Sunday, April 27, 2008

TIME defends altered Iwo Jima photo


Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 4/25/2008 11:30:00 AM
Conservative media watchdog Media Research Center is outraged that TIME magazine is defending its recent issue, claiming that the fight against alleged "catastrophic" global warming is just as important as World War II.
green TIME cover bigRecently TIME created a stir when its cover featured a doctored version of the famous Iwo Jima photo taken by Joe Rosenthal on Mount Suribachi in February 1945. TIME replaced the flag with a tree and a caption that read: "How to Win the War on Global Warming."

Amy Menefee is managing editor of the Business and Media Institute of the Media Research Center, which has been trying to expose the truth about global warming. "We've talked with several veterans. We talked with some Iwo Jima vets. And they've been outraged, which is very understandable. This issue of TIME magazine called green the new red, white, and blue -- likening fighting global warming to fighting in World War II. This seems to be almost the new liberal analogy because Al Gore's 'We Campaign,' his new ad campaign, has also used this likening the need to fight global warming with storming the beaches of Normandy," Menefee points out.

According to Menefee, TIME managing editor Richard Stengel recently defended the doctoring of the photo and defied the traditional notion that journalists should be unbiased. "He doesn't think journalism should really be objective anyway because he thinks objectivity is a fantasy. That was one of the words he used. So it does show the huge sea change in journalism toward advocacy, especially on this particular issue," Menefee contends.

Menefee says TIME has been banging the global warming drum for some time now. In 2007, the magazine offered 51 ways to "save the planet," which included more taxes and regulation.
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What do you think? Is TIME or Media Research Center right? Is global warming an issue? Is it as important as the World Wars? Is this disrespecting our troops? Is global warming over-rated?
Leave your feedback below.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Expelled {Movie Review}



I went and saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed on Friday, opening night. I thought that Mr. Stein did a very good job of not just accepting what one side said, but looking into the matter to form his opinion and show it in a balanced fashion. He also did a good job of making this documentary interesting all the way around. I never thought that any part of it was dull or over bearing. I definitely recommend that everyone see this movie it. It is well worth the time and money. It is definitely a film that requires thought, and maybe even action.

Sites:
http://expelledthemovie.com/
http://www.getexpelled.com/


4 out of 5 stars.

This post does contain affiliate links; thank you for your support.

Friday, April 18, 2008

The Dark Side of Green

Environmentally friendly fuels may make drivers in the U.S. feel greener, but a report out of the United Nations reveals one dark side to going green. According to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the demand for biofuel--particularly ethanol--is creating a crop shortage that's resulting in a deadly famine for many of the world's less fortunate. The U.N. estimates that the amount of corn it takes to fill a 50-liter car tank with ethanol is enough to feed a child for an entire year. America is already devoting 18 percent of its grain to ethanol production, and other countries are following our lead. Food prices are up, and the number of Third-World families that can afford to eat is down. In effect, this paranoia over global warming is leading to global hunger, a crisis far more destructive--and credible--than climate change. Despite what Al Gore says, this prescription for "solving" a climate problem (which scientists have yet to confirm) is not only expensive but also deadly.

Additional Resources
An appeal to slow down on biofuel
from Tony Perkin's Washington Update, April 17, 2008

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Poem



Oh ghastly empty cathedrals
Where we say the Most High God dwells
Must we continue living in this way?

Do our monotonous, glorious, ever-same sanctuaries
Block our prayers to God?
Can He hear our cries and prayers
Through these magnificent walls we've built?

Or does He hear us
And answer?

Do these walls block His reply?

Does our self-absorption keep us from
The one we long for?

What about the world? Do they know
Who He is?
Do we go out and share?
But I forgot

This is a Sanctuary
A place of refuge from the world
But we cannot keep out the stench of death that lies outside our door

What if
What if
What if it was a hospital instead?
A place of healing for those outside
What if we turned this place back to what it was meant to be?

The red cross demands it
The risen Saviour commands
What if the answer to our prayer is found
In doing what He says?

Just a thought...

original image source

Saturday, April 12, 2008

*Psst* Have You Heard....?




Racism Alive and Well at Planned Parenthood
A shocking set of recordings was released this week that could prove disastrous for Planned Parenthood's ties with the African-American community. Lila Rose, a pro-life student and reporter at UCLA, launched an undercover investigation aimed at exposing the racism of the nation's largest abortion merchant. With the help of an actor, she contacted Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states, inquiring if they would be willing to accept a donation earmarked for the abortion of black babies. The results were jaw-dropping.

Rose was appalled to discover that every last clinic agreed. Not one employee objected or questioned the request, even when the actor insisted that the purpose was to "lower the number of black people" in America. When the caller phoned an Ohio branch, he was told that Planned Parenthood "will accept the money for whatever reason." Read the outrageous transcript from the Idaho clinic, which is also available with Rose's other recordings in a montage at [I will post the video at the end of this article]
Actor: ...I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids.
Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.
Actor: And we don't, you know, we just think the less black kids out there the better.
Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable... This is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited and want to make sure I don't leave anything out.
Students at UCLA are so infuriated by the investigation that they are petitioning the university to cut all affiliation with Planned Parenthood. What few people realize is that the organization has a history of racism that has been ingrained since Planned Parenthood's earliest days, when founder Margaret Sanger advocated negative eugenics and spoke to a woman's branch of the KKK (Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography, 1938, p. 336-367). However, as is customary for Planned Parenthood, the organization has managed for decades to cover its tracks--and the facts. That task has just been made monumentally more difficult. Abortion has taken the innocent lives of over 14 million black children--a national tragedy that has begun uniting and mobilizing African-Americans across party, state, and financial lines.

Today, FRC [Family Research Council] hosted a press conference to kick off the National Black Pro-Life Gathering in Washington, D.C. which drew pastors, parents, leaders, and activists from across America to commemorate Black History Month by calling on abortion merchants like Planned Parenthood to stop preying on their community. As these abortion clinics continue to demonstrate that blood money is not colorblind, we call on Congress to de-fund and disavow Planned Parenthood. Taxpayers should not be forced to spend over $300 million on an organization whose scruples are for sale, even to those who seek racial genocide.

NOTE: there are a few sensual images that could have been left out of this video


Follow-up Article
No, Planned Parenthood, Virginia Isn't Santa Clause
Representatives for Planned Parenthood are scrambling to explain how seven of its branches were caught on tape agreeing to accept bigotry-inspired donations. When recordings of the undercover investigation were released this week, spokesmen from Idaho to Ohio desperately tried to explain away the incidents. Rebecca Poedy, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Idaho, where a vice president for development was caught exclaiming how "excited" she was to receive money from a donor who wanted to reduce the state's black population, says her employee was misunderstood. "We need to train our staff to handle calls from people that are coming with offensive agendas," Poedy told reporters. Unfortunately for Planned Parenthood, the tapes speak for themselves as to whose agenda is truly offensive. "Planned Parenthood firmly and unequivocally denounces racial bias in the delivery of health care... [T]his employee made a serious mistake." Apparently the mistake was not considered serious enough for the employee to be fired. In Ohio, where a clinic worker agreed to accept a donation from a man who said, "There's definitely way too many black people in [the state]," no disciplinary action was taken. Lila Rose, the UCLA student who organized the calls, believes Planned Parenthood's PR nightmare has just begun. Rose plans to release the audio from other clinic calls in the upcoming months to expose the organization's deep-rooted prejudice. As the evidence against Planned Parenthood continues to mount, so too does the reluctance of state lawmakers to fund the organization. For the first time in 10 years, the Virginia Senate voted yesterday to strip all funding for Planned Parenthood because it performs and promotes abortion. The amendment, offered by Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R), withstood the Democrats' fiercest challenge. After hours of trying to dissuade Sen. Charles Colgan (D) from voting in favor of the amendment, Democrats finally succumbed to a 20-20 tie, in which Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) cast the deciding vote to sever ties with Planned Parenthood. The bill now heads to Gov. Tim Kaine's (D) desk, where he should have ample reason--after this racial controversy--to distance Virginia from this squalor. Please, if you live in Virginia, contact Gov. Kaine by phone at (804) 786-2211 or through email at www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm and encourage him to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund Virginia's abortion mills. If you live elsewhere, why not urge your state to do the same?

both articles came from FRC's Tony Perkin's Washington Update, from Febuary 28 and 29, 2008, respectively.

original image source

Thursday, April 10, 2008

No forgiving Charlton Heston

Brian Fitzpatrick - Guest Columnist - 4/8/2008 2:15:00 PM

My grandfather was a college football star who even played for the NFL champs back in 1928, so I was looking forward to seeing George Clooney’s new 1920s football movie, Leatherheads, this weekend. That’s before I found out how Clooney, like many lefties in Hollywood and the news media, had treated the late Charlton Heston.
Clooney’s offense took place a few years back. According to Life Site News, “For his conservative stands, however, Heston was attacked and reviled by his Hollywood colleagues. In 2003 actor and leftist political activist George Clooney joked about Heston’s illness [Alzheimer’s disease], and, after Heston criticized him for the remark, he retorted, 'I don’t care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.'”

Making fun of somebody with Alzheimer’s disease and feeling no remorse is about as low as it gets, but it isn’t all that surprising in this case. To Clooney, Heston’s embrace of conservative orthodoxy on the Second Amendment made him worse than persona non grata. He became subhuman, not even deserving of the most basic courtesies.

George Clooney can only dream of rivaling Charlton Heston’s life accomplishments. Let’s leave aside the leading roles in some of the greatest movies ever made, the acting laurels and the celebrity, and look at the man:

• Married to his college sweetheart, Lydia, for 64 years.
• Beloved father of two successful children, one a Hollywood director.
• Unabashed Christian and church attender.
• First among his peers; president of the Screen Actors Guild a record six times.
• Served his country in World War II as a B-25 crewman.
• Campaigner for civil rights; protested as early as 1961, long before it became popular, and marched on Washington alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Protector of the unborn; provided the introduction for Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s great pro-life film, Silent Scream.
• Champion of public decency; shamed Time Warner into dropping rapper Ice-T’s contract because of his song celebrating the murder of police officers.
• Defender of individual liberty; president of the National Rifle Association.

Ask Heston which of his accomplishments he treasured most, and he’d probably point to this tribute from his family: “Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life.... We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather with an infectious sense of humor. He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity.”

Sadly, many in the liberal news media wear ideological blinders that render them incapable of appreciating the entirety of Charlton Heston. In spite of Heston’s admirable private life, sterling character and spectacular career, some journalists could only see Heston waving a musket in the air at the 2000 NRA convention and growling, “Out of my cold, dead hands.” They saw Heston’s pro-gun stance as beyond the pale, as if it were morally reprehensible to stand up for the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Heston’s death this past Saturday has allowed them to express hostility similar in kind, if not in tone or degree, to Clooney.

• ABC’s Barbara Walters: “He is very controversial or was because of his support of NRA.”
• ABC’s Dan Harris: “As president of the National Rifle Association, he became one of the most polarizing figures in American politics.”
• CBS’s Russ Mitchell: “Once the quintessential big screen hero, in his later years he drew as much attention for his controversial politics.”
• AP’s David Germain: a “fierce gun-rights advocate.”

Not “principled” or “passionate.” Just “fierce.” Charlton Heston was “polarizing” and “controversial” because he refused to toe the line of political correctness.

Heston began his public activism as a liberal, backing Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and Kennedy in 1960. In 1963 he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., but he supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, Nixon in 1972, and Reagan in 1980. The apparent transformation was mostly superficial, though, a question of party labels. USA Today didn’t quite get it right: “Heston, like Reagan, claimed the Democratic Party left him while his values remained the same -- a personal sea change that by the Reagan ’80s had turned Heston into one of the most prominently public Republicans.”

What “personal sea change?” Though he grew on some issues (notably, the Second Amendment), Heston’s core values, his support for individual liberties from civil rights to life to self-defense, were consistent throughout. “Liberalism” changed, not Charlton Heston.

I met Heston once, in an elevator on the way to a gathering of Hollywood conservatives. No, the meeting wasn’t held in the elevator. Instead of asking him how he parted the Red Sea, I brought up a Second Amendment essay he’d recently written. Engaging his mind, rather than his celebrity, delighted him. He was affable, unpretentious and witty, and he clearly had the courage of his convictions.

After forcing Time Warner to cut its ties with Ice-T over the Cop Killer album by reading aloud the lyrics at a corporate stockholders’ meeting, Heston quipped, “Still, I’m proud of what I did, though now I’ll surely never be offered another film by Warner, or get a good review from Time. On the other hand, I doubt I’ll get a traffic ticket very soon.” Now there’s a man Kipling would be proud of.

This weekend you won’t catch me dead at that Clooney movie. I think I’ll head for the rifle range instead, then crank up the home theater and enjoy my brand new DVD of Ben Hur.

Brian Fitzpatrick is senior editor for the Culture and Media Institute.

from OneNewsNow.com, link to the article

Monday, April 7, 2008

"This Has Been Confirmed..." ... Or Not

So I received this email in my inbox yesterday. Apparently this was forwarded without checking out the link at the bottom.

Subject: New Virus confirmed by Snopes
This is a new virus
Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.
This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton.
Please send it to everybody you know who has access t o the Internet.
You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled "Mail Server Report"
If you open either file, a message will appear on your screen saying:
'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.'
Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who
sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.
This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.
AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's
are not capable of destroying it.
The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.
PLEASE SEND A COPY O F THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to
PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!
THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp

See, when you pull up the page the second part of it says...

In March 2008, a new warning began circulating that erroneously linked the name of the 'Mail Server Report' worm with elements of the 'Life is Beautiful' virus hoax and claimed that the resulting amalgam "HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES", thereby creating yet another hoax virus warning: ...


I found the whole thing highly amusing.