Author: Papa Giorgio

Liberty University Drops Caner

Published by Papa Giorgio

This makes me happy. Often you hear about the pressure from the blogosphere having an impact on the political spectrum, but the Christian “sub-culture” is a little more insulated. So this is big news for us in this “sub-culture.” I first brought this up last year on my older blog December 8th, 2009:

As well as on March 12th, 2010:

I was one of the earlier blogs to catch this story, but the real credit goes to the larger blogs and people who veraciously followed this story. I found my information out via LiveLeak [DEAD] and then through Mirele’s Miscellany’s [NOW PRIVATE] post (dated August 1st, 2009)

There is an entire series of video critiques [by Mirele’s Miscellany] HERE. Be aware, much of his critique is noteworthy, but he or she is still a Mooslem, so, there is theology one need to be aware and cautious of when he interprets Christian positions.

One such site is the Ministry of Reconciliation [DEAD], and it moved up the chain of larger blogs until apologists themselves took notice, like Alpha & Omega Ministries (James White).

I was happy to be a small part in this larger cog.

Good debate took place on this subject all over the Net… many Christians thought it was done with a spirit of malice (see the more recent defense of Caner at Christianity Today [oooops] and click out to James White’s response to it from my post:

It was not, it was done in the spirit of truth. So it is with joy — joy for truth triumphing over fabrications — I post this story dated June 25th, 2010. (The earliest I could find it is 2013 in the paper I mentioned, but here is an original reference dated 2010: Egrun Caner Out As Head of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary)

LU WON’T RENEW CANER’S CONTRACT AS DEAN OF SEMINARY (ARCHIVED… FOUND IT!)

Liberty University said Friday that Ergun Caner would no longer be dean of its seminary, following an investigation into some of his claims about being raised as a Muslim.

Caner has signed a contract to be a member of the seminary’s faculty next year, the university said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Four members of Liberty’s Board of Trustees who conducted the investigation found that “Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory,” the university said.

The panel, however, basically supported Caner’s testimony of being a former Muslim who converted to Christianity.

The contradictions came in “matters such as dates, names and places of residence,” the LU statement said.

Although LU didn’t provide any more details about the discrepancies, Caner said in several speaking engagements in 2001 and later that he was raised in Turkey before coming to the United States as a teenager.

He also said he was trained in Islamic jihad, a term associated with terrorist activity, according to recordings made in 2001 of his comments at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., and Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.

However, his parents’ divorce papers, on file in a Columbus, Ohio, courthouse, indicated the family moved from Stockholm, Sweden, to the U.S. when Caner was about 4 years old, and continued to live in the Columbus area.

Caner’s father was a Muslim who sought to raise his children in the Islamic faith, although he had only part-time custody after the divorce, the documents indicate.

“Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review,” the LU statement said….

…(I assume the paper had an update or change to their website, so the 2013 version is here – behind a paywall)…

(I took the liberty in this updated links and graphics “rehab,” 7-18-2026, to update the original graphic I used — click the black and white to see the color version of it via AI)

In updating this posts links and showing which are dead, I do have to say I will look into Caner’s views on Calvinism a bit more. I posted the following James White linked graphic many years before I realized the truth of this.

So, in reading quickly through some old responses to Caner, I can see I agree more with him than the 5-Pointers on this topic. For instance:

1. “Double Predesitination.” Calvin believed this. Are we to label him a hyper-Calvinist? John Bunyan believed this. Is he a “neo-Calvinist?”

Yes. But I say that a neo or hyper Calvinist is one that integrates Exhaustive Devine Determinism into his or her worldview. Which is why at first Phil Johnson defined “hyper-Calvinism” initially, and later recanted in order not to sweep up friends into his net, so-to-speak.

At any rate, this will be a fruitful detour in the future.

Petraeus v. Democrats Blowhards

Published by Papa Giorgio

The following is with much thanks to Abu Wabu, to which there is much more there to read… but this is the bottom line:

More from WABU:

With all the commentary that will follow from the MSM about the splendor of Obama’s decision, let’s remember all the baseless, despicable scorn, lies, character assassination and slanders Obama and his fellow Senate Democrats heaped on General Petraeus during the hearings on the Surge, a plan they all said wouldn’t work and for which they called him a liar for even suggesting it would.

Rather than burnishing Barack Hussein Obama’s presidential cred – he has none – all this whole affair has done, at this point, is prove once again what a bunch of lying sacks of shit the Democrats were in their attacks on Petraeaus and the military at the outset of the final surge and rescue of Iraq. Obama, Durbin, Reid, Biden, Clinton, Kennedy, Dodd, Kerry, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Levin, Schumer, Frank, all of them, from top to bottom. It had failed before it had even begun, they said; the war was lost, and only a lying Bush military lackey like Petraeus would try to suggest otherwise. And today it is proven once and for all that it was all politics, for nothing but their own benefit, regardless of the cost to the country, its military and its image around the world, all of which they were prepared to sacrifice on the altar of political power.

[….]

Remember, for Obama, even the prospect of genocide in Iraq was not enough to merit taking down Saddam, and he proudly declared in the Surge hearings that he never supported the rescue of Iraq.

So Obama has never had any use for a genuine national hero like General Petraeus. Until now.

WIKI notes:

  • The MoveOn.org ad controversy began when the U.S. anti-war liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in The New York Times on September 10, 2007, accusing General David H. Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House”. The ad also labeled him “General Betray Us”. The organization created the ad in response to Petraeus’ Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. MoveOn hosted pages on its website about the ad and their reasons behind it from 2007 to June 23, 2010. On June 23, 2010, after President Obama nominated General Petraeus to be the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan (taking over the position from retiring General Stanley McChrystal), MoveOn erased these webpages and any reference to them from its website.

Victor Davis Hanson via NATIONAL REVIEW:

  • It is one of the ironies of our present warped climate that Petraeus will face far less criticism from the media and politicians than during 2007–8 (there will be no more “General Betray Us” ads or “suspension of disbelief” ridicule), because his success this time will reflect well on Obama rather than George Bush. It is a further irony that Obama is surging with Petraeus despite not long ago declaring that such a strategy and such a commander were failures in Iraq. And it is an even further irony that he is now rightly calling for “common purpose” when — again not long ago, at a critical juncture in Iraq — Obama himself, for partisan purposes on the campaign trail, had no interest in the common purpose of military success in Iraq.

And George Will via NEW YORK POST:

…Less than three months after the Times excoriated the court for weakening issue-ad restrictions, the paper made a huge and patently illegal contribution to MoveOn’s issue-advocacy ad. The American Conservative Union filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, noting that the purchaser of the ad, MoveOn Political Action, is a registered multicandidate political committee regulated by the mare’s nest of federal laws and rules the multiplication of which has so gladdened the Times.

The Times, a media corporation that is a fountain of detailed editorial instructions about how the rest of the world should conduct its business, seems confused about how it conducts its own. The Times now says the appropriate rate for MoveOn’s full-page ad should have been $142,000, a far cry from the $65,000 the group paid. So the discount of $77,000 constitutes a large soft-money contribution to a federally regulated political committee. The Times’ horror of such contributions was expressed in its enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold.

FEC regulations state: “The provision of any goods or services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for such goods or services is a contribution.” Individuals are limited to contributing $5,000 in a calendar year; corporations such as the Times can make no contributions.

MoveOn is going to send the Times a check for $77,000. The Times has apologized, which is sweet, but normally the FEC doesn’t accept apologies in lieu of fines. And often FEC fines are levied after intrusive investigations into motives and intentions. Will there be such an investigation of the Times? The FEC is not lenient when dealing with individuals who, less lawyered-up than The New York Times Co., fall afoul of regulations much more recondite than the bright line the Times ignored.

Bob Bauer, a Democratic lawyer specializing in laws regulating political speech, notes – not approvingly – that the Times supposedly has a policy of rejecting ads involving “personal attack” speech. But the Times accepted MoveOn’s ad accusing a soldier of betraying his country. According to the Times’ public editor, a Times official said the ad was “a comment on a public official’s management of his office.”….

IRAQ HEARINGS: Sen. Clinton Questions Gen. Petraeus

 

People Can Use Their EBT Cards At Casinos – I Suspect We Will Hear About This Tomorrow

Published by Papa Giorgio

This must be layed squarely at the feet of the Democrats. By the way, as much shite as us conservatives give the L.A. Times, this is an excellent article:

….The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found.

State officials said Wednesday they were working to determine how much money had been withdrawn from casino ATMs by people using the welfare debit cards.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who learned of the issue when asked to comment for this story, promised to take immediate action.

“We have instructed our vendors to prohibit these cards from being accepted at ATMs located in casinos and card rooms,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Wednesday. “It is reprehensible that anyone would use taxpayer money for anything other than its intended purpose.”

Administration officials said the social services agency contracts with a private ATM network to handle the electronic transfer of benefits to people on welfare, and hadn’t noticed that the taxpayer money was being withdrawn at gambling establishments.

McLear said the system of paying out welfare benefits via bank cards was created under Schwarzenegger’s predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis. Since the late 1990s most states have adopted this system, which is a viewed as a more efficient way of distributing and tracking government aid….

….The cash benefits, however, can be withdrawn and spent just about anywhere.

The Capitol Casino, which occupies a pair of small rooms a few blocks from the legislative chambers in Sacramento, appears on the social services website showing where clients can get money. Each room has an ATM: one is so close to a poker table that a player with long arms could lean back and withdraw cash without leaving his chair; the other is a few steps from the blackjack table.

At the Casino Royale on the outskirts of Sacramento, the first thing patrons pass as they walk to the gaming floor is the ATM with a sign next to it saying, “Exceed your ATM daily limit here!!”….

…(read more)…

Democrats Do Not Think About Their Actions and Consequences, What Thomas Sowell Calls “2nd Tier Thinking”

Published by Papa Giorgio

All three network news shows on Tuesday skipped a report that eight of 15 experts consulted by the Obama administration opposed the government’s plan to halt deepwater oil drilling for six months. Only Special Report With Bret Baier covered the story….

…(read more)…