Archive for October 11th, 2007
Using Halo 3 to teach about Jesus
October 11th, 2007
One of my heroes in the faith, Greg Stier (founder of Dare 2 Share) was recently on the Erica Hill show on CNN and is supposed to be on the Mike and Juliet Show on Fox sometime today. He’s talking about using the new video game Halo 3 as a springboard to talk about Jesus. It stems from an article written by D2S associate Lane Palmer.
Says Greg:
My take? While we are not endorsing a violent videogame like Halo 3 we are endorsing the conversation that we should be having with our teenagers that these kinds of subjects usually bring up (good verses evil, right verses wrong, the invading alien force and the overwhelming victory that teenagers can have through Jesus!) It’s too easy to demonize culture. What we need to do is to demonize demons and use the topic of culture to win our teenagers back to Jesus.
Some Bible-believing Christians think this is a terrible idea, but I don’t, considering that I am immersed in youth ministry. I’ll put up another post later about this explaining why, and talk about Lane’s article.
(cross posted at Crisis Christianity)
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Hillary Clinton: Perpetual Victim
October 11th, 2007
Does this woman ever admit to causing some of her own problems?
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed back against criticism from fellow Democrats that she is too polarizing to unite the country as president, arguing that the political battles she has been through make her uniquely equipped to bring the nation together and build a centrist governing coalition.
In an interview aboard her campaign bus, Clinton (N.Y.) acknowledged that she has contributed to the divisive politics of the past decade but said she has learned from those experiences. She said that if she becomes president, she will attempt to assemble a broad, centrist coalition on such key issues as health care, energy independence and national security.
The former first lady called President Bush’s political and governing strategy of concentrating primarily on his party’s base for support “a tragedy” for the country’s politics.
“I actually think that in a way, the fact that I’ve been through so much incoming fire all these years is an advantage,” she said, adding: “It’s been my observation that when you’re attacked continually in American politics, you either give up or get disoriented or you either lose or leave — or you persevere and show your resilience.”
Who was it who went on the Today Show and told Matt Lauer there was a “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”?
Who was it who stood beside her husband the day he was impeached and listened as he called the atmosphere in politics, “the politics of personal destruction” while being the chief personal destroyer in town?
A lot of the incoming fire she speaks about has come from shooting herself.
I don’t play victim to anyone and own up to my mistakes. I can’t stand for someone to constantly find excuses for why something happened in their life and not take personal responsibility for his or her own actions.
If she should be elected president we’ll have to send her the world’s smallest violin because you can be sure if she wants to run with the big boys she’d better act like one of them.
That Old Deceptive Headline
October 11th, 2007
What a headline!
Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq
When I saw it at Drudge it peaked my interest immediately. I found it incomprehensible that the Marine Corp would press to leave Iraq without completing their mission.
Okay, the first paragraph supplies a bit of an explanation:
The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.
Contingency plans and shifting of personnel take place constantly in the US military. Relocating troops is a bit different than leaving the impression in a headline that the Marine Corp wants to bail out of Iraq.
Reading further, I discovered the Corp has yet to even put a solid plan on the table:
Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not spoken publicly about the Marine concept, and aides to both officials said no formal proposal had been presented by the Marines.[Emphasis added] But the idea has been the focus of intense discussions between senior Marine Corps officers and other officials within the Defense Department.
There are many what-ifs in this article. Frankly, I believe our enemies in Afghanistan would love to know if the Marines are headed their way. They might just want to find even deeper caves to hide in. But until the time when the SecDef or Admiral Mullen make a shift public, it is best kept amongst those who know what is best for the US military, war strategy and our safety and security.
Will the Ninth Circuit Court Uphold this Decision?
October 11th, 2007
I have just about given up on anything substantial being accomplished on illegal immigration in this country.
While I understand that many businesses depend on folks who are not American citizens to carry their workload, if we do not begin somewhere, and not just by building a fence, how will we ever arrest this ever growing problem?
A federal judge barred the Bush administration yesterday from launching a planned crackdown on U.S. companies that employ illegal immigrants, warning of its potentially “staggering” impact on law-abiding workers and companies.
In a firm rebuke of the White House, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction against the president’s plan to press employers to fire as many as 8.7 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers, starting this fall.
President Bush made the effort the centerpiece of a re-energized enforcement drive against illegal immigration in August after the Senate rejected his proposal to overhaul immigration laws. But the court ruling — sought by major American labor, business and farm organizations — highlighted the chasm that the issue has opened between the Republican Party and its traditional business allies.
The case also called attention to the gulf between Washington rhetoric about the need to curtail illegal immigration and the economic reality that many U.S. employers rely on illegal labor, as well as to the government’s inability for nearly three decades to develop adequate tools for identifying undocumented workers.
One of the questions I have in this case, is if these indivividuals are fired, where do they go. If we simply allow them back into the system and do not deport them, will we as taxpayers be footing the bill for more illegals than we already do?
There are no simple answers to illegal immigration but it appears that no matter when anyone, Congress, the President, Secretary of DHS, or citizens attempt to take the lead, ideas are squashed at their inception either by the courts or lawmakers themselves.
Let’s take a quick look at the judge who rendered this decision:
On Aug. 31, U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney issued a temporary restraining order pending an Oct. 1 hearing before Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and is the sister of Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.
If this is appealed to the USSC, I wonder what their view will be of the entire case. According to the article, we will have a lengthy wait to find out.
HT: Macsmind
Gay Couple Want Divorce
October 11th, 2007
A lesbian couple “married” in Massachusetts, the only state to allow such “marriages” has decided married life isn’t for them and they want a divorce.
They have a big problem though. They live in the neighboring small state of Rhode Island and want that state to grant them a divorce. Otherwise one will have to move to Massachusetts and set up residence to get a divorce.
Since Rhode Island doesn’t recognize marriages of people of the same gender, why would they agree to let them divorce? As far as Rhode Island and forty-eight other states are concerned they are two single women living together.
Is another state, say Connecticut, going to get them for bigamy if they “marry” someone else?
What a slippery slope this stupid law has become.
Carter: “Cheney is a Disaster”
October 11th, 2007
It’s no secret I think Jimmy Carter is probably the worst president in history, but certainly in my lifetime.
I admire the humanitarian work he has done with Habitat for Humanity, but I deeply resent his getting in the way of our foreign policy some 27 years after he was soundly kicked out of office.
Now he is saying Vice President Cheney is a disaster for the U.S.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a “disaster” for the country and a “militant” who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.
Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.
“He’s a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world,” Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.
“You know he’s been a disaster for our country,” Carter said. “I think he’s been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he’s prevailed.”
Coming from him, if I were Dick Cheney I would take that as a compliment.
Will someone please point out to me where in the Constitution it states a president or vice president must have served in the military in order to hold office?
Did Bill Clinton serve? No, in fact, he wrote a letter to his supposed National Guard officer telling him he “loathed the military.” This after getting a deferment so he could study at Oxford.
Many people were defered for having families. If my husband and I had been married a year earlier and had a child he wouldn’t have had to serve, but the law was changed by then and he signed up to join the Army.
Wasn’t it Jimmy Carter who gave amnesty to all the draft-dodgers in the Viet Nam era who ran away to Canada?
Each time Carter speaks he shows himself to be a petty man who can’t get over the fact he is not held in high esteem by history.
Canada’s Highly Praised Health Care System Strained
October 11th, 2007
It seems there is a baby boom in British Columbia. So much so that the nationalized health care system can’t handle the load.
Mothers in British Columbia are having a baby boom, but it’s the United States that has to deliver, and that has some proud Canadians blasting their highly touted government healthcare system.
“I’m a born-bred Canadian, as well as my daughter and son, and I’m ashamed,” Jill Irvine told FOX News. Irvine’s daughter, Carri Ash, is one of at least 40 mothers or their babies who’ve been airlifted from British Columbia to the U.S. this year because Canadian hospitals didn’t have room for the preemies in their neonatal units.
“It’s a big number and bigger than the previous capacity of the system to deal with it,” said Adrian Dix, a British Columbia legislator, told FOXNews.com. “So when that happens, you can’t have a waiting list for a mother having the baby. She just has the baby.”
The mothers have been flown to hospitals in Seattle, Everett, Wash., and Spokane, Wash., to receive treatment, as well as hospitals in the neighboring province of Alberta, Dix said. Three mothers were airlifted in the first weekend of October alone, including Carri Ash.
The cost to Canada is about $1,000 per birth.
Question: If the babies are born in the US doesn’t that make them US citizens?
It makes me think of what Rudy Giuliani said in Tuesday’s debate about socialized medicine of the sort Hillary and the Democrats would want us to have: “If we have socialized medicine where will Canadians go for health care?” [Paraphrased]
What if you need surgery for your heart or for cancer treatment in countries such as Canada? You wait your turn in line unless you have the means to come to the States and get treatment.
Michael Moore touts the Canadian health system in his film “Sicko”. Maybe he should try it sometime and then tell us how good it is.
This is one of the important reasons to keep the Democrats out of the White House and with no more than a slim majority at the worst in Congress. Otherwise they’ll be sending our mothers to Mexico to have their babies.
The Patient Survived But Has a Terrible Headache
October 11th, 2007
An Italian man on vacation in Australia decided, for some reason, to drink anti-freeze or at least something with the same lethal ingredients.
He was taken to the hospital, unconscious, and doctors started him on an IV drip of pharmaceutical grade alcohol, the anti-dote for this type of poison.
The problem is the alcohol soon ran out and the doctors had to be creative in treating the patient.
They sent out for a case of vodka and gave the man the equivalent of three standard drinks an hour IV for three days in the ICU.
Word is the patient survived, but he probably still has a big hangover. I wonder if he joined AA? That’s a lot of vodka over three days.
