Olivia King - Bumped/Updated

I'm bumping this because my cousin is still in need of a liver. Please continue to pray for her and her parents.

As I get back to work in the new year, I have a request for those who might choose to read this blog. My cousin in Atlanta is in dire need of a liver transplant. There is a race against time until her liver fails completely. She's 10 years old and this will be her second transplant in six years. I ask for a couple of things.

First, I ask for your prayers for Olivia. She has spent much of her young life in the hospital and that will not change until she gets a transplant. Right now she is not bad enough to place very high on the transplant list. Unfortunately she has to get more ill to get a higher priority. That breaks my heart but it is a simple fact. Her parents also need your prayers. They have lived lives of little sleep and lots of anxiety.

Second, the family is going to need in the neighborhood of $175,000 for out of pocket expenses for the surgery. They've been through this before and they trust God that he will meet their need as He did the last time. If you are in the Atlanta area, watch for benefit concerts for Olivia King and go. They have lots of friends in the Christian recording industry and they will be having concerts to raise money for Olivia's surgery soon. They are also going to be selling lots of autographed memorabilia on e-bay in the coming weeks. I know that they have received a banner from Amy Grant and something special from Larnelle Harris that will be up for bid. They also have lots of autographed pics that have been donated. When the items go up for sell, I will post links here.

I have been skeptical of similar things on the internet before but when it is a family member it hits home. I'm not asking for any money at this site yet. That may be in the future though. Right now, please pray and watch for an opportunity to help.

Send Him a Nice Welcome Gift

Incrementalism. That’s the method that the liberaltistas have used to make smoking a near felony. Apparently, their brainwashing is progressing quite well. It seems that Rep Keith Ellison (D-Minn) thought it was a crime to smoke in a government building. It is not allowed in almost all government buildings except in the private offices of US Representatives and Senators. Call it a perk. I really don’t care. But Rep Ellison does.

You remember Rep Ellison. He’s the newly elected congressman that insisted on being sworn in on the Koran. Sure he used Thomas Jefferson’s Koran to pretend that it was legitimate but he was emphasizing his Muslim faith over his swearing in. Now it seems that Ellison has displayed his poor judgment in establishing a relationship with his fellow congressmen.

He tasked his minion press secretary to call the Capitol police because he smelled smoke. Not electrical smoke, or paper smoke, or wood smoke. Nope, he smelled cigar smoke. And he knew where it was coming from too. It was that evil Republican Tom Trancedo enjoying the sweet aroma of a finely crafted cigar. He was relaxing. I bet it smelled good too. But Ellison lacked the personal courage to go knock on Tom’s door and ask him to put it out. He didn’t send a lowly page (apparently they were busy). He didn’t even have someone pick up the phone and call him. It wasn’t like Trancedo was on the other side of the building either. He was next door.

So Ellison calls the cops, who inform him that it is perfectly legal for congressmen to smoke in their offices. Trancedo has said that now he’s going to smoke twice as much and find some really nasty stinky cigars to boot. I understand his anger that a fellow congressman would call the cops before talking to him personally. I think that Rep Trancedo is taking the wrong approach though. He should send a peace offering to Rep Ellison. Maybe a nice bottle of brandy, a box of fine cigars, and a wonderful honey cured smoked ham. That should open a friendly dialog.

I'm Queen Nancy and You WILL Do As I Say

Queen Nancy has decreed that her house will debate whether they are losers or not. "We all know that deep down we are losers. This will make it non-bindingly official" Pelosi is quoted as stating to The Loser's Gazette today. In a related story, it is becoming more difficult for Queen Nancy to make her case when American troops keep winning the battles. The latest from Mosul:

Title:
IRAQI ARMY, 2-7 CAVALRY TAKE DOWN INSURGENT OPERATION; SOLVE MURDER, UNCOVER LARGE WEAPONS CACHE
Release Date:
2/13/2007
Release Number:
07-01-03P
Description:
MOSUL, Iraq - Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division and A Co., 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, raided several buildings in northeast Mosul on Feb. 9 in response to intelligence received about a possible weapons cache.

2-7 Cavalry Soldiers arrived on site and began receiving small-arms fire from the upper floor of an adjacent mosque. They managed to suppress the fire while the IA soldiers investigated. No additional fire was reported and the 2-7 troops continued their mission.

10 suspects were detained in the southern compound, five of which tested positive for explosive residue. Millions of Dinar, worth thousands of dollars in U.S. currency, was also found in an underground storage room along with over 400 fake identification cards.

One suspect was detained in the northern compound, and a tunnel gave way to the discovered cache of ordnance and weapons:

* approximately 250,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition

* grenade fuses

* dozens of rockets

* 100 grenades

* over 200 mortar rounds

* more than a dozen rocket launchers

* approximately 100 pounds of IED-making material

* more than a dozen small arms

All of the ordnance was turned over to explosive ordnance disposal teams, and the remaining evidence was processed along with the 11 detainees.

Soldiers from 2-7 Cavalry continue to partner with members of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police in rooting out illegal weapons and shutting down illegal operations that harm the citizens of Ninewa Province. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION - NORTH AT: TFLIGHTNING.PAO@US.ARMY.MIL

The Speaker Who Would Be Queen

Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be your queen. At least that’s what her actions indicate. She proclaims that her House (I thought that it belonged to the country) would be ethical and moral. That turned out to be a trinket for the newspapers. She then pledged to work in a bipartisan manner. We found out that means as long as we agree with her.

Her latest headlines are about the jet she wants the American taxpayer to provide her. Instead of calling up the Air Force and asking for whatever is available heading west, Marie Antoipelosi specified that it had to fly non-stop, be fully staffed, and have enough room for her extended family members. When asked how the taxpayers could afford such extravagance, Madam Pelosi responded, “Let them eat cake!” Umm…that didn’t work out so well for the last woman to say that.

For now, Pelosi has taken possession of an aircraft and parked it in front of her palatial estate in Napa. We are not surprised, or amused.

Of Course He's not Sane...He's Algore

Matt Drudge posts today an interview with the President of the Czech Republic. I know that he changes the lead often so I am posting his post in its entirety (that means that I copied and pasted it. It’s not mine, Matt Drudge wrote/posted it.) Apparently the Czechs have a president who is not afraid of the PC enviro-wacko mafia. I would not be surprised to see some leftistas threaten him now. They are peaceful only in name if you cross them. I particularly love the part where he tells the interviewer that he's a moron for asking such a stupid question and He's going to pretend that he didn't hear it. This guy is classic. If only other politicians had this kind of intellectual honesty.

Here is the Drudge post:

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity

Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET
Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" [sic] are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrically opposite. Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change. Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...

A: ...I am right...

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa. It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably [sic] more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago. That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

[English translation from Harvard Professor Lubos Motl]Developing...