Global Warming Not a Cause of Coral Reef Degredation

This article comes by way of Sunshine Hours (h/t ~ Climate Depot):

…Then they get to the good stuff.

The results show that coral reefs surrounding remote islands were dramatically healthier than those in populated areas that were subject to a variety of human impacts.

“There are still coral reefs on this planet that are incredibly healthy and probably look the way they did 1,000 years ago,” said Jennifer Smith, lead author of the study and a professor at Scripps’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.

Teeming with sharks, manta rays, jellyfish and sea turtles, these remote locations contrasted starkly with the heavily populated areas, which were encircled by coral reefs covered in murky seaweed and lacking much of the colorful algae that helps to cement a reef.

Duh!!!!!

It isn’t “global warming” damaging reefs. It is humans and their pollution and rich assholes boats scraping over the reefs!

(read it all)

This next excerpt comes from an old post, Coral Reefs are Not Endangered Due to Global Warming. The site has not been posted on since 2010, so I will import their whole post here (I will also reference the quote when I find the book on my shelf[s]):

When the 1998 El Niño raised the temperatures of the waters in the Pacific Ocean, it caused widespread ”bleaching” of coral reefs, which is shown to be a natural response to temperature changes of water in scientific studies. The resulting change in the appearance of corals around the world was enough for many to proclaim that the world’s corals were “dying off en mass” due to global warming, despite the fact that corals have lived through hundreds of relatively recent historical cycles of glacial periods interspersed with warm periods, as well as higher acid concentrations in the water and sea level rise of as much as 400 feet.

Note a 2001 United Nations press release falsely claiming that the 1998 El Nino caused a loss of 90% of the corals in some parts of the Indian Ocean:

”.. It includes new information on the impacts of global warming and coral bleaching, including the El Niño event in 1998 that caused the loss of 90 per cent of the corals in some parts of the Indian Ocean, representing 5% of the world’s reef area. Much of this damage passed almost unnoticed by the world’s policy-makers. Marine scientists point out that had such levels of damage occur in terrestrial environments they would have caused a major public outcry.”

Claims of Coral Dying due to ”Bleaching”

The Book ”Unstoppable Global Warming— Every 1,500 Years” explains numerous scientific studies showing that ”bleaching” coral is an entirely natural occurrence for adapting to temperature changes of the surrounding water— through the coral expelling the current algea associated with it in order to accumulate new strains of algea with are better suited for the newer temperature of water. Studies cited include ”The Acquisition of Exogenous Algal Symbionts by an Octocoral After Bleaching,” by Cynthia L. Lewis and Mary Alice Coffroth. Following is an excerpt from the book:

The claim that higher temperatures will kill off the world’s corals is irresistible to global warming activists. They understand the emotional appeal of the reefs and their bright-colored fishes. Greenpeace, perhaps predictably, has been quick to play this card:

”The Philippine coral reefs, among the most diverse and largest in the world, may not be around for long. … On the last day of the symposium [at Bali] the environmental group Greenpeace released a new coral reef study showing that, because of the global warming, the Pacific Ocean could lose most of its coral reefs by the end of the current century.” (385)

The only problem with the ”disappearing coral” theory is that it is false. Corals date back 450 million years, and most of today’s coral species date back at least 200 million years. Just in the last two million years, coral reefs have been through at least seventeen glacial periods, interspersed with their warm interglacial periods. These glacial-interglacial shifts imposed repeated dramatic temperature changes, along with sea level changes as drastic as four hundred feet.

Temperatures across the Pacific change sharply with the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-which causes a major Pacific temperature change every four to seven years. The 1998 El Nino boosted sea surface temperatures all over the Pacific, causing massive coral bleaching, especially in the Indian Ocean. That’s when Mark Spalding, supposedly a coral expert, claimed that the vast majority of the corals had died out. (386) Bleaching is a part of corals’ strategy for adapting to their almost-constant temperature changes. (387)

Ross J. Jones of Australia’s Queensland University reported coral bleaching on a portion of the Great Barrier Reef just after average daily sea temperatures rose by 2.5 degrees Celsius in eight days. (388) However, Canada’s D.R. Kobluk and M.A. Lysenko found severe coral bleaching in the Caribbean after the water temperature declined 3 degrees Celsius in eighteen hours. (389)

New studies tell us that bleaching is the coral system’s way of dealing with sudden temperature changes. Cynthia Lewis and Mary Alice Coffroth of the University of Buffalo deliberately triggered bleaching in some coral colonies. In response, the colonies ejected 99 percent of their symbiotic algae friends. The researchers then exposed the bleached coral to a rare variety of algae that wasn’t in the coral colonies at the beginning of the experiment. Sure enough, within a few weeks, the corals had substantially restocked their algae shelves, and about half included the new marker algae. Later, the marker variety was displaced from several of the coral colonies by more effective algae strains-indicating that corals pick the best partners for the new conditions from the wide variety of algae floating in their part of the ocean. (390)

Lewis and Coffroth say this is a healthy demonstration of flexibility in coral colonies. They say coral systems have the flexibility to establish new associations with algae strains from the whole environmental pool and that is ”a mechanism for resilience in the face of environmental change.” (391)

In the same June 2004 issue of Science, Angela Little of Australia’s Cook University and Madeline van Oppen of Australia’s Institute of Marine Science echoed the findings of Lewis and Coffroth. They attached titles to various parts of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and studied the algae recruited by the juvenile corals that grew on them. They found that the young corals were likely to try any algae— ”a potentially adaptive trait.” (392)

Eco-activists and biologists who claim global warming is killing corals are wrong-again. Science has returned its verdict on corals and global warming: No Link.


(385) Report from the 9th International Coral Reef Conference, Bali, 23 June 2003.

(386) Samanta Sen, ”Disappearing Coral Reefs Also a Human Loss,” Interpress News Service, September 13, 2001.

(387) Jeff Hecht, ”Corals Adapt to Cope With Global Warming” NewScientist.com, August 11, 2004.

(388) R. J. Jones et al., ”Changes in Zooxanthellar Densities and Chlorophyll Concentrations in Corals During and After a Bleaching Event,” Marine Ecology Progress Series 158 (1997): 51-59.

(389) D. R. Kobluk and M.A. Lysenko, ”Ring Bleaching in Southern Caribbean Agaricia Agaricites During Rapid Water Cooling,” Bulletin of Marine Science 54 (1994): 142-50.

(390) C. L. Lewis and M.A. Coffroth, ”The Acquisition of Exogenous Algal Symbionts by an Octocoral After Bleaching,” Science 304 (2004): 1490-491.

(391) Ibid.

(392) A. F. Little et al., ”Flexibility in Algal Endosymbioses Shapes Growth in Reef Corals,” Science 305 (2004): 1492-94; Kobluk and Lysenko, ”Ring Bleaching in Southern Caribbean Agaricia Agaricites During Rapid Water Cooling,” 142-50.

Christianity Is the Only Falsifiable Religious Worldview

…and if the Messiah has not been raised, then our message means nothing and your faith means nothing. In addition, we are found to be false witnesses about God because we testified on God’s behalf that he raised the Messiah—whom he did not raise if in fact it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then the Messiah has not been raised, and if the Messiah has not been raised, your faith is worthless and you are still imprisoned by your sins. Yes, even those who have died believingin the Messiah are lost. If we have set our hopes on the Messiah in this life only, we deserve more pity than any other people. But at this moment the Messiah stands risen from the dead, the first one offered in the harvest of those who have died. (1 Cor 15:14-20, ISV)

Dr. Gary Habermas gives lecture at UCSB,  “The Resurrection Argument That Changed a Generation of Scholars,”is a bit longer but VERY powerful:

The following graphics come with a H-T to NY Apologetics Twitter, and comes by way of Credohouse:

This belief has been a source of contention with many people, even Christians, in the past. But the more I research, the more I find it to be the case that Christianity is the only viable worldview that is historically defensible. The central claims of the Bible demand historic inquiry, as they are based on public events that can be historically verified. In contrast, the central claims of all other religions cannot be historically tested and, therefore, are beyond falsifiability or inquiry. They just have to be believed with blind faith.

Think about it: The believer in the Islamic faith has to trust in a private encounter Muhammad had, and this encounter is unable to be tested historically. We have no way to truly investigate the claims of Joseph Smith (and when we do, they are found wanting). Buddhism and Hinduism are not historic faiths, meaning they don’t have central claims of events in time and space which believers are called upon to investigate. You either adopt their philosophy or you don’t. There is no objective way to test them. Run through every religion that you know of and you will find this to be the case: Either it does not give historic details to the central event, the event does not carry any worldview-changing significance, or there are no historic events which form the foundation of the faith.

This is what it looks like:

…read it all…

The following is a really good series by INSPIRING PHILOSOPHY, It is a 7-part series (they will all play below, or you can go HERE to play the one you wish) that is worth the watch.


Series


1. The Resurrection of Jesus (Introduction)
2. The Resurrection of Jesus (The Historical Evidence)
3. The Resurrection of Jesus (Origins of the Belief)
4. The Resurrection of Jesus (Advanced Theories)
5. The Resurrection of Jesus (Are Miracles Improbable?)
6. The Resurrection of Jesus (Spiritual Resurrection?)
7. Refuting Biblical Arguments from Silence

J. Warner Wallace’s presentation to the Mars Hill Apologetics Group of North Coast Calvary Chapel. J. Warner is a cold case homicide detective and he hosts the PleaseConvinceMe Podcast (www.pleaseconvinceme.com).

“The Last Communist City” ~ A City-Journal Article (Updated)

Before the WONDERFUL article…

…one should also consider C-SPANs interview “Book Discussion on Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant” ~ the discussing Cuba, Fidel, Che Guevara, and their “useful idiots,” is Humberto Fontova. His Amazon.com page has three books on Cuba available. Here is the truncated video interview:

  • Inside the BookTV Bus, Humberto Fontova was interviewed about his book Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, published by Regnery Publishing. He spoke about the media’s affixation with the Cuban dictator. Mr. Fontova also discussed political prisoners and a decline in health care.

I want to say, firstly, our of all the politically/culturally minded journals I subscribe to, The City Journal is by far the best, if one were to subscribe to one journal, this would be it. Here are a few excerpts from the article, “The Last Communist City: A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see

…Marxists have ruled Cuba for more than a half-century now. Fidel Castro, Argentine guerrilla Che Guevara, and their 26th of July Movement forced Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959 and replaced his standard-issue authoritarian regime with a Communist one. The revolutionaries promised liberal democracy, but Castro secured absolute power and flattened the country with a Marxist-Leninist battering ram. The objectives were total equality and the abolition of money; the methods were total surveillance and political prisons. The state slogan, then and now, is “socialism or death.”

Cuba was one of the world’s richest countries before Castro destroyed it—and the wealth wasn’t just in the hands of a tiny elite. “Contrary to the myth spread by the revolution,” wrote Alfred Cuzan, a professor of political science at the University of West Florida, “Cuba’s wealth before 1959 was not the purview of a privileged few. . . . Cuban society was as much of a middle-class society as Argentina and Chile.” In 1958, Cuba had a higher per-capita income than much of Europe. “More Americans lived in Cuba prior to Castro than Cubans lived in the United States,” Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, author of a series of books about Castro and Guevara, tells me. “This was at a time when Cubans were perfectly free to leave the country with all their property. In the 1940s and 1950s, my parents could get a visa for the United States just by asking. They visited the United States and voluntarily returned to Cuba. More Cubans vacationed in the U.S. in 1955 than Americans vacationed in Cuba. Americans considered Cuba a tourist playground, but even more Cubans considered the U.S. a tourist playground.” Havana was home to a lot of that prosperity, as is evident in the extraordinary classical European architecture that still fills the city. Poor nations do not—cannot—build such grand or elegant cities.

But rather than raise the poor up, Castro and Guevara shoved the rich and the middle class down. The result was collapse. “Between 1960 and 1976,” Cuzan says, “Cuba’s per capita GNP in constant dollars declined at an average annual rate of almost half a percent. The country thus has the tragic distinction of being the only one in Latin America to have experienced a drop in living standards over the period.”

Communism destroyed Cuba’s prosperity, but the country experienced unprecedented pain and deprivation when Moscow cut off its subsidies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Journalist and longtime Cuba resident Mark Frank writes vividly about this period in his book Cuban Revelations. “The lights were off more than they were on, and so too was the water. . . . Food was scarce and other consumer goods almost nonexistent. . . . Doctors set broken bones without anesthesia. . . . Worm dung was the only fertilizer.” He quotes a nurse who tells him that Cubans “used to make hamburgers out of grapefruit rinds and banana peels; we cleaned with lime and bitter orange and used the black powder in batteries for hair dye and makeup.” “It was a haunting time,” Frank wrote, “that still sends shivers down Cubans’ collective spines.”…

Some equate Cuba to Iraq or Afghanistan. The author of the article, after being told this by a fellow travelor responded to this in the article:

I visited Iraq seven times during the war and didn’t have the heart to tell her that Baghdad, while ugly and dangerous, is vastly freer and more prosperous these days than Havana. Anyway, Iraq is precisely the kind of country with which Castro wants you to compare Cuba. It’s the wrong comparison. So are impoverished Third World countries like Guatemala and Haiti. Cuba isn’t a developing country; it’s a once-developed country destroyed by its own government. Havana was a magnificent Western city once. It should be compared not with Baghdad, Kabul, Guatemala City, or Port-au-Prince but with formerly Communist Budapest, Prague, or Berlin. Havana’s history mirrors theirs, after all.

[….]

…As for the free health care, patients have to bring their own medicine, their own bedsheets, and even their own iodine to the hospital. Most of these items are available only on the illegal black market, moreover, and must be paid for in hard currency—and sometimes they’re not available at all. Cuba has sent so many doctors abroad—especially to Venezuela, in exchange for oil—that the island is now facing a personnel shortage. “I don’t want to say there are no doctors left,” says an American man who married a Cuban woman and has been back dozens of times, “but the island is now almost empty. I saw a banner once, hanging from somebody’s balcony, that said, DO I NEED TO GO TO VENEZUELA FOR MY HEADACHE?

Housing is free, too, but so what? Americans can get houses in abandoned parts of Detroit for only $500—which makes them practically free—but no one wants to live in a crumbling house in a gone-to-the-weeds neighborhood. I saw adequate housing in the Cuban countryside, but almost everyone in Havana lives in a Detroit-style wreck, with caved-in roofs, peeling paint, and doors hanging on their hinges at odd angles.

Education is free, and the country is effectively 100 percent literate, thanks to Castro’s campaign to teach rural people to read shortly after he took power. But the regime has yet to make a persuasive argument that a totalitarian police state was required to get the literacy rate from 80 percent to 100 percent. After all, almost every other country in the Western Hemisphere managed the same feat at the same time, without the brutal repression.

Cuba is short of everything but air and sunshine. In her book, Sánchez describes an astonishing appearance by Raúl Castro on television, during which he boasted that the economy was doing so well now that everyone could drink milk. “To me,” Sánchez wrote, “someone who grew up on a gulp of orange-peel tea, the news seemed incredible.” She never thought she’d see the day. “I believed we would put a man on the moon, take first place among all nations in the upcoming Olympics, or discover a vaccine for AIDS before we would put the forgotten morning café con leche, coffee with milk, within reach of every person on this island.” And yet Raúl’s promise of milk for all was deleted from the transcription of the speech in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper. He went too far: there was not enough milk to ensure that everyone got some.

Even things as simple as cooking oil and soap are black-market goods. Individuals who, by some illegal means or another, manage to acquire such desirables will stand on street corners and whisper “cooking oil” or “sugar” to passersby, and then sell the product on the sly out of their living room. If they’re caught, both sellers and buyers will be arrested, of course, but the authorities can’t put the entire country in jail. “Everyone cheats,” says Eire. “One must in order to survive. The verb Ωto steal≈ has almost vanished from usage. Breaking the rules is necessary. Resolví mi problema, which means ‘I solved my problem,’ is the Cuban way of referring to stealing or cheating or selling on the black market.”

Cuba has two economies now: the national Communist economy for the majority; and a quasi-capitalist one for foreigners and the elite…

[….]

…The Floridita bar in downtown Havana was one of Ernest Hemingway’s hangouts when he lived there (from 1940 until 1960, the year after Castro came to power). He was in the Floridita all the time—and, in a way, he still is. There’s a statue of him sitting on his favorite bar stool, grinning at today’s patrons. The décor is exactly the same, but there’s a big difference: everyone in the bar these days is a tourist. Cubans aren’t strictly banned any more, but a single bottle of beer costs a week’s salary. No one would blow his dismal paycheck on that.

If he were still around, Hemingway would be stunned to see what has happened to his old haunt. Cubans certainly aren’t happy about it, but the tourists are another story—especially the world’s remaining Marxoid fellow travelers, who show up in Havana by the planeload. Such people are clearly unteachable. I got into an argument with one at the Floridita when I pointed out that none of the patrons were Cuban. “There are places in the United States that some can’t afford,” she retorted. Sure, but come on. Not even the poorest Americans have to pay a week’s wage for a beer…

[….]

…An advertisement in my hotel claimed that the Sierra Maestra restaurant on the top floor is “probably” the best in Havana. I had saved the Sierra Maestra for my last night and rode the elevator up to the 25th floor. I had my first and only steak on the island and washed it down with Chilean red wine. The tiny bill set me back no more than having a pizza delivered at home would, but the total nevertheless exceeded an entire month’s local salary. Not surprisingly, I ate alone. Every other table was empty. The staff waited on me as if I were the president of some faraway minor republic.

I stared at the city below out the window as I sipped my red wine. Havana looked like a glittering metropolis in the dark. Night washed away the rot and the grime and revealed nothing but city lights. It occurred to me that Havana will look mostly the same—at night, anyway—after it is liberated from the tyrannical imbeciles who govern it now. I tried to pretend that I was looking out on a Cuba that was already free and that the tables around me were occupied—by local people, not foreigners—but the fantasy faded fast. I was all alone at the top of Cuba’s Elysium and yearning for home—where capitalism’s inequalities are not so jagged and stark.

You Should READ It All!

ReasonTV:

John Stossle & Daily Beast:

Cuban’s in L.A. Fighting Castro:

Sen. Marco Rubion on Jay-Z:

Other Worthwhile Articles:

By The Numbers ~ Raheel Raza

I love the graphics Mrs. Raza put to Sam Harris’ cogent response to Ben Affleck.

(Here is the video description) By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?

The below video is a the original Ben Affleck video challenging Sam Harris. What I didn’t know however is that Ben (and all the panelists) are instructed not to interfere with the interview portion between Maher and whoever his guest is that sits to our right, Maher’s left.

I wanted to repost as well Ben Shapiro’s discussion of this appearance of Ben Affleck on Bill Maher’s show. It was an earlier version of Raheel’s video… but I REALLY liked Raheel’s graphics better:

#Batfleck got pwned!

These “terrorists have no resolvable grievances” ~ Netanyahu

  • I first want to send my condolences to the families of those murdered in today’s terrorist attacks in Brussels. The chain of attacks from Paris to San Bernardino to Istanbul to the Ivory Coast and now to Brussels, and the daily attacks in Israel – this is one continuous assault on all of us. In all these cases the terrorists have no resolvable grievances. It’s not as if we could offer them Brussels, or Istanbul, or California, or even the West Bank. That won’t satisfy their grievances. Because what they seek is our utter destruction and their total domination. Their basic demand is that we should simply disappear. Well, my friends, that’s not going to happen. The only way to defeat these terrorists is to join together and fight them together. That’s how we’ll defeat terrorism – with political unity and with moral clarity. I think we have that in abundance. (NewsBusters)

More from CNSNews:

…Later in his speech, Netanyahu addressed the continuing efforts by Palestinians leaders to raise a generation of children with “murderous hatred” for Israel.

“Palestinian children are taught to stab Jews. They’re taught that the goal of the Palestinian people is not to establish a state on the West Bank, but in all of Israel, in Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa.”

Netanyahu also criticized the United Nations for maligning Israel:

“At the U.N., Israel, the Middle East’s only true Democracy, is slandered like no other country on Earth. At the U.N., Israel is subjected to consistent, systematic discrimination. Only Israel is permanently scheduled for condemnation at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Not Iran, not Syria, not North Korea. Only Israel is hounded by U.N. bodies expressly established to delegitimize its very existence. Only Israel is condemned every year by 20 hostile resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly.”

Netanyahu questioned why anyone would think that the U.N. could impose peace terms on Israel, when it is allowing Palestinians to think they can “stab their way to a state.”

Netanyahu said the best formula for achieving peace is the two-state solution, “in which a de-militarized Palestinian state finally recognizes the Jewish state.”

“Now, I know there’s some skepticism about my views on this, so let me state unequivocally — and here’s the acid test. I’m ready to begin such negotiations immediately, without preconditions, anytime, anywhere,” Netanyahu said. “That’s a fact. But President Abbas is not ready to do so. That’s also a fact. There is political will here in Jerusalem. There is no political will there in Ramallah.”

Netanyahu noted that Abbas has refused to even talk with him for the past five-and-a-half years….

A Girl Was Legally Kidnapped (A Local Story)

The Daily Mail has this on the father of Lexi, the girl taken from the Page family, the only family she has known:

The biological father of a child seized from the only foster parents she has known because they are not Native American is a serial criminal, Daily Mail Online can disclose.

The six-year-old girl, Lexi, was taken from Rusty and Summer Page so she can be given to new foster parents chosen by the Choctaw nation. Her biological father is enrolled as a member.

The real father, Jay Ellerfobes, can be named for the first time. He has spoken on the case to describe it on social media as ‘#1 story in the nation’.

But crucial new details about his lengthy criminal history, which includes at least felonies, can be disclosed.

He has spent time in prison for, among other offenses, drugs and grand theft, and boasted that he has white supremacist friends. A former girlfriend told Daily Mail Online that he abused her.

The convictions were disclosed as a family services worker involved in the case spoke out to Daily Mail Online to reveal concerns over the handling of the case.

Lauren Axline said that the Native American unit of Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had been ‘deceptive’ and ‘crooked’ in their handling of Lexi’s case.

The case centers around laws which designate children as Native American and mean that their welfare is the responsibility of their tribe if they have proven tribal ancestry.

But Lexi – and her biological father – have never lived on a reservation or been subject to tribal law before.

He even denied that he was Native American when his mother raised the issue with Los Angeles County DCFS, and told them that he was an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, of Oklahoma….

The Signal newspaper, the local paper notes:

Amid crying and chanting, county social workers Monday collected a 6-year-old foster child from the Saugus parents desperately fighting to keep her, acting on a court order that concluded the girl’s native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah.

Three Department of Children and Family Services officials waited on the Santa Clarita Valley family’s doorstep for 10 minutes until foster father Rusty Page opened the front door and, holding a crying Lexi in his arms, made his way through a gauntlet of reporters as the child clutched teddy bear.

As the foster father arrived at the county workers’ car door, foster mother Summer Page emerged screaming from the house, the couple’s three children in tears with her.

A couple of supporters shouted at county workers, “How do you live with yourself?” and several repeatedly yelled toward the child, “The Page family loves you.”….

Here are a couple audio excerpts from Michael Medved and Dennis Prager who noted this travesty of justice:

Here is an open letter to Chief Gary Batton of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma from Lexi’s Uncle:

Honorable Sir,

I’m writing to you respectfully and in a spirit of friendship and shared humanity to plead with you over the custody of Lexi Page of Saugus, California.

I am one of Lexi’s foster uncles. My wife’s biological brother is Rusty Page, the foster father. I give you this context only to say that I have interacted directly with Lexi for the past 4+ years. I not only know the intricacies and complexities of this legal case but, more importantly, I and my wife and children have laughed and played and celebrated holidays and vacations with Lexi for these few years. I’ve seen her blossom into an intelligent, respectful, happy, adventurous little girl. I’ve heard her infectious giggle as she splashes with her cousins in the hot tub. I’ve seen her marvel at a collection of colorful summer wildflowers. I’ve seen her dance with delight at her uncles’ weddings. I’ve watched her fall asleep in Rusty and Summer’s arms. I’ve witnessed the extraordinary care she’s received in sickness and in health from two of the greatest parents a girl could ever ask for.

I understand that Lexi is 1.5% Choctaw by blood. I respect her heritage, as do Rusty and Summer. I also understand the reality of what that means: 1 of Lexi’s 64 Great Great Great Great Grandparents was Choctaw. 63 of them were not.

For my part, I grieve over the history of what has been done to your tribe and many other Native American people groups. It was wrong. Any abuse of or discrimination toward a people on the basis of race is deplorable and immoral. I say as a Christian that we have one Creator God who made all of us in His image. For one people to mistreat, destroy, or even be prejudiced agains another simply because of race or ethnicity is a grave offense to me because it’s an act of contempt toward our God. So I’m genuinely sorry and I ask your forgiveness on behalf of those who went before me. Your people have been wronged in unspeakable ways. And I understand any degree of suspicion or self-protectiveness or frustration you must feel.

Since Lexi entered our lives, I’ve read and studied ICWA fairly thoroughly — though just as an uncle and not as a legal professional. ICWA was enacted in 1978 to stop these abuses of racism, and the manipulation and exploitation of Native American children. I, for one, am grateful for this law. Your people deserved this protection then — and you deserve the protection of our nation’s laws now.

That said, I respectfully disagree with the specific way ICWA is being (mis)used in the case of Lexi Page. As you may know, she is being taken away from a foster mom, Summer Page, who is of Native American descent. Furthermore, the court is not placing Lexi with either birth parent, nor any immediate blood relative, nor is she being “returned” to the life of a reservation which her birth father did not identify with. In fact, Lexi isn’t being “reunited” with anyone from her past. She’s been forcibly removed from a safe, stable, loving home after 4+ years and is being placed with an extended relative in Utah who is neither biologically related to Lexi, nor is any part Native American.

I wish you could see firsthand how loved and accepted Lexi was by the Pages, and I wish you could see how absolutely ruined she has been by out-of-state visitations. I wish you could’ve heard her cries and pleadings today that she not be taken away from the only mommy and daddy and sisters and brother she’s ever known. Many experts on both sides of this have agreed in court that removing Lexi from the Page family at this point will be devastating to her. I appeal to you to see that removing Lexi will actually exploit and damage her, contrary to the very heart of ICWA.

And so I appeal to you, sir, to do what is within your power to ask that a “good cause” exemption be granted in the case of 6 year old Lexi Page so that she can stay with her foster family and not be forced to experience the undue hardship of a separation and cross-country move.

Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my request. May God grant you wisdom, justice, and grace.

Matt Hand

POTUS’ Odd View of Plain History

Muhammad

I reworded President Obama’s words a bit to show how he has history all wrong (via Breitbart):

President Obama denounced the violent activities of Islamic State terrorists, asserting that they had distorted the teachings of Islam to promote their hatred around the world.

“They are vicious killers and murderers who have perverted one of the world’s great religions,” Obama said, “And their primary power in addition to killing innocent lives is to strike fear in our societies, to disrupt our societies.”…

Jesus Versus Muhammad by Papa Giorgio