More non-sequiturs from the Left, in this case, David Letterman. He tries to make a connection between the Pilgrims and this mosque by saying that what the Pilgrims were after we should allow these particular backers of the mosque to get. He is implying that they are not being allowed to worship freely and are being persecuted. Both of which are not true. Not to mention Pilgrims were not blowing up buildings or leveling towns, or financially supporting terrorists:
The Underground writes about the continuing split between the conservative and out of control ELCA:
Three more conservative churches split recently from the largest Lutheran denomination in the country and formed their own church, amid the more accepting position that has been taken by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America toward gay clergy, and their recent ordination of gay bishops who are involved in committed relationships.
The First Lutheran Church in Philip, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Long Valley, and Trinity Lutheran in Midland, who form part of the Lutheran Coalition of Renewal voted by an overwhelming margin of 98 percent to 100 percent to leave the 4.5-million strong ELCA and create the North American Lutheran Church, the Rapid City Journal said.
Meanwhile a fourth church, Deep Creek Lutheran Church of Midland/Hayes has already voted 12-0 to part ways with ELCA, and has its second vote scheduled for Sept. 5, the Rapid City Journal said.
Other churches that are set to break ties with ELCA are the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran church in Lead, and Immanuel Lutheran Church in Whitewood, whose first votes also showed vast margins, the Rapid City Journal said.
Lead’s second vote is scheduled on Sept. 26, while Whitewood will have its second vote on Oct. 10. Rev. Frezil Westerlund, pastor of the four churches said, “We are not divided on this at all. We just feel renewed, like the Holy Spirit is moving among us,” the Rapid City Journal said.
While NALC opposes the gay clergy directive that ELCA passed in its convention last year, they say their focus is less on sexuality and more on returning to Lutheran traditions while the gay issue was simply the last straw, the Rapid City Journal said.
Bishop Paull Spring, who will head NALC, cited for example ELCA’s incorporation of language that eliminated male references to God such as “Father” and “Son,” and instead using gender-free words like “Creator” and “Savior,” the AP said.
Spring said, “The broader issue [was]: Which is the authoritative voice of the church today? Is it holy scripture, which Lutherans have always confessed, scripture alone, or is supposed to be some combination, that as well as some mood of the times?” AP said.
In general, churches leaving ELCA perceive a gap with local congregations, and many departing churches would have left even without the 2009 gay clergy policy, the Rapid City Journal said.
So far 199 churches have left ELCA after two congregational votes, with another 136 who only need a second vote before it becomes official. There are 10,239 ELCA churches totaling 4.5 million members. Over the last 20 years some 500,000 church members have left ELCA but many individual congregations also prospered proportionately, that share the sentiments of NALC, the AP said.
Mark Chavez, director of Lutheran CORE said, “The average person out there who’s interested in a Christian church wants the real thing. They want Jesus. They want the gospel. They don’t want something else,” the AP said.
NewsBusters h/t:
This amazing story can be read more fully at Religion News Blog:
….On March 20, 2008, Ami Ortiz, then 15, opened a gift basket that someone had left anonymously at his family’s home in Ariel. The basket disappeared in a massive explosion that destroyed much of the Ortiz home and shattered Ami’s body.
When he arrived at the hospital, Ami was clinging to life. He was bleeding profusely, had burns covering much of his body and was full of needles, screws and glass fragments the bomb-maker had built into the device.
The doctors had little hope for him and listed his condition as “anush,” meaning his soul was about to leave his body.
After countless hours of surgery and even more spent in prayer, Ami went from “near dead,” to burned and blind and eventually to playing basketball on a national youth team. Both his parents said his recovery was nothing sort of a miracle from God….
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….Jack Teitel, 37, who in November was indicted on two charges of pre-meditated murder, three charges of attempted murder and numerous weapons charges, is expected to enter a plea on Sunday (Sept. 5)….
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….When Teitel was arrested in October 2009, police found him hanging up posters celebrating the shooting of two teenagers at a gay and lesbian community center in Tel Aviv.
Teitel’s background is still somewhat of a mystery. An emigrant from the United States, he became an Israeli citizen in 2000, got married not long afterwards and is the father of four children. Usually portrayed in Israeli media as part ultra-orthodox ideologue and part fringe survivalist, it is clear that Teitel was motivated by a fascination with end-times prophecy and an extremely violent interpretation of Judaism and Jewish nationalism.
He is a self-described follower of such anti-missionary groups as Yad L’Achim. According to authorities, Teitel sought to kill those he deemed enemies of traditional Judaism: Palestinians, homosexuals, liberal Jewish intellectuals and, in the Ortiz case, Messianic Jews…..
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One Messianic Jew I enjoy and follow – Rosh Pina – has some great insight that builds on how God builds a bad situation into one that the greatest good can come from:
In a place filled with the type of hatred that causes people to strap bombs to their bodies to kill others, the attack has given people a reason to think and, for some, to choose forgiveness and peace.
Ortiz said he has gotten calls from Palestinians who had said if he could forgive a man who bombed his child, then they can forgive what has happened to them. Orthodox Jews have called him and asked forgiveness for their hatred toward Messianic Jews. Muslims have called Ortiz offering blood for transfusions for Ami.
Here is more on Teitel:
(NECN/ABC) – His acts of terror have spanned more than a decade. Jack Teitel, a Jewish-American extremist, was smiling as he appeared in a Jerusalem court today, now charged with multiple counts of murder. But, what has shocked Israelis the most, is that Teitel targeted not only Palestinians, but fellow Jews. Israelis are calling him the “Jewish Terrorist.” And, in a Jerusalem court today Jack Teitel showed no sign of remorse. He is charged with killing two Palestinians in 1997, a taxi driver and a shepherd – in revenge he claims, for Palestinian suicide attacks. In custody, he also professed his hatred left wing Israelis and homosexuals and his charge sheet lists 14 offenses. One of them: sending a bomb to the home of this left wing Israeli professor, and this is him leaving a bomb at the home of a family of Messianic Jews – Jews who believe in Jesus. This 15-year-old boy was the one who opened the parcel. Teitel moved to Israel from Florida in 2000 and set up home in this settlement in the occupied West Bank. Police arrested him five weeks ago distributing posters praising the recent murder of homosexuals in this Tel Aviv club – back at his house they found an arsenal of handguns and rifles. His neighbors and family say they had no idea. For now, his wife Rivka is standing by him, although he has freely admitted the charges against him. For Israelis it’s been an unpleasant reminder, that within their midst there are also Jews capable of terrorism, just a few days after the anniversary of the murder of their prime minister Yitzhak Rabin 14 years ago, by a lone Jewish gunmen.
NewsBusters makes the point that
….Well, then why did 43 percent of white Americans vote for Obama in November 2008? And why did Obama have a 78 percent favorability rating in January 2009 according to Gallup?
Did all of these white folks that voted for Obama and previously adored him suddenly become concerned with losing their majority status?
It’s one thing that despicable race-baiters like Tucker get to go on shows like this and make such racially-charged comments.
But that not one of the people on that panel or the host brought up how popular this same man used to be before he started implementing unpopular policies is deplorable….
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See also here.
Richard Trumka is a thug’s thug, and a crafty one at that.
The AFL-CIO boss believes the end justifies the means. Breaking the law is acceptable if it advances the cause. Unions should “forget about the law; this is about more than that,” he said at the “Future of Unions” roundtable in Detroit on April 7.
[….]
Trumka encouraged and approved acts of violence by UMW strikers during a labor dispute in the late 1980s. As Virginia Circuit Court Judge Donald McGlothlin, Jr. declared, “The evidence shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that violent activities are being organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”
Michelle Malkin has an outstanding post today on Unions and all the various connections and violence that naturally ensues from such connections and view of the world. By view, I mean a class warfare point of view on history and economics – Marxist in other words. Here is Michelle’s post/article:
….My syndicated column today takes on the rise of President Obama’s best new Big Labor buddy, Richard Trumka — whose looming presence on the political scene I first flagged in April. As we noted last week, he’s got a combined $88 million war chest with his labor alliance and a Marxist get-out-the-vote force behind him. When they are through, they’ll make the SEIU Purple Army’s political expenditures (and its thuggery) look like a pittance.
On a related note, the NLRB (with SEIU attorney Craig Becker recess-appointed onto the catbird’s seat) is set to launch an assault on workers’ rights to a secret ballot to remove an unwanted union. See here. Card check through the back door. Who needs the legislative front door?
And yesterday on Megyn Kelly’s show, I noted that union members can opt out of having their hard-earned dues used for political purposes. Several readers e-mailed that they had never heard of the process by which this was possible and wanted to know how they could do it. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree. Spread the word. challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based
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The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of Tea Party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” workers.
Trumka and Obama will cast Big Labor as an unassailable force for good in American history. But when it comes to terrorizing workers, Trumka knows whereof he speaks.
Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?
A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”
In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the s**t out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation (pdf), the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”….
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Watch the many videos of union violence and intimidation HERE.
After much speculation and competition, FNH wins contract.
The Marine Corps Times reported last week that:
….Earlier this month, the MK-17 – dubbed the SCAR by its Belgian manufacturer FNH – went into “full rate production” making it the first new assault carbine to be purchased by the U.S. military since the M-16 and M-4 rifles went online four decades ago. The rifle is expected to be particularly valuable in situations like those faced by soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, where the weapon’s additional range will provide a significant upgrade.
The new rifle meets Special Operations Command’s, or Socom’s, goal of providing a flexible firearm to special operators that essentially puts the capabilities of five weapons into one, says Maj. Wes Ticer, spokesman for the command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base.
“This is the first modular weapons system, with the first interchangeable barrel, that the operator can change in the field,” Ticer says.
The advantage, says Ticer, is that special operators, who carry as much as 75 pounds of gear in extremely difficult terrain, can now carry a single, lighter weapon that can be used in close quarters or for longer-range shooting. It can also fire the standard 5.56mm bullets now used in the M-4 – the mainstay of special operators – or the larger, 7.62mm bullet, which is more effective at longer distances.
The MK-17 won’t replace the M-4, says Ticer. But it will fill a gap in a lighter-weight weapon that fires the larger rounds.
“There is a capability gap,” says Ticer. Socom, he says, has no assault rifle that can fire the 7.62 round.
“This is smaller and more maneuverable than the existing weapons,” like the M110, the MK-11 and the MK-14 Enhanced Battle Rifle.
At 7.9 pounds with a standard barrel, the MK-17 is 4.5 pounds lighter than the MK-14.
The MK-17 won’t be able to fire both calibers until early next year, when the weapons are outfitted with what is called a “common receiver,” according to FNH Marketing Director Gabe Bailey….
…(read more at NBC)…
Defense Tech has some reaqlly good input on this weapon, to which I post just a bit of the personal opinion here:
….From personal experience, I just gotta say these weapons rock. I fired the SCAR Heavy and Light at FNHs range near Fredericksburg, Va., several months ago and fell particularly in love with the SCAR Heavy. The gas/piston system has a great thunk-thunk mechanical feel to it and the 7.62 caliber heavy packs a heck of a punch. The SCAR Light is easy to fire, very adjustable, and the barrels are easy to interchange — creating basically a whole new weapon for each variation.
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FNH says the Mk-16 and Mk-17 are the first assault rifles to be procured through a full and open competition since the M4/M16 carbines in the 1960s. Both FNH weapons are impressive and well see how the operational tests and initial fielding go. I bet operators who get a chance to test them wont want to give them up. I didnt.
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