Month: November 2013

The List Grows Larger

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here are two of the latest, the first story comes via The Blaze:

A taxpayer-funded “green” energy company that went bankrupt in July 2012 didn’t just leave behind a legal mess for its creditors – it left behind a mess of contaminated water and toxic carcinogens.

And its up to the owners of Abound Solar’s deserted 37,000 square foot facility to clean up the broken glass and hazardous wastes.

The mess left by the company, which was awarded a $400 million loan guarantee in 2010 by the Obama administration, and the damage done to the facility will cost an estimated $3.7 million to repair, according to The Northern Colorado Business Report.

…read more…

The second comes from HotAir:

The Department of Energy originally extended Fisker a $529 million line of credit back in the 2009 stimulus effort, but cut off the already ailing Fisker in 2011 after having dished out only about $190 million. Including the recent auction, the DOE has managed to recover only about $53 million of that loan, which is where the number of the $130 million for which taxpayers will be on the hook came from — except that that specific loan guarantee apparently wasn’t the only tax break of which Fisker was one of the Obama administration’s anointed beneficiaries. According to Reuters:

The bankruptcy of Fisker Automotive could end up costing the U.S. government much more than the $168 million it loaned to the maker of the Karma plug-in hybrid sports car.

According to its bankruptcy filing on Friday, Fisker owns tax breaks worth $320 million.

Fisker’s bankruptcy papers said the Southern California-based company plans to sell its automotive operations to a business affiliated with Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li, but it will hold on to the tax breaks after it emerges from bankruptcy.

Fisker piled up some $800 million in net operating losses in recent years, which have a future cash benefit worth approximately $320 million, according to the bankruptcy filing.

That lost tax revenue would add to taxpayers’ pain from Fisker’s failure.

The Obama administration’s green-energy loan guarantees: The “investments” on behalf of the American taxpayer and overriding the obviously cretinous free-market signals of the private sector that just won’t die.

…read more…

(from Moonbat) Having trouble keeping track of how much money Obama has flushed down green energy boondoggles? This list from the Heritage Foundation should help. It lists faltering or bankrupt green energy companies as of last October, along with the amount of taxpayer loot offered them by the Obama Regime in parentheses (not including other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies):

*Filed for bankruptcy.

Another Heterophobic Hate-Crime

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Gateway Pundit, and is ANOTHER story of faux hate (like ones here, and here — for example):

Gay New Jersey waitress Dayna Morales, a server at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, N.J., claimed a family she waited on stiffed her, insulted her and left her a nasty note about her sexuality.   She told the liberal media the family denied her a tip and wrote her a hateful note on their receipt. However, on Thursday a local family contacted NBC 4 New York and said their receipt shows they paid a tip and didn’t write any such note.

[….]

Now her former co-workers say it’s not the first time she’s been caught in a lie.
“She lies about everything.”

Lohud.com reported:

Morales has been caught in multiple lies, telling co-workers she shaved her head because she had brain cancer and later telling them it was her friend who had brain cancer, her colleagues and friends said.

They said she also told co-workers at a day care center where she once worked that Superstorm Sandy severely damaged her home in Stony Point, and sent a boat into her living room. Concerned co-workers dropped by her home and found only minor damage to the carpet by her front door and no sign of a boat, they said.

“Every story she comes up with has a lie,” said Julie Howat, 23, of Pomona.

From the Rational to the Relational ~ Kirsten Powers and Holly Ordway

Published by Papa Giorgio

“Certain words can mean very different things to different people. For instance, if I say to an atheist, ‘I have faith in God,’ the atheist assumes I mean that my belief in God has nothing to do with evidence. But this isn’t what I mean by faith at all. When I say that I have faith in God, I mean that I place my trust in God based on what I know about him.”

William A. Dembski and Michael R. Licona, Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010), 38.

I found this intriguing, and, many academics and skeptics I have read who have come to faith later in life express similar thinking. That is, they have relied purely on what they think is reason — however, God gets in-there and tips over some tables and shows the non-believer that they have been ~ in fact ~ unreasonable in their conclusions. Not only this, but a reality of personal (Personal) Being is involved… and this frightens many, and why CS Lewis and others explain that they were brought into the Kingdom “kicking and screaming.” Something rises above the skeptics own intellect and they have to trust a Person on Who They claim to Be (notice the capitalization).

This is momentous. And such a shift in thinking can be somewhat frightening. This weight of importance and why it is suppressed is expressed by R.C. Sproul and his co-athors well in this excerpt:

…But even a sound epistemic system, flawless deductive reasoning, and impeccable inductive procedure does not guarantee a proper conclusion. Emotional bias or antipathy might block the way to the necessary conclusion of the research. That thinkers may obstinately resist a logical verdict is humorously illustrated by John Warwick Montgomery’s modern parable:

Once upon a time (note the mystical cast) there was a man who thought he was dead. His concerned wife and friends sent him to the friendly neighborhood psychiatrist determined to cure him by convincing him of one fact that contradicted his beliefs that he was dead. The fact that the psychiatrist decided to use was the simple truth that dead men do not bleed. He put his patient to work reading medical texts, observing autopsies, etc. After weeks of effort the patient finally said, ‘All right, all right! You’ve convinced me. Dead men do not bleed.’ Whereupon the psychiatrist stuck him in the arm with a needle, and the blood flowed. The man looked down with a contorted, ashen face and cried, ‘Good Lord! Dead men bleed after all!’

Emotional prejudice is not limited to dull-witted, the illiterate, and poorly educated. Philosophers and theologians are not exempt from the vested interests and psychological prejudice that distort logical thinking. The question of the existence of God evokes deep emotional and psychological prejudice. People understand that the question of the existence of God is not one that is of neutral consequence. We understand intuitively, if not in terms of its full rational implication, that the existence of an eternal Creator before whom we are ultimately accountable and responsible is a matter that touches the very core of life…

R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 69-70. (Emphasis Added)

Here is how Kirsten Powers wrote of this first Personal encounter with God:

…Then one night on a trip to Taiwan, I woke up in what felt like a strange cross between a dream and reality. Jesus came to me and said, “Here I am.” It felt so real. I didn’t know what to make of it. I called my boyfriend, but before I had time to tell him about it, he told me he had been praying the night before and felt we were supposed to break up. So we did. Honestly, while I was upset, I was more traumatized by Jesus visiting me.

I tried to write off the experience as misfiring synapses, but I couldn’t shake it. When I returned to New York a few days later, I was lost. I suddenly felt God everywhere and it was terrifying. More important, it was unwelcome. It felt like an invasion. I started to fear I was going crazy.

I didn’t know what to do, so I spoke with writer Eric Metaxas, whom I had met through my boyfriend and who had talked with me quite a bit about God. “You need to be in a Bible study,” he said. “And Kathy Keller’s Bible study is the one you need to be in.” I didn’t like the sound of that, but I was desperate. My whole world was imploding. How was I going to tell my family or friends about what had happened? Nobody would understand. I didn’t understand. (It says a lot about the family in which I grew up that one of my most pressing concerns was that Christians would try to turn me into a Republican.)

I remember walking into the Bible study. I had a knot in my stomach. In my mind, only weirdoes and zealots went to Bible studies. I don’t remember what was said that day. All I know is that when I left, everything had changed. I’ll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, “It’s true. It’s completely true.”…

Kirsten was taken out of her comfort zone and was faced with knowing that God is real and that He is personal… and that she would ultimately have to answer to a Personal Being for her life — since she now realized He is her Creator. Accepting Christ’s imputed life and sacrifice was her response.

Here we switch to Dr. Holly Ordway describing a similar feeling, just worded differently. Before meeting God ‘personally,” Holly had to first come to the realization of God/Christ truly existing in order to believe the claims made by this Personal Being (both is Scripture [Revelation] and in Jesus claims about Himself):

I had accepted God as an Idea; now I was confronted by His reality as a Person. I had known, intellectually, that He could be encountered, but I had not the least idea of what that encounter might be like.

Looking back, the experience makes sense in a way that it didn’t, and probably couldn’t, then. If I were to have a relationship with Christ, I would have to know Him as a person, not just as an idea.

When I did encounter God, it was at a moment when I wasn’t con­sciously ready for it: I was still thinking through the philosophical issues, still trying to understand what the implications might be. I wasn’t looking for a relationship with Him yet; at that moment, I didn’t even understand how a relationship might be possible. And therefore, it was the perfect moment for the Spirit to make Himself known to me.

Because there was no question of wish fulfillment. God made Himself personally known to me in a way that I could recognize without being completely overwhelmed—in a way, perhaps, that might seem oddly anticlimactic to someone else. There were no vi­sions, no voice, no tears: just a profound and inescapable recogni­tion of the Other. Trust me, it was quite enough. What’s more, He made Himself known to me before I sought Him, and before I had the slightest idea what His presence would be like. As I thought about the experience, I could not shy away from the implications.

If I had been looking for Him when I encountered Him, I might not have been entirely sure that the experience was real. I might have doubted, wondering if perhaps this was, indeed, a case of wish fulfillment. The fact that I recognized, beyond any reasonable doubt, that my “experiment” had returned a shockingly positive result be­fore I had consciously started it, was the sting in the tail. I could not disregard this experimental data even if I wanted to—not if I Were to retain my own intellectual honesty.

And that, after all, was the lodestar for me in this journey: to fol­low Reason where it led, and not to be afraid, and not to abandon the experiment even if the results were unexpected.

Well, the results were not at all what I had expected—and now I knew something that I could not have even imagined knowing just a few weeks earlier. God was real, and He was active in my life.

Holly Ordway, Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds Radical Faith (Chicago, IL: Moody, 2010), 94-95.

Both these women speak to initially having their doubts, previous conclusions, presuppositions, and the like destroyed by answers to their “vague generalizations or unchallenged assumptions,” which left them wanting more of the “intellectually rigorous weaving [of] art, history, and philosophy”:

Powers ~ “…I was fascinated. I had never heard a pastor talk about the things he did. Tim Keller’s sermon was intellectually rigorous, weaving in art and history and philosophy. I decided to come back to hear him again. Soon, hearing Keller speak on Sunday became the highlight of my week.”

Ordway ~ “…whenever I challenged a point, he had solid information and clear reasoning to back up what he’d said. What’s more, he respected my intellect by not letting me get away with vague generalizations or unchallenged assumptions. That was refreshing…. I was stunned by the very concept that there were rational arguments for the existence of God. Never mind whether I agreed with the argu­ments or not, the simple fact that Josh said, ‘Let’s reason this out’ rather than ‘You have to take it on faith’ made me want to hear more…”

And then, and only then, being confronted in a personal way by God, their Creator and Owner, they realized they were dealing with a Being interested in their well-being, unto salvation.

Here is Theologian Wayne Grudem explaining this understanding a bit more for the deep-thinker:

Personal saving faith, in the way Scripture understands it, involves more than mere knowledge. Of course it is necessary that we have some knowledge of who Christ is and what he has done, for “how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Rom. 10:14). But knowledge about the facts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for us is not enough, for people can know facts but rebel against them or dislike them. (Rom. 1:32; James 2:19)….

In addition to knowledge of the facts of the gospel and approval of those facts, in order to be saved, I must decide to depend on Jesus to save me. In doing this I move from being an interested observer of the facts of salvation and the teachings of the Bible to being someone who enters into a new relationship with Jesus Christ as a living person. We may therefore define saving faith in the following way: Saving faith is trust in Jesus Christ as a living person for forgiveness of sins and for eternal lift with God.

This definition emphasizes that saving faith is not just a belief in facts but personal trust in Jesus to save me…. The unbeliever comes to Christ seeking to have sin and guilt removed and to enter into a genuine relationship with God that will last forever.

The definition emphasizes personal trust in Christ, not just belief in facts about Christ. Because saving faith in Scripture involves this personal trust, the word “trust” is a better word to use in contemporary culture than the word “faith” or “belief.” The reason is that we can “believe” something to be true with no personal commitment or dependence involved in it. I can believe that Canberra is the capital of Australia, or that 7 times 6 is 42, but have no personal commitment or dependence on anyone when I simply believe those facts. The word faith, on the other hand, is sometimes used today to refer to an almost irrational commitment to something in spite of strong evidence to the contrary, a sort of irrational decision to believe something that we are quite sure is not true! (If your favorite football team continues to lose games, someone might encourage you to “have faith” even though all the facts point the opposite direction.) In these two popular senses, the word “belief” and the word “faith” have a meaning contrary to the biblical sense.

The word trust is closer to the biblical idea, since we are familiar with trusting persons in everyday life. The more we come to know a person, and the more we see in that person a pattern of life that warrants trust, the more we find ourselves able to place trust in that person to do what he or she promises, or to act in ways that we can rely on. This fuller sense of personal trust is indicated in several passages of Scripture in which initial saving faith is spoken of in very personal terms, often using analogies drawn from personal relationships. John says, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). Much as we would receive a guest into our homes, John speaks of receiving Christ.

John 3:16 tells us that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Here John uses a surprising phrase when he does not simply say, “whoever believes him” (that is, believes that what he says is true and able to be trusted), but rather, “whoever believes in him.” The Greek phrase pisteuo eis auton could also be translated “believe into him” with the sense of trust or confidence that goes into and rests in Jesus as a person. Leon Morris can say, “Faith, for John, is an activity which takes men right out of themselves and makes them one with Christ.” He understands the Greek phrase pisteuo eis to be a significant indication that New Testament faith is not just intellectual assent but includes a “moral element of personal trust.” Such an expression was rare or perhaps nonexistent in the secular Greek found outside the New Testament, but it was well suited to express the personal trust in Christ that is involved in saving faith.

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction To Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 709-711. (Emphasis Added)

God was present in every step of the way, from the rational and logical conclusions of science, history, philosophy, and the like… to the Holy Spirit breaking through in the ultimate sense by making the presence of Jesus REAL. All truth is God’s truth and the apologist cannot even begin to make truth claims unless it is first God’s truth. An amazing coinciding of testimony from two amazing women that God loved so much that He gave His only begotten Son for.

Dr. Holly Ordway Speaks About How God Challenged Her Intellect Through Apologetics

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is an excerpt from Holly’s book, linked below, and you can access her thinking on matters of faith more-so at her blog, Hieropraxis, which is the continuing thoughts of someone Christ went back for. I will also include (below) an interview about her journey from atheism to belief. (Her presentation on “academic faith” was also posted as a Serious Saturday lecture.) Enjoy… and for the curious, one should read about how God called Kirsten Powers through apologetics as well. One should keep in mind it isn’t the Christian using his or her intellect to “best” someone in argument, but God meeting people where they are at, and the Holy Spirit quickens people’s hearts to the knowledge of God in different way, Holly is an example of this.

“I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. But if God in whom they believe created them with intellectual and rational powers, that imposes upon them the duty to try to understand the creed of their religion. Not to do so is to verge on superstition.”

Morimer J. Adler, “A Philosopher’s Religious Faith,” in, Kelly James Clark, ed., Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 207.

(Take note as well that God invigorated her mind towards Christ via Christian poems/literature [like John Donne] — her degree is in literature, so she has a passion for this beauty in word and really a need in all of us for objective meaning and beauty in life.)

Here is the excerpt:

IMPORTANT THINGS CAN START in odd places and at seemingly inauspicious times. It was early March, and I was in Reno for a Division II North American Cup fencing tournament—a big event for  me. 

I started the day in great confidence, feeling ready for a breakthrough performance. I was sure I’d make it to the semifinals at least, and not-so-secretly I anticipated winning the whole thing. Let us just say things did not go as planned. I fenced abysmally in the first round of pools (as my coach succinctly, and factually, put it, “You did everything wrong”). Then, instead of making a spectacular comeback in the direct-elimination round, I fenced horribly and lost the very first bout. It was the end of the line for me; an ignominious end to my high hopes. My coach studiously ignored me until I stopped crying; when I had pulled myself together, we had our debriefing conversation, analyzing what had gone wrong and why. I was glum but I realized that if Josh was talking about what we would address in the next series of lessons, at least it meant he wasn’t going to kick me to the curb for one bad performance.

Still, I felt deflated. Debrief completed, I slunk off to my hotel room, tail between my legs.

An hour or so later I wandered back down to the venue and watched the women’s sabre finals (where I’d hoped to have been! sob). I ran into Josh and Heidi, and they invited me to dinner. Their company was a welcome distraction from brooding over my lousy performance, and the conversation was sufficiently interesting to continue past our meal, so we found a place to chat in the casino coffee shop. Slot machines stood in ranks on either side, flashing and jingling; the casino traffic ebbed and flowed around us. This was Reno, where people gamble 24/7: late as it became, the lights stayed on and no tired barista came to shoo us out. And that was a good thing, because the three of us stayed there, in conversation, for hours—talking about God.

Its a curious thing, how God works. If we’d been in a normal cafe that had to close up at nine or ten p.m., we might never have gotten where we did in our conversation. If I had done well in the tournament, we’d probably just have talked about fencing. But con­sidering how disconsolate I was about my performance that day, I was glad to talk about anything but fencing. Movies we’d seen. Fa­vorite books. As it turned out, we were all fans of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

“I’ve read a little bit of Lewis’s other stuff,” I said. “I’m really an­noyed with him. He says Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. But he’s leaving out that we can respect Jesus’ teachings, without the re­ligion part.”

“Well,” Josh said, “actually . . .”

And the conversation went on from there.

We talked about whether it was possible to know that there was something beyond death. We talked about where morality comes from. We talked about the idea of a First Cause, a creator of the uni­verse. At midnight my roommate called to see if I was OK, since I’m not the type to stay out late. I assured her I was fine, wished her a good night, and went back to the conversation.

I’d had interesting discussions before, but this one was different right from the start. I felt completely awake, alert, and more than a little nervous, like I was handling dynamite. But then, I was, wasn’t I? All my adult life, if I discussed religion at all, it was to dismiss it as nonsense. Yet there I was, risking honesty about what I believed but had never questioned before—and genuinely listening to ideas that I’d never heard before. Why was this conversation different?

At the time, I just knew that I felt safe. I knew that I was re­spected, that neither Josh nor Heidi would try to convert me, so I could let my guard down like I’d never dared to before.

They offered no Bible quotes. No sharing of how ‘God had worked in their lives. No appeal to my happiness or peace of mind. What, then? Philosophy. Ideas. Dialogue.

The upshot was that, right there in that noisy, neon-glittering casino coffee shop, I experienced a radical turnaround from my previous perspective on all things God-related. As yet I didn’t know if the idea of God were true or false, but I discovered that “faith” wasn’t anything like I thought it was. It could be based on Reason.

I swiftly discovered that Josh knew what he was talking about: whenever I challenged a point, he had solid information and clear reasoning to back up what he’d said. What’s more, he respected my intellect by not letting me get away with vague generalizations or unchallenged assumptions. That was refreshing. It was, in fact, the same kind of give-and-take as in my fencing lessons: he knew what I was capable of, and so he wouldn’t permit lazy thinking any more than he’d permit sloppy technique.

But also—again, just as in my fencing lessons—he challenged me exactly at the limits of my comfort zone, where I had enough to work with that I wasn’t lost, yet was stretching myself past where I was really comfortable.

(A fencing lesson, working on practicing strong attacks. He’s making me repeat the attack over and over again, with corrections, till I get it right. My leg muscles are burning-I’m out of breath-he pauses. Him: “Tired?” Me: [gasp] “Yes” [gasp]. Him: “Good. Back to work. En garde.”)

As we wrestled with these ideas, Josh answered my questions-not the questions that an evangelist might think I ought to have, but the ones I actually did have.

Though a lot of Christians probably haven’t thought of it that way, talking about Jesus as Savior involves many assumptions—for instance, that you already believe in a Creator, not just an impersonal force but an actual Person, who is wholly good and who in­teracts with humanity. Miss one of those links, and the whole thing falls apart.

I needed to start at square one. For me, the term “God” was heavily loaded, so we used a safer term—the neutral, philosophical “First Cause”-and began with a basic question: can we even know, reasonably, that there is a First Cause of the universe? I’d always held to the belief that the universe just “happened.” I knew that I couldn’t back up that assertion, but I also thought that the religious take was simply to assert the opposite. I say no God; you say God; great, we’re done.

Except that it seemed like Josh had some actual reasons for his claim, some actual arguments to make. That was a totally new idea.

Sensing my interest, he laid out a few of the cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Here I can safely say that what’s helpful varies from person to person. The mere thought of philosophical apologetics might cause some people’s eyes to glaze over. On the other hand, for me it was like asking for a glass of water and getting champagne instead. I was stunned by the very concept that there were rational arguments for the existence of God. Never mind whether I agreed with the arguments or not, the simple fact that Josh said, “Let’s reason this out” rather than “You have to take it on faith” made me want to hear more.

What’s more I saw that these arguments made frighteningly good sense. I could see, even right there in that coffee shop in the casino in Reno, Nevada, that they made more sense than I wanted to admit.

Holly Ordway, Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds Radical Faith (Chicago, IL: Moody, 2010), 43-47. (Emphasis Added)

 

(Via Apologetics 315) Today’s interview is with Holly Ordway, professor of English and literature and author of Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith. She talks about her background as an atheist, her encounters with Christians in the past, the influence of literature and poetry, personal influences from others, looking at arguments for the existence of God, counter-arguments against God, psychological explanations, her encounter with Christ, her advice to skeptics and her advice to Christian apologists.

 

TWO BLONDES, ONE CUP ~ Start A Starbuck’s `Trend` With Me

Published by Papa Giorgio

While standing in line at Starbucks, I have heard people order a “tall blonde.” I want a tall blonde! What guy doesn’t… blonde’s have more fun… its proven!

What is a Starbuck’s “blonde”? It is a milder, less roasted coffee, actually their Veranda, and I think it is their best… mainly because it isn’t over-roasted. So Maybe a Grande can be a blonde with legs?

Funny.

But a tall is a small… I only go big — I want legs on my blonde — and  I WANT some cute slang to use when ordering my preferred drink.

SO!

I started asking for “Two Blondes, One Cup” when I order. I (or you) would then have to explain to the perplexed barista that it is a “Venti Blonde with Room.”

IF ENOUGH PEOPLE DO THIS, as workers change location and you tell friends about it… soon it will be the norm… and you will have participated in changing the Starbuck’s culture just a tad.

From Lifehacker:

Most coffee shops have at least a few unlisted drinks for patrons in the know. “For some shops, there are unwritten drinks, based on popular drinks some customers may ask for,” Dominy says. Most established baristas can make off-the-list fare, he says, though managers prefer they stick to the menu. So what’s popular in the unposted coffee drink arena? The Dirty Chai, a chai latte with a shot of espresso. Another is the Espresso Panna Cotta (listed on the Starbucks website, though not in stores), an espresso topped with whipped cream, he says. And if you’re after a megadose of caffeine, order the Red Eye or Black Eye, a drip coffee plus one or two shots of espresso, respectively. At Starbucks, says Duong, one of the most popular off-menu orders is coffee served through a French press.

A “Purple-Eye” has three shots of expresso. There is a battle for the secret menu… some say it doesn’t exist, other in the Starbuck’s org want to squash it for reasons of complication in ordering it with baristas who do not know what it is. But the old school baristas KNOW:

Here are some more examples via Urban Daddy:

Shhhhhhhh... Secret Menu

…Green Eye / Purple Eye (depending on what part of the country you are in) / JFK (for the 3 shots to the head which killed him) / Shot in the Dark

Whatever you call this drink it is a whopping three shots of espresso in a regular Starbucks coffee.  Be carefull with this one!  Do not drink at night unless you want to be up all night, shaking, in caffeine withdrawal.

Poor Man’s Latte

An Iced Americano with no water and half ice, then head over to the condiments station, fill the rest up with half and half cream (certainly not the 18% coffee cream) and viola, you have a Breve Latte at less than you would pay for the actual drink. 

Poor Man’s Chai Latte

Order a Chai Tea Misto with extra foam, two tea bags, and half cinnamon-half vanilla syrup. This is essentially the same drink but at half the cost.  

Chocolate Dalmatian – also know as a Michael Jackson:

A White Chocolate Mocha with java chips and chocolate chips sprinkled in.

Cafe au Lait

Order the Misto without foam for a classic French coffee drink.

French pressed coffee

You can choose any coffee they sell by the bag and have it served in a French press. For coffee snobs, this is one of the best way to appreciate all of the flavors of the coffee you chose – it takes about 5 minutes for this to be done and don’t be surprised if you get a dirty look if you are doing this during their morning rush.

Chocolate Cream Frapuccino

Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.  Chocolate syrup and chocolate flavoring in this frozen blended coffee.

Cake Batter Frappuccino

Originally, this drink contained vanilla and almond syrup added to a Vanilla Bean Crème Frappuccino. However, since the almond syrup is largely no longer available, some recommend that you try subbing in hazelnut syrup and white mocha for a similar flavour.

Raspberry Cheesecake

Order a White Chocolate Mocha and have them add a few pumps of raspberry  – if you use your Starbucks card to pay, you get one free pump of any flavour. 

The Nutella

Cafe Misto with pumps of chocolate and hazelnut and a caramel drizzle.

…read more…

`Peace in Our Time` ~ Iran and the American Left

Published by Papa Giorgio

Below is an interview of Michael Rubin by Hugh Hewitt. Some frank discussion about the Iran deal occurs by a historian on such negotiations. I believe we have our own Chamberlain moment… brought to you by the kind people on the American Left.

Michael Rubin's Input

…It appears Iran has not made any deal that would curtail its nuclear ambition. As described, the framework upon which U.S. and Iranian negotiators appear to agree fails to resolve those issues of most concern to regional states. Obama has unilaterally waived Security Council resolutions demanding a complete enrichment cessation. There may be some enrichment suspension at key sites but, as Rouhani bragged in 2009, he used an early suspension to install new and better centrifuges. And while Iran might convert some more highly enriched uranium to less usable fuel rods, it has backtracked its own earlier proposals to ship fissile material abroad.

Of even more strategic concern, the deal does not address Arak. On Thursday, a German court sentenced four businessmen who sold components to Iran for that plutonium-producing plant. When Arak becomes operational within a year, it can produce enough plutonium for two bombs per year. Nor has Iran made any concession on Parchin, where Iran conducted weapons research. In short, Kerry can arrive back from Geneva and declare triumphantly, “I have in my hand a paper signed by Mohammad Javad Zarif,” but the agreement does not stop Iran from assembling the material or know-how needed to make a bomb. There is no truth and reconciliation component to the deal: Iran needs not come clean on its previous activities. If the regime had truly has a change of heart, such transparency should not be an issue.

Diplomats may celebrate a deal, but a bad deal can be worse than no deal. Sometimes, the hangover is not worth the celebration.

~Rubin

Besides Debka calling these secret meetings to the public’s attention back in 2012, they also note some glaring loop-holes in the deal:

Debkafile’s intelligence and military sources list seven of the most glaring loopholes in the first-step accord:

1. Parchin: This long-suspected facility remains out of UN oversight. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry boasted after the signing that daily IAEA inspections will take place at Fordo and Natanz. However, cameras are already fixed at both those facilities without an agreement, whereas Tehran’s consistent denial of IAEA access to Parchin is not addressed.

2. Secret nuclear locations: Under the heading “Possible Military Dimensions,” the last IAEA report noted: “Since 2002, the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related organizations, including activities related to the development of a payload for a missile.”

The watchdog has received information indicating activities “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” This was further corroborated by new information obtained since November 2011.

Tehran’s non-cooperation for investigating these findings is not mentioned in the Geneva interim accord, nor was it addressed in the negotiations.

3. Dirty bombs: Iran doesn’t need a full-scale nuclear bomb or missile warhead for attacking Israel. For decades, Tehran has been working on perfecting hundreds of dirty bombs as part of its nuclear program, by adding plutonium or enriched uranium to conventional bombs. These weapons are easy to make and easy to use. In the hands of Hizballah or other Shiite terrorist organizations in Syria or Iraq, for instance, they could be used to strike Israel without leaving a trail to Tehran.

This peril too was ignored by the six powers in Geneva.

4. Rollback. While President Obama has presented the deal as a first step toward freezing or even rolling back “key aspects” of Iran’s nuclear program. The fact remains that, so long as Iran is permitted to enrich uranium, even though this is restricted to a low 5 percent grade, it is free to produce as much fissile material as it wants, whenever it wants. This seems more like roll forward than roll back.

5. Enrichment. Obama and Kerry said the new deal does not recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium. They were contradicted by the Iranian president and senior negotiator as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. So what is the truth? If Iran won recognition for this right, it blows the bottom out of the Non-Proliferating Treaty because, in no time, all the signatories may start enriching uranium with permission from the big powers. Neither is there any point in making Iran join the NPT’s Additional Protocol for snap inspections.

6. Centrifuges. Iran has undertaken not to add new centrifuges to its enrichment facilities, according to President Obama, but there is nothing to stop it from keeping up their production. In the six-month interregnum for negotiating a comprehensive nuclear deal, Tehran wins time to turn out enough centrifuges to substantially expand its production of enriched uranium.

7. A leap to breakout: Far from being static or in freeze, as the Americans claim, Iran is free to step up centrifuge production and boost its stock of 3.5 percent enriched uranium, thereby accumulating enough material to enhance its capacity for producing enough weapons-grade uranium to break through to a nuclear bomb rapidly enough to defy detection by the IAEA or Western intelligence until it is too late.

The first loophole appeared hours after the new accord was signed:

Iran’s lead negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, announced that his country’s enrichment rights had been recognized in the negotiations, after which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani praised the supreme leader’s guidelines for achieving world power recognition of Tehran’s “nuclear rights.”

However, Secretary of State John Kerry in his first appearance after the signing denied this concession had been made. He said: “The first step, let me be clear, does not say that Iran has a right to enrich uranium.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lined up solidly behind the Iranian version of the accord, confirming world recognition had been extended for Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, including the right for enrichment.

…read more…

Supports the Muslim Brotherhood, Rejects the Green Revolution ~ New Partners? Iran (Looking Forward to 2016)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Gay Patriot

So, over the weekend, the Obama Regime came to an agreement with the gay-killing, terrorist-supporting Iranian regime. The agreement is that sanctions will be lifted, and Iran will be allowed to continue to enrich uranium. And in return, the Obama Regime gets a distraction from the Obamacare debacle and the predictable adulation of their sycophants in the press.

The agreement is strikingly similar to the deal Jimmy Carter negotiated with the Norks in 1994. And we all know what a brilliant success that was.

Obama is happily willing not only to negotiate with the gay-killing, terrorist supporting regime in Iran, but eagerly grants them major concessions. But he will not negotiate with Congressional Republicans.