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PITTSBURGH – The Devils will be facing a Penguins team that is looking for its first home victory of the season when the two Atlantic Division clubs meet at 1 p.m. tomorrow at the Consol Energy Center.
The Pens, coming off a big victory over the Rangers at the Garden, are 0-2-0 at home this season.
"We need to make this a tough place to come into. We haven't played very well here yet," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said today. "We're going to get a chance against a divisional foe to do that at one o'clock tomorrow."
Sidney Crosby said a home win would be huge.
"It would be nice. We want to make sure we're playing well here and make it tough on teams," Crosby said. "Not just the environment but the way we play."
The environment of the new building has sometimes been in question compared to the now-demolished Igloo.
"When we opened the Consol Energy Center and we didn't do well the first couple of games at home, there were people begging to go back across the street and play at a place that wasn't as nice and was a little tougher place to play," Bylsma recalled.
"We've won a lot of hockey games after that. We've had a very good home record. We haven't played well yet here (this season). We're going to win and we intend to win a lot of home games."
Former Devils defenseman Paul Martin knows what to expect.
"Since I've been there (the Devils) have changed," Martin said. "It was always a defensive system there-- depending on who was coach—with Jacques Lemaire it was the trap and packing it in. Now they're playing a little more simple. The D are coming down and pressuring.
"For us it's a matter of getting pucks in deep. Obviously their goaltending is great. We have to keep it away from Marty (Brodeur) so he can't play it. Get pucks to the net with traffic."
Martin said of Brodeur's ability to play the puck: "That's what sets him apart. He's been a great goaltender at stopping the puck. As far as playing it, there's not many in his category. He takes the pressure off the D."
The pressure will clearly be on the Penguins to win at home, where they have been outscored, 9-3.
"We're still finding exactly what our best game looks like and what we need to play like," Bylsma said.
He pointed out that the Pens scored a lot of goals, but also gave up a lot last season and were "not necessarily a good team in the playoffs."
"We're a long ways from developing where we need to be as a team to be at our best," Bylsma said. "It's developing."
The Devils are 1-0-2 on the road this season.
Rich Chere: firstname.lastname@example.com; twitter.com/Ledger_NJDevils


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Readers show off coupon coups
My readers enjoy sharing their couponing and money-saving tips, so here's a roundup of ideas for saving with coupons straight from my inbox to you.
Dear Jill: Ever hear of "throwaway" coupons? I get coupons in the mail from area restaurants, etc. I live in an apartment complex. Everyone else just throws away these coupons in the trash can in the mailroom. So, I retrieve the coupons and always get up to 50 percent off meals. -- Glen
Dear Jill: I have a post office box for mail, and on Wednesdays there is a local newspaper that has small coupon inserts in it. I make sure to go get the mail that day because everyone else throws the coupon insert into the recycle bin. I pick out whatever I need and get free coupons. -- Lauren
Dear Jill: If you get your hair cut at a chain that takes coupons, see if they take competitor coupons. I get coupons all the time in those coupon packs in the mail for local businesses. I keep all the haircut coupons and whichever one is the best value, that's the one I take to get my haircut. My salon takes coupons from anyone and it's a great way to save. -- Patty
Dear Jill: If you have a phone that receives texts, it is worth signing up for offers from stores you like. I get $10-off-$25 text coupons from a major department store pretty regularly and they are usually better coupons than I get in e-mail or in the postal mail. I also subscribe to text coupons for my favorite hair salon and they send out $10-off-$40 coupons for styling and other treatments. They don't offer coupons any other way. -- Emma
Dear Jill: Here's an online shopping tip that I learned when I was going to send a cheesecake to someone as a gift. I put the cheesecake in my shopping cart and then decided to think about it until the next day. Well, the next day, I got a coupon code in my e-mail reminding me about the cheesecake in my shopping cart. It gave me 25 percent off if I placed the order in the next three days. So I did, and then it cost much less than I planned to pay.
I have read about abandoning your shopping cart for a day or two and in many cases, it works to get you a better deal if you don't need to order something right away. -- Devin
JILL CATALDO, a coupon workshop instructor, writer and mother of three, never passes up a good deal. Find her column on this page on Sundays. Go to www.super-couponing.com.


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Playhouse hosts "Sister Robert Anne's Cabaret Class" | Art & about
The WHIDBEY PLAYHOUSE is hosting "Sister Robert Anne's Cabaret Class" this week Thursday through Sunday.
SUE RINEY is the musical comedy's director, producer and lead performer. The show also features GAYE LITKA and J.R. RUSSELL. It runs through June 30. Thursday, Friday and Saturday shows start at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday matinees begin at 2:30 p.m. The Whidbey Playhouse is located at 730 S.E. Midway Blvd. in Oak Harbor. Tickets are $18.
For more information, go to 360-679-2237, or www.whidbeyplayhouse.com
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WineAccess Travel Log
Read stories from the world's greatest wine trails.
More About This Wine
About Pride Mountain Vineyards
Nestled above the Spring Mountain fog, on the Napa-Sonoma county line, Pride Mountain Vineyard sits on a former 340-acre agricultural Summit Ranch. In 1989, when Jim and Carolyn Pride purchased the spread they planned on growing grapes to sell, but soon caught the bug and built a winery.
2007 Pride Mountain Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Napa County/Sonoma County
Producer: Pride Mountain Vineyards
Style: Red Wine
Grape Type: Cabernet Sauvignon
Origin: California
Region: Napa
91 Points | Stephen Tanzer's IWC - May/June 2010
($66) Good ruby-red. Nuanced nose combines currant, blueberry, blackberry and graphite with hints of olive and tobacco. Sweet and penetrating; shows the best fruit intensity of these basic 2007 varietal bottlings. Currant, licorice and mineral flavors are complemented by spicy oak (nearly 60% new) and supported by a firm tannic spine. This, too, needs time. Even the youngest blocks are now 8 to 12 years old, notes winemaker Johnson, "so we're getting better-balanced wines now."


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Jackson County prosecutors charged a Kansas City man in a hit-and-run accident involving a school bus Thursday.
Toryne M. Sanders, 33, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving while revoked.
The crash happened just before 4:30 p.m. near 67th Street and Askew Avenue and left the bus on its side. Police said a car ran a stop sign and hit the bus. No serious injuries were reported.
The driver of the other car fled the scene. Police said a man was taken into custody Thursday evening near 72nd Street and Bales Avenue.
Prosecutors requested $50,000 bail.


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Ten-year-old Mahe lives in a rural village in the region of Dosso, in Niger. Heavy rains recently flooded most of Dosso and destroyed thousands of homes - including Mahe's. "We were living a happy and peaceful life when the rain burst into our village at dawn and destroyed our home, our clothes, our food and all our possessions," says Mahe.
His father, a farmer, lost all his crops in the flood. This is a double blow because they were already affected by drought last year leading to poor harvests.
Plan is helping children like Mahe and their families in Niger to cope with four emergencies that have hit the country in a matter of months. We are working with partners to ensure a coordinated response to the complex situation there.
Repeated poor harvests complicated by drought and insect infestation led to a food crisis across the Sahel region. The situation remains fragile with low supplies and a general rise in prices. There are reasonable prospects for agricultural production if good rains continue, but in the areas where Plan works delayed planting and poor soil could mean inadequate harvests.
Plan has distributed food to 65,000 people affected by the food crisis, stocked 48 cereal banks and provided regular meals in 69 schools.
Flooding has affected a reported 400,000 people leaving 52 dead. The main challenges right now are access to flood-affected areas and verification of the numbers of people affected There is concern that the Niger River will flood again as it will reach its seasonal peak early . This means people living in temporary camps may need to be relocated.
Plan has distributed emergency supplies, including tents, mosquito nets and blankets to more than 2,500 households and we are set to provide similar items to another 1,000 households.
The majority of flood-affected families are sheltering in schools and mosques. Mahe and his family are living in the village school. He is concerned because school should restart in a few weeks, after the summer holiday, but the classrooms are still housing families. "My father managed to buy some wood to build a new house but he still has to buy the straw for the roof. I hope the other families will also succeed in building their new houses before school resumes," says Mahe.
Plan is working to ensure that schools are available and ready for children to resume school in October.
Political instability in neighbouring Mali has brought an influx of refugees to Niger since early 2012 and numbers continue to increase. Almost 60,000 people have entered the country, placing additional strain on Nigeriens' ability to cope. Plan is managing a camp at Tabareybarey with nearly 8,500 people and working in Mangaize camp where more than 5,000 people are living. As well as ensuring access to clean water, we are providing pre-school and psychosocial activities.
Floods increase the threat of water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria. There have been several thousand cases and 80 deaths in Niger this year. In Tillaberi, Plan is working on both prevention and treatment through the provision of medicine and medical supplies. We are also providing some technical staff and 30,000 litres of disinfectant fluid for treatment centres.
Please make a donation online by telephone on 0800 526 848.
Find out more about Plan's work in Niger.
Registered Charity no.276035


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On Tap Today: Batter up
Fish fry peak is upon us, and Wisconsinites-- of all people-- know their fish fries. So we asked readers to name their fave fries, and in Weekend Cue Dining Critic Carol Deptolla rounds up the suggestions. Our roster of area church fish fries provides more options than you can shake a bread stick at. Find our Fish Fry Fest here, along with a map to help you discover the batter of your dreams.
Would you like a movie with that haddock? We review the very different types of romance in "Safe Haven" and "Beautiful Creatures." We give you more movie coverage here. »Read Full Blog Post
Notable deaths in arts and entertainment in 2013
It was a year that took from us Tony Soprano, Billy Jack, Edith Bunker, and Arnold and Willis' stepdad, among others.
Here's a look at some of the notable arts and entertainment figures who died in 2013. (The cause of death, when known, is listed for some younger people on the list.) »Read Full Article(1)
Ring in the new year at one of these Milwaukee events
Ring it in
There are as many ways to celebrate the new year in Milwaukee as there are corner bars and cafes. »Read Full Article


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UNFCCC Publishes Slovenia's Inventory Report
5 February 2010: The UNFCCC Secretariat has published the report (FCCC/ARR/2009/SVN) of the individual review of the annual submission of Slovenia submitted in 2009.
The report indicates that the inventory is in line with the Revised 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines, the IPCC good practice guidance and the IPCC Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). The inventory covers the period 1986–2007 and is complete in terms of years, sectors and geographic coverage. Slovenia has submitted a complete set of common reporting format tables for the years 1986–2007 and a national inventory report (NIR).
The Expert Review Team found that the completeness of Slovenia's inventory could be improved in respect of the party's reporting of a number of non-LULUCF categories as not estimated (NE), especially those categories that are included in either the Revised 1996 IPCC guidelines or the IPCC good practice guidance, and for which methods are prescribed therein. The party's NIR shows improvement compared with its previous annual submission, in terms of the additional reporting on implemented quality assurance activities, on the peer review conducted of the energy sector and on the planned peer review of the industrial processes sector. [Slovenia's Inventory]


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Practice Tests are a new interactive study support resource from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) which allow students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and focus final revision before taking a live exam. Practice Tests replicate the exact experience of a real live computer-based exam (CBE) and offer the same flexibility, instant results and convenience as CBEs.
As well as giving insight into a live exam experience, Practice Tests will also provide students with a personalised feedback diagram showing how they have performed across the different areas of the syllabus. This instant feedback provided at the end of the test allows students to find out where they need to focus their efforts in revision before they sit their real exam. The tests also provide model answers for each question.
Practice Tests are now available to purchase online and are available as a single test, or as a set of three tests for a discounted rate.
Jonathan Patterson, ACCA student in Guyana, said: 'Along with classroom study and textbooks at home, I have also used the new Practice Tests. These proved to be very handy when it came to writing my exams. So you can imagine how great it was to have the opportunity to run a crash test of this new syllabus and exam structure before having to do the real thing.'
Alan Hatfield, ACCA's director of learning, said: 'As the saying goes 'practice makes perfect', so we want to ensure that our students have the best possible chance to be prepared for their exams, by giving them a test run of the kinds of questions they will get on the day. Through the feedback given on the Practice Tests, students are able to identify their weaker areas that need focus before taking the live exam.
'This complements the other resources available for revision and is also another step to ensure our students become complete finance professionals, ready for the world of financial work.'
Practice Tests are one of the many resources ACCA has developed to support students through their studies.
Other key resources that should be referred to, in addition to approved study texts and question and answer banks, are:
- The Syllabus and Study Guide for exams. This is the definitive document outlining the content and structure of each exam - these are updated annually.
- Examiner Approach articles and interviews cover the main themes of each paper, giving information on question styles and how the exam is structured, along with guidance on exam technique. These will help to start studies with a good understanding of the focus of the exam.
- Technical articles provide in-depth insight into subject areas, question types, exam techniques and practical experience. They give a more detailed explanation of specific topics and provide extra support for some of the new, or more challenging, areas of the syllabus. They are produced throughout the year so students need to make sure they look at the full list and not just the most recent ones.
- Examiners' Reports and Analysis interviews are also produced and give constructive feedback on candidates' performance in the exam, highlighting problem areas such as lack of knowledge or poor examination technique. These reports are full of valuable guidance, and show how to avoid the main pitfalls in exams.
- Specimen exams, in CBE and paper formats, are available on the website and give an idea of the format of the exam and the question types that students may face.
Find out more about Practice Tests and CBEs, via the 'Related Links' section, left of this article.


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View all Podcasts
NL Special
Goebbels could have learnt a thing or two from Mamata Banerjee's prowess in propaganda
Justice Katju demands a brave new world free from the scourge of smutty social media
The newspapers have their moments, and we've picked our favourite.
What you may not know, and should, about how you have lost the right to offend.
If you're printing a company press release as a news report at least take the trouble of re-writing it. The Special Correspondent did take the effort of deleting three paragraphs, we'll give them that much.
Why is there a presumption that the gender of a woman undermines her ability to be an effective or successful journalist?
When the journalists become inquisitive and start investigating, politicians react. No. They lash out.
One wonders if this frequently and frivolously repeated phrase of foreign hand holds any merit in today's excessively globalised world.
Our government has spent around Rs. 30 crores on ads on the birth & death anniversaries of Rajiv and Indira Gandhi
Some commercials sell ideas, some try to establish credibility. Some try to buy respectability by paying big bucks for prime time.


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Humans and Technology AlistairCockburn HaT TR96.01 (96.01.31)at
(P9) Provide something to alter.Copy-modify is currently being applied even to completed applications. There is a growing trade between competitors in non-critical applications delivered with both generated, tuned code and the high-level description of it. These are referred to as "application frameworks". The accepted assumption is that the application framework is not quite correct for the buyer, but will take less effort to fix than it would to build from scratch. An example of non-competitive application frameworks suitable for trading traded is a frequent-flier awards system for an airline company. Application frameworks are quite a different notion than providing a "tailorable" system. People constantly request examples. It is as though they operate internally and directly from the examples. There is some evidence from cognitive psychology that that may be so2 and there are research projects associated with that idea3. Whether it is actually true that people work directly from examples, it certainly is clear that most people work better given examples than simply working from abstract theory. So it is not only true in expository writing, but in technical development,
(P10) Provide examples.The modern style of eliciting application requirements is example-based. We find that people give better requirements when given specific situations to discuss and walk through than when just asked for their input. Even better than discussing the future system is to enact the use of the new system, making an actual performance of it. The performance is both example-based (P10) and tangible (P11). Some organizations create fictitious employees having different personalities. The users describe how these made-up employees would get their work done. A lazy employee might find ways to defer work until later, while an ambitious employee might find ways to get the most accomplished soonest. Example- and instance-based design techniques are well received by designers. Where a few, talented individuals can handle the powerful, abstract techniques, the masses of developers have trouble with them. It is not a matter of teaching. Abstract techniques will always attract fewer practitioners, however powerful it might be. Better than working from an example is working with something tangible. The tangible item is both an example, and it plays into our senses.
(P11) Provide something tangible, where possible.An example of working from tangibles is the "CRC" (class-responsibility-collaborator) card exercise4. Index cards represent components of the software system under design. The designers write on each card the component's responsibility to the functioning of the system. They pick up the cards and walk through the operation of the system in particular situations. CRC cards have been transferred onto the computer screen by numerous practitioners, but somehow lose their effect there. There is a particular effect in working through the design that comes from reaching over, pointing to a card, picking it up, and perhaps moving it to the side. ...


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I've been reading a lot of food blogs this week. I think I've just been in a foody state of procrastination this week, and funny, well-written food prose has been my go-to. (Also assisted by having some truly remarkable food this week, including an amazing brisket/garlic mash soft taco last night. I know how weird that sounds, but it was amazing.) Here are some of my favourite reads this week:
- Portland, Maine's From Away is a great read generally, but I'm especially taken with the America! Presents series where the blogger walks us through some of the deepest horrors of the frozen food section. Delightful reviews that make you go, "Well, okay, that sounds revolting, but could a stuffed pretzel really be so bad?" (We're all healthy-and-everything-from-scratch around here these days, and my parents were when I was growing up, too, but in the intervening undergraduate years I developed a deep abiding love for frozen bizarreness. And I miss it.)
- Smitten Kitchen, as most amateur cooks with a passion for the internet know, is the business. The recipes on Smitten Kitchen always just work, and the food photography is delightful.
- Jamie Oliver's TED Talk was all about teaching children about food so they can grow up with the tools to make educated choices about food and health. (He won a TED Prize for his One Wish to assault a cultural ignorance about food.)
- Serious Eats is running their A Sandwich a Day feature which, if you love sandwiches as I do, is just a marvellous thing indeed.
- And Todd and Diane over at White on Rice? They take the most incredible food photos ever. Prepare your drool napkin before clicking.


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International Edition Winners 2011: Romania, Target 1, Grade 5-6
International Edition Winners 2011: Romania, Target 1, Grade 5-6
International Edition Winners 2011: Romania, Target 1, Grade 5-6
|Ioana Todea
|6th Grade
|School no.195
Bucharest, Romania
Teacher: Florentina Iofciu
"Hyperion is one of the most interesting celestial bodies from our solar system. It was discovered by William Bond, George Bond and William Lessell, in 1848. The satellite was named after Hyperion, the Titan god of watchfulness, the elder brother of Chronos, from the Greek mythology. It is the 16th largest satellite of Saturn, it is situated unusually close to Titan and it has an ovoid (or elliptic) orbit, parallel to Saturn's equator, but located at a distance of 1.48 million km from it. A complete revolution of Hyperion lasts 21 days.
One of the things concerning Hyperion that should be discovered is the object's internal composition of which, too little is known at the present. However its low density indicates that it could be made of ice and a small amount of rocks. So, Hyperion is a solid body. We could find a way to plant on the satellite a research station, in order to study other astronomical objects situated in the proximity, especially Titan (which scientists consider to be a suitable place for life occurrence), knowing that the turbulent atmosphere of the mentioned body wouldn't permit such an easy approach.
A percent of 40 from Hyperion's volume is empty space and that means there are parts of it which don't contain solid matter. The satellite has a sponge aspect due to its many impact craters which mark its surface. Such a crater, one of unusual dimensions, it's visible on Hyperion : it has a diameter of 120 km and a depth of 10 km, where the maximum diameter of Hyperion itself is of 410 km and the minimum one of 220 km. It has been found out that a layer of dark matter covers the surface of the satellite and it would be interesting to also find out this matter's composition and where did it come from.
Hyperion's shape is irregular. This is one of the biggest satellites which share this feature, being surpassed only by Neptune's satellite, Proteus. It is possible that Hyperion was spherical in shape and it followed a deformation as a result of a collision with another object. Hyperion could be also just a piece from a fragmented celestial body.
Hyperion has no atmosphere, so the process of erosion can't take place on it. The same feature can be found at our own natural satellite, the Moon. We know that any trace left on Moon's surface remains intact, so why not presume that the same rule applies to Hyperion too. If we studied the surface craters much closer we could discover information about the structure of the body which interacted with the satellite.
The photos taken by spacecrafts indicate the chaotic rotation of Hyperion, that means that it constantly changes the rotation axis position. The proximity to Titan, its irregular shape and the lacunas interior of the satellite may contribute to this phenomenon. But it's hard to believe that Hyperion is the only body whose movement doesn't imply laws or rules. A thorough study could certainly help to solve this problem.By choosing Hyperion as Cassini's target, we can find out new things about the rules governing our solar system."


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On Monday, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) confirmed receipt of two Air Force contracts worth a combined $120 million, whose award had earlier been announced in less detail on the Department of Defense's website.
Lockheed describes the two "Global Positioning System III" contracts, for the procurement of long-lead parts for the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth satellites, as part of a larger plan to "affordably replace aging GPS satellites while improving capability to meet the evolving demands of military, commercial, and civilian users." The company continued: "GPS III satellites will deliver better accuracy and improved anti-jamming power while enhancing the spacecraft's design life and adding a new civil signal designed to be interoperable with international global navigation satellite systems."
So far, Lockheed has won contracts to produce the first four GPS III satellites, and its award of funds to begin buying parts needed to put together the next batch of four satellites argues strongly in favor of its ability to win funds to complete those as well. Farther down the road, the Air Force eventually wants to put a constellation of 32 GPS III satellites in orbit, so even after this batch is done, the company will still have twice as much revenue awaiting in future years, as it's already collected, or begun to collect, on the first few satellites of the group.
Lockheed shares edged down in Monday trading, slipping 0.3% to close at $87.88.


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How Bush Can Lift a Sagging Economy
The President will lay out his 2003 agenda on Jan. 7. Here's what his speech should sound like if he wants the average American's backing
By Richard S. Dunham
It's George W. Bush's economy now. For two years, voters were willing to cut the President some slack because the one he inherited was already ailing and then further damaged by the September 11 terrorist attacks. But now, with the government firmly in Republican control, Americans will hold Bush responsible if their prosperity suffers any more. "Once you get into the third and fourth years of a Presidency, it gets harder to escape what happens on your watch," says Al From, head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
The President and his White House political advisers are fully aware of the stakes. After all, voters tossed his dad from office in 1992, despite a string of foreign-policy triumphs. Americans decided that Bush Senior didn't understand the pain they were feeling. Small wonder Bush has overhauled his economic team, and now he's preparing to roll out a new plan to stimulate U.S. growth. He's expected to unveil his proposals in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago on Jan. 7.
To succeed politically, the President must convince Americans that he has a short-term fix for unemployment and investor confidence, and a long-term plan to boost economic growth. It'll be a delicate balancing act between feel-good political measures and effective solutions that create real results. Within the confines of his free-market philosophy, here's what the President would be wise to say:
My fellow Americans, I see my job as protecting the security of Americans -- our national security, yes, but also our economic security, which is just as important.
We are at war. A terrorist network out there wants to harm Americans, and we will hunt those terrorists down. Countries are out there developing weapons of mass destruction, and we will deal with them appropriately, in due time.
The war on terrorism has exacted a steep toll on the U.S. economy. We're still recovering from the attacks of September 11 -- and the lingering after-effects of a slowing economy that began before I took office.
In 2001, we gave every American a tax cut. In the past year, we took steps to jump-start growth. We passed incentives for corporate investment. We extended unemployment benefits for workers who lost their jobs after the terrorist attacks -- and we should do so once again for those still out of work.
Working with Congress, we also approved the most sweeping corporate reforms in more than half a century to punish the scandalous actions of evil executives and to reassure investors that companies will play by the rules or face serious repercussions.
I hail Democrats and Republicans alike in the House and Senate who voted to restore Presidential Trade Promotion Authority (a lot of you call it "fast track"), which gives me a stronger hand to help open foreign markets to American products. And in a special session after the 2002 elections (a lot of you call it a "lame duck" session), Congress passed terrorism insurance legislation, which already is putting construction workers back to work.
Because of these actions, and because of the resiliency of the American people, the economy is growing again. Not as robustly as I would prefer, but it's headed in the right direction.
The economic indicators are quite favorable. Inflation is firmly under control, which keeps the cost of food, clothing, and other necessities more affordable. Mortgage interest rates remain at historic lows, bringing homeownership within reach of millions of Americans. A 5.6% increase in productivity over the last four quarters is the biggest of any comparable period since 1973.
We live in uncertain times, but one thing is certain: The U.S. economy is the greatest in the world -- strong, resilient, and open to innovation and growth. We must put policies in place to enhance that resiliency and enhance that strength.
We must do more to turn a nascent economic recovery into sustained growth. To do that, I will ask Congress to enact a jobs-and-growth package designed to put people back to work, boost investor confidence, and spark corporate expansion.
This is a three-step process. We must protect the most vulnerable in our society. We must restore the confidence of the Investor Class, now a majority of our citizens. And we must create incentives for business to grow, so companies can hire more workers and reward their loyal employees who have been asked to sacrifice these past few years.
Our first priority must be job creation. I'm worried about those who are unemployed. I am concerned about those who are looking for work but can't any.
To help those in need, it's imperative that the new Congress quickly extend unemployment benefits for Americans who need them. But let's not stop there: We should raise the minimum wage for the working poor and increase the child tax credit for hard-pressed families, so they have more aftertax wages to spend for their welfare.
We should create a prescription-drug benefit for our seniors who are being squeezed by rising drug prices. And we must modernize the Medicare system to ensure that the elderly continue to receive quality care at a price all taxpayers can afford.
While we protect the vulnerable, we must put into place policies that let Americans keep more of their tax money while encouraging them to invest in our capitalist system.
To do that, I propose that we accelerate some of the tax cuts Congress passed in 2001. I ask Congress to allow middle-income Americans to receive immediately those due to take effect in 2004. That will effectively give every average American an instant pay raise.
While I would like to implement all of the rate reductions immediately, it would be too costly and would give too much of the tax-cut pie to the wealthiest among us. So I would suggest that we not accelerate the rate cut for the top tax bracket.
To boost investor confidence, I ask Congress to be vigilant in implementing the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate responsibility law of 2002, from broader disclosure requirements to tougher penalties for wrongdoing to removing executives who break the faith with the shareholders. I am also requesting a significant boost in funding for the Securities & Exchange Commission to hire more investigators, retain them with better salaries, and train them to track down corporate malfeasance. We must end the brain drain that has complicated our efforts to prosecute corporate corruption.
But we can do more to entice investors back into the market. One thing is to move toward ending the double taxation of dividends. At its heart, this is a question of fairness. Why should dividends be taxed twice -- unlike ordinary income? While Congress would be justified in repealing this unfair tax, it's too expensive at a time when we are facing a growing federal deficit. So I ask Congress to exclude up to half of dividend income from double taxation. This is a down payment toward reforming and simplifying our tax system for the 21st century.
To create jobs, we need to give businesses an incentive to expand their plants and hire new workers. We can do that by providing tax breaks for short-term capital investments. If properly crafted, this would stimulate the economy, particularly in the hard-hit manufacturing and technology sectors. Corporate America does not need corporate welfare. But government can extend a hand in times of need.
The U.S. faces a challenging year ahead. My job is to protect and strengthen our security. That also means strengthening our economy. I'm going to continue doing the job the American people expect, which is to safeguard the nation and restore prosperity. Thank you.
When he's not making up speeches for sitting Presidents, Dunham is White House correspondent for BusinessWeek. Follow his views every Monday in Washington Watch, only on BusinessWeek Online
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht


text:
You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'abortion' tag.
I was confused reading the articles about the Pope's permission for priests to forgive the sin of abortion in the upcoming Jubilee Year which starts on December 8, 2015 and ends on November 26, 2016.
The BBC had the best explanation:
In most countries, only a bishop can approve forgiveness for abortion. They would then delegate an expert priest to hear the confession.
I didn't know that. I assumed that priests could forgive any sin, provided the supplicant was truly contrite for the past and repentant for the future.
That is true only in certain countries. In the case of the United Kingdom:
the rule relaxation will not affect Catholics in England, Wales and Scotland as all priests there can already forgive abortion without seeking permission from a bishop.
Other news outlets could have explained this better, but who expects modern media to ask enough questions?
In any event, this is not a new 'forgiveness' for past abortions, as such absolution is nothing new in the Catholic Church. This simply extends it to a priest's discretion during the Jubilee Year.
Let us hope it is not misread by young women as meaning they have permission to proceed with an abortion now — notionally in good conscience (I use the words advisedly) — and be forgiven for it in a few months' time.
On March 19, 2015, the French government voted to suppress the mandatory seven-day cooling off period between the first and second medical consultations for women seeking abortions.
The Socialist parliamentarian Catherine Coutelle expressed the sentiments of many in the pro-choice lobby:
This delay is infantilising and stigmatising.
However, that is not entirely true. Le Monde asked for women who had had abortions to describe their experiences. The paper received 70 responses.
Whilst stigmatisation was part of having an abortion in France, as one woman said:
… the unsympathetic look from the obstetrician, an even more critical one from the midwives …
other women described crises of conscience.
That was the objective of the cooling off period, intended to provide an enforced time of reflection.
The article has a photo from a feminist demonstration which took place on January 8, 2014; their banner says:
1 child, if I want, when I want.
Last year legislators began relaxing the process leading to abortion: no questions asked if a woman seeks a consultation up to 12 weeks into her pregnancy and more information about the procedure.
What women told Le Monde about the now-repealed seven-day period of reflection is interesting. Most of the comments indicate their personal psychological discomfort during that time:
Even if you have made up your mind, those days of waiting give rise to questions, to guilt. You can't escape it.
The most incredible comment, however, was this:
a real Calvary.
What a choice of words. I wonder if that woman even knows the meaning of Calvary.
(I did work with a woman who thought that 'martyr' meant 'crybaby', thanks to her father's atheistic influence. After hearing the umpteenth misuse of this word, I advised her to look it up in the dictionary. She did so and stopped saying it.)
I do hope that the French abortion folks use a set of pictures and descriptions as to what happens to the foetus within a short space of time.
These two resources are very useful. Girls would do well to study them carefully:
Babycenter's fetal development images diary
WebMD's Fetal Development Pictures Slideshow
Far from being the well publicised 'mass of tissues', a foetus at six weeks has a beating heart. At seven weeks, fingers and toes begin to develop. At eight weeks, the baby can bend his knees and elbows. At nine weeks, the baby has eyelids. At 11 weeks, the baby starts stretching and kicking. At 12 weeks, synapses begin forming in the brain.
Yes, abortion is death. Feeling guilty about it is entirely the right thing to do.
Choices, choices. A bit of reflection before engaging in coitus prevents difficult decisions afterward.
Gosh, I was in secondary school in 1973.
Abortion was a frequent subject in our Ethics class a few years later.
David Fischler, a frequent contributor to the Episcopalian / Anglican site Stand Firm had a thought-provoking piece on this legislation last week:
Fischler examined the congratulatory White House statement on this anniversary, which began:
Today, as we reflect on the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to the decision's guiding principle: that every woman should be able to make her own choices about her body and her health.
It also had this statement:
Because this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams.
An average of approximately 1.3m foetuses per year in the United States alone have lost that chance of freedom and opportunity since 1973.
Fischler has sharp observations. Here are but a few:
Abortion is not health care, except in very rare cases. It is virtually always about taking a healthy, growing human being and killing it because its life would complicate its parent(s) lives.
"Reproductive freedom" is the kind of euphemism that George Orwell was talking about when he wrote his seminal essay "Politics and the English Language." Notice that the word "abortion" doesn't appear in the statement. Heaven forfend the White House should actually mention the barbaric practice that they are so invested in defending.
Apparently the White House has a rather limited definition of "all our children," since a million a year are not welcomed into "safe and healthy communities," but instead are thrown out like so much trash for the garbage collector to haul off.
This is what the Lord said to the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). If this was true for him, surely it must be true for everyone (emphases mine):
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Because the Old Testament has many other verses on the creation of human life, among them:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13)
Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands. (Psalm 119:73)
And for those who doubt God's sovereignty:
This is what the LORD says– your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself (Isaiah 44:24)
As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. (Ecclesiastes 11:5)
It is alarming and tragic that abortion is being used as a method of birth control in so many countries around the world.
I remember the arguments from abortion proponents at the time: 'It's to ensure women don't die in the back streets from an illegal and unsafe procedure', 'Very few women will seek an abortion' and 'It will only be used in emergencies when women's lives are in danger'.
Really? Look how well that turned out. It was and is a lie.
Kevin DuJan at HillBuzz shared breakfast with his black friends at a Chicago hotel recently.
One of their hot issues, along with their opposition to gay marriage, is their frustration with abortion and Planned Parenthood.
This is what DuJan had to say (emphases mine):
… every time someone comes out screaming about wanting more abortions that the correct response would be to call that woman a racist and tell her that she's only doing this so more black babies could be killed. "That would shut those [morally derelict women] up in a heartbeat if Republicans [and other pro-life supporters] would do that…just call them racists and they will run for the hills. It will work on the Planned Parenthood crowd. Go and start accusing them of being a racist organization and watch all Hell break loose". The Think Squad has always been very open about how useful accusing someone of being a racist can be, particularly if you are doing it to anyone on the Left…since the Left FREAKS OUT when its own weapons are used against it.
I've seen articles out there talking about how Obama's decision to embrace gay marriage has really hurt him with black people (which is true …) but it's really the abortion celebration that Democrats held in Charlotte that's angered black women in particular.
Pro-life campaigners should feel free to play the race card.
In fact, as recently as a few years ago — and perhaps even now, who knows? — you could call Planned Parenthood and ask that your donation be dedicated to the extermination of a specific race in a specific city. No sound needed for this short video recording an actual conversation (a set-up, but Planned Parenthood appeared to accept the premise). A transcript is included in the video:
The Advocate, which is behind the video, is not the American gay magazine but a UCLA action group.
We are now beginning to see some questionable stories after the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games. Two follow.
On the day that a story about mother-to-daughter womb transplants in Sweden appeared, the Telegraph also reported a request for a 'ban' on abortions where disability in the foetus has been detected. Interestingly, this did not come from groups of or for the disabled but from Catholic and Evangelical Protestant church groups.
The Paralympic Games were a joy to watch and, as I said previously, got many of us thinking differently about disability. This can only be a positive.
However, one has to wonder about the way disabled people are treated in general in the UK — benefits, mobility, job opportunity. Is this appeal for an abortion ban a form of emotional blackmail?
Women who want an abortion will go where they can get one, regardless of the law. Many Irishwomen came to the UK, teenage girls included, to get abortions. I don't read so much about that now.
Here are a couple of reader responses, the first — and most recent — from a disabled person (emphases mine):
blondieuk: How dare these religious groups try to hijack the good feelings after the Paralympics for their own political and religious ends.
The athletes don't triumph over their disabilities – they like myself, just make the best of what we can.
At a time when the disabled need all the help we can get with unfair benefit cuts, lack of access to jobs, lack of public transport we can use and an increase in hate crimes – what do the religious groups do ? – try to use disabled athletes for propoganda purposes.
Shame on you.
I'm disabled and fully support decisions made by families on what to do with unwanted pregnancies – even if the embryo has the same disabilities as I have.
If you want to help the disabled how about giving us a job or a tube we can get into or access to benefits when we are too sick to work instead of cynically using us for your own ends.
Anita Bellows: The Paralympics might trigger this call, but the way disabled people are treated by this government makes for the opposite argument.
MarinaS: Shame on you Telegraph for giving a platform to such an exploitative campaign. No disability campaigners or groups signed this letter; it is a case of outside religious interests exploiting the disabled (who have enough to worry about these days, thanks) to push an anti-woman agenda.
Organisations like Life are pushing for a ban on all abortions, not just specific types. This is clearly a disingenuous wedge campaign on their part. A respectable broadsheet should not encourage such bad-faith arguments, especially ones that usurp the voices of the disabled.
This is a sensitive issue which the disabled, their families and their support groups should be mooting first.
The second news story involves an exhortation from the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, to businessmen. He believes they should model themselves on Olympian ideals. I can see a case for excellence, good ethics, sporting teamwork and so forth. However, I fear this is not what he has in mind:
We have no political agenda. We have instead a moral tradition that has accumulated wisdom down the centuries, drawing on the twin sources of revelation and reason.
It has given us an outline of a paradigm of good business practice that is contained in Catholic Social Teaching. This talks of solidarity and subsidiarity and their relation to common good, of the unique human dignity of every person specially those who are poor, vulnerable or disadvantaged, and it also talks about the nature of work and human creativity. And it is intensely conscious of the content and influence of culture, the shared values of any society that can do so much good – and if they go wrong, much harm.
I am joining prominent leaders of business and industry at a conference in London today [Tuesday Sept 18] in discussion of what it would take to bring about a renewal of the business culture in Britain.
We have sub-titled it "Uniting corporate purpose and personal values to serve society", because we have detected a tendency for business people to feel they need to adopt a different set of values in business than those which they apply in the rest of their lives. That intriguing insight clearly needs further investigation.
Hmm, that sounds suspicious, too, especially as he goes on to mention that he and the Archbishop of Canterbury are in agreement on the matter. 'No political agenda', only that of the social gospel. (For more on this, please see my Marxism / Communism page and the heading 'Communism and the Church Today'.)
Neither of these news items is completely honest. And that is not necessarily the Telegraph's fault.
The following is for mature readers only.
My jaw dropped in disbelief the other day when I read this post on one of the most famous colas in the world (emphases in the original):
Thought of as a soft drink. Strong enough to kill.
Yes. One 12 oz oca Cola [sic] is all it takes to end a human life. Many women when late try to end their pregnancy, in poor countries, and over a period of time, they've worked out the best way to do it.
All they need is a 12 oz bottle of Coca Cola. This they boil for fifteen minutes. Then they leave it out in the midday sun from morning til afternoon.
This must do something to alter the chemical composition, because that alone, when drunk, can be fully effective to cause an abortion. They only add headache pills to beef up the solution, and whack, the pregnancy's over. It works in about half of cases, my partner assures me. Her friends have used it successfully.
What chemicals are there inside Coca Cola which achieves this outcome, I wonder?
Another report says that a metal coin left in Coca Cola for a week will dissolve into the liquid. You put an egg in Coca Cola and the shell disappears.
What's in that drink, for God's sake?
It attracted two anonymous comments asking for more information. Another person mentioned the douche method from the 1950s and 1960s, which I'll get to below.
First, however, let's look at the issue of the pointed accusation at the world's top cola drink manufacturer. Would the world's other leading brand work as well? What about other brands of cola? Surely, they contain nearly the same ingredients. What about non-cola drinks?
Furthermore, once the cola is combined with headache pills, then it is no longer cola as originally manufactured.
One might as well ask what is in the headache pill — note, the brand was unspecified — that acts as a possible abortifacient.
And no one has speculated on the effect of hot sunshine, boiling and how combining a soft drink with headache pills under those conditions produces a halfway-reasonable abortion method.
One thing is clear: the substances will have all been altered either by heat or by combining one with the other. Neither colas nor headache pills can produce the effect as they are, if such an effect really exists.
I searched the Internet and could find nothing to support this method, which I can only conclude must be purely anecdotal with a 50% success rate.
Ladies — do not expect this method to work. Men — think a little bit about the above questions before advising people not to drink a particular brand of cola.
Now to the original Coca-Cola abortion myth.
Nearly 60 years ago, a story developed saying that douching with Coca-Cola would produce a home abortion. This was common currency until sometime in the 1960s. The origins of the story are unclear.
However, anyone — man or woman — who has paid attention in high school biology class will know instinctively and logically that this is anatomically impossible.
Let's explore myth and reality further.
How was the method meant to work?
From Urban Dictionary:
The practice of rinsing the vaginal vault with a carbonated beverage, such as a cola drink. The can or bottle is usually agitated vigorously post coitus, and the ensuing spray is directed towards the vaginal opening. In the 1950s, prior to availability of the oral contraceptive pill, this was considered a form of birth control, and Coca cola was thought to have some spermicidal properties. Referred to in the song "Coca Cola Douche" by 60s New York band, The Fugs.
Snopes says that Dr Pepper was also used. The carbonic acid in the shaken bottle of the soft drink was thought to act as a spermicide and that the sugar would 'explode' sperm cells. They cite studies which have tested for spermicidal properties in Coca-Cola; the initial positive results by Harvard University researchers in 1985 could not be replicated by other teams around the world. A Taiwanese group concluded that 'cola has little if any spermicidal effect'. The same holds true for Pepsi-Cola. Nigeria's Krest Bitter Lemon, studied in 1992, seemed to work the best; researchers attributed this to the lemon — an alkaline (not acid) property — in the drink. It is unclear whether further research on Krest was done. Note that the researchers experimented with the soft drinks on sperm in vitro — in glass — so, using test tubes. It is highly unlikely that Krest would work as a post-coital douche.
Why doesn't it work?
Sexologist Dr Ruth Westheimer, writing for Dummies.com, explodes the myths about pregnancy. This is worthwhile reading, especially as I have known a few young women who were caught out by the first time, standing up and withdrawal myths.
Douching is useless both for hygiene and birth control purposes. If you've heard that douching — with vinegar, Coca-Cola, commercial douches, or anything else — prevents pregnancy, don't believe it. By the time you finish with intercourse and douche, many sperm have already begun their trip toward the egg and are beyond your ability to flush them out.
The sugar may also give the user a yeast infection.
It amazes me that the following even needs saying in the 21st century, but …
Drinking soft drinks or douching with them to induce an abortion will not work.
What about Coca-Cola's ability to clean pennies?
This will work with any soft drink, not just Coca-Cola.
From Wiki Answers:
Simply put, coke is acidic on the pH scale. If you don't remember what the pH scale is, it is a measure of how acidic or alkaline a substance is. Coke is about 3 on the pH scale, making it decently acidic (just so u have a comparison distilled water is 7 on the pH scale which is neutral). In short acid eats away at metals while alkaline eats away at protein. So when calcium and zinc build up on your penny soaking it in coke will eat away at the metals built up, leaving it nice and shiny.
Side note: alkaline pH substances eat away at proteins so that's why we use high alkaline products to clean our sinks and toilets.
The same is true of Sprite, which has citric acid. Coca-Cola does not.
Bottom line: carbonated soft drinks are acidic. Soft drink acids target metals, not humans.
Now let's stop the nonsense about carbonated drinks.
Now there is a controversial triangle of topics.
A few recent news items caught my eye:
– The Amish and Muslims are exempt from Obamacare because both religious groups object to insurance. Two states are also exempt. Hmm. Anna's Clue Tank points out that the health care package is unconstitutional as it denies equal protection and smacks of totalitarianism. It also seems, to me, as if these exemptions show favouritism to certain groups. Beyond that, it's just a bad idea (and isn't how the NHS works). IRS agents deciding whether you've got the right Obamacare plan, i.e. paying enough into government coffers? You couldn't make it up. However, there is good news on the horizon, as a number of Protestant evangelicals support the 12 lawsuits Catholic organisations have filed against Obamacare.
– William Peter Blatty, the 85-year author of The Exorcist, might sue Georgetown University in Washington DC's Diocese Court of Canon Law. Although he graduated from Georgetown in 1950, he has been unhappy with the Jesuit-run university's drift away from Catholicism. The last straw for him was their inviting Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be their 2012 Commencement speaker. The Archdiocese of Washington (DC) also found the invitation 'shocking'. Shades of the University of Notre Dame's inviting President Obama to be their Commencement speaker in 2009. The Diocese of Fort Wayne was also outraged but couldn't do anything about it. They do not have direct control over religious orders, i.e. Notre Dame's Congregation of the Holy Cross.
– Speaking of Notre Dame, the elderly priest Father Norman Weslin, who was so cruelly manhandled by security staff there after peacefully protesting against abortion during Commencement weekend in 2009, is now very ill. The priest has been living at an Alzheimer's residence for the past two years but his health is deteriorating. Norman Weslin served his country as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He started the Mary Weslin Homes for Pregnant, Unwed Mothers in memory of his late wife, also firmly pro-life. Father Weslin was ordained in 1986. Please remember him in your prayers.
– Back to Georgetown and the Washington Post article concerning William Peter Blatty. Anna's Clue Tank picked up on number of Catholic comments against Blatty and in defence of Georgetown. As Anna rightly observes:
… since they are unsure of what the Catholic Church stands for and they don't want to stir themselves on a Saturday or a Sunday to attend Mass, I suggest they buy a recent copy of a book called Catechism of the Catholic Church. It might do them a world of good. And when they questions they could talk to the parish priest. It could be an eye opening experience …
As for Georgetown (which covered up Jesus's name for Obama's team in 2009):
Perhaps they do need to get out the incense, Holy Water, crack open a Bible, and then examine themselves. Then they just might discover the log in their eye and remove it. Might find again the path St. Ignatius of Loyola set out for all Jesuits. And as a result – Go forth and set the world on fire.
We all hoped the same would happen at Notre Dame, unfortunately, it was business as usual.
"…all who hate Me, love and court death." — Proverbs 8:36
"…sin, when full grown, gives birth to death." — James 1:15a
Once again, thanks to a serendipitous trawl of the Net, I happened across two online posts, at least 15 years apart, which discuss the same topic: what America (and the rest of the West) must be on guard against.
First, from the 1990s, a few excerpts from an article by Cutting Edge Ministries' director, David Bay. It's called 'Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan' and was originally broadcast on radio. This is one of those items which if I had read it when he originally posted it, I would have passed it by without a second glance. However, it ties in so well with what Linda Kimball (Patriots and Liberty) and I have been discussing for the past few weeks that it is really a must-see. Most emphases in bold below are mine. Those in red are mine; the rest are in the original.
The moral bankruptcy of our society is well-documented.
Few people understand why we have become morally bankrupt. However, when we look at society through the eyes of God, through the Bible, we can easily see why we are facing the unprecedented troubles today …
Now consider the following news briefs:
Three weeks ago, we showed that America has rejected our traditional Christian Values Foundation, replacing it with a Satanic Values Foundation. Once we view our daily news with this focus, we can easily see why we are facing daily crimes of great variety and incredible atrocity. But, this is only part of the horror; the rest of the story is that most Americans subscribe to many Values of Satanism without realizing that they have also fallen victim to this trap. To quickly review:
Again, we quote the Satanic Bible, the most common Values:
- Personal selfishness, i.e., greed and pride.
- Physical lust.
- Anger.
The elevation of these Satanic values to the level of encouraging its members to deliberately indulge in them has produced tremendous societal effects:
- Strong desire for power over others.
- Strong desire for accumulation of wealth and material possessions.
- Strong sexual desires, to be satisfied no matter who might be harmed.
- Life becomes cheapened, losing God-given sanctity.
- Obsession with violence and murder.
- Lack of compassion or empathy for those individuals who are handicapped or who are ill.
- Obsession with death. Death symbols begin to appear in society, and followers begin to fix their minds on death. Remember, hard-core Satanism demands human sacrifice, the younger the better. If our theory is correct, we should be able to see our society killing the innocent …
The Six Step Attitudinal Change Plan works like this:
- Some practice so offensive that it can scarcely be discussed in public is advocated by a RESPECTED expert in a RESPECTED forum.
- At first, the public is shocked, then outraged.
- But, the VERY FACT that such a thing could be publicly debated becomes the SUBJECT of the debate.
- In the debate, sheer repetition of the shocking subject gradually dulls its effect.
- People then are no longer shocked.
- No longer outraged, people begin to argue for positions to moderate the extreme; or, they accept the premise, challenging, instead, the means to ACHIEVE it.
1. According to Newsweek magazine, December 25, 1989, respected American officials, both liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, have begun to call for the legalization of drugs, claiming all our efforts have miserably failed.
2. At first, the public is shocked and outraged. This outrage has been led by other respected American officials …
3. Even discussing drug legalization at such high levels in our government gives the issue a stamp of legitimacy.
4. This war of words provides the sheer repetition necessary to dull the public's opposition.
5. People are now becoming less shocked by the proposal.
6. No longer shocked, the focus of the debate shifts to moderating the extremes of both sides of the debate.
So we can see just as in the case of abortion, a compromise will then be reached that will legalize drugs in a limited manner. Several years later, American public opinion will have been changed sufficiently to allow for ever-wider legalization. (This point is very key: Limited acceptance of the controversial proposal is always fatal, because it opens the firmly-shut door just a crack. This tiny beginning then allows the door to be systematically opened wide.)
TV, Newspapers, and Magazines are strongly supporting the campaign for public acceptance of homosexuality. TV shows, movies, and articles in printed media have been consistently presenting a picture of validity and normalcy in the homosexual lifestyle. Simultaneously, Governmental Agencies, certain elected officials, and our courts have been actively re-shaping laws which promote this normalcy theme. Clearly, our entire society is moving rapidly and strongly toward full acceptance, and Mass Media is leading the charge.
Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? (Genesis 18:16-19:29). God's actions amount to a NATIONAL capital execution. Consider the scene: God's Holy Angels, bodily incarnated as men, visit Lot's house to warn him to flee Sodom before God's physical judgment falls. Homosexual men have seen these angels enter Lot's house, so they surround the house and loudly call to the angels to come outside so they could have homosexual relations with them …
The entire society of Sodom was supportive of homosexual activity … God not only condemned this societal support, He physically destroyed the cities in punishment …
We see this kind of societal support for homosexual behavior in America. But, there is more, as Lesbianism is now being promoted in women's magazines, on T.V., and in newspapers.
We have gone through all 6 steps of the Plan are now in the process of opening the door wide.
Heterosexual Adultery
Today, we see a steady Mass Media drumbeat to convince Americans that traditional Judeo-Christian values governing heterosexual relationships is out-of-date and has been replaced. Thus, we see TV sitcoms which depict couples living together without being married and even raising children together …
Newspapers feature article after article which depict real-life situations in which men and women, living together without being married, appear happy and prosperous.
Sexual Perversions
Pornography is the avenue by which the Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan has traditionally worked in America. Both mediums of printed material and video material has changed the values of many … All the mediums of Mass Media are now running many articles on real-life stories of sexual perversions. Even when the tone of the article is negative, even horrific, sheer repetition is at work.
EXAMPLES: 3. ADVANCE DEATHMAKING As Desirable/Noble/Courageous/ Advantageous To Society
Americans are being convinced that Individual Euthanasia is a right which society should protect and advance …
After the Jewish Holocaust, many Jewish scholars studied German society to discover how the nation of the Martin Luther Christian Tradition could turn into one of the greatest mass killing machines in history. One study, The Nazi Doctors, by Robert Lifton, states emphatically the Nazi Holocaust could never have occurred if the intermediate step of Euthanasia had not first occurred. The individual's "right to die" very quickly became the government's "right to kill".
German Public Opinion was molded by films showing incurable people being "helped" by sympathetic physicians. Medical Committees were set up in local communities comprised of local physicians, to decide whether a person was medically incurable, and thus eligible for euthanasia. German public acceptance for Euthanasia was begun by activist doctors, was promoted by activist doctors, and throughout the Mass Death Camps, was directed by activist doctors …
This is one of the concerns I have about David Cameron's Big Society localism. It could potentially spiral out of control very quickly, in this way or in others. Earlier this summer, the BBC featured a television show about British author Terry Pratchett, an Alzheimer's victim, who discusses and investigates euthanasia. He would like to have it when the time comes. So, already, we have the respected source and we are becoming accustomed to the idea of death on demand.
EXAMPLES: 4. Reduce "Overpopulation" of the Earth
… What are the New Age answers to this `horrible' over-population of the earth? We have listed just two of their answers; please understand they are utilizing the Six Step Attitudinal Change Plan to achieve their goal. Remember the supreme importance in this Plan of Point #4, creating a tremendous battle in the media and in the streets between opposing sides. This battle creates the sheer repetition necessary to erode people's opposing attitudes.
Abortion on Demand
When all 6 points of the Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan have properly completed, the door has been opened just a crack to allow the objectionable process and only in certain circumstances. Then, the door is systematically forced open wider and wider, until the point is reached where the formerly objectionable practice is occurring constantly and for whatever reason. Clearly, we have been at this point with abortion. Since 1973, over 27 million American babies have been killed!! Every abortion prevents the population of the earth from getting larger, thus contributing to their goal of reducing the world's population by two-thirds! …
This is true. Britain's Daily Mail carries many stories on doctors advising abortions for the possibility (!) of a club foot or cleft palate; the latter can be operated on quite routinely and if the first cannot, custom-made orthopaedic shoes and physiotherapy enable the person to walk reasonably well. This was true even when I was growing up in the 1960s. So, if any doctor suggests an abortion for either of these conditions, just say no.
Sarah Kliff looked at American abortion data for Newsweek magazine in 2010 and from data gathered from a reproductive rights think tank, the Guttmacher Institute, calculated that 40% of American women have had abortions. 40%! She writes (emphases mine throughout):
This is, to be fair, a crude estimation. It does not factor in some teenage abortions, although it does get most of them, since both the pregnancy and abortion rates of 18- to 19-year-olds are much higher than those of 15- to 17-year-olds (see tables 2.2 and 2.3 of this Guttmacher report for the data). Nor does this estimate take into account how many of those 45 million abortions were among women having more than one, which could reduce the overall percentage. At the same time, women who had abortions pre-Roe are left out, as are those who had illegal abortions post-Roe (yes, that still happens). Working with the data that we do have on the prevalence of abortion, I think 40 percent is a pretty good, albeit imperfect, estimate.
If anything, I believe the debate among our readers really hits home one of the main points of my story: since we do not talk much about abortion, we generally underestimate just how prevalent it is.
Keep in mind that it's not the cool, clinical procedure as presented in the media. It's not like going for a botox treatment at lunchtime. There are many variables involved — physical and emotional. Many women live with the trauma for the rest of their lives. It can also have a knock-on effect on the way they relate with other people — friends, families, boyfriends or colleagues.
Next up from 2009, we have a post from Todd of Blue Collar Philosophy who has a train of thought similar to that of David Bay of Cutting Edge Ministries (the first article). Below are extracts from his post, 'The Great Evangelical Collapse'. It outlines a book he hopes to publish. Todd, by the way, was a former Dead head (as in Grateful) and has a Master's degree in the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics.
Book Summary
My manuscript centers on the conflict and influence the liberal spirit of the age is having on Christianity in America. The particular manifestation of this spirit of the world is humanist/liberal/progressive and ultimately satanic and it stands in total opposition to an orthodox/conservative biblical view of the world.
Chapter 1. Death of a Dead Head: From Jerry to Jesus
I use my testimony as an opening chapter to set up the how ideas have consequences. The ideas that are dominating American society and politics stem from the spirit of the age which stands in total opposition to the truth of God's Word in the Bible. Ideas are inherently religious in nature and inform our notions of truth and have radically different effects on our ethical views and how we live. I explain my life and liberal world view before becoming a Christian and how radically my life changed afterward.
Chapter 2. The Dual Crisis
This chapter further details the liberal spirit of the age and its influence on America's cultural life. The wars of the twentieth century have left mankind in a dual crisis of meaning and value. America's consumer mentality, coupled with this crisis, has led to a fast food religious and moral outlook that ultimately places the justified self, the autonomous person at the center of the moral universe …
Chapter 3. Homosexuality: Liberation from Self-Control
This new justified self cannot be restrained in the pursuit of the satisfaction of any desire it may have. When meaning and value are assumed to be relative then everything is up for grabs including human sexuality. A radical gay rights agenda has developed around the idea that homosexuality is just another normal expression of human sexuality and ought to be accepted as such. Tolerance is no longer putting up with something one disagrees with but is now synonymous with complete acceptance which also entails promotion. I put forth a broad response to this agenda by looking at the biological, philosophical, theological, and political reasons to reject this agenda based on a sexual act.
Chapter 4. Abortion and Euthanasia: Culture of Death
The assault on the Christian view that life has value in that it was created by God has disastrous consequences for the defenseless among us. I respond to the arguments in favor of abortion and euthanasia by articulating a view of human personhood that is not relative or emergent based on some subjective criteria that constantly changes. Under this liberal view, life has value only if those who stand in power say it does and there is no way to check such arbitrary assertions. Only by grounding the value in life in it being a unique creation of God can personhood not be compromised.
Chapter 5: Democracy in Crisis
This liberal spirit is also undermining our democracy. Through relativism, multiculturalism, and pluralism the foundation of Democracy is being destroyed. Removing self-control and value will usher in a new form of totalitarian government in America. With the removal of internal restraint people see no reason to refrain from satisfying their immediate desires no matter how perverse they may be. In order for Democracy to survive people need to exercise self control …
Chapter 7: Biblically Based Renewal
The only institution that can respond and challenge this liberal spirit of the age is the Christian church. The tragedy is that the Christian church in America is falling under the same sway of this worldly spirit. Christians have accommodated and compromised their faith to such an extent that there is little difference in how they live. Christians who claim to be against abortion or say homosexuality is a sin voted for a liberal candidate like Barack Obama who would not stand against infanticide as a state Senator. He is also advocating for gay rights. There is a widening gap between what Christians say they are for and the consistent application of such affirmations to their lives. This allows for relative qualifications of the objective moral absolutes stemming from God's Word. A Christian will assert that he or she is personally against abortion "but" and fill in the rest. Any such qualification reveals a compromised faith that in the end is no different from someone with no faith at all. Christians need to return a biblically based world view that stands alone and independent from the influences of the world. This will help begin to transform the Christian church in America so that it can address the problems in our society as well …
We have spiralled downhill considerably over the past 20 years. Think back 50 years. These events and modes of thought would have been unimaginable then. It's certainly time to pray and study the Bible.
The American actress Jane Russell died on Monday, February 28, 2010.
My parents and their friends were born around the same time as Miss Russell. No one, even my mother's friends who were avid fans of film gossip, ever had a bad thing to say about her.
Some of her obituaries were better than others. A few mentioned her Christianity and conservative politics in passing whilst others explored these points in more depth. These things I didn't know. They make interesting reading. Emphases mine throughout.
Born Ernastine Geraldine Russell on June 21 1921 at Bemidji, Minnesota, she grew up in California, graduating from Van Nuys School. Though her mother had been an actress, the young Jane did not initially entertain thoughts of a career in showbusiness, opting instead for employment as a chiropodist's assistant. But showbiz was in the blood and in 1940, she enrolled in Max Reinhardt's Theatrical Workshop. Later, she studied with Maria Ouspenskaya, with a little modelling on the side.
That was how Howard Hughes discovered her, earmarking her immediately for the Western he planned to make with brand new stars. Russell and Jack Buetel were cast in the leading roles. Though The Outlaw was not released for many years, Hughes's publicity machine kept the stories churning about this actress with the phenomenal embonpoint.
The Daily Mail tells us more about her youth and private life:
[She] was … the daughter of a U.S. Army lieutenant and his wife, a small-part touring actress …
At the start of her career, she found herself pregnant at 18 by her high school sweetheart, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Bob Waterfield, who later became her first husband in 1943.
As she was not married, Russell went to a back-street quack. 'I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards my own doctor said: "What butcher did this to you?" I had to be taken to hospital. I was so ill I nearly died.'
The abortion left her unable to bear children. During her 25-year marriage to Waterfield, which she described as 'tempestuous', the couple adopted a baby girl, Tracy, and a British boy and then another boy.
In 1955, Russell helped to found the World Adoption International Fund, an organisation to place children with adoptive families and which pioneered adoptions from foreign countries by Americans.
For the rest of her life, she held to the belief that abortion was wrong in any circumstances — including even rape or incest.
A born-again Christian, long before that term was in general use, she formed the Hollywood Christian Group for weekly Bible study at her home, attended by many of the leading names in the film industry.
She also joined a singing group to record gospel songs, one of which made it into the charts.
Her marriage to Waterfield ended in divorce in 1968, and in that same year she married the minor stage actor Roger Barrett, but he died three months after the wedding.
Her third husband, to whom she was married for 25 years, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, died in 1999.
Back to the Telegraph for more about the adoption of her English son after the Second World War:
"I'm the mothering type," she admitted, when visiting England in the early Fifties to attend the Royal Command Film Performance. High on her agenda was "to adopt a really cute little English baby boy", as she was unable to have children … Her mother, who was accompanying her, faced an even more challenging task. "I've come over", she said, "to see if I can get hold of a rare German edition of the Bible". "That", added her daughter, "is the secret of our family's success – religion. Mom always was devout."
The quest for that "cute" little boy opened up a long and bitter battle, involving questions in the House and impassioned pleas by Lt-Col Marcus Lipton, Labour MP for Brixton, for the actress to return the 15-month-old boy, Thomas Kavanagh of South Lambeth, to his rightful mother. An agreement had been reached with the boy's parents for him to spend three months with the actress in her Hollywood home, but legislation of 1950 expressly forbade parents to allow their children to be adopted by non-British subjects. In the end, after an 11-month struggle, Miss Russell did adopt Thomas Kavanagh in America, while the parents were discharged conditionally in London "for unlawfully permitting the care and possession of the child to be transferred".
As far as politics went, the Mail relates:
In 1971, she made her Broadway stage debut in the Stephen Sondheim musical Company, and later in the decade appeared in TV commercials for Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Bras, with the catchphrase, 'For us full-figured gals'.
Behind the scenes, however, she had been battling alcoholism for a number of years, and in 1978, there were worldwide headlines when she was arrested for drink-driving and jailed for 96 hours.
After that, she swore off alcohol, describing herself as 'a teetotal mean-spirited Right-wing conservative Christian bigot'.
Asked what she thought of Hollywood liberals such as George Clooney, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, she replied: 'I think they're not well.'
In later life:
she moved to Santa Maria, California, to be close to her younger son.
She was visited there in 2004 by Leonardo DiCaprio, who was filming The Aviator and wanted her to tell him what his character, Howard Hughes, was really like.
In 2006, at the age of 84, though suffering from macular degeneration of the eyes and with hearing aids in both ears, Russell put together a musical show, The Swinging Forties, which played twice a month at the Radisson Hotel in Santa Maria.
It featured herself and about a dozen of the town's residents, including a choir director and a retired police officer.
Asked why she did it, Russell said: 'Out of boredom, and because there was nothing much going on in town for the older folks to do.'
Another 'old school' star passes. It won't be long before I stop reading film stars' obits. The new ones just aren't worth the time.
Jane Russell recognised her sins and duly repented. May she rest in peace and may her family walk in the comfort of almighty God.
James Delingpole, Telegraph blogger and Spectator columnist, is keen on debunking the Church of Gaia.
So, it was no surprise that he latched on to Harold Lewis's resignation letter from the American Physical Society, whose position on climate change can be found here. The position statement is the one to which Professor Lewis refers to below. (Thanks to Dick Puddlecote for featuring the Delingpole column.)
Since then, it appears that Professor Lewis will be joining The Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Here are excerpts from Professor Lewis's letter (emphases mine throughout):
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood … Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that …
As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce … an honest appraisal of the situation at that time …
How different it is now. The … money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1/ … In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate.
2/ The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry … and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it … In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety … The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe.
3/ In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4/ So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science … I might note that it was not easy … you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5/ To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses … The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6/ As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it … I think it is the money … to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department … would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.
And so would Tobacco Control, another leviathan spanning the world. But we'll look at the spurious science behind that in another post.
It's all money and job-generating stuff. And, as my readers have seen, it's also all about Church unity. No dissension, no discussion, only agreement. After all, when funding and your job are at stake, what's to discuss?
About this, Dick Puddlecote writes:
I have looked at tobacco control 'science'. Just about all of it. And everything described by Lewis is not only replicated therein, but is more duplicitous, more resistant to debate, more mendacious, more money-oriented, and more corrupt, than anything Lewis will have witnessed.
Based on this experience, I can also offer a prediction. Lewis will be ostracised, his name blackened, his previous work dismissed as eccentricity, his future work dismissed as funded by oil companies. He will be expunged from the scientific community and threats of similar treatment will be issued to all who dare to commission him.
Or maybe, as one of Dick's readers noted, they'll just say he was 'gaga' or an 'embittered' old man. I hope not, but this is how these guys work. And they're always in it for the long Gramscian game.
Delingpole's blog post generated nearly 1,800 comments when I read it. It may have more now. A reader, Henrybrubaker, cited in the blog Banned, had this to say (brief excerpt below):
… Eco-fascists are … extreme and they are willing to go to any lengths to protect their criminal schemes. If they are not confronted, discredited and defeated could the future bring us an eco-genocide? There are those on the side of 'gaia' who think that is exactly what should happen.
The greenies will scream at me 'How dare you compare us to the Nazis, we are not the same, we don't want to build the death camps etc…'. Perhaps not, perhaps the majoity … don't want to kill us all. However, these people are the tools, the useful idiots, of the extremist eco-fascists. They do the ground work for people with views like Pentti Linkola, the Finnish eco-fascist who wants to destroy the majority of humanity and essentially enslave the rest …
Mr Brubaker's comment received 54 recommendations from his fellow readers.
Stewart Cowan of Realstreet does an outstanding job of dissecting ethical issues. In 'Is Prince Charles a eugenicist? Are you without realising?' he explores why the heir to the throne thinks the way he does:
Prince Philip wrote in the foreword to If I Were an Animal (1986),
In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.
He notes that the Prince of Wales wishes to be known as Defender of Nature when he becomes king:
Defender of Nature? The worry is: how much do his beliefs match his dad's?
Cowan believes that the Church of Gaia is part of eugenics:
This is how the world's elites view humanity – as a virus; a cancer spreading across the planet and killing it. I believe the main purpose of the environment movement is to sear images like these into people's minds so that they will either willingly accept, or more likely, be forced to go along with a managed reduction in population: eugenics.
On the 10:10 campaign, he writes:
… They really seemed to believe as Prince Philip does and also appeared to revel in the bloody murder of those who won't go along with them.
It seems that the only difference between the Nazis and the Ecofascists is the targets to be eliminated.
The mysterious Georgia Guidestones suggest the world's population should be limited to half a billion people. These elite atheist globalist "Ten Commandments" are as follows. (Some of these should already be familiar as the groundwork was begun a long time ago)
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
Whoever was responsible for these words clearly thought that at least nine out of ten people must be eliminated.
Notice how much prominence that second "commandment" has in western society today: Guide reproduction wisely.
The only 'guidestone' that makes any sense is Number 7, however, I suspect that would be used against us instead of for us.
He notes that 'family planning' has been around for many decades now:
It has been made to appear totally acceptable, even wholesome.
As I have written about before, Marie Stopes, "pioneer" of Britain's abortion clinics, used to send her poetry to Adolf Hitler in adoration, while calling for the compulsory sterilisation of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character.
While that hasn't quite happened yet, family planning is considered normal and many people believe that killing unborn humans is acceptable, even a "woman's right". This particular cull deprives many millions a year of their part in history.
I didn't know that about Marie Stopes, did you?
What's next? What about:
… a euthanasia industry to match the effectiveness of the abortion factories?
This should easily be achieved in this age of family breakdowns and the seemingly increasing disrespect for the elderly. Old folk will be told it is their right to be terminated in cases of illness, even a spot of depression or a harelip. They will be encouraged to feel they are a burden to the rest of society and the environment and eventually they'll be volunteering to jump off cliffs (or ride their wheelchairs over). There will be posters in doctors' surgeries alongside the family planning ones.
Who knows? Euthanasia may even be incorporated into family planning. For example, if you want four children, you should plan to have all the grandparents killed off by the time the fourth child arrives. It could be promoted as a double celebration: a new life comes into the world and an old timer gives his life for the planet so as to maintain humanity in perpetual balance with nature.
Cowan's conclusion is chilling:
You could live with that, couldn't you? Ask yourself how many of their lies you have bought up until now.
I can think of a group with whom they might start. Can you? Hint: it's the only minority group worldwide that has no legal or state protection anywhere, increasingly deprived of housing, recreation and employment. If you think you know who it is, do leave a comment.


text:
Anyway, guess what came in the mail today? I love signing for parcels, but what I love even more is getting belated birthday presents (: My heart literally skipped a beat when I received a gift in the mail from my friend, beckaroo becks.
Hail the mother of all cook books!1. I've had an ongoing love affair with cupcakes for awhile now.
Here's why this is the perfect gift..
Here's why this is the perfect gift..
2. Every single time I'm in London and want to try one of them famous hummingbird cupcakes, the queue just puts me off
3. I now have all sorts of excuses to use my hand-held mixer and other baking tools (I love cookware, especially colourful ones).
4. There are recipes for all sorts of treats inside this little gem of a book!
I'm drooling already.
Becks sent me a photo of herself with the book a few days ago, and now I'm proud to return the favour. I know I look alot less graceful as compared to becks, but I'm channeling my inner cupcake ninja.
Can't wait to start on a series of cupcake making adventures!
It'll be a blast. (:
Thank you soo much becks! I owe you a red velvet one if you ever come visit!
It'll be a blast. (:
Thank you soo much becks! I owe you a red velvet one if you ever come visit!