Send The President To Africa

I just signed a petition to the 2008 presidential candidates urging them to commit to visiting Africa during their first term.

You can help by taking action here: http://www.one.org/visitafrica/

Let The Games Begin...

except it really isn't a game. How can life be a game? Thousands upon thousands of children are in dire need of basics every day, every moment. These people have partnered with Compassion International to see that something is done for those hurting children in Uganda. You can click on the widget at the top of my page or you can click on the following. These bloggers will see things daily that will break their hearts. They will also see hope. They will see places that provide that hope. They will see children for whom you can provide that hope. Don't just sit at your computer reading and nodding and thinking how horrible it is. Do something. Change a life for $32 a month.

Compassion Blog
Ragamuffinsoul
Chris Elrod
Doug Van Pelt
Whittaker Woman
Phil Ware
Ethos
Shaun Groves
BooMama
Flowerdust
Rocks In My Dryer
J-Walking
Compassion - Christian Child Sponsorship
Spence Smith
Queen Anne's Lace
Brian Seay

Now go: read, sponsor, change a life.

Check out time is ...

Have you ever felt the need to escape? Nothing stressful is going on - or at least not major, but this overwhelming urge to crawl into bed for a few days comes over you. I start thinking of movies with happy endings I can watch and fluff books I can read. Nothing that requires thinking. I don't like when I want to go to this place. It feels as I'm wasting a lot of time, but I'm also not in the mindset to accomplish much. Maybe there is some stress under the surface that needs to be dealt with, but part of my brain doesn't want to acknowledge it is there.

Wisdom For The Ages...

Do not forget that you are using an electric toothbrush and pull it out of your mouth while the power is still on. Especially when you are wearing black.

He is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States...

states Frank Schaeffer in his interview with John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute. The following is a very small part of a very interesting conversation.

JW: What do you think of George W. Bush as the Christian president?

FS: He is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. He is unfit for the office of president of the United States. He has trouble speaking the English language and articulating a point of view. Second, he has led us into a war—in which my son, by the way, fought—on false pretenses. That is a terrible thing. Bush is personally responsible for the displacement of the Christian minority in Iraq. It was the last large Christian minority anywhere in the Middle East, and it has been destroyed. It is ironic that someone who proclaims he is a Christian president has single-handedly started a war that has undone the last Christian minority in the Middle East. Now it is wall-to-wall Islam from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean with the exception of Israel. There is not one place outside of Syria that still has that intact Christian minority now.

JW: Are you opposed to the war in Iraq?

FS: Absolutely. We had a legitimate cause to go into Afghanistan, and it was the right thing to do. It was the only logical response to 9/11. But Iraq was a completely misbegotten fiasco from the beginning. It was unnecessary and will only make our world situation worse.

JW: Do you think it is ironic that the Christian Right supports the war and has raised very few moral questions about it?

FS: Yes. Because of my son’s service in the Marine Corps, I’ve written on the subject of who serves in the military and who doesn’t. There is no question about the fact that when you have the Religious Right, the neoconservatives and others supporting the war, it is hypocritical when you discover that there is no preponderance of their own children who volunteer and serve. This is a fundamentally immoral situation, especially when you have someone like James Dobson who could use his prestige to call for his followers’ children to volunteer and serve. They typically make the moral case for the war without anybody having to actually sacrifice for it. It puts an immoral blossom on the whole enterprise. Also, it would be something that I would think Christians would want to talk about, as well as the fact that a Christian minority in the Middle Eastern Islamic country has been destroyed.

Craigslist Nightmare

Evil never sleeps. It is constantly looking and finding news ways to destroy and exploit.

Children For Sale

With a bit of research, one can realize just how much of a problem this has become. In one recent case, two Chicago women were charged for selling girls as young as 14 years old on Craigslist. The girls were forced to have sex with 10-12 men per day, and the traffickers made tens of thousands of dollars. A Boston man and his niece were charged with plotting a child trafficking operation with teenagers as young as 13 by selling them on Craigslist to predators from Massachusetts to New York. These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, law enforcement efforts to fight trafficking nationwide are consistently reporting a spike in online Craigslist ads, and how sex trafficking has “moved online” lately.

Katherine Chon Executive Director & Co-Founder Polaris Project
Read more.

Pizza with a Purpose

I was at the Dallas Zoo recently having lunch with my son. He was munching on a personal pizza and I was watching the Golden Lion Tamarins groom each other and play chase. I'm the weird kind of person that reads everything around me. Cereal boxes, fast food bags, menus, pizza boxes...and that is how it happened. I began to read Clay's pepperoni pizza box. My eyes almost bugged out of my head when I read:

Help Us Make A Difference!
Share Your Compassion - Sponsor Needy Kids From Around The World With Compassion, Int'l
Compassion
1-800-336-7676
www.compassion.com

WOW! A pizza with a purpose! I believe their slogan: Noble Roman's The Better Pizza People