Newsletter from IP-adress.com
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New IP to location database
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The new IP to location database seems to be very accurate.
Many of our visitors told us that they were scared by the
close pinpointing. How close does it come to your house?
http://www.ip-adress.com
Enhanced satellite IP image
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Did you see the new enhanced satellite IP image?
If not, check it out.
http://www.ip-adress.com
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Comment: Mapped about 5-6 m from my house (Mapped to Golden Valley, MN). At work it maps to San Francisco (instead of Minneapolis)
Reggie L. Buddle 
Joe Lieberman, Amy Klobuchar, Lamar Alexander 
From the Motley Fool:
Financing That New Car, Part 1
Financing That New Car, Part 2
Two good articles. I add this advice:
Earlier Post
What follows are screen shots with brief comments:
DNS addresses in Netgear router. OpenDNS provides complete instructions for various routers, devices (eg Palm), and workstations (Linux, MAC, PC).
Illustration of content blocking. Why waste one's time, mind, or spirit on these sites!
Anti-Phishing. I've never been fooled but nice to have this protection!
Eg of shortcuts. Eg. "WF" resolves itself to Wells Fargo Banking.
Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter New Baptist Covenant Clambake Unravels
Excerpt:
The New Baptist Covenant, a conglomeration of some 31 Baptist denominations in the U.S.A. and Canada, was conceived of and instituted earlier this year by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both of whom claim to be Baptists, with Carter having been active in the Southern Baptist Convention until the 90s and still a Sunday School teacher in his home church. A convocation of the NBC is planned for next January in Atlanta. Among the speakers are Carter, Clinton, Bill Moyers, Al Gore, and Marian Wright Edelman, as well as a number from the religious community. Although it seems cast as a mini-democrat convention, republican senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley are also slated to speak, their only bona fides, one presumes, being that they're Baptists, though one also wonders about the "token" thing.
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The overwhelming consensus among Baptists is that homosexual behavior is totally unacceptable, sinful. They believe this because the Holy Bible is unmistakable in its absolute denunciation of homosexual practices, actually lumped in with those of such other perversions as bestiality. Homosexuality is excoriated in scripture just the same as fornication and adultery, sins of the worst kind with regard to family and its place in society, not to mention in the sight of God.
Carter, of course, knows this as a life-long Baptist and Bible scholar but has attempted -- for whatever purpose -- to form an organization of people who in the main absolutely disagree with him on this matter, an extremely important one that goes straight to the heart of the primary unit in society -- the family. One wonders, then, what his actual purpose is in forming the NBC. He is also bound to know that the so-called "mainline" denominations have been wilting on the vine for decades trying to accommodate homosexuals in an official way, welcoming them already in worship and even membership but being terribly conflicted over ordination and same-sex unions, since scripture undeniably militates against both.
Official Site (Note: Called "an authentic and genuine prophetic Baptist voice in these complex times")
Wiki: New Baptist Covenant
Roger (Brother) and his spouse, Kathy came by after dinner on Saturday for fellowship. Our kitty Blue between them.
'The Mother of All Churches' - One site in Jerusalem unites, and divides, Christians
Excerpt:
In 1757, after Greek Orthodox clergy violently wrested majority control of the church from the Roman Catholics, the Ottoman rulers of Jerusalem decreed a status quo for the city's holy sites. For the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, this meant that control was split primarily among the three patriarchates of Jerusalem--the Latin, the Greek and the Armenian--and secondarily among the churches of Egypt (Coptic), Syria and Ethiopia. The arrangement, formalized in 1852, has been enforced by the British, Jordanians and, today, Israel.
But this has not created harmony. Back in 1869, Mark Twain visited and noticed the denominations chanting, sometimes simultaneously, in their own languages: "It has been proven conclusively that they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace." And the cease-fire's fragility persists to this day.
Five years ago, Ethiopians, exiled since 1658 to quarters on the roof, resented the placement of a Coptic priest's chair there, and the ensuing brawl sent 11 monks--seven Ethiopians and four Copts--to the hospital. A couple of years later, Greek clerics tussled with Franciscans.
The turf wars also paralyze maintenance. A wooden ladder has rested on a ledge over the church's entrance for at least 150 years. The edicule, braced with scaffolding, is falling apart. The Chapel of St. Nicodemus, over which both the Armenians and the Syrians claim ownership, has for that reason never been restored. To prevent denominational disputes, the very keys to the church have since the days of Saladin been entrusted to Muslims from the Nuseibeh and Joudeh families.
Democrats go soft on crimes against humanity
Excerpt:
Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq.
"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done," Mr. Obama told the AP. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."
Mr. Obama is engaging in sophistry. By his logic, if America lacks the capacity to intervene everywhere there is ethnic killing, it has no obligation to intervene anywhere--and perhaps an obligation to intervene nowhere. His reasoning elevates consistency into the cardinal virtue, making the perfect the enemy of the good.
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One may take the position that genocide would not be the likely result of an American retreat from Iraq. That is the view of Mr. Obama's Massachusetts colleague John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee. Mr. Kerry, who served in Vietnam before turning against that war, voted for the Iraq war before turning against it. He draws on the Vietnam experience in making the case that the outcome of a U.S. pullout from Iraq would not be that bad. "We heard that argument over and over again about the bloodbath that would engulf the entire Southeast Asia, and it didn't happen," he said recently.
"It didn't happen"--just as Mr. Kerry predicted it wouldn't. In his June 1971 debate with fellow swift boat veteran John O'Neill on "The Dick Cavett Show," the 27-year-old Mr. Kerry said, "There's absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath. . . . One has to, obviously, conjecture on this. However, I think the arguments clearly indicate that there probably wouldn't be. . . . There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw." Mr. Kerry acknowledged that "there would be certain political assassinations," but said they would number only "four or five thousand."
Here is what did happen:
In 1973, the U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam, as Mr. Kerry had urged. In December 1974, the Democratic Congress ended military aid to South Vietnam. In April 1975, Saigon fell.
According to a 2001 investigation by the Orange County Register, Hanoi's communist regime imprisoned a million Vietnamese without charge in "re-education" camps, where an estimated 165,000 perished. "Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed," the Register reported.
Comment: We need to stay in Iraq until that country is stable!
J.W. Hendryx Interview with Dr. Steven J. Lawson
Comment: Read the entire interview!
Excerpt:
Tragically, the church in America, I have found, is the most resistant to the doctrines of grace. I think that this is caused by a culture and church that is saturated with political correctness, individual autonomy, and financial prosperity, as well as spiritual apathy and theological superficiality. All these elements have a deadening effect upon understanding the truth and feed Arminianism, in one way or another. Sad to say, the church is just as man-centered in other parts of the globe as it is here. We, who believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation, remain islands of reformed thinking in the midst of oceans of semi-Pelagian doctrine.
Comment: The title - "Inane drivel" - sums my view of the CNN Democratic Youtube debate last night. No I did not watch! Newsweek comments below:
Cancer patients, gay couples and snowmen: voters, not journalists, asked the questions at the CNN-YouTube debate. Was it a breakthrough for democracy or a publicity stunt?
Excerpt:
CNN hyped the event heavily on its Web site, crowing in its recap that though the cable network "vetted the questions, it was the first time that a journalist or a professional has not dictated what is asked of the candidates. The control was solely in the voters' hands." Actually, the control was in Anderson Cooper's hands—a fact which rankled many dedicated YouTubers, who would have preferred that CNN air the most popular videos submitted. It was the telegenic young anchor who moderated the event, struggling to keep meandering candidates on topic. And it was Cooper, we are told, that led the initiative to whittle the 3,000 video submissions down to 25-30. Perhaps we should be grateful. The debate kicked off with a rundown of videos that didn't make the cut. A child asking about Social Security was clearly being coaxed and coached by her parents; a lady in a giant chicken suit was just too weird.
Still, some strange ones slipped through the gates. A pair of hammy hillbillies from Tennessee asked if all the will-he-or-won't-he over former vice president Al Gore's intention to run hurts the candidates' feelings; an animated snowman asked what the candidates planned to do about global warming ("a silly video on a serious topic," explained Cooper). But most of the questions were posted online in advance of the debate, giving candidates ample time to see what appeared to be at the forefront of voters' minds.
Comment: Questions may be viewed at Youtube. Search "CNN debate". I'm skipping this too!
Costly "free" credit reports are everywhere
Artist's depiction of Solomon's court (Ingobertus, c. 880)
Kathee and I are reading in 1 Kings and last week we came across this familiar passage:
1 Kings 11:1 & 4 "But king Solomon loved many strange women ... his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father"
This passage illustrates the truth that friends can either lift one up spiritually or drag one down. Solomon's multiple pagan wives "turned away [Solomon's] heart after other gods". Since God desires our fellowship and commands us to be wholehearted, it is incumbent upon every believer to carefully evaluate one's relationships: friendships and dating relationships (a 'more than friendship').
I am blessed to have my spouse of 32 years as my sole-mate and best friend. Kathee is a deeply spiritual person who loves the Lord. She encourages me in my Christian walk, and I endeavor to encourage her as well.
Obviously we cannot move to a commune or live alone in the desert. God wants us to interact with all kinds of people, even some who are ungodly. I see this in the great commission (Matthew 28:19, "in your going, make disciples").
Note the phrase "since then you would need to go out of the world" in the following passage:
1 Corinthians 5:9-11, "I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person."
God does not want his children to be hermits!
There are some relationships that are more entangling than others. Dating and marriage would fall into this category. The one whom one marries will be first one whom one dates. Marriage is a committed relationship ('til death do us part') that should not be entered into lightly or parted without death or the scriptural cause (eg. abandonment, abuse, or adultery). I believe that God's warning of 2 Corinthians 6:14 ("Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?") addresses at the very least, the marriage relationship. Thus it is important that the Christian who is contemplating marriage be careful about the dating relationship.
The Apostle Paul has addition instructions about friendships:
1 Corinthians 15:33 "Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”"
Back to my original premise: "Friends will lift you up or drag you down". In evaluating relationships, these questions may be helpful:
Wells Fargo pulls popular subprime loan from mix
Excerpt:
The company in an e-mail said it ended on Friday retail offerings of so-called 2/28 loans, which at 65 percent of all subprime mortgages last year are the staple of the industry. Payments on 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) are based on rates that are fixed for two years and then are adjusted twice a year for the remaining 28, if the loan is not refinanced.
Decisions were partly driven by the $583 billion market for subprime mortgage bonds, where sales rely on opinions of rating companies such as Moody's Investors Service, Wells Fargo said. Rating companies in the past two weeks have unleashed a flood of downgrades on subprime bonds in response to rising delinquencies and increased their assumptions of losses that new loans will produce.
"These changes are being made to align our practices with industry guidance, as well as appropriately respond to recent downgrades by key ratings agencies regarding subprime bonds," the San Francisco-based bank said in a statement. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is in Des Moines, Iowa.
Comment: Good to see this! I favor Mortgage brokers being licensed with a license that can be revoked forever if borrowers are misdirected fraudulently. The Mortgage broker needs to have the interests of the borrower at heart! (I'm naive!)
Euro vs. Dollar: More factories may be U.S.-bound
When you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change
Excerpt:
Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
Read full article here
If one wants: drama, action, character development, good vs evil, miracles, wicked kings, 'Jezebel' queens, prophets, seers, family rivalies, etc ...
Look no further than ...
I'm amazed by the frenzy over "Pottermania"! Americans are ignorant of the greatest book ever! The Holy Scriptures. And unlike Harry ... the Scriptures are TRUE!
There was a black widow in her grapes
A riot on Plymouth Avenue in Minneapolis 40 years ago changed one neighborhood and shaped a new one.
read more
Comment: We drive across Plymouth Avenue on the way home from work. There are still (I'm amazed!) empty lots along this section where the riots occured! 40 years later! Be sure to view the graphic associated with the Star Tribune article!
1967 was the Summer of race riots. Cincinnati (where I lived then) had them. So did Minneapolis! Detroit's 12th Street riot was the granddaddy of them all! What was accomplished: death, destruction, distrust! Nothing else!
