Friday, November 30, 2007

MSNBC Stoops Even Lower

Typical bias from the left… President Bush called a monkey at MSNBC.

I do not recall anyone on the right in a media position similar being so disrespectful to Clinton? Maybe I am wrong, but I have never see a “Cuck Flinton” sticker, but I have seen “Buck Fush” stickers and shirts quite often. The Left is generally rude, disrespectful, and often times I find myself leaving CAUTION, GRAPHIC LANGUAGE labels for liberal posts or videos I link at my site. Some even compartmentalize their sites… some are serious and respected; while others rude language is used. Almost in emulation of Bill’s compartmentalizing of his life, so to do some have “fantasy” lives under pseudo names.

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R.I.P. Evel Knievel


A Legend... Jumping the Pearling Gates now.

Christianity Today - Article, found via Reformed Chicks Blabbing (props)

On Palm Sunday, hundreds responded to Robert "Evel" Knievel's testimony by asking to be baptized on the spot at Crystal Cathedral. Speaking alongside the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, Knievel told the congregation in Orange County, California, how he had refused for 68 years to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. He believed in God, but he couldn't walk away from the gold and the gambling and the booze and the women.

"I don't know why I fought it so hard," he said. "I just did."

But Knievel knew people were praying for him, including his daughter's church, his ex-wife's church, and the hundreds of people who wrote letters urging him to believe. And then something indescribable happened during Daytona Bike Week this March.

"I don't know what in the world happened. I don't know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just—the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. … All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! … I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, 'Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.' … I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go."


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Joe Lieberman on the Iraq War


2000 Democratic Vice Presidential Choice

How far the party has swung to the Left sine 2000'! Those billions George Soros has pumped into the party persuaded many. This is a great speech and every person, Left and Right should take note of, listen close now you person's from the Left. Your party (the Democratic Party that is) would not put a pro-war Democrat like Lieberman in that position again. He is far left on almost every issue except the war in Iraq. I guess to be a "true" Democrat one must agree with the left on every issue!


PART I


PART II



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Bush and Our Sovereignty - Sea Treaty


Law of the Sea Treaty

SD-419


The $ Quote:

“If Dan Rather is for it, and Ronald Reagan was against it… it’s a no brainier, I am against it.” (in one of the videos to follow)

One should know this is one of many reasons why conservatives generally give Bush low ratings. It is because he is a big-government bureaucrat; otherwise know as a neo-con. I have pointed out in the past that the neo-cons have their ideology founded in the social ideals Theodore Roosevelt and Tony Blair, but have the foreign policy stance that John Quincy Adam’s and Margaret Thatcher held to. Which is why their fundamental ideas are likely to survive changes of control of the White House, Clinto was a neo-con just as much as Bush. Neocons are almost Keynesian in their economic outlook, much like liberals; and they are very left when it comes to the power and growth of government. So when I hear a Democrat or Liberal make the dichotomy between “conservative values” and George Bush’s growing of government, I simply note this person has no clue in regards to the political philosophy that drives neo-conservatives. And the “Sea Treaty” proves this disparity.

Jim DeMint on Fox

Jim DeMint, Glenn Beck

More Glenn Beck on L.O.S.T.

Phyllis Schlafly on the Law Of The Sea Treaty (L.O.S.T.)

Ed Meese (Heritage Foundation) on the Treaty

Jim DeMint/Foreign Relations Committee (Part I)

Jim DeMint/Foreign Relations Committee (Part II)


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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Too Funny!

These Puppies Aren't Too Sure...



These Puppies Are Sure...



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Retro - SPACE 1999

SPACE: 1999

And a commercial that would have run during the show

For all you old dudes out there!

1975 - SPACE 1999

1970 – Jolly Green Giant

1970 – First Ford Pinto Commercial

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Psychology & Christianity (Paul Vitz)

Herein is a quick video response as well as a longer lecture to some of the old clichés I have heard in many debates over the years. These "challenges" are often said without reflection and introspection into the validity of the argument at hand. Hopefully the reader will get spurned on to buy a book about this very topic… I recommend the links to the books below, as, they are conservative views on psychology which is the opposite to what students are taught in the colleges and universities.


A good short response to some “Informal Fallacies” by the new atheists:
Below is a snippet from a previous blog entitled Religions Positive Influence:
Social Scientists Agree:
Religious Belief Reduces Crime Summary of the First Panel Discussion Panelists for this important discussion included social scientists Dr. John DiIulio, professor of politics and urban affairs at Princeton University; David Larson, M.D., President of the National Institute for Healthcare Research; Dr. Byron Johnson, Director of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy at Vanderbilt University; and Gary Walker, President of Public/Private Ventures. The panel focused on new research, confirming the positive effects that religiosity has on turning around the lives of youth at risk.

Dr. Larson laid the foundation for the discussion by summarizing the findings of 400 studies on juvenile delinquency, conducted during the past two decades. He believes that although more research is needed, we can say without a doubt that religion makes a positive contribution.

His conclusion: “The better we study religion, the more we find it makes a difference.” Previewing his own impressive research, Dr. Johnson agreed. He has concluded that church attendance reduces delinquency among boys even when controlling for a number of other factors including age, family structure, family size, and welfare status. His findings held equally valid for young men of all races and ethnicities.

Gary Walker has spent 25 years designing, developing and evaluating many of the nation’s largest public and philanthropic initiatives for at-risk youth. His experience tells him that faith-based programs are vitally important for two reasons. First, government programs seldom have any lasting positive effect. While the government might be able to design [secular/non-God] programs that occupy time, these programs, in the long-term, rarely succeed in bringing about the behavioral changes needed to turn kids away from crime. Second, faith-based programs are rooted in building strong adult-youth relationships; and less concerned with training, schooling, and providing services, which don’t have the same direct impact on individual behavior. Successful mentoring, Walker added, requires a real commitment from the adults involved – and a willingness to be blunt. The message of effective mentors is simple. “You need to change your life, I’m here to help you do it, or you need to be put away, away from the community.” Government, and even secular philanthropic programs, can’t impart this kind of straight talk.
  • Sixth through twelfth graders who attend religious services once a month or more are half as likely to engage in at-risk behaviors such as substance abuse, sexual excess, truancy, vandalism, drunk driving and other trouble with police. Search Institute, "The Faith Factor," Source, Vol. 3, Feb. 1992, p.1.
  • Churchgoers are more likely to aid their neighbors in need than are non-attendees. George Barna, What Americans Believe, Regal Books, 1991, p. 226.
  • Three out of four Americans say that religious practice has strengthened family relationships. George Gallup, Jr. "Religion in America: Will the Vitality of Churches Be the Surprise of the Next Century," The Public Perspective, The Roper Center, Oct./Nov. 1995.
  • Church attendance lessens the probabilities of homicide and incarceration. Nadia M. Parson and James K. Mikawa: "Incarceration of African-American Men Raised in Black Christian Churches." The Journal of Psychology, Vol. 125, 1990, pp.163-173.
  • Religious practice lowers the rate of suicide. Joubert, Charles E., "Religious Nonaffiliation in Relation to Suicide, Murder, Rape and Illegitimacy," Psychological Reports 75:1 part 1 (1994): 10 Jon W. Hoelter: "Religiosity, Fear of Death and Suicide Acceptibility." Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, Vol. 9, 1979, pp.163-172.
  • The presence of active churches, synagogues… reduces violent crime in neighborhoods. John J. Dilulio, Jr., "Building Spiritual Capital: How Religious Congregations Cut Crime and Enhance Community Well-Being," RIAL Update, Spring 1996.
  • People with religious faith are less likely to be school drop-outs, single parents, divorced, drug or alcohol abusers. Ronald J. Sider and Heidi Roland, "Correcting the Welfare Tragedy," The Center for Public Justice, 1994.
  • Church involvement is the single most important factor in enabling inner-city black males to escape the destructive cycle of the ghetto. Richard B. Freeman and Harry J. Holzer, eds., The Black Youth Employment Crisis, University of Chicago Press, 1986, p.354.
  • Attending services at a church or other house of worship once a month or more makes a person more than twice as likely to stay married than a person who attends once a year or less. David B. Larson and Susan S. Larson, "Is Divorce Hazardous to Your Health?" Physician, June 1990. Improving Personal Well-Being
  • Regular church attendance lessens the possibility of cardiovascular diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema and arteriosclerosis. George W. Comstock amd Kay B. Patridge:* "Church attendance and health."* Journal of Chronic Disease, Vol. 25, 1972, pp. 665-672.
  • Regular church attendance significantly reduces the probablility of high blood pressure.* David B. Larson, H. G. Koenig, B. H. Kaplan, R. S. Greenberg, E. Logue and H. A. Tyroler:* " The Impact of religion on men's blood pressure."* Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 28, 1989, pp.265-278.* W.T. Maramot:* "Diet, Hypertension and Stroke." in* M. R. Turner (ed.) Nutrition and Health, Alan R. Liss, New York, 1982, p. 243.
  • People who attend services at least once a week are much less likely to have high blood levels of interlukin-6, an immune system protein associated with many age-related diseases.* Harold Koenig and Harvey Cohen, The International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine, October 1997.
  • Regular practice of religion lessens depression and enhances self esteem. *Peter L. Bensen and Barnard P. Spilka:* "God-Image as a function of self-esteem and locus of control" in H. N. Maloney (ed.) Current Perspectives in the Psychology of Religion, Eedermans, Grand Rapids, 1977, pp. 209-224.* Carl Jung: "Psychotherapies on the Clergy" in Collected Works Vol. 2, 1969, pp.327-347.
  • Church attendance is a primary factor in preventing substance abuse and repairing damage caused by substance abuse.* Edward M. Adalf and Reginald G. Smart:* "Drug Use and Religious Affiliation, Feelings and Behavior." * British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 80, 1985, pp.163-171.* Jerald G. Bachman, Lloyd D. Johnson, and Patrick M. O'Malley:* "Explaining* the Recent Decline in Cocaine Use Among Young Adults:* Further Evidence That Perceived Risks and Disapproval Lead to Reduced Drug Use."* Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 31,* 1990, pp. 173-184.* Deborah Hasin, Jean Endicott, * and Collins Lewis:* "Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Patients With Affective Syndromes."* Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 26, 1985, pp. 283-295. * The findings of this NIMH-supported study were repilcated in the Bachmen et. al. study above.
Now let’s look at a more supported thesis, one from a study of history and logic. I would recommend this professor’s books highly… which will be listed at the end of these two audio lectures:
PART I
PART II
This lecture is by Paul C. Vitz (website), he is the author of many well written epitomes (Amazon.com), of which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed (of which are pictured throughout this post). ALSO!, the image below links directly to a Paul Vitz book entitled…





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Links from Christocentric.com (X-Mas + More)

Guest Writers on Christocentric.com
  • Another Viewpoint - Rev. Robert Ash, co-pastor and youth minister of Euphrates Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland, California
  • Comments on Africa and Kwanzaa - James Dearmore, Missionary from Rodgers Baptist Church - Garland, TX
  • Kwanzaa is for Pagans - La Shawn Barber is a freelance writer, blogger, and blog consultant based in Washington, D.C.

More Anti-Kwanzaa Websites and Articles

Kwanzaa Information Websites

Christmas from a Christian Point of View

About Culture (Christian and Non-Christian)

Bible Study Topics

Christian Organizations

  • ChristianAnswers.Net - Various respected Christian ministries join together to tackle tough questions about life and the Christian faith.

  • The Believer's Web - Website full of text files from various Christian organizations and writers.

  • Gospel Communications Network - An organization dedicated to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Internet.

  • Christian Research Institute - Hank Hanegraaff: the "Bible Answer Man"

  • Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry - CARM is a well documented and easy to use website on Christianity, cults, Doctrine, the Bible, New Age, and much more by Matthew J. Slick.

  • Answers in Action - A ministry directed by Bob and Gretchen Passantino that is committed to helping individuals find the truth and grow in Christian commitment and activism.

  • Stand to Reason -Greg Koukl - "Building Christian Thinkers for the Public Defense of the Faith"

  • Gospel Outreach Ministries Online - Apologetics and much more by Rolaant L. McKenzie

  • Reasoning from the Scriptures - A discipleship ministry founded by Ron Rhodes

  • Thinkman's Scripture Thoughts - An excellent site by a Christian "Thinker" William Kilgore

  • The Christian Arsenal - A website dedicated to the study of the Word of God and the defense of the Christian Faith.

  • Hope for Today - a non-profit corporation in the state of California designed to spread the Bible teaching ministry of David Hocking through the avenues of radio, tapes, and publications.

  • Grace to You - featuring the preaching, writing, and Bible-teaching ministries of Dr. John MacArthur.

  • The Rock Church San Diego - online video and audio messages with outlines from Pastor Miles McPherson

  • EX Ministries - controversial ministry for the youth that exposes the ungodly culture of Hip Hop and Rock Music by G. Craige Lewis

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Kwanzaa - Racism in Disguise

Kwanzaa ~ Not Just another Holiday!

A Letter from a Concerned Parent (Fifth-Grade/2002 ~ updated 11-11-05)

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Who Created Kwanzaa?

Kwanzaa was invented by Ron Everett (also known as Maulana Karenga) in 1966 as a means to foster and help the Black Nationalist movement in their goal to segregate and separate the races. Ron Karenga, thus, views people of Jewish decent, much like the Nation of Islam, as “devils,” to be stamped out like weeds. His views towards whites are very similar ~ racist, in-other-words. Let’s look at some of this history.

Karenga founded and led the United Slaves (US), a Black Nationalist organization, which got into gun battles with the Black Panthers on occasion with people murdered as a result.

The biggest dispute between the United Slaves and the Panthers was for the leadership of the new African Studies Department at UCLA, with each group backing a different candidate. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter verbally attacked Karenga at the meeting, which infuriated Karenga’s followers. After the meeting ended, two United Slaves members, George and Larry Stiner, reportedly confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway, shooting and killing them[1]

In 1970, Karenga and two of his followers were arrested by authorities for the torture of two of his female followers, Debra Jones and Gail Davis. Karenga did time in prison for disrobing these two women at gunpoint and having them beaten severely. Karenga told them that “Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what we know,” whereupon he forced a hot soldering iron into the mouth of one while the other had a toe squeezed in a vice.

The Los Angeles Times described the events: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electric cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes at gunpoint. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”


Karenga was sentenced to one-to-ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. At his trial, the question arose as to Karenga’s sanity. The psychiatrist’s report stated: “This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.” The psychiatrist reportedly observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons, and he believed he’d been attacked by dive-bombers.


Eight years later, California State University Long Beach named Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. By this time, Karenga had “repented” of his black nationalism and had become just a harmless garden variety Marxist. This must be our esteemed university system’s idea of repentance!


How terrifying for these two women! According to the July 27, 1971 Los Angeles Times, a psychological profile of Karenga described him “as a danger to society who is in need of prolonged custodial treatment in prison.” The profile noted that Karenga, while legally sane, was “confused and not in contact with reality.”


The “seven principles” of Kwanzaa that Karenga created as part of the Nguzo Saba are little more than Marxism transposed into afrocentric key.[2] Therefore, the Kwanzaa celebration, unlike – for instance – the Martin Luther King holiday, celebrates separatism and Black Nationalism. It would be the same as the school teaching and celebrating a holiday created by the Ku Klux Klan, or an offshoot thereof. (I would just as vehemently speak out against this as well, for when the school sets its seal of approval on a celebration, you teach all its goals and aims ~ whether religious or political.)


Created Equal

My point is that I teach my children that all men are created equal and that all men are equal in the eyes of God. This is what Christmas is all about! Jesus came to save the world (John 3:16-17), God’s Word has always stated that He has “made of one blood [i.e. from one man, Adam] all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Karenga created Kwanzaa to shun the world and display racism as their main goal for the holiday season, in place of Christmas. In fact, when asked why he designed Kwanzaa to take place around Christmas, Karenga explained, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” Great values!


Again, trying to tie in African culture and beliefs with this holiday celebration is a stretch, to say the least. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by a revolutionary Marxist and racist man – Karenga – who took here and there from the African culture as well as the Menorah from Judaism[3], and created a new celebration with socialist/Marxist overtones

I have long-standing family friends who are native-born Africans (Kenyans), who have given their entire life to the mission field. They vehemently oppose this holiday because it creates subversion between the races when love is needed most. Neither do they find a connection with it and African culture.


Origins vs. Current Beliefs

Do the millions of black Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa think of it as the ritualization of socialism/Marxism? Doubtful. Do they object to the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa symbols and products? Probably not. Do they know anything about Karenga and his past? It doesn't seem so. When Karenga spoke at the Million-Man March, he went virtually unnoticed. However, the holiday's origins in a terrible time and with a terrible person are certainly relevant to its legitimacy.


Neutrality?

I do not mind if the school teaches my son true history, which includes the history of Africa, as well as other Continents. However, having said this, I do not pay my hard earned tax dollars for the school to meet some need of trying to teach and include all the cultural holidays of the world, which apparently must include racist holidays founded right here in California’s radical [recent] past. That is not the schools job; it is mine, if I so choose!

This is why this subject is so “political,” you have in a sense undermined my family’s values and put it upon yourselves to teach my son “multi-culturalism” in a “politically-correct

” fashion. This, then, requires the school to make value judgments on how to teach this to my child. Which is why I pointed out that by doing so, you have strayed from being neutral to taking a position on how to present other peoples cultural mores (which now includes racism as mainstream) to my child (in rejection of America’s cultural mores… which is Christmas and Hanukah, i.e., Judeo-Christian).


Back to the Original Premise!

So again, I restate my three points in the original letter[4] on why I asked to have my son join either the Christmas table or Hanukah table in class; in contradistinction to Kwanzaa or the Chinese New Year:


  1. It [Kwanzaa] promotes and supports ethnic separation and segregation. For instance, Hallmark Cards and Giant Foods have a policy of any items related to Kwanzaa be produced and sold only by blacks (William A. Henry III, “The Politics of Separation,” Time Magazine [fall 1993]: 75). This was also the intent of the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Karenga, separation, not healing. Christmas promotes the latter.
  2. It is not practiced equally with the traditional (Judeo-Christian) practices. For example: one public schools students and parents were asked to come in and share with the class about Kwanzaa, and other religious holiday practices of their Buddhist faith and Muslim faith as well as the traditions and practices of Hanukkah. When one parent attempted to share the true meaning Christmas, using a Nativity scene as a visual aid, the presentation was prohibited. (Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil: Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture, p. 57)
  3. It takes a political and moral stance. This type of multi-cultural “politically-correct” inclusive teaching takes a moral and political stance that requires value judgments to be made that are at variance with my (and many others) particular political and moral stance on afro-centric history and teaching… as well as putting one set of moral pre-suppositions (Marxism, racism, segregation) above others. Thus, taking a non-neutral position.

[1] Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (a black-American) is the Founder and President of BOND (the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, www.bondinfo.org). He is also the author of the book SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America. For more information, please e-mail bond@bondinfo.org.

[3] Karenga believes[ieved] that the black race are the real Jewish peoples, much like Christian Identity – the religious movement of the KKK – believes the white race to be the true Jewish peoples. The bottom line is this: both views are founded in racist ideology!

[4] Carlotta Morrow, the main author I quoted from heavily in my first letter to the school, (a black-American woman) began her research on Kwanzaa in the early 1980's after her sister, who was a member of Dr. Karenga's black activist group called the United Slaves (US) Organization, denounced her faith in Christ, claiming that Christianity was a white man's religion.

Determined to find out the teachings that persuaded her sister's complete change in faith, she went with her sister to "the Center" to hear what was being taught. She was deeply disturbed at the "us" against the "white man" attitude that seeped through the meetings, and especially at the negativity directed toward the Christian and Jewish religions.

Seeing the spiritual and racial harm being subtly encouraged, Carlotta began her trek in learning, researching and exposing the real truth and spiritual seductiveness of the principles behind Kwanzaa.

She has had articles on Kwanzaa appear in the Southern California Christian Times, the Twin City Christian Magazine of Minnesota, Tout Timoun Nou Yo also of Minnesota, (a quarterly for families with children adopted from Haiti) and has been a guest on radio talk shows in the Southern California area which included an on-air discussion with Dr. Karenga on the Mason Weaver Show of KPRZ in San Diego, where the author resides.


Cover Letter

This was a “clarification letter” written to my son’s fifth-grade teacher. The in-class activity was to break the kids up into groups and learn about the various holidays, so I politely asked that my son sit in on the Hanukah or Christmas table, as he had been assigned to the Kwanzaa table. I gave some reasoning behind this decision – as I often do about most decisions I make (my wife would beg to differ).

The reason I felt it necessary to clarify the original letter was because the teacher gave the letter over to the principle, and I heard through the grape-vine that the principle called the letter, ergo me, racist. While I sympathized with the principle a bit… because, well, I “look” like a racist (shaved head and all, see pic below)… I just couldn’t let this just pass by. I am sure that this sixties – Berkley attending – gentleman had gotten away with such a card before, he unfortunately hadn’t researched his statement in my particular case enough.

First of all, while I look like a racist, I in fact have a wonderful black grandmother. Not only do I have a black grandmother, I also grew up in Detroit, where I was the only white kid at the public school and in my neighbor hood. I didn’t just “have a black friend,” I, in fact, didn’t have any white friends whatsoever… they were all black ~ they (my friends) had “a white friend.”

Not only did this principle not know my history, he apparently didn’t realize that I quoted mainly from either black authors as well as from the L. A. Times. In fact, after having a sit down meeting with my son’s fifth-grade principle, I realized that he had not even read the original paper, he just assumed that any person who spoke out against Kwanzaa (whether rationally or illogically) was a bigot.

Unfortunately this old-school “sweeping-under-the-carpet” argument that I’m sure guided this gentlemen through many a brushing off of a parent just didn’t work in this case.

I made sure he read this second letter.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Opinions verses Truth

What is a True Statement

Greg Koukl on “emoting.” This is from his radio show.


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Mitt 1 Giuliani 0

This is politics at its best! Giuliani just fell in points because of one answer. Townhall.com called the debate for Huchabee and then Fred. I think Giuliani will fall back a bit and Huckabee is tightening up his gains. Great! Mind you, Huck has his issues, but every candidate does… left and right.

Enjoy a plane going down in flames!

Wayne Grudem calls for Evangelicals to rethink Mitt’s faith. Wayne is well known in Evangelical circles, many seminaries use his Systematic Theology as a textbook. My seminary does. He makes sense in this article, and Mitt showed why.

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Black Myths

I found this amazing, and this type of fantasy continues to hold the black community down, keeping them feeling like they are victims and cannot succeed in life and that they need some entity (government or black leaders, etc) to come in and guide them.





I have to post some sane thinking in this debate by Larry Elder.

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Prepare Yourselves

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Leonard Peltier - Innocent?

Over the years of talking to people about almost everything, I have come to note that very often people do not look into their own claims they make. Many times these claims that remain unfounded shape and guide how they think about the world around them. Talking with one such gal has led to many interesting research topics in a very short time. Leonard Peltier came up. Mind you, I am somewhat familiar with this case, but only through popular movies and growing up in the hippie era of the 70’s. At any rate, outside of Jack Cashill’s book, Hoodwinked: How Intellectual hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture. In fact, the entire portion from his book can be found in an article entitled, “Don’t Free Leonard Peltier,” of which I will quote a portion from later.

I was told he is completely innocent by this person… is this true though? The evidence says no. Let us start this good time with some Wikipedia:

Wikipedia – News from Indian Country

More recently, News From Indian Country has broken stories related to the investigation of murders during the 1970s at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, including those of American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash, whose maiden and legal name at the time of her death was Annie Mae Pictou, FBI Special Agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack Coler, and Black civil rights worker Perry Ray Robinson. In 2002, The Native American Journalists Association Board of Directors recognized DeMain for reporting on imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier and the murder of Pictou-Aquash. DeMain was awarded the Wassaja Award, which salutes courage shown by journalists covering Indian country.

DeMain was also honored with the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism by the University of Oregon, for News From Indian Country Editorials indicating a withdraw of his previous support of clemency for Leonard Peltier, soon after a former AIM member, Ka-Mook Nichols admitted to DeMain that she had witnessed Peltier bragging about shooting the FBI agents. DeMain and News From Indian Country were sued by Peltier in an attempt to expose Nichols (Used in 2002 as one of three confidential sources of information to NFIC) prior to her public testimony during the trial of Arlo Looking Cloud in 2004. The lawsuit against News From Indian Country was dropped shortly after Looking Cloud's trial.

… Columnists for NFIC range from Mohawk author Doug George-Kanentiio from Akwesasne, New York to the award winning Canadian writer, Richard Wagamese, Ojibwe now residing in Kamloops, British Columbia.

One major supporter, upon further investigation finally concluded that there was no way someone else shot and killed these two FBI agents other than Peltier and his accomplice. Let’s get a little history on this case. What exactly went down during this killing? (Leonard Peltier to the right)

On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents in separate cars, Jack Coler and Ron Williams, were investigating a pair of politically motivated crimes on the reservation, one a murder. They were following at a distance a vehicle they thought was owned by a suspect named Jimmy Eagle, when it pulled off a lonely country road and stopped.

“They're getting out of the vehicle,” FBI agent Williams cautioned over the radio. A moment later, Williams's voice became urgent: “It looks like these guys are going to shoot at us!” And they did just that. The two FBI cars took some 125 hits from high-powered rifles at a distance of roughly 250 yards. The agents, armed only with service revolvers, fired five futile shots in return. Both were quickly hit and wounded.

As they lay helpless behind their cars, one or more of the gunmen approached. In a vain attempt to forestall the inevitable, agent Williams raised his hand to the barrel of an AR-15 now less than two feet from his face.

Indifferent to his plea, the gunman let it rip. The shot blew off Williams’s fingers before lodging in his face, killing him instantly. The gunman then put the semiconscious Coler out of his misery with shots to the head and throat and fled the scene. Nearly two years later, in March 1977, Peltier was convicted of the double homicide in a federal court in Fargo, North Dakota.

(Cashill)

How could these two cover up the fact that they killed two people, fabricate a story. The only problem was that this fabrication came many years later and it involved a red pickup truck that was never mentioned in any court proceedings prior top this new information. Peltier had an author in his corner Peter Matthiessen who wrote the story about the Peltier case entitled In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. Matthiessen has changed directly refuted some of his own arguments in this book in regards to later revelations and positions he has taken, as we will see herein with a 60-Minutes special that was a “Free Peltier” campaign, with no real journalistic inquiry:

In prison, Peltier wrote his obligatory memoirs, which were published in 1999 by St. Martin’s Press as Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance. The book quickly found its way into the multicultural curricula on campuses across America.

The newly talented Peltier took up painting as well, his canvasses selling for as much as five thousand dollars apiece to Hollywood worthies like Peter Coyote, Jane Fonda, Val Kilmer, and Oliver Stone. Stone, not surprisingly, had optioned film rights to the Matthiessen book.

Stone, in fact, would play an important walk-on role as the case morphed from tragedy to burlesque with the emergence of a certain “Mr. X” As Matthiessen tells it, he was meeting in February 1990 with Peltier’s cousin Bob Robideau when the hooded and “faceless” Mr. X slipped quietly into the room. Disturbed by Peltier’s thirteen needless years in prison, Mr. X had volunteered to tell his story.

According to Mr. X, he and a nameless partner were delivering a red pickup truck full of dynamite to Peltier on that fateful June day in 1975 when they came across the two FBI agents. The agents allegedly fired at them, and Mr. X fired a shot over their heads to warn them off, but they persisted.

When the other Indians from Peltier’s tent city weighed in with covering fire, Mr. X drove his pickup behind the camp to unload the explosives. As the gunfire died down, Mr. X drove back to the seriously wounded agents. In the retelling, both were alert and alive.

One allegedly tried to fire his revolver, and Mr. X blew them both away, shooting literally from the hip. “It was self-defense then,” Matthiessen interjects. “There was no element of anger?” “I'm absolutely sure it was self-defense,” Mr. X replies.

In August of 1990, Matthiessen brought in Stone to shoot a second interview. Matthiesen provided a tape of that interview to Robert Redford for his documentary and to 60 Minutes, which broadcast it in 1991.

“The death of those agents was brought about by their wrongful behavior, not mine,” Mr. X told the twenty-six million people watching the 60 Minutes segment. “I did not choose to take their lives. I only chose to save my own.”

60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft all but vouched for the man’s authenticity. “The man behind the mask seems intimate with every detail of the shoot-out,” he told his viewers. What he did not tell them is that he could have gotten those details reading the Matthiessen book. Nor did he tell them that 60 Minutes had not shot the videotape they had just seen.

The 60 Minutes segment likely represented the high water mark of the “Free Peltier” campaign. It energized a wide segment of the public, but it also introduced new facts that were capable of being disputed. Scott Anderson, for one, pointed out the “patent absurdity” of the story.

Mr. X’s shoot-from-the-hip scenario failed to account for the severed fingers of agent Williams. Nor did the authorities find any of the boxes of dynamite that Mr. X allegedly unloaded. Nor did any of the three accused ever mention a red pickup at any of their trials.

By 1995, one of the three, Dino Butler, had grown so weary of the lethal internecine warfare among AIM members that he came forward with the truth. “Well, there is no Mr. X,” he admitted to a reporter from NFIC. “Those are all lies.” He traced the origin of the Mr. X story to an AIM meeting that he had attended in California, where the idea was floated and rejected.

Somehow, he claimed, the Mr. X scenario made its way to Stone and Matthiessen. “I lost a lot of respect for Peter Matthiessen as a writer and as a person I could trust,” he admitted, “because he didn't verify this, and it put me and my family in jeopardy. He never made any effort to contact me and ask if this was true.”

Scott Anderson had also begun to question Matthiessen’s judgment and integrity. In a January 1992 Esquire article, Matthiessen made a number of seeming revisions to the story. Most glaringly, he transposed the site of the killings from a humble ranch in Oglala to the historically symbolic Wounded Knee twenty miles away. Anderson was stupified.

“The Peltier story,” he concludes, “has so entered the realm of myth that apparently its architects no longer feel the need to adhere to the most rudimentary of facts.”

(Cashill)

(Matthiessen to the left) As the story of what happened that day got more convoluted and others came forward to testify that these were fabrications, one long time supporter also came out and publicly withdrew his belief that Peltier was innocent:

“After many years of supporting and advocating clemency for Leonard Peltier,” he writes, “the News From Indian Country editorial staff no longer believes Leonard Peltier is innocent of shooting the agents at close range as he has so often proclaimed.”

DeMain had invested twenty-seven years in the case. He had read every document there was to read and interviewed every witness there was to interview. He acknowledged that he and his colleagues would have come to this damning conclusion sooner were it not for the “lies, deceptions, smoke and mirrors. Part of a charade.”

That charade had begun with the nearly uncritical media acceptance of the American Indian Movement and continued with the celebrated martyrdom of Peltier. Tim Giago, an Oglala Sioux from Pine Ridge and the publisher of Indian Country Today, blames the “eastern liberal press” for ginning up the AIM mania.

(Cashill)

Why would someone believe so adamantly that this person is innocent? Two words, Higher-Education. Much like Rigoberta Menchu and other “Liberal Myths,” many young people yearn to have a cause and so they latch onto myths passed around their sub-culture. This “group-think” (for lack of a better concept) rarely gets tested outside the group itself. Until me, that is.

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