Could it be... the lady in the passage of Acts 9:36-41... a pious Christian widow at Joppa whom Peter restored to life (Acts 9:36-41)

She was a Hellenistic Jewess, called Tabitha by the Jews and Dorcas by the Greeks.

And I thought Tabitha was a lady who twitched her nose 

Hmmmm, which of her names are you looking for? 

Batter Up!

The pitcher has lobbed a fine ball slow and up the middle....

The crowd tracks the arc and is silenced...

Crack!!

1 Sam. 17:4 Goliath the dude from Gath

["Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities... With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."]

I know that there is hate in the words that I have put up here, they are not my words.  I am afraid we have really lost our way here in America.  It is not good, but people need to be aware of him and his associates.

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities... With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."
                      --Thomas Jefferson

My faith is in Jesus Christ and His blood shed for me at Calvary.  He is the Cornerstone, my Rock on which I stand.

Beware of the shifting sands in American politics.

Reverend Wright, Senator Obama's mentor for the past 20 years...

Got these excerpts from Mark Alexander's 3-part article No ObamaNation...

Wright was, himself, a disciple of James Cone, one of the original champions of Black Liberation Theology, who wrote the following in his seminal work, Black Theology and Black Power: "Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love."

Wright quotes Cone on TUC's website: "The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people. ... All white men are responsible for white oppression. ... Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil'."

When asked if he would leave TUC (as if that would make everything copacetic), Obama said, "This is somebody who I have known for 20 years [who] led me to Christ. He is a biblical scholar. He is a well regarded preacher and somebody who is known for talking about the social gospel."

...

Perhaps the most important domestic policy issue the next president will undertake is the nomination of one or two Justices to the Supreme Court. Here is where Wright's mentorship of Obama really shines! Obama says he will nominate judges "who got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old -- and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges."

...

In 1969, Ayers and Dohrn were founding signatories of the Weathermen's declaration of unification with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" vanguards, to ensure "the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world Communism."

...

Ayers and Dohrn scurried underground in 1970, after a bomb being constructed in New York to kill Army officers at Fort Dix detonated prematurely, killing three fellow Weathermen. (In the jargon of bomb technicians and investigators, this is known as "self solving.")

They surrendered to authorities a decade later but were never prosecuted because of "improper" FBI surveillance methods. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Dohrn is an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

...

Asked about his association with Ayers, Obama said, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood ... who I know. ... He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." So, he only exchanges ideas with him on an irregular basis?

Obama added the disclaimer that he was only eight years old when Ayers was bombing buildings. However, Obama was 40 when an unrepentant Ayers told The New York Times, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough." (No small irony that interview was published on 11 September 2001.)

For her part, Dohrn once offered the following assessment of the Manson family murders: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into [pregnant actress Sharon Tate's] stomach! Wild!"

Nonetheless, Obama has maintained his association with Ayers and Dohrn, and the connection goes quite a bit deeper than just neighborhood proximity.

Ayers and Dohrn actually hosted the party to launch Obama's successful 1996 Illinois State Senate campaign at their fashionable Hyde Park home, a campaign endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Incidentally, the DSA would later note in a newsletter that State Senator Obama gave the eulogy for socialist Saul Mendelson, a "champion" of the "democratic left."

Obama and Ayers also served together on the Woods Fund board, which, incidentally, awarded $6,000 to Obama's "pastor," Jeremiah Wright, noting the grant was "in recognition of Barack Obama's contributions to Woods Fund as a director." This is the same board that supports such anti-Semitic organizations as the Arab-American Action Network.

A more in-depth look at Obama reveals he may indeed be a "hard-core academic Marxist" as accused by his 2004 Senate campaign opponent, and sacrificial lamb, Alan Keyes.

["The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men."]

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men."
                        -- Samuel Adams

Hey Everyone,
Unfortunately, the St. Louis Post Dispatch removed it's article from the web with the Sunday Christians remark, but I noticed the speech is on the web in video form... you might want to listen.

Here's a web article about his visit there...

Senator Obama Speaks At St. Louis Convention 
 
Last Edited: Sunday, 06 Jul 2008, 9:31 AM CDT 
Created: Saturday, 05 Jul 2008, 11:33 AM CDT 
 
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Watch Sen. Obama's entire speech and Betsey Bruce's coverage here:
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Links
African Methodist Episcopal Church Website



ST. LOUIS  -- 


By: Betsey Bruce
Fox 2 News

 Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama called on Americans to celebrate our nation's birth by serving and sacrificing to help create a "kind and more just" world.  Speaking in St. Louis to a crowd of twelve thousand attending the African Methodist Episcopal church convention, the Illinois senator drew cheers and shouts of "yes we can!"

 "Just as this celebration cannot be an idle celebration; our faith cannot be an idle faith," he told the church goers Saturday afternoon. "We must live truth not only with good words, but with good deeds."  He told the crowd at America's Center of the Christian faith he found as a young community organizer working in Chicago.  Suggesting moral values belong in government policies and laws as well as homes and lives, Obama called for a new economic plan that would produce better paying jobs and an education agenda that invests in early childhood education and better pay for teachers.

 Chiding news reporters for suggesting he had suddenly accepted a Bush administration idea of faith based programs working with government, the candidate declared "coming to the church is not new to me, it is not part of a political stratagem."  He promised faith based initiatives would be at the moral center of an Obama administration.  But he also called on individuals to step forward.  "We cannot legislate compassion; we cannot legislate responsibility," he said going on to exhort parents to instill values in their children, to read to them and to teach them to respect others.

 "We've got to have every hand on deck to deal with this crisis that we face," he said.  Praising the A.M.E. church for its leadership roles in the civil rights movement, Obama described his success as "the culmination of so many others."  He concluded his speech asking the crowd, " keep me in your prayers AME. Go out and march with me. I won't fear anybody."

 A church elder from Oakland, CA, Booker Guyton said the convention would welcome hearing from Republican nominee Senator John McCain.  "We are a diverse society and we need both views."

 McCain has yet to respond to the church convention's invitation to speak.  The quadrennial convention continues through July 11.
 

Hey Everyone,
I cannot and will not forget the comment made during the Democrats' primaries that the leftist liberals like Obama more than Hillary, because he was more liberal than she.  LOL, that was a shocker.

Want to also point out, the Democrats are already strategizing the future.  Congress has ground to a halt wasting time making apologies for American slavery and what not instead of real work.  They are not dumb, just holding back until OB wins and then the flood gates open with a democrat controlled Congress and Executive branch.  Then it looks like progress is being made, without OB even raising a finger.  I know it's politics, I'm sure the Republicans could be accused of such nonsense in the past.  It just sickens me.

I also read an article about Senator Obama's speech before a religious conference in St. Louis just recently.  They loved him, and he claimed he wouldn't be doing the Lord's work if he wasn't following the Lord's will.  He also urge "Christians" to practice what they hear on Sundays... not just be Sunday Christians.

Sorry, I don't dig fraudulent comments.  There are many Christian organizations and ministries that are dying to self everyday in service to the Lord Jesus Christ and not the American political machine!

Sincerely,
MangoMan

True, Satan would love to tar the image of God the best he can... since he himself is a created being and well below God.  Satan can hurt humans, and I guess indirectly hurt God.  Except, likening life to baseball in that the Slugger, our Almighty God is gonna knock the skin off the ball (Satan) as He sends it over the wall screaming in unending pain in the final inning.  I will probably be corrected for that statement, so I'll start the correcting myself.  Jesus Christ's death on the cross of calvary was the knock out blow.  Death where is thy sting?  Grave where is thy victory?  From Isaiah I believe, the battle is already won.  That last inning hit is gonna be so cool though.
Sincerely,
MangoMan

I forgot about the address rule... feel free to delete

Seems you've garnered somebody's attention that doesn't appreciate your work or views.

(link removed) is their attempt at smear...

I will say this much, God is watching too.  To Him be honor and glory forever!!

[The Triumph of Peter Singer's Values: Animal Rights More Important Than Human]

The Triumph of Peter Singer's Values: Animal Rights More Important Than Human
by Wesley J. Smith
July 28, 2008

Peter Singer is the Princeton bioethicist who first broke into the public's consciousness more than thirty years ago with Animal Liberation, a book in which he claimed that granting human beings special privileges based on being human is "speciesist"—discrimination against animals.

Instead of society being human centric, he asserted that the lives and well-being of animals deserve "equal consideration" with those of humans.

Singer's intent was (and is) to destroy human exceptionalism—the belief that human life matters morally simply because it is human—and replace it with a "quality of life" ethic in which being a "person" rather than a human is what matters morally.

Personhood status would be earned by possessing minimal cognitive capacities such as being self aware over time. This means, Singer wrote in Practical Ethics, that "some members of other species are persons: some members of our own species are not." The latter category includes the unborn, infants, people with catastrophic cognitive impairments.

One consequence of replacing the sanctity/equality of human life with the "quality of life" ethic would be the destruction of universal human rights.

As just one example, Singer argues that infanticide is acceptable because babies are not persons. Thus, writing again in Practical Ethics, Singer stated that parents should be allowed to kill a baby with hemophilia if they believed that doing so "would lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life."

Singer is also the moving force behind the Great Ape Project (GAP), which he announced in 1993 with the goal of obtaining a United Nations declaration that apes, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans are members with human beings in the "community of equals."

No, apes would not be given the right to vote, but they would be deemed morally equivalent to human children.

At first glance, this seems paradoxical because the GAP is explicitly speciesist. But there is method to this madness. The GAP isn't intended "just" to give apes human-type rights. As he and philosopher Paola Cavalieri wrote in The Great Ape Project, breaking "the species barrier" would establish the principle that humans do not have unique moral worth. That would break the spine of Judeo/Christian moral philosophy opening the door to even more animals being accepted in the moral community.

At this point too many readers may be rolling their eyes, laughing, and saying to themselves, "Ape rights! Infanticide! It can't happen here."

More dangerous words were never uttered. One reason Singer Values are triumphing is that too many refuse to acknowledge the evil that this way comes. Moreover, it is happening here:

* Eugenic infanticide has become almost common in the Netherlands, with two studies in the Lancet revealing that 8% of all infants who die there are killed by doctors—about 90 such murders per year, all with the support of the Dutch Medical Association.

* Cognitively devastated human patients, most famously illustrated by the Terri Schiavo debacle, are dehydrated to death by removing tube sustenance based on quality of life judgments.

* Futile Care Theory, allowing doctors to refuse wanted life sustaining treatment, again based on quality of life, is the law in Texas and other states.

* And this just in: the species barrier is about to be officially breached in Spain, where the Parliament is poised to pass the Great Ape Project into law and require the country's diplomats to promote it internationally.
The threat to human exceptionalism is real and immediate. The danger to the weak and vulnerable acute.

In the world that would rise from the ashes of human exceptionalism in which we would be viewed as just another ape in the forest, an individual's value would be subjective and rights temporary, depending on the extent of each animal's individual capacities at the time of measuring.

In such a milieu, none of us would ultimately be safe because if we were ever deemed to lose (or not yet to have gained) our personhood, we would come to be viewed and treated, well, like animals.
_____________________________________________________________________

I would love to hear your opinions.  Can one read between the lines and see where one's beliefs when they don't coincide with the masses might get them in the "dog pound" and one day be "put to sleep".  This is not sci fi material, this is real life.

Sincerely,
MangoMan 

Hello,
Thank you for the update.  Curious, is there a chance you could pass me his email address or forward mine to him.  Is there a possibility, one can pick up the torch and carry it on?  Why let a lifetime of work be dissipated like vapor on the wind?  I am seriously interested here.
Sincerely,
MangoMan

...

Obsession with polling

Now, part of the mind recoils from the suggestion that elections are regarded in this way. Yet consider the extent to which, in our discussions and media coverage, we treat them like horse races, or games of chance. The focus of attention is more than ever on the question of who is winning, who will win, who has won.

Talking heads rail on incessantly about who has lost or gained momentum, or who stands where in this poll or that. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the obsession with polling and poll numbers has taken the place of any real interest in the quality, thought, or characteristics of the people standing for election.

 The focus is not on who they are, what they believe, or most importantly, why and how they think as they do — but rather on the reaction of the electorate to their presence, the way a chemist focuses on the reaction of a substance to the introduction of a catalytic reagent. For purposes of analysis, the chemist needs to know what the reagent is, not why it is as it is. In the testing process, the objective is to determine from its behavior the nature of the substance (in this case the electorate), not the factors that influence its nature in order to affect its behavior.

Manipulate versus persuade

Why is this a bad way to understand political elections? Because the ultimate purpose of the election is not just to produce an outcome, but to determine the outcome one way or another. For freedom to be respected, the aim of the political process cannot be simply to determine who wins or loses. It must include an effort to persuade the voters that it is better for them and for their country that one person wins their support, rather than another.

Unless the element of persuasion is taken seriously, the political process degenerates into a competition to see who can successfully manipulate perception to drive the electorate toward an outcome that generates power for their side. When elections focus more or less exclusively on matters of perception, the perception of victory tends to drive out and dominate all the rest. Power flows toward the perception of power.

Impact over substance

When a candidate's views are simply catalysts for the process of analyzing and manipulating electoral reaction, their content is less important than their effect.

To achieve the maximum impact, every political statement must be limited to words and phrases calculated to achieve that effect. In this context, what makes for a strong viewpoint is not its rational basis or the facts that support it, nor the truth or decency of the principles, ideals, and values it represents. Political strength lies all in the momentary electoral impact, and not at all in the substance.

Many have assumed that the reduction of political discussion to sixty-second sound bites, or bullet point notations of support and opposition, is especially the result of media imperatives, but it is more likely that media coverage is what it is because of the influence of the pseudo-scientific paradigm of politics itself. The alliance between materialistic pseudo-science and material ambition effectively drives from politics the substance that would otherwise offer the electorate some basis for deliberate choice.

Voter disconnect

This degraded approach to political life necessarily affects the voter's understanding of his political actions. When politics is like a horse race, or a game of chance, casting a vote is like placing a bet.

Though the bettors pick the winner, they would not claim that their choice has determined the winner. They might consult the handicappers to know who looks like a winner. They might follow some gut instinct and bet against the odds. They might try to learn whatever they can about a competitor's form, past performance, handlers and trainers, etc. Such information might influence their pick — but it would not give them the sense that their choice contributed to a competitor's victory or defeat.

 Bettors presume that forces beyond their control, including mere chance, are responsible for the outcome.

Politics as pastime, not opportunity for moral choice

Understood in this way, voting and political activity may be seen as engaging pastimes, like sports competitions or a trip to Atlantic City. They cannot be regarded as serious moral responsibilities, through which the people exert their sovereign will and as a whole make the choices that determine the destiny of the nation.

The materialist paradigm of politics therefore undermines the sovereignty of the people by corrupting their understanding of the act through which above all they exercise that sovereignty. They come to believe that their role in politics is to follow the most powerful force, rather than, by their choice, to constitute the powers by which force may legitimately be exercised.

Rather than choosing their representatives, they become elements of a process that periodically alters the appearance of the forces that dominate them, and which actually exist beyond their control.

Is this liberty?

© 2007 Alan Keyes

Electoral politics?
Part 2 of 'The Crisis of the Republic'

Alan Keyes
April 25, 2007

 Because our understanding of politics has been corrupted, we cannot discuss what threatens our political sovereignty until we free ourselves from the effects of that corruption. It's as if we are looking at our political life through lenses or panes of glass that obscure and distort everything we see, including the nature of our own actions.

Thus, though the very possibility of electoral politics derives from moral premises that justify and require self-government, we are led to consider our political choices without regard to those moral premises, as if economic and other material consequences are the only proper subjects of political life.

Why do the American people accept this approach, when it so evidently undermines their claim to political sovereignty?

The "science" of politics

The great scientific and technological breakthroughs of the twentieth century contributed to the intellectual triumph of scientific materialism as the paradigm of all human knowledge and expertise. Abashed by the success of their colleagues in the physical sciences, intellectuals concerned with politics and society sought to reestablish their disciplines on what would appear to be scientific grounds.

This meant of course an attempt to understand complex human actions and activities in quantitative terms, with little respect for the moral elements of human consciousness that cannot easily be reduced to material data.

 Scientific methodology requires facts — which is to say, measurable objects of study and experimentation. But how does one measure faith in God; the love of family, of justice, or of noble deeds; or the vision of compassion that seeks no gain? How does one measure boundless hate passed on through generations, or fear tasted for so long that it is like an organ in the body? Many things that play a role in human action, for better or worse, defy quantitative expression, including of course the sense of infinite worth that almost everyone instinctively attaches to their own existence.

The sense that there is at the heart of our existence an intangible, indefinable mystery of being may explain why many human beings have refused to surrender their belief in God and transcendent morality, despite pressure from the arrogant ideologues of scientific methodology. Given the proverbial pride of intellect, however, it shouldn't be surprising that many elite intellectuals have not been among them.

Calculating human worth

Instead of accepting the true challenge of the human condition, these ambitious intellectuals have proselytized for the redefinition of human activities in terms that would appear to fit the paradigm of scientific methodology. Motivations, of course, cannot be easily quantified, but the behavior they produce can be tracked, categorized, sorted, counted, and compared. The meaning of right and wrong may not be scientifically provable, but opinions about it can be polled, averaged, analyzed, classified, and broken down and out.

In social science methodology, counting has taken the place of measuring, but only by discounting a difficulty that does not arise when dealing with physical things, which is the effect of abstracting from the significance of the unit of measurement — i.e., the worth and significance of the individual human being.

In the realm of mathematical science, the individual is a mere abstraction. No harm is done, it is assumed, when relationships are considered in the aggregate without regard for the worth of the ones being counted.

When applied to human things, however, this mentality denies the very insight that American principles place at the heart of right, justice, and legitimacy — which is that every individual has a worth and dignity not derived from their participation in the community or group, or their relations with other individuals, but which must be respected as a matter of principle, rather than calculation.

"Materialistic pluralism" and electoral corruption

 The mimicry of scientific materialism in political and social science is obviously quite compatible with materialistic pluralism as the paradigm of American political life. Indeed, the pervasive acceptance of this paradigm owes much to the apparent confirmation provided by these pseudo-sciences.

Tragically for the American republic, this approach to human affairs rejects in its very premises the understanding of human nature and action on which our free institutions depend. This is nowhere more apparent than in the degraded understanding of elections which it has imposed upon our politics.

In the material sciences, measurement produces a result that is the consequence of the presence or activity of material factors, but in no way a sign of their self-determination or responsibility. Heat of a certain intensity brings water to a boil. But it would be thoroughly unscientific to suggest that individual units of the material being heated somehow "decide" upon this outcome. The action of physical things is what it is, not what the things themselves have determined it to be.

Looked at in this way, the outcome of an election becomes a result entirely abstracted from the individual choices that have produced it. Individuals participate in the result the way agitated molecules participate in the production of heat.

....