now before the Senate, and I’m beginning to think about it more than I have in the past.

What happens if we don’t pass an immigration bill this year? I guess everything would remain the same, but will Congress and the president finally realize we want border security before we will consider anything else?

Our economy cannot continue to absorb millions of people who are here illegally and counting on us to sustain them.

I feel sorrow for the majority of these people, who just want a better life for themselves and their families, but then there are the ones who want to be able to get in and out of the country at will to deliver drugs and whatever else will bring them a quick buck.

On the other hand I feel if we don’t do something this year we won’t do anything for a long time to come and the flow of illegal immigrants will just continue to surge.

I haven’t read the bill because I’m not the type of person who can sit down and read legalize and actually have it sink in as I get bored with it almost from the beginning. What I have heard about it tends to show there are some good things in there if we secure the borders first.

It’s called by its detractors an amnesty bill because so many illegals already here will be given a free pass to stay here at least for a period of time.

It is being pushed by big business, which makes me wonder why they would be so interested in seeing it pass. The answer is money of course. Cheap workers mean cheap overhead. Then that lowers the standard of living of the entire country and soon we could be a third-world country.

I saw a video on YouTube the other day where a consulting company was telling its clients how to hire illegals legally. It has since been removed from YouTube.

The gist was when they advertise for a job the Dept. of Labor says they have to do certain things such as post an opening at the workplace and put in a newspaper etc. Since most newspapers are online they post to the print version and the online version, which takes care of two of the three requirements. They also make plain they publish in little-known newspapers where no regular Americans would think to look for an ad.

The objective is to not get American workers but to get a green card for a foreign or illegal worker. This was actually stated in the video. No wonder it was taken down by the user, which was the consulting company.

I may not be one who would bend over all day picking lettuce, but I’ll bet we have high school students who would do it for a summer job. I may not want to sling hamburgers at McDonald’s but I know we have high school students who will do it. I may not be able to maintain my yard but I know for a fact there are American companies that do it. I may not be able to do brick work but I know plenty of Americans know how and would do it if they could only get the job.

Yes, it costs a bit more because we pay our people more, but in the end it’s worth it.

I can’t think of many jobs an American will not do, except his price is higher. So we pay a little more for lettuce and our brick home.

I have seen the work of some of the illegals and it is good work. I couldn’t complain about the quality of the work, but it needs to be offered to our people first.

I am in the group of people who say we secure our borders first before we do anything else. Let the government prove they can do that and we’ll talk about the rest.

It’s been an evolving process for me but I think it’s the best solution.

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Japan has changed the name of Iwo Jima to the traditional name of Iwo To.

This is one of the most famous battles of World War II, and when we fought there we knew it as Iwo Jima. It will forever be Iwo Jima in the minds of Americans as long as someone doesn’t change the history books.

We fought the battle of Iwo Jima and not of Iwo To.

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If this actually takes place then one of the US benchmarks for progress in Iraq will have been met.

Iraq’s Kurdish leaders said last night they had struck an important deal with the central government in Baghdad over a law to divide up Iraq’s oil revenues, which is seen by the Bush administration as one of the benchmarks in attempts to foster national reconciliation.
Ashti Hawrami, the minister for natural resources in the Kurdistan regional government, told the Guardian the text had been finalised late last night after 48 hours of “tough bargaining” with Baghdad. The deal represented “a genuine revenue sharing agreement” that was transparent and would benefit all the people of Iraq and help pull the country together, he said.

Iraq’s oil revenue accounted for 93% of the federal budget last year. Iraq sells about 1.6m barrels a day.

Mr Hawrami said the law provided for the setting up of two “regulated and monitored” accounts into which external and internal revenues would be deposited. The external account would include items such as oil export earnings and foreign donor money, while the internal fund would consist largely of customs and taxes. The federal government in Baghdad would take what it needed, and the rest would be automatically distributed to the Kurdistan regional government, which would get 17%, and to Iraq’s governorates “according to their entitlement”. Revenues would be distributed monthly, he said.

Mr Hawrami said the system would better enable Iraqis to track how and where the oil funds were being spent. The Kurds, for example, have complained that remittances to their self-rule region have been being held back by up to six months in Baghdad. Iraq’s Sunni Arabs had also expressed concerns that they might miss out on their share.

The new deal came days after a visit to Iraq by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, during which he rebuked politicians for failing to reach consensus on sharing oil revenues. The US sees the deal as a benchmark of progress toward reconciliation.

A western diplomat in Baghdad said last night: “Fair-sharing of Iraq’s oil revenue is important to finding a sustainable political solution in Iraq. But on its own it will not halt the sectarianism.”

Let’s pray this is for real and a sign of progress in this upside down world we call Iraq.

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Here’s an example of what wing nuts on either side can accomplish.

Liberal activists who claim Fox News Channel is not a legitimate news source said that cooperation by several groups was key in preventing the network from hosting debates by Democratic presidential candidates.

Robert Greenwald, a producer/director who hosted a panel discussion Tuesday at the liberal Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C., called collaboration “the C word” — the element without which their “victory” would have been “totally, completely impossible.”

Greenwald’s earlier film “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” accused Fox News Channel of a right-wing bias. He began Tuesday’s discussion by showing a video posted at his FoxAttacks.com website.

The video begins with Christiane Brown, a radio host on KJFK — a local affiliate in the liberal Air America network — recalling the morning of Feb. 16, 2007: “I opened up my email, and I saw that the Nevada state Democratic Party was partnering with Fox News [in planning a debate], and … I could not believe it.”

Greenwald is then shown saying: “People immediately got upset about it, but the question was: Can we do anything about this? … Can we convince them that this is a mistake of serious proportion?”

The video shows Adam Green, civic communications director for the liberal group MoveOn.org, saying that his organization learned of the proposed debate from online bloggers. “We immediately issued a call to action” and started a petition drive for Nevadans to tell the state party not to allow FNC to host the debate.

On his website, Greenwald then posted video clips of what he calls “erroneous and slanted stories Fox ran” about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a candidate for his party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

“We decided to bring these campaigns together,” Green says on the video. MoveOn.org joined local and national bloggers in distributing Greenwald’s videos – an example of what Green called “mutually reinforcing activism.”

And then the candidates began to withdraw from the Fox sponsored debates.

This makes me wonder what these people would do as president if they’re so afraid of Fox News as candidates?

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According to Gallup’s Frank Newport in this USA Today blog piece public confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low of just 14%.

Just 14% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress.

This 14% Congressional confidence rating is the all-time low for this measure, which Gallup initiated in 1973. The previous low point for Congress was 18% at several points in the period of time 1991 to 1994.

Congress is now nestled at the bottom of the list of Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions rankings, along with HMOs. Just 15% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in HMOs. (By way of contrast, 69% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military, which tops the list. More on this at galluppoll.com on Thursday).

It’s worth remembering that Congress is basically nothing more than a mechanism for the representation of the people’s wishes. We all can’t go to Washington. So we elect men and women and send them off in our stead. It’s not an optimal situation, it seems to me, when such a low percentage of average Americans have confidence in this system.

Generally speaking, Americans have been skeptical about Congress for decades now. But the current 14% confidence rating for Congress is down from 19% last year and is the lowest in Gallup’s history, surpassing the 18% confidence in Congress measured in 1991, 1993 and 1994.

So much for the much-heralded mandate. Then again, we haven’t heard that word bandied about so much lately, have we? Maybe Congress had its own set of polls showing the same thing.

Maybe if they got to work on bills that could actually pass and be signed their approval rating would rise, but they seem hell-bent on spinning their wheels in the mud and dirtying anyone who gets in the way.

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