Professor Hadley Arkes does a good job, here, of explaining why Obama really is in favor of “effective abortions” meaning that, if an infant survives an abortion, the doctor performing the procedure withholds medical care so as to assure the infant’s death. He DID vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which sought to close loopholes on the current law, which claimed to protect infants who survived abortions but was, in reality, totally ineffective. He IS playing a word game with us.

And, here is what the NY Times had to say about it. I guess if the NY Times highlights someone’s pro-abortion bias, that person is pretty pro-abortion.

Somebody is stealing political yard signs in our neighborhood, and they are not the Obama-Biden yard signs. Come on, people! We’re all American citizens and all choosing who we think is the best candidate to fill the presidency.

I, like Devin, was very pleasantly surprised. I went to the see the movie because it seemed like a good thing for a grassroots Christian conservative to do. I confess that I expected a little cheesiness. But, it totally drew me in. I found myself cheering for Caleb Holt as he became a worthy man and set about winning his wife’s heart. I found myself feeling for her in her confusion and pain. I even got weepy–a very good sign.

I really encourage you to see “Fireproof.” It is an gift to those who are married (Devin and I grinned at each other at different times throughout the movie as the statements about the needs of men and women in marriage reminded us of our first two years of marriage) and a good preparation for those who are not yet married. Good job, Sherwood Films! I’m really impressed.

Very interesting development at the United Nations Population Fund, vetted well by Colin Mason of the Population Research Institute.

Possibly!  We could become licensed to foster children by this weekend!

Our homestudy finishes up tomorrow with Katie being interviewed, and then the caseworker writes up the interview information–she has 2 weeks to finish the write-up, but she is a terrific young lady and told us she would try her best to finish it by this Friday!

My “Dad-readiness Status”: Not Ready
(but hey, I’ve still got at least 4 days–how hard can it be?)

Katie and I follow Nature’s Harmony Farms sustainable farming adventures, and Tim is doing a series of posts on poultry processing, including the benefits of doing it on the farm versus at the USDA-approved processing plant.

Katie and I could become a licensed foster home by this Friday.

That means that we could receive a call at any time after that asking if we are willing to take one or more children who need a home immediately (because their parents abused, neglected, or abandoned them).

The first thing that Katie and I are supposed to do, if the child is not already in the hospital, is to take them to a doctor to have them examined to see if their parents have hurt them in any ways not yet known at the time they were removed.  But we can’t take them to any doctor, we have to take them to a Star Health doctor (or, failing to find one soon, to the emergency room).

What is Star health?  It is the newly-revamped form of Medicaid for foster children to help them get better treatment, more quickly, and provide more consistency as they possibly move around from one guardian to another (whether a family or the State).

Fortunately, there are doctors who take Star health, but many do not or are not taking new patients.  Why?  Well, one probable reason is that getting the government to pay the doctors for their work is exceedingly difficult and even when Medicaid finally does pay, its reimbursement rate is low.

So doctors have to jump through a bunch of hoops to even take this government insurance and then deal with wasted time and hassle from billing Medicaid only to have it get sent back for correction and then re-sent before finally being rejected or approved; and even then, when it does pay it doesn’t pay much.  I don’t blame doctors for not taking it, but the net result is greater difficulty for foster parents to find good health care for their child.

Katie and I will soon have to deal with this, and I’m sure we’ll have more to tell you about.  I don’t blame the government for it because I am sure the people who work in these governmental departments are doing their best and are overworked and under-paid, but one thing it makes me wary of is the government getting more involved in health care (e.g. “universal health care”) so it can be “run better”.

Let’s see them first run better what health care programs they are already involved in before letting them venture into the lives of every American man, woman, and child.

I’ve been buyin’, shortin’, speculatin’ a-plenty in this volatile market.  I’ve heard lots of people blaming others but not one person taking any responsibility for it.

Sen. Obama just said of the crisis and coming bailout: “When taxpayers are asked to take such an extraordinary step because of the irresponsibility of a relative few, it is not a cause for celebration.”

Clearly he wants to side with “the little guy” on the “Main Street” that we’ve been hearing so much about lately.  But I’m one of those little guys, and I take some of the responsibility for this mess.  Why?  Because over the past 4 years I have benefitted greatly from low loan rates on houses and 0 – 5% down-payment arrangements as well as the increased interests rates that were earning me 5% risk-free in my online bank account (that number is now down to 3% with the drop in rates in the past year or so).

I am one of the millions of American citizens who have benefitted from the housing and tax incentives, whose houses have not been foreclosed upon, and who have even benefitted from the stock market volatility.

I don’t know how to exactly dole out the blame on the financial mess we are in, and certainly many CEOs and big-money people, banks, and corporations take a share in the blame–the people Sen. Obama was referring to when he mentioned “a relative few”–but so does Main Street, which you won’t hear Sen. Obama (nor Sen. McCain most likely) say.

I took out a good loan on a good house that was undervalued in a good housing market in Austin with, thanks be to God, a good job to pay for the mortgage, but many others took out bad loans with adjustable (read “increasable”) interest rates on overvalued houses in overvalued markets and then got burned when the other shoe dropped.

The government already has bailed out millions of individual people who made bad or unfortunate decisions, which shouldn’t be forgotten as they bail out the big corporations now, and many others didn’t get bailed out and are in hard times.  Then everyone else also takes the hit as the market goes down, their house value goes down, and their job security decreases.

No one is the big winner here, but there is plenty of blame to go around without pointing fingers at our favorite scape-goats.

Appropriately vague lyrics from Collective Soul’s Blame:
“When your willing to render
To the guilt you concede
When truth is your reason
Then lay that blame on me.”

I was a bit afraid of cheesiness in this movie, since it is lower budget and overtly Christian-influenced (like Bella), but we had heard lots of good things about it, so my wife and I and my mother-in-law went to see it today.

Conclusion: Worth watching!  I really got into it and enjoyed it a lot; so did Katie and her mom.  It was believable and real–both the husband and wife had faults and were at fault for their marriage dying, and in spite of efforts to mend their marriage, especially by the husband, it was still falling apart and the wife continued wanting a divorce.

The Christian faith is portrayed positively though at times it is a bit heavy-handed, but considering that even mentioning “Jesus” in a serious manner during a movie is considered heavy-handed nowadays, it isn’t that bad.

Fireproof is very funny in several places–the husband is a fireman and his buddies are hilarious: think big, dumb, ox-like guys.

But what struck me most about the movie is how well it showed that it is all too easy to let your marriage die through selfishness and unwillingness to love.  Neither the husband nor the wife were overtly “bad”; rather, they were both “good” people by the standards of society, yet they had quit loving each other and turned in on themselves.

The husband’s addiction to pornography is portrayed in a tactful yet truthful way.  Pornography was one of the evils poisoning their marriage, and it was refreshing yet appropriately uncomfortable to see it portrayed in a movie.  Very few movies are brave enough to call out this elephant in the room, one that hurts so many tens of millions of marriages in our country alone, but Fireproof does.  If only overcoming addiction to pornography was as easy as it is in the movie…but that’s another topic.

The movie had some songs that sounded great, so I also just went on iTunes and bought the ones by Leeland and Grey Holiday.

I posted a video that included Eduardo Verastegui’s testimony against abortion, especially targeted towards minorities, and it included an actual abortion happening.

This is so horrific that I don’t want children to see this if they are visiting our blog, but it is also a evil that is perpetrated thousands of times everyday in our country, so if you are mature enough to watch portions of an abortion being committed, you can find the video on you tube.

Blessings to you all.  The election approaches, and the man we elect as President matters tremendously.  Let us end this scourge that plagues our country.

Katie says: Here is a link to the video with English subtitles and the abortion portion removed. If anyone would like to the watch the original video with the abortion segment, if is at YouTube–Dura Realidad, Eduardo Verastegui.