Happy New Year

Gabriel, The Fallen vs The Arcs

Two of my favorite books of all time were written by Frank Peretti. Piercing the Darkness and In This Present Darkness thrilled me with fictional accounts of spiritual warfare based off the authors (and my) Biblical interpretations. Those brought to life for me the angelic and demonic competition that occurs for the human soul. So when I saw the movie Gabriel and read on the DVD box that it was a movie about angels and demons, I decided to watch it.

IMDBs website summarizes the movie as follows:

In the tradition of Underworld, Garbriel reveals the battle between good and evil and the fight for the human soul. Set in purgatory, there is a struggle between Arc and Fallen angels for control over the city and its population of re-born souls. At present, darkness rules and Garbriel, the last of seven Arcs sent to return light, must assume a human form for the first time. In the darkest places of the human soul, this lone arc angel's battle with his human feelings and emotions will prove as perilous as facing the Fallen.

This movie has a very Goth look and feel to it. It vividly depicts the dark and despair of a world without Christ. However, the movie never mentions Christ or God. Instead, they simply refer to the good force as “The Light.”

In the slums of some major city, a drug riddled, prostitution infested, decaying world barely exists. The scales of power have clearly tipped in favor of the Fallen and Gabriel is the last of the seven Arcs sent to wage war for human souls.

The acting in this movie was maybe a B or B-. There was one Fallen female actress that was terrible and one male Arc that wasn’t great either, but beyond that, the acting was acceptable. I was a little put off by some of the vulgarity, but I think that at least part of it was necessary to drive home the despondency of the darkened existence. The fight sequences were unimpressive to me; and the fact that angels and demons would do battle with guns really turned me off. There is one sex scene in the movie (no nudity) that I found offensive as a Christian. It wouldn't have hurt the movie without the sex scene. In addition, I hated the revelation of the main character’s true identity near the end of the movie.

What I loved about this movie, however, was the stark parallel between light and darkness, decay/despair and the absence of goodness and/or light. The battle that takes place in the spiritual world for the human to be able to choose freely how he/she will live and if he/she will accept the full grace of God or reject salvation and be doomed to an eternity in Hell. Many things in this movie are questionable or just plain off Biblically, but if you watch this movie solely from the perspective of how a life without the Light of the World decays, withers, and dies a slow and tormented death, it can have a powerful message.

With all the news that floods our media about terrorism, moral depravity, corrupt politicians, starving nations, senseless violent acts against others, lives that have been destroyed because of sinful choices, weather related disasters, economic crisis, wars and rumors of wars, and the list goes on and on, it is easy to feel hopeless and be full of inner strife and despair. There is no clear line for what is morally acceptable and/or reprehensible anymore. I watched this movie and was easily able to channel some of my own despair, strife and hopelessness into the theme and relate that to the world around me in real life.

More and more the world seems hopeless to me, lately. I picked up a small child from a home overnight to transport for vomiting. All the people in the house with this young boy was intoxicated or stoned. My heart broke for this innocent child who will in all likelihood become a product of his environment. I see things like this every single day.

Friends, the Fallen and the darkness are gaining in strength and strategy. Christians can no longer freely exercise our beliefs and traditions. We are giving those rights away, that has emboldened the darkness and perpetuates the decay. We have to bring the Light back into this world by doing battle against the Fallen.

We have got to learn to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do, instead of doing the politically correct thing just to appease everyone. We must introduce people to the Light of the World and restore their hope. The best way to do that is for those people to see the Light of the World in us; our witness, our walk, our encounters with people, our attitudes, our postures, our words, our care, our concern, our reaching out.

Al Gore; A Friend to OPEC

Merry Christmas From The Kids

Blago - Obama Connection II

Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Obama's chief of staff, had direct discussions with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich about Obama's vacant Senate seat, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun- Times Emanuel spoke with the governor and pushed for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett in the days after the presidential election and asked that it be done by a certain date.

The sources said Blagojevich told aides about conversations with Emanuel and sometimes gave them directions afterward. Some conversations between Blagojevich and Emanuel were likely caught on tape, the sources said.

Source

I told you this was going to come out. How much damning evidence does one person need before the world sees him for the fraud and man of ill repute that he is? Why does Obama seem bullet proof? Nothing sticks to him, because everyone always looks the other way. Can you really believe for a minute, that Obama was not in discussions with the man who would appoint his replacement?

NKU M.S. Program Graduates First Class

Northern Kentucky University will graduate its inaugural class from the Executive Leadership and Organizational Change master's program on Dec. 20 at the Bank of Kentucky Center.

The inaugural class consists of 25 students who completed the program at the end of the 2008 summer term.

The Executive Leadership and Organizational Change program is offered through the NKU Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./US Bank Foundation College of Business.

Currently the program has 45 highly talented and motivated students and 25 alumni from diverse professional fields and geographic locations including Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Tennessee and Florida.

Press Article

Congratulations to the NKU ELOC graduating class of 2008 and especially to my lovely, talented and motivated wife (who graduated with a 4.0 GPA). The sacrifice, commitment, and effort that you have given to this pusuit of excellence is great cause for celebration. Your families are exceedingly proud of your distinguished accomplishment. Always remember the words of the late great Eleanor Roosevelt, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Lest we also not forget Henry Ford's great life lesson, "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

Congratulations! May you always have fair winds and following seas.

AP Report on GloBuLL Warming Deemed 'Propaganda' by Scientists

They say the report, which was published on Monday, contained sweeping scientific errors and was a one-sided portrayal of a complicated issue.

"If the issues weren't so serious and the ramifications so profound, I would have to laugh at it," said David Deming, a geology professor at the University of Oklahoma who has been critical of media reporting on the climate change issue.

"The mean global temperature, at least as measured by satellite, is now the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years sea level has stopped rising. Hurricane and cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980."

"Reporters, as I understand reporters, are supposed to report facts,"Deming said. "What he's doing here is he's writing a polemic and reporting it as fact, and that's not right. It's not reporting. It's propaganda.

Excerpts taken from this article.

Finally, the scientists are speaking out. In the 1970s and 1980s news magazines and science journals were scaring people to death with notions of a second life ending ice age. Now we have wacko's scaring people to death with global warming.

The fact is that the earth has always gone through natural warming and cooling cycles. That, of course, means varying levels of ice, ocean currents, and tidal patterns. "carbon footprints" have nothing to do with humans. It is a NATURAL phenomenon. So, please everyone...get off your global whining.

Now, let the record state that I am not in opposition of being good stewards of the gift that God has given us in our planet. We should keep it clean, healthy, and pollution free and I endorse all activity to do that. I deeply oppose the notion of climate change caused by human beings. The science behind it is pseudo and deeply flawed. The environmental alarmists, led by their false savior Gore.

I'm very happy to hear that the scientific community is finally starting to speak out!

Blago - Obama Connection

Deny! Deny! Deny! That is the Democrat’s chief strategy.

No one can convince me that the snake Obama and his political team did nothing wrong in the replacement for Obama’s vacant Senate seat. A couple of things stick out in my mind.

First, Blago states, apparently unaware that he is being recorded, that if Obama isn’t willing to deal in how and who replaces him that he (Blago) will give it to someone who Obama hasn’t endorsed. That implies that Blago had spoken to Obama or someone high on his staff about this.

Second, why wouldn’t Obama be extremely interested in who replaces him in the Senate? He’s going to want to have someone in there that he can work with in the Senate, plus he wants someone in there who will continue his legacy of corruption and questionable associations.

Obama thinks, and largely he is right since he was elected, that the American people are stupid enough to follow him without questioning his character and/or motivation. Rham Emanuel is in this neck deep as well. I predict that he will never become Obama’s Chief of Staff or that if he does he won’t be there long. His internal review shows …. Who the hell cares what his internal review shows? We all know it is a review, if one even took place at all, to cover up any links to Obama.

Blago is for sure going down. I hope he takes Obama with him!

Controversy Erupts Over School Proposal to Teach Kids to Fight Back Against Gunmen

A proposal to teach children as young as 10 years old to fight back against a classroom gunman is causing quite a stir in a small town in Massachusetts.

Georgetown Police Chief James E. Mulligan told FOXNews.com the proposed technique was intended to be a "last ditch" thing to be used in cases where a gunman has been able to thwart police and get inside a classroom alone with students.

But others think the last thing you want to teach young kids is how to fight off an intruder with a gun.

"To put that expectation on young, emotional, scared, frightened children is really a slippery slope," says Kenneth Trump, the president of National School Safety and Security Services. "It has a high risk and higher probability of escalating a situation than it would to neutralize the situation."

Source

I have to confess as a parent of two elementary aged children, I am torn. I absolutely can appreciate the points of both sides of this argument. I have said many times that the public school system is the number one most dangerous place in America for a child to be in these days.

We have taught our children since the time they were able to understand us, that if anyone they do not know or even if they do know them tries to make them or take them and they know that's not right, that they are to scream at the top of their lungs, "that man/woman is not my mom/dad, please someone help me." I want them to fight in an environment like that. I want them to make as much noise to draw attention to themselves.

A man with a gun in their school, well I'm just not sure about that. If a man with a gun has entered the school and made it through the ridiculously inadequate security provided, I think I'd rather my child find a safe place to hide and be quiet. It just isn't the same as a group of adults being held hostage on an airplane. Adults are capable of fighting; their capable of reasoning out what the odds are and how best to play them. Children just aren't strong enough or developed enough in their ability to reason out their next move. They can reason, "I need to run from here to there," but they would have trouble with more complex decision making items. "If I have to make contact with this guy, where should I hit/kick him and what should I use as a weapon?"

I guess I lean more on the side of just biding your time and following directions until a rescue plan can be devised and implemented by experts. I just don't think the average child has the capability to make wise choices in such a high stress environment.

Illinois Governor's; A Culture of Corruption

It seems corruption has become a major problem in politics and there is no end to it sight. Congressmen/women, Senators, President-elects, and most recently Governor's.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D), was arrested early this morning at his home on corruption charges related to allegedly auctioning off Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder for personal gain. The investigators seem to have overwhelming and indisputable evidence of the Governor's intent and his corruption.

He is, of course, presumed innocent until proven otherwise, but in my opinion he will join the ranks of his predessor's, former Illinois Governors' George Ryan and Dan Walker. For the record, Governor Dan Walker was convicted on charges unrelated to his Governorship. George Ryan, like Rod Blagojevich, was arrested for using their elected office as a catlyst for personal gain.

It's important to note, no charges have been filed nor any links to President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama, despite the level of corruption that we witnessed in Obama funded groups like ACORN in promotion of voter fraud. I'm certain that the Obama camp is doing everything possible to distance themselves from Blagojevich and his alleged crimes.

Republican Identity Crisis

With the Census Bureau projecting minorities will one day be the majority, some Republicans believe they have a branding problem. As if things couldn't get any worse for the GOP, the Pew Research Center claims White voters are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party. The numbers of White voters calling themselves Republicans have been dropping for the past four years. And there are some Republicans who believe the party needs its own Barack Obama, a political star who can transcend race and party lines.

Source

The GOP has a problem. I'm not sure I would call it a branding problem, exactly. I'm equally uncertain the resolution lies in finding the perfect African American candidate as the text taken from and Essence.com article implies. I maintain that politics shouldn't be about race, but more about the qualifications for the position. Obviously, many people disagree with me since we elected the most under qualified and liberal candidate in US history.

The problem with the GOP isn't about the lack of minority representation. The problem is the GOP does not stand for anything anymore. They can't decide whether they're going to be conservative, moderate or as in John McCain's case, liberal. I believe that there are far more Conservatives in the country than Liberals, but the Liberals have learned to make more noise than the Conservatives do. The Liberal strategy has been brilliant in making people so afraid of being politically incorrect that Conservatives are petrified to stand for anything that was once considered a core value.

The GOP has to do a better job of reaching out to their base. John McCain did not represent their base. His campaign was stale and lifeless until he named Sarah Palin as his running mate. Governor Palin breathed new life into the GOP and it would serve the GOP to take notice of her characteristics, her values, and her message which resurrected and energized a fallen party.

The article from Essence.com goes on to talk about another rising star in the GOP, Michael S. Steele. He is the former Lt. Governor of Maryland. I don’t know much about him, except that he is a conservative. I have seen him many times as a commentator on Fox News, and I like the message I’ve heard from him. He is seeking the leadership of the Republican National Committee. For sure, anyone who receives this coveted position must clearly define the core principles, values, and the mission of the Republican party or there will be no future for the party. The Republican party is not going to prevail by seeing which candidate is the blackest African American and I hope they don’t use race as a determining factor in appointing leadership for this monumental task of defining what the Republican party is and will be.

I’m the author of Your Moral Compass and I approved this message.

Another Major Victory in 'Right To Die' Case

HELENA, Montana — A Montana judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in the state, a decision likely to be appealed as the state argues that the Legislature, not the court, should decide whether terminally ill patients have the right to take their own life.

Judge Dorothy McCarter issued the ruling late Friday in the case of a Billings man with terminal cancer, who had sued the state with four physicians that treat terminally ill patients and a nonprofit patients' rights group.

"The Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally (ill) patient to die with dignity," McCarter said in the ruling.

It also said that those patients had the right to obtain self-administered medications to hasten death if they find their suffering to be unbearable, and that physicians can prescribe such medication without fear of prosecution.

"The patient's right to die with dignity includes protection of the patient's physician from liability under the state's homicide statutes," the judge wrote.

Read Article

I'm certainly no proponent of rogue judges making law from the bench, but if this judge is interpreting existing law correctly then this is a major victory for terminally ill patients.

As a staunch pro-life supporter, I am often taken to task on my support of end of life decision making and capital punishment. Capital punishment is a discussion for a different time. In so much as the decision to die was made by the person who will die, my pro-life stance ends there. There is no innocent person being killed, like an unborn baby. I am a Christian, having spent most of my Christian life in a Southern Baptist setting. Southern Baptists and many other denominations do not share their support of a right to die mentality. Their case is made in explaining how God will call us home when it's our time and until then our life could be ministering to someone (that's the really dumbed down version of it).

I am in and out of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and private residences regularly. I see firsthand the degradation of the quality of life, the unbearable pain, the humiliation of not being able to care for oneself, the misery of knowing the toll one is taking on ones family, and being trapped in a body that doesn't work and never will again. As a human-being, I never want to be alive under those conditions. I would beg my family, my doctors, my nurses and anyone else who would listen to end my suffering. Am I playing the role of God? Maybe!

I'm not advocating that anyone and everyone should be allowed to run out to clinics of suicide. I am advocating right to die laws for the terminally ill, the person who will be in a vegetative state (if they've declared their intent previously in a living will or other legal document), and/or people who have tragically had their lives forever altered into a state that requires others to care for them. To deny a person the right to die under these circumstances is to enact cruel and unusual punishment, even torture, and in a civilized society such as the United Socialist States of America we're above these types of punishments.

Kudos to Montana. I hope the rest of the country will follow suit.

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Fatigue in the Medical Field

PEORIA — Traditionally viewed as a baptism by fire for future physicians, a new report said the lengthy, grueling schedules of medical residents may be hurting patients and doctors-to-be - instead of helping them...

...To trim the number of fatigue-related mistakes, the 480-page report recommended residents working the maximum 30-hour shift should have a five-hour break for sleep. Moreover, it stated shift changes at hospitals should overlap to allow for a smooth transition between residents, and doctors-in-training should be prohibited from moonlighting at other jobs.

"This is not a trivial issue," said Dr. Thomas Santoro, associate dean for graduate medical education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, which administers 10 residency programs. "A fatigued physician is not practicing optimal medicine..."

Complete Article

They print this report like it is going to be some kind of epiphany. Isn't this pure common sense? Standards have changed for truck drivers and airline pilots, yet the medical profession refuses to change.

Consider that you or your loved one might be rushed into surgery or some other medical procedure, to be performed by someone who has been working on the job for 28-hours. Would you allow this to happen?

This isn't unique to residents and medical students though. It happens with RNs and prehospital providers. As a paramedic, I can attest to the grueling pace that our employers task us with. There is never enough staff to go around and/or the budget won't allow for a different schedule. Just yesterday in a 12-hour shift my partner and I drove a patient 200 miles (one way) to their residence, was asked on the way back to take a patient to a VA hospital which was another 150 miles away after we got back to town to pick him up. I was so tired of driving, that when we got back from the trips and while waiting at a stop light to turn left, I saw a light change on the stop light and assumed it was our green light (I was watching a couple of cars across the street that looked like they may have had a fender-bender)... Guess what, it wasn't our light and I pulled into the intersection to make my turn before I realized that our light was still red. It seems trivial, I know, but considering that we're entrusted with some of the most powerful medications in the world and/or tasked with advanced life saving techniques and skills, it would seem natural that our industry would better police the stress, fatigue and pace at which people in the medical field are subjected to.

Next time you're in the hospital and you or your loved one has to be worked on, be consciences and inquire about the physician who will be treating and ask them about how long they've been working without sleep or food. Why wouldn't you? When you buy an automobile, you try to get as much information and history about your purchase. This is no different! You're the consumer purchasing medical expertise and treatment - at least you're the consumer until Obama's regime takes over and socializes medicine.

Mormon Temple's Being Targeted by Hate-Filled Homosexuals

In the nearly four weeks since Election Day, gay activists and thousands of their supporters have rallied outside Mormon temples around the country, protesting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' support for California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to make same-sex marriage illegal in the Golden State.

There have been calls to boycott the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; some activists have called for a boycott of the entire state of Utah. Protesters have defaced some church buildings, and in Arapaho County, Colo., the Sheriff's Office is investigating a possible hate crime — the torcSo why is the Mormon Church the only target?

It's because of the money, says Evan Wolfe, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a New York-based group that supports same-sex marriage.

"The Mormon Church hierarchy led the way on this attack on gay families and the California constitution," Wolfe said. "They provided more than half of the funding. They provided the ground troops and were a major political force in a way that no other group was.

"It's not like there's one centralized voice telling everyone whom to protest. People have their own reactions to what they see with their own eyes, and what they saw here was a $40 million deceptive campaign to take away rights, led by the Mormon Church hierarchy."hing of the Book of Mormon on a church's doorstep.

Entire Article

My reaction to this is very simple. Where were these protester's hiding out when Obama and his minions of fraudulent organizing ACORN workers were trying to and succeeding in fraudulently electing Barrack Hussein Obama? Well, that kind of organizing is Okay to the groups who want to go against the majority balance of the American people and live a lifestyle that many consider deviant and would like to protect their young families from having to experience.

I know little about the Mormon, involvement supporting the proposition. There are many many things I disagree with the Mormon faith on, but this is not one of them. They did what any good Christian, Jewish, or most any other faith should have been more active in, and that is upholding the fundamentals of God's Law against such lifestyles or perversion. The majority has ruled by the taking of a secret ballot and the vore should be upheld.

The hypocrisy by which they try to advance their cause, at the risk of the damned damning persons of opposing opinions is telling and an act of desperation. Obama and the demon spawn of leadership in the House and Senate are probably the best friends the homosexuals have ever had in a position to really advance their pathetic cause. Now, more than ever before, it is important for Evangelicals, Catholics, and any other form of religion that speaks the absolute truth of God's Word on this subject be shouted from every corner and off of every roof top.