The Duck Dynasty Witchhunt

I'm not a TV fan, but there's a TV show out there I haven't seen on A&E called 'Duck's Dynasty', that, from what I've heard, is a about a family in Louisiana who openly espouses Christianity and what we could call traditional American values on the air.

The show is a huge, off the charts success in the ratings.

Apparently there's a huge controversy now going on because of an interview the family patriarch, 67-year-old Phil Robertson did with GQ magazine.

Let me underline that...the remarks made were not made on the air, but in a magazine interview several weeks ago.

A lot of the interview, of course, concerned the family's Christian beliefs and Phil's own wild past before he became a Christian. As you can imagine, he sees Duck Dynasty as something of a push back against a lot of what constitutes popular culture today.

“Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says. “Sin becomes fine.”

When asked what he considered sinful, he replied:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Later in the interview, he made a point of saying that he's not trying to be judgmental, but that these are merely his views as he sees them, saying, " “We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus—whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”

That sentiment on his part didn't change things one iota. His equating homosexuality with sin, just as the Bible he believes in says it is was all it took.

Because of those remarks, he's been indefinitely suspended from the A7E television show.

My friend Terresa Monroe-Hamilton over at The Noisy Room had an excellent take on this:

For telling the truth and stating what he personally believed, A&E put him on indefinite hiatus. They fired him. I would be very surprised if the family did not tell A&E to stuff it. They managed to take THE most popular rated show ever and scuttle it. Phil had told A&E earlier that if they insisted he remove God or guns from his show, they were through [...]

Drudge headlined this whole shameful turn of events on his site this morning with: “Roasted ‘Duck’ – Leader Fired After Gay Rant. The title is misleading as I don’t consider Phil’s statement as a rant, but a confirmation of his beliefs and faith. He has a right according to the First Amendment to state his views. And while A&E has a right to run their channel as they see fit, they obviously care more about the rights of Gays than they do of Christians and they fear the backlash from the LGBT community and their supporters. They don’t give a crap about Constitutional rights and evidently they are willing to throw away millions in revenue to placate a certain segment of society. That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? A&E chose sides with GLAAD, took a stand and walked off a cliff. It’s okay for militant Gays to attack Christians and hunt them down, but when a Christian stands up and says what he believes… well, that’s hate don’t ya know.

She's entirely correct.GLAAD is a far Left group that despises Christians, and was conspicuously noticeable by its absence after Alec Baldwin's anti-gay slurs, which were a whole lot worse than anything Phil Robertson had to say.

Greg over at Rhymes With Right makes the point that firing Phil Robertson is also a blatant violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer - to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;"

Read more at: http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-duck-dynasty-witchhunt.html

Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue

Navy sailor Lindsay Cooper knew something was wrong when billows of metallic-tasting snow began drifting over USS Ronald Reagan.

“I was standing on the flight deck, and we felt this warm gust of air, and, suddenly, it was snowing,” Cooper recalled of the day in March 2011 when she and scores of crewmates watched a sudden storm blow toward them from the tsunami-torn coast of Fukushima, Japan.

The tall 24-year-old with a winning smile didn’t know it then, but the snow was caused by the freezing Pacific air mixing with a plume of radioactive steam from the city’s shattered nuclear reactor.

Now, nearly three years after their deployment on a humanitarian mission to Japan’s ravaged coast, Cooper and scores of her fellow crew members on the aircraft carrier and a half-dozen other support ships are battling cancers, thyroid disease, uterine bleeding and other ailments.

“We joked about it: ‘Hey, it’s radioactive snow!’ ” Cooper recalled. “I took pictures and video.”

But now “my thyroid is so out of whack that I can lose 60 to 70 pounds in one month and then gain it back the next,” said Cooper, fighting tears. “My menstrual cycle lasts for six months at a time, and I cannot get pregnant. It’s ruined me.”

The fallout of those four days spent off the Fukushima coast has been tragic to many of the 5,000 sailors who were there.

At least 70 have been stricken with some form of radiation sickness, and of those, “at least half . . . are suffering from some form of cancer,” their lawyer, Paul Garner, told The Post Saturday.



Read more: http://nypost.com/2013/12/22/70-navy-sailors-left-sickened-by-radiation-after-japan-rescue/

Churches using GPS to keep track of Baby Jesus

 

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -

It's a problem some churches didn't know how to handle until now. One security company is using its power to partner with a symbol that needs a little help this holiday season.

Each year, Baby Jesus figurines are stolen from nativity scenes across the country. Now, church owners are fighting back.

A GPS device is put inside the doll to prevent theft.

"And the beauty of this is it really works and it's simple to use,” said Alan Czyzewski, Parishioner at St. Ambrose Church in New Jersey.

Brickhouse Securities gives out free GPS devices to qualified religious institutions. Then they track the movements.

"We then monitor it from our cloud-based mapping system, and set up alerts so that they'll get a text message or an e-mail if Baby Jesus is in motion,” said Todd Morris, CEO of Brickhouse Securities.


Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/24277120/churches-using-gps-to-keep-track-of-baby-jesus#ixzz2oEK14jW9

Thrivent Would Facilitate Donations from Lutherans to Planned Parenthood

Earlier today, I was alerted to the presence of an entry in the Thrivent Choice database. The entry was for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. It can be found here.
Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion provider in the United States, having performed around 327,000 abortions in 2012.

Thrivent Choice is described in this way on Thrivent’s website: “The Thrivent Choice® program lets members recommend where some of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans’ charitable outreach funds go by directing Choice Dollars®.”

Thrivent is “a faith-based, not-for-profit membership organization nearly 2.5 million members strong.” Why is Thrivent providing a way for Planned Parenthood – an abortion business that commits atrocities every day that are completely contrary to the will of God – to receive charitable contributions from them?

Read more: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/12/18/thrivent-would-facilitate-donations-from-lutherans-to-planned-parenthood/

Balding? What You Should Do...

from: http://agoodman.com.au/faqs/im-balding-what-should-i-do/

As men we don’t show off much. Besides our hands and a bit of our arms (and sometimes our calves, in winter), the only part of ‘us’ that we ever really show to the world is our head. Everything else is covered by clothes almost all of the time, and should compliment the body while drawing attention up towards the face.

If you have a deep receding hairline, keep your hair short; don’t assume that adding extra length to the back and sides of your hair will compensate for a lack of hair elsewhere!

Don’t, do not, do never, ever, ever try to cover up bald spots with a combover. When it comes to the point where you’re trying to hide your baldness like that, it’s time to shave it. Don’t need to go down to the skin, but shave it as short as you’re comfortable with.

This way you look more like a man who in comfortable with his hair and has chosen a style that works with it – rather than a man who is clawing on to every last remaining follicle. The former looks quite natural and, honestly, people rarely even notice. The latter sticks out like a sore thumb.

Jesus Wants You to Judge

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the Ten Commandments. My favorites is the one that says “Thou shalt not judge.”

Oh, that one isn’t in there, you say?

Sorry, it’s easy to forget nowadays, especially in this country where many Christians carry on as though the entire Bible could be summed up by the phrase, “it’s all good, bro.”

In actual fact, there are a lot of urgent truths and important moral lessons in the Bible. Interestingly, almost all of them have fallen out of favor in modern American society. Here are just a few verses that aren’t particularly trendy or popular nowadays:

(WARNING: Politically incorrect truths ahead)

“Whoever harms one of these little ones that believes in me, it would be better for him if a millstone where tied around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the ocean.”

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”

“But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, unless the marriage is unlawful, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” 

“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.”

Strange as it may seem, enlightened, progressive Christians rarely attempt to wrestle Ephesians 5 or 2 Thessalonians 3 into a conversation. Yet, while the bulk of the Bible has ended up on our civilization’s cutting room floor, the warnings about “judging” are quoted and repeated incessantly, by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Apparently, the rest of the Book is outdated, outmoded, antiquated and fabricated, but the verses about judging — that stuff is gold, man.

read more at: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/12/12/jesus-wants-you-to-judge/

Tom Laughlin, "Billy Jack", dead at 82

 

Actor-writer-director Tom Laughlin, whose production and marketing of "Billy Jack" set a standard for breaking the rules on and off screen, has died.

Laughlin's daughter told The Associated Press that he died Thursday at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Laughlin was 82 and Teresa Laughlin, who acted in the Billy Jack movies, said the cause of death was complications from pneumonia.

"Billy Jack" was released in 1971 after a long struggle by Laughlin to gain control of the low-budget, self-financed movie, a model for guerrilla filmmaking.

He wrote, directed and produced "Billy Jack" and starred as the ex-Green Beret who defends a progressive school against the racists of a conservative Western community. The film became a counterculture favorite and the theme song, "One Tin Soldier," was a hit single for the rock group Coven.

Laughlin was in his mid-30s when he created Billy Jack with his wife and collaborator, Delores Taylor. Billy Jack was half-white, half Native American, a Vietnam veteran and practitioner of martial arts who had come to hate war. Billy Jack was first seen in the 1968 biker movie "Born Losers," but became widely known after "Billy Jack," the second of four films Laughlin made about him (only three made it to theaters).

"Billy Jack" was completed in 1969, but its release was delayed for two years as Laughlin struggled to find studio backing. He eventually successfully sued Warner Bros. to retain rights and — with no support from Hollywood or from theater chains — Laughlin made a radical decision: Distribute the movie himself and rent theaters to show it in. He also was among the first to advertise on television and to immediately.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/12/16/tom-laughlin-dead-at-82-billy-jack-creator/?intcmp=features