My Beauty Best Teacher

One year later, it appears that Obama has abandoned his 'search' for an official Church and instead has decided to make up his own religion through his Blackberry. I won't judge his actions- that is up to other people to do. But I can pass on to you the information.

In the middle of the campaign for President, Barack Obama (D), quit Chicago's embattled Trinity United Church of Christ only weeks after a 'great speech' where he claimed that he would never abandon his pastor. That was months before he took office, and since then, he has not formally joined a new Church. Once regular churchgoers who weekly choose to sit in the pews listening to Jeremiah Wright bash America and rejoice in the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11, he has now publicly attended services in Washington just three times in the past year, by ABC News' count. He didn't even make it to Church on Christmas.

But, that does not mean that he does not worship something, after a fashion. Obama told ABC Nightline's Terry Moran that his personal BlackBerry, which he famously fought with the Secret Service to keep, has actually become a tool of keeping the faith during his first year in office.
"My Faith and Neighborhood Initiatives director, Joshua DuBois, he has a devotional that he sends to me on my BlackBerry every day," Obama said. "That's how I start my morning. You know, he's got a passage, Scripture, in some cases quotes from other faiths to reflect on."

The President's chooser of religious readings to read is Joshua DuBois. His path to power, according to www.whorunsgov.com, started after he was “struck by the injustice” of the acquittal of four New York City police officers who had shot and killed unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo. After that, he protested 'social injustice', and that led him to be invited to become a pastor and preacher at the United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God church. DuBois earned his bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003, and went on to Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he received his master’s in public affairs in 2005. He moved further south to Washington, D.C., to enroll in law school, going part-time to Georgetown University. At the same time in 2004, he worked as an intern in Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-N.J.) office and then as a fellow in Rep. Charles B. Rangel’s (D-N.Y.) office. After Obama's 2004 Convention speech, DuBois thought that Obama was going to be someone powerful, and so decided to hitch his star to Obama's wagon. He was hired as a legislative correspondent in Obama’s Senate office in May 2005. DuBois never completed his law degree, leaving instead to work on the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. In 2008, at the age of 25, DuBois was appointed director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign. After Obama became President, he was named the head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

President Obama is receiving his spiritual guidance from a young political operative who has degrees in political science and international relations (from the liberal-slanted Woodrow Wilson school) and became a religious figure through political protesting. He, like Obama, worked on a law degree but never was a lawyer of note, and his stated support of Obama stemmed from a purely objective calculation of how to obtain power over other people.

Obama's spiritual advisor has decided to focus the Office of Faith in the White House less on faith and churches and instead redirect its mission to supporting neighborhood and community groups like ACORN. He is also an active member in an evangelical anti-poverty organization called Sojourners, which is characterized as "a loose network of progressive-minded Christians" who have been meeting in Washington for the past few years.

So, every day this guy, Joshua DuBois picks "a devotional that he sends to me on my BlackBerry every day" (as Obama said). Even though Obama is supposedly a devoted Christian, he begins each morning with "quotes from other faiths to reflect on," quotes picked by a progressive, liberal pastor with a thin resume of spiritual and religious accomplishments but a thicker resume of political activism and powerful connections.

I know I started this post by saying that I wasn't going to judge Obama and his faith, but I can't help but opine that I am indeed concerned about the type of spiritual guidance that Obama is receiving during his time in the great office of President of the United States of America.

Several months ago, inspired by my reading of Exodus 20, I wrote a post about the importance of the First Commandment- Thou Shalt Not Have Any Gods Before Me. As I wrote earlier, this is a pretty easy command by God to understand- believe in God, believe in his power, and worship him and no other gods. This means that you should also refuse to 'worship' other things- money, reason, sex, success, environment, beauty, logic, status, etc.

In my post I went on to say:

As a conservative teacher, I am surprised at how far our schools and our society has strayed from this simple commandment. Most public schools teach students to worship reason and logic, and they teach students to not worship God. Schools are increasingly becoming anti-God, and are finding new ways to prevent students and staff from worshipping him in order to follow some perverted interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

The point of this statement was to point out that schools are not observing the first amendment or even a separation of church and state. Instead, schools are actively sponsoring the worship of other gods and are using their power and influence over students to actively attack the Christian church. It usually isn't obvious, but the fact that they have classes on diversity, international relations (or even Islamic studies), the portrayal of religion and religious leaders in history books, the absence of any mention of religion in science classes, or the fervent avoidance to any religious texts in English classes- in these ways, schools have tried their hardest to evict God and anything that sounds like God from their walls.

Look at the textbooks that your children take home, ask your child what was talked about by the teacher in their lectures, and by a fly on the wall in staff lunch rooms or between hours and you will hear a lot of public school teachers openly mock and disrespect religion, especially Christian religion.

In my post I directed people to learn more about religion and God by clicking on some links that I found were helpful- they took you to about.com's site on religion. This brought my blog to the attention of the atheism and agnostic blogger for this site, and on his site he decided to attack my views.

This blogger feels that caring about students morality and values and trying to put in place a society closer to God's views "could be one of the problems in America's public schools." In his view, it is a problem to even speak of religion, and the mere thought that someone in public schools might personally care about religion terrifies him. How could he be an atheist and deny God and have people read his blog if people learn about God in schools? Oh, the terror!

Here is the real root of his concern- "I doubt that this Conservative Teacher can find a single example of a society which has enforced Christian dogma and which was just"- in other words, he has so lost his faith and is bitter and angry at the world that he strikes out at it, hoping that if he can tear down God somehow he will be less alone. He thinks that the Christian church is particular has made the world worse off, and suggests that attempting to follow Gods laws makes society bad. I'd find him sad if he wasn't running a blog that thousands of people a day read and take advice from.

In his anger at the Christian church and his hysteria over protecting the liberal interpretation of the first amendment, he misses the point entirely. Read the comment section and you'll see what I mean. According to readers of this blog, God is an "imaginary god," "this world already lacks any gods," "What god?", or mock God by calling him the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." One reader even a says "I hate Enki the incestuous Sumerian semen god and want him dead. Don’t know why, maybe I just want to worship myself, or I don’t want to be accountable to anything bigger than myself. Or I hate love and hope."

No where do I see in the post on Austin's Atheism Blog or in the comments is my original point disputed- that once you disconnect people from God, they are disconnected from reality and usually in their desperation resort to worshiping other false idols, whether it is the state or other men.

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck."

If bad luck is the reason that our nation has struggled lately, I wondered to myself just what exactly our President and Commander-in-Chief was doing to combat this recent run of bad luck.

Never in my knowledge has any other President had to battle 'bad luck' before- a google search of past Presidents' speeches did not turn up any results of past Presidents, whether they were Republican like George W Bush or Ronald Reagan or Democrats like Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, ever blaming 'bad luck' for the problems that the United States faced. Perhaps it was because these past Presidents were religious people, who did not believe in paganism and 'luck' so much as the divine will of God and his plan.

To combat a run of 'bad luck', past Presidents like George W Bush turned to prayer and Bill Clinton took to reading Scripture, but it appears from President Obama's speeches and comments that he has decided not to talk to God or read God's word to turn around the run of bad luck, but rather bemoan the run of 'bad luck' and sing 'woe to me'.

Although in our nation we do have a separation of church and state, that does not mean that there is a separation in our nation between those who believe in a higher power and those who serve in our political institutions. For most of our nation's history, our leaders on both side of the political spectrum have been religious and have prayed and read the word of God and saw in the actions of the world God.

President Bush often said that "these are trying times" when our nation faced tough circumstances like terrorist attacks, hurricanes, the total collapse of our banking system, a recession in 2001, or the difficult times of fighting two major wars against dedicated and evil groups. He did not say that our nation suffered through 'bad luck'- he recognized that God's plan and the free will of men sometimes tried our faith and offered a trial to our nation and its people, whether to fight harder for what is good and right or to not.

Bill Clinton, for all of his faults and failures, was well versed in the Bible and believed that he was doing his best to advance the values that he saw in it- love, hope, forgiveness, etc- and that when he faced trials, that those trials were presented to him by God or by those who freely choose to deny God, and that our nation would overcome those trials by sticking to our values and believing in God.

And yet, President Obama, who resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ after he judged that his affiliation with Jeremiah Wright would reflect badly on him politically, does not quote Scripture or talk about his time in prayer. So how exactly should Obama cope with this run of bad luck- an unaffiliated Christian who does not go to Church or regularly read the Bible or study theology of any sort of any religion?

At some point questions need to be asked about President Obama and his views on God and religion, and I don't just mean the sort of 'is he a Muslim' kind of questions that will lead us nowhere. He does not appear to be a Muslim, and his connection to Christianity is either very very private and unmentioned or thin at best, and since he isn't Buddhist or Jewish, one has to begin to wonder just what exactly does Obama see as the divine plan for our nation. I would suggest that Obama is atheist, but his reference to supernatural 'luck' does not fit with that theory either.

What are President Obama's religious beliefs and what role does 'luck' play in his view of the universe?

UPDATE: Get out of my head Charles Krauthammer! For the record, I posted my post before he came out with his editorial today, but it is amazing that both of us arrived at the same thought days after the event and then posted about it. In his article called Bad luck? Bad faith? he goes a slightly different direction, but struggles like me with Obama's comment about 'luck'.

Via memeorandum.

Those who are interested in learning more about Obama's religion should try The Faith of Barack Obama.

Growing up, all my friends would have described my family as a Christian family. I assumed all my friends were Christians as well. We all believed in God. We occasionally attended church. We were good people. Even though we believed in God, we didn't know his word, didn't understand the gospel, and didn't pursue his will. We believed in God, but we lived as if he didn't exist. After pastoring for eighteen years, I've noticed a large percentage of people in my church living similar lives. Some seem to be Christian in name only without a lot of visible spiritual fruit. Others boldly claim Christ is Lord while living lives diametrically opposed to the teachings in scripture. The more I looked, the more I found Christian Atheists everywhere. While it is often easy to spot the hypocrisy in others, it is generally more difficult to see in the mirror. One day in an honest moment, I painfully admitted that although I unquestionably believed in God, I was leading the church as if he didn't exist. I wrongly depended more on my own abilities than on his Spirit. Sadly, I dangerously cared more what people thought about me than what God thought about me. And although I preached about putting your whole faith in God, I still lived as if everything was up to me. The book Christian Atheism reflects my personal journey toward a more authentic God-honoring life.

 

Click here to buy from Amazon

Over my years as an active citizen, I've been to many Zoning Board meetings at several different towns and townships. I've seen Zoning Boards reject business owners who want to build a sign promoting their business because the 'sign was too green-colored' or 'the sign distracted from the overall ambiance of the area,' I've seen ZB's reject building permits for buildings that 'were not environmentally friendly enough' or 'didn't have the right amount of parking,' I've seen ZB's reject decks and docks and lamps for reasons ranging from 'too bright' to 'too big' to 'too close to neighbor' to 'not right vision for area.' I've seen churches, religious groups, gun sellers, and cell phone operators all rejected.

Anyone who is an active citizen in their community has probably seen similar actions by Zoning Boards all over America- Zoning Boards frequently reject and deny buildings for all sorts of reasons, regardless of 'separation of church and state' or 'Muslims have the right to building anything they want anywhere.' So let's back up a little bit on this Ground Zero Victory Mosque and ask the question "What in the world was the Lower Manhattan Zoning Board thinking when it approved this building 29 to 1?"

First, to be more accurate, the group that approved the Ground Zero Victory Mosque (or as it is sometimes called the Cordoba House Initiative Project, or Ground Zero Mosque, or Celebration of the Thousands Killed by Extremist Muslims, or Cordoba Initiative) is really called the Manhattan Community Board 1. CB1 is one of New York City's 59 community boards, covering most of the southernmost part of Lower Manhattan below Canal Street. Community Board members are appointed by the Borough President and make recommendations to government agencies about significant matters affecting the district. CB1 is reportedly concerned with quality of life and the delivery of services to the district and advocate on behalf of those who live or work in the district.

After a little bit of digging, I found the Resolution itself on the Cordoba Project, passed in May 25, 2010. You can see the Resolution yourself by looking at this page.

One shocking thing is that this Resolution was adopted by such large margins. One wonders who exactly was on this Board and who these people are who approved the Project- again, I've seen many local boards in many communities, and am shocked that this Resolution passed with only one objection. I'm going to continue to do some more digging on this issue, but I suggest that you do the same- Nancy Pelosi wants an investigation into who is behind this, so let's figure out who these people are who approved the building of this mosque and make them answer for their actions.

Sean Hannity's Discussion Board's suggest one way to contact the City of New York over this issue, but I don't think that's right course of action. The people to contact are the people on Manhattan Community Board 1, which you can contact by going here.

One of the main reasons used by liberals and Democrats in defense of this project is that "the project was approved in a non-political and non-religious and purely objective way." I reject this premise, as man is by nature a political animal, and this particular project was is a political and religious statement and anything but objective. This boards approval of the mosque was not an objective decision based on separation of church and state- no, this was a political statement by a group of radical liberals. Look up these people and see for yourself.

UPDATE: Welcome Doug Ross readers! Thank you for checking out my post- I hope that you all can do some legwork yourself on this issue. While you are on my blog, be sure to check out other recent entries like I Knew I Was Different From Liberal Teachers When..., Reflections from High School World History Students, Are 340K/year 'Anchor Babies' Too Many?, The Coming Tax Assault I: 2011 Destroyed by Tax Increases on Everyone, or Catailine = Obama?

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    - Letting go of the past

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    - Controlling your moods 

    - Holding on to your joy

Don’t settle for the status quo. God says that you are going to have the most peace, the most fulfillment. You may not have seen it yet, but if you make room, you will not lack in any area.

 

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A study(PDF) of Mutual Health Organizations (MHO's) in Nigeria made a number of conclusions, they include interesting features such as the fact "...that they are organised through existing community organisations of all kinds – from local trade unions, to traders and professional associations, church groups including spiritual or charismatic church groups, Muslim groups and traditional birth attendants. Membership..." in some cases is "... gained not directly as an individual but through the local association which offers advantages in terms of social control and prevention of abuse or fraud as well as the chasing up of defaulters. It also means that control is exercised at the lowest possible level...Another feature that is worth noting is the savings nature of the schemes, rather than an insurance mechanism as such. The idea of saving for health is apparently better understood (as an extension of traditional saving concepts such as esusu or ojo), whereas insurance is less well understood, and moreover, requires different and rather scarce skills to manage properly. This particular adaptation not only saves on administrative costs , but also helps avoid fraud, an ever-present danger with insurance schemes everywhere and a big problem in Nigeria.

With all due respect to 'Little Green Footballs', it's take on the story about Texas school board officials trying to moderate and diversify the textbooks used in Texas is all wrong. In it's story "Far Right Texas School Board Members Push Revisionist History" it says that

far right conservatives in charge of the Texas State Board of Education (are making an) outrageous attempt to manipulate curriculum development and textbook production for public schools. The social conservatives appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry are pushing a revisionist history of the United States in which separation of church and state do not exist, in which the founding fathers intended the US to be a 'Christian nation.'

Before I taught US History last year, I read quite a few of the textbooks, and in almost all of them, the textbook taught a very liberal version of US history, emphasizing strict separation of church and state, never mentioned the religion of our Founding Fathers, never mentioned the religious background of our history, and for every religious movement in our nation mentioned 50 progressive movements.

Injecting some 'revisionist history' and 'manipulating the curriculum' would be adding some real diversity to what our students learn. There is even an outside chance that injecting conservative history into our textbooks and revising the curriculum may even help students gain a more accurate view of our history and may very well lead to increased understanding of what made our nation great and what will make it great again.

Let's be more specific and not just fall back rhetoric when we talk about this issue. I read the NY Times article that went into this story in a little more depth. One specific issue that so upsets many is that the Texas School Board wants to include a new standard that textbooks would have to meet that requires students taking classes in U.S. government to identify traditions that informed America’s founding, “including Judeo-Christian” and to “identify the individuals whose principles of law and government institutions informed the American founding documents,” among whom is included Moses. Is this really objectionable? Why is it offensive to ask students to learn these things and for textbooks to discuss them? Other than the fact that they are true and that truth burns like a light through the lies and darkness that liberals wish to spread in schools, what else is wrong with this new standard? Nothing.

Another objectionable standard that these 'right wing fanatics' push on our poor young students is to have students “analyze the importance of the Mayflower Compact, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut and the Virginia House of Burgesses to the growth of representative government.” Oh the horror! Of course, go through your laundry list of liberal cannon law, and I'm sure it is in the guidelines for students to analyze them, but have them learn a little bit about conservative history (our history!) and it's suddenly crazy wild indoctrination!

Little Green Footballs might think that Rick Perry is appointing "religious fanatic cronies who have turned Texas education into a national laughingstock," but I don't think what they are doing is all that 'fanatical' or even something to laugh at. One particular 'fanatical' recurring theme that these 'wacko's' keep pushing is the desire of the board to stress the concept of American exceptionalism in our standards. I guess to liberals it is a laughing matter that America is exceptional. If liberals have their way and push their views in our curriculum, without balancing and sensible conservative views, then soon the sad laugh will be that America will indeed no longer be exceptional.

Let's wait and see what sort of guidelines the Texas School Board comes up with and how textbooks meet them, and then what sorts of students are produced after reading these textbooks. I'm willing to bet that injecting conservative values and religious education in them doesn't harm them as much as liberals and Little Green Footballs thinks it will.

The problem with pervasive religiosity,Wana Udobang writing in Bella Naija:

We don’t need more canopies, cordless microphones, megaphones and another architectural edifice in an already over-crowded metropolis. We need responsible people using the skills and gifts that God has put inside of them. With all said, the church is a community, and though communities have leaders, we as individuals make that community. So maybe the new question we should ask is: Have ‘we’ failed ‘us’?

More here

The sign of the Occupy Wall Street protester shouts 'False Gods of Wall Street', but in other signs and in interviews and conversations, these protesters loudly shout that their real gods are people who run governments. They believe in government policy- see sign after sign encouraging more spending, more government programs, more government control of the economy and people, and sign after honoring and supporting 'the People'. The 'P' in 'People' is always capitalized, because they are not talking about supporting the people who go to work every day, pay their taxes, pay on their debts, and try to make a better world for their children- no, these Occupy protesters support the People, who believe that Men are Gods and that if Men were given power to control other Men, the world would be a better place.

A friend of mine does some work for the Michigan Department of Education, and he let me know what some of the questions on the Michigan Merit Exam (MME) are about. Now, I'm not going to tell you what the questions actually ask or what standard or information is being tested, but I think it's okay to tell you the general liberal thrust of the questions that your taxpayer money is paid to write.

There are several questions about why Wal-Mart is bad written in the guise of economics questions. The questions pretend to ask questions about economic principles that students are supposed to learn, but the correct answer to every question is 'Wal-Mart is evil.' Since students are usually taught this instead of economics principles, I guess it's okay for them, but I think that these types of questions are wrong to put on this state-mandated test. Besides, Wal-Mart isn't as bad as it is made out- see my earlier post Undercover at Wal-Mart.

It's surprising how economic questions rarely ask about supply and demand, and yet there are several questions on saving gas and helping the environment disguised as 'supply and demand' questions. Seriously, the correct answer to several questions on the MME test is 'save the environment, drive green cars, save gas, and vote Democrat' (okay, I added that last part). Although saving gas might be good for the environment, are these concepts really fundamental to education in Michigan? Never mind, they probably are- my students can repeat the liturgy of global warming to me, but know few economic concepts.

Oh, and for those of you who believe in a religion other than global warming- according to the state-mandated, taxpayer funded MME test, you are a barrier to progress. Yes, several questions on world history can be answered with the correct answer of 'church is barrier to progress.' I guess that's not exactly wrong- conservative values have been standing in the way of Progressivism for many years, fighting to make sure that the values of men are protected and respected and we don't progress to a tyrannical inhuman society. Still, I hope students aren't being taught that the church is bad- I know schools have interpreted the 1st amendment to mean they can't talk about religion, but I hope they haven't interpreted the 1st amendment to mean that they can't talk about religion in a good way.

Just thought some of you would be interested in what the state is producing. Imagine all the great things it will produce now that it has forcibly appropriated massive amounts of your property in the form of a 'stimulus bill.'

The issue of Global Warming has sort of faded away right now- probably because it is the middle of winter, and it is very cold, and when it is cold, it is a tough sell to convince people that the whole planet is uncontrollably warming because of human actions and the only solution is massive government control over every aspect of our lives. Don't worry though- when summer gets really hot, idiots will parrot this idea again and government will take away more of our liberty.

I've written about this twice before- my first post was called Global Warming Melted my Ice Cream Cone, and mocked Global Warming Believers by using some science (in this case, the fact that the ice sheet in Greenland melting was not due to my driving an SUV but rather the emergence of a hot spot of liquid hot magma emerging under Greenland). In this post, I hint that I think that global warming is less about science and more about pagan beliefs in mother nature (with government officials playing the role of shamans!).

To prove that this is not some nutty theory of mine, I also posted several days later an article by Australian writer Arthur Herman called Climate hysterics v heretics in an age of unreason, based on his article of the same name. In his article, he says that the reason why logic and reason is rejected in the global warming debate is that they are believers, not scientists. It's a good article in its entirety- check it out by looking at the post.

Why do I bring these points up today? Over at Ace of Spades there was a link to another Aussie writer talking about global warming, and I really think for some reason down under they understand the nature of the beast. The article is called "Beware the church of climate alarm"- here is a snippet from it:

But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy.

"We're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational" (said one expert about people who believe in the myth of global warming.) Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."

It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.

A couple good books if anyone wants to know more are Science, Politics, And Gnosticism by Eric Voegelin and Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Vaclav Klaus.

UPDATE: Here is a good website that pulls together a lot of stories of those who are skiptical about the claims made about global warming. Check it out!

Not sure if you followed this recent story, but a Reverend Terry Jones, the leader of a tiny Florida church, had been planning to burn a bunch of Quran's on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, extremist Muslim terrorist attacks. He has a tiny congregation of only 50 people and is not considered to be a leading authority or leadership figure in the wider Christian church. When word got out that he planned on doing this, a lot of people decided to write about it and advise him not to, including President Barack Obama, who urged him to listen to "those better angels" and give up his "stunt." Liberal bloggers and Democrat activists jumped out of the woodwork to condemn this pastor, and liberal talk radio was filled with criticisms and caricatures of him and 'crazy nut Christians'.

Reverend Jones prayed about what to do and probably listened to what people were urging him to do, and after all that the crazy nut decided that it was probably a better decision to not go ahead with the Koran burning. In the end, he made the correct decision and did the right thing for society. One other reason that he gave though was that he was promised that be calling off this inflammatory stunt, another inflammatory stunt would also be called off- that be cancelling his Koran burning, he says he was promised that the Ground Zero Mosque would not be built on Ground Zero but would be moved somewhere else.

Let's connect these two events, and compare the building of the Ground Zero Mosque to the Burning of Korans.

Liberals, Democrats, and liberal talk radio was filled with people defending the building of a mosque on Ground Zero because it was 'someone's legal right to do so' and that by Americans letting it be built would be a good demonstration of how tolerant our nation was. And yet those same radio stations, Democrats, and liberals were criticizing, mocking, and rejecting Jone's plan to burn the Koran, even though that is an even more clear example of First Amendment Freedom of Speech and that by letting him burn those Korans, it would be giving Muslims a great chance to demonstrate their toleration. It appears that these people pick and choose who they feel should get First Amendment rights, and they choose the opposite people than I would choose (if I could choose, which I can't). It appears that these liberals and Democrats are all about forcing America to show that it is tolerant and nice and welcoming to Muslims, but fearful and afraid that if Muslims are given the same chance that they'll demonstrate that they aren't tolerant, peaceful, loving, or welcoming in turn. The difference in liberals and Democrats feelings on these issues was striking.

For example, look at the reaction of the leader of the Democrat Party, Barack Obama, to the two planned events. Both building a mosque on the site of Ground Zero and burning Korans on 9/11 are inflammatory stunts designed to bring publicity and raise intense feelings. Both were destined to turn out badly- tying the mosque to 9/11 by building it on that location will increase anti-Muslim feelings in our nation, and burning the Koran will make Christians look intolerant and could lead to increased casualties in our War on Extremist Militant Islamic Terrorists. But Obama and the Democrats came out and supported the building of the mosque, but tried to put a stop to the building of Korans. This difference in reactions is troubling- why is Obama and the Democrats willing to cause damage to our society and inspire bad feelings in one situation, but unwilling in the other situation? I'll let you answer that question in your own mind.

And in the end, it was the crazy nut small time Pastor of some backward town in Florida who made the correct decision and decided not to go ahead with his plan, and it was the well-respected and esteemed Imam who is being paid by the US State Department to travel around the world as a spokesman for tolerance or something who is rejecting as 'radicals' the 70% of the nation who feels it would be wrong for him to build his mosque on that location in spite of the consequences. This demonstrates something else- one person made the correct decision and decided not to inflame the situation further, and another made the wrong decision and decided to inflame the situation further. Both of course had the legal right to inflame as much as they wanted to, both had the right to demonstrate which religion was more tolerant and accepting, but in the end, only one person decided correctly that just because you have the legal right to do something and just because it could send a message, that doesn't mean that you do it.

Pastor Jones eventually made the right choice, the Ground Zero Imam is making the wrong choice, and anyone who supports anyone who believes otherwise needs to really think about the choices they are making in their own lives.

Been pondering on rewards and awards. The inevitable onslaught of upset people after the EDublog 2011 award finals has begun.

But some have asked why we should even have awards in education. Shouldn't teaching be reward enough?

When it means judging the unjudgeable, not a good idea
In my church youth group, my youth minister created an "Eagle Award" for the "best Christian" youth. He said kids needed an award at church to make the kids want to come and compete for that award.

In this case, I didn't like this award and rightly so. As a Christian, walking daily with God IS my reward and the greatest rewards come later in heaven anyway. In this case, the journey is the reward and to create an award is to judge something on the inside that no one can see: motivation. We have to be careful about casting judgement on others and that is what I see a lot of happening.

When you point a finger at someone, you always have 3 pointing back at yourself!

Rewards vs. Awards
The looks on my eighth grader's faces as I knocked it out of the park teaching filmmaking yesterday. That was a blast. By the end of class we were huffing and puffing we were working so hard. That rewarding lesson was great for all of us.

My Daughter "Didn't Win" with her Flat Classroom Video
Today, the Flat Classroom projects will have our awards show at 8 am to announce our winners.

I haven't told anyone until now that this semester's project has a very special student in it: my daughter. She's special to me. She wanted to win the Flat Classroom project video competition more than just about anything.I wanted it for her.
Find more videos like this on Flat Classroom Project


She spent over 20 hours drawing each frame by hand in Paint.net and importing. Julie and I have an agreement that when our students are in a project, that we completely distance ourselves from judging. Fairness is essential.

I've seen the final list and my daughter didn't win anything huge. She did make the list. Am I disappointed? Of course. She's disappointed. Am I glad we had the competition. YES! It spurred her on to do more and be more. She's going to dissect the winners and prepare for NetGen in the spring because she loves making movies. She will learn and do better next time.

She didn't win but did that mean she lost: no! She gained a valuable learning experience.

The Grindstone of Life
Life grinds on you. You can choose to let it either it polish you to a bright, shiny gem or grind you down. It is all how you take it.

Did I lose or did I learn?

So, what about the edublog awards?

Joe Bower raised his concerns in a post "Why I Don't Like Edublog Awards" and Melissa (who had commented on my original post mentioning the Edublog awards) said:

"Thanks for posting this! I actually commented on someone who was nominated for said award. She was encouraging her readers to vote for her because she wanted to be awarded the "best teacher blogger." I was really turned off by this because I thought...what message is she sending to her students if she did not win said award. I asked if she needed the award as validation AND was having 1,000 followers not enough validation. I don't think she cared too much for my comment, as she mentioned that I was passing judgement on her...no judgement, just curious of why all the self promotion for an award saying that you are the best teacher blogger. No worries...I will remain a follower."

My response about the edublog awards on his blog:

"I think these are great comments. Melissa commented on my blog. The reason I wrote my post was because I was nominated in five categories and, to me, I didn't feel I deserved a lifetime achievement award after only 6 years of blogging. So, I said which awards I felt that would mean something and best teacher blog was one of them. I also wanted to thank those who nominated me. It is a pain to nominate for those awards and I should acknowledge that. Enough of that.

Secondly, all awards are flawed. Especially ones involving online polls. (Author's note: See my post about the online poll involving a Redskin player trying to stack the poll for his cousin versus our school's quarterback to see just what I mean.) This poll was based on ip address. That means if someone really wanted to and thy had a mifi card, they could turn it off and on again and vote all they wanted. Hopefully no one did that but the fact is that it is easily hackable. The awards were given in most categories with just a couple of hundred votes. Not many.

Online polls are flawed. Period. See these for what they are. The people who win must mobilize their friends, fans, family and schools to win by ASKING. Period. You will see that behind everyone who won. If you want to win. You ask.

Don't ask. Don't win. The name of the game. I don't apologize for telling my readers about the awards for this reason. You never know unless you ask.

But I think it is fine to have these conversations. We should always know that the best value of the eddies or any other award like it that is popularity based is to help us find new voices. Help us see new people. Truthfully, every link to the eddies opens up more conversation.

It is ok. In life not everyone can get an award and not everyone deserves it. The best awards is always knowing that you helped someone. None of us would ever blog just because of the eddies, that would be silly. But it would also be silly to ignore something that recognizes excellence in what you love. I get up every morning at 5 am to write and set up my tweets for the day. Blogging and Tweeting is very near and dear to my heart.

Just see these for what they are and it is fine. But to have nothing to recognize rank and file teachers means the only educational writers would be journalists etc and that would be sad.

None of us will unfollow you for this post. It is well written and has good points. Likewise, Melissa, no blogger worth a flip would take your comment with offense. When you ask like I did it is a risk you run and there are always people to disagree with something in every post. It is the nature of this beautiful wonderful online conversation. Up with edublogging."

It is a fact that the more people who vote in the Edublog awards, the more it will mean and the less likely someone could hack it. Does that mean we should get rid of the edublogs because it is flawed. The Academy Awards are flawed too, but we don't get rid of those. All award systems are imperfect, especially online polls.

I think the thing that bothered me most about Joe's post is this. He says:

I realize this isn't going to win me many fans, and I'm likely to lose followers on Twitter and subscribers to my blog, but I guess that would be my point. 

People often imply that they risk having people not follow them because they have a contrarian viewpoint. Long live the contrarian. We need more people who can disagree respectfully. And we don't want group think. If we are to be bridge builders we listen to all sides of an issue. We include everyone and treat everyone with respect.

What about ISTE?
A note on ISTE. I have NEVER had a session accepted where it was just me. ISTE cares about "we" presentations -- or groups of people. Lots of people will have their feelings hurt. Lots of deserving, amazing people. But ISTE has a rubric as well and when you have groups of people, the rubric is obviously stacked in your favor.

Don't be disappointed, look at what was accepted and learn.

We win some we lose some
Yes, it is trite but it is true. Right now, you could say I "lost" the Edublogs. Sure, I was second to Stephen Anderson (@web20classroom) in the Twitter category but still. I didn't "win"... or did I? (Honestly I had like 90 votes and he had 120 - not huge vote counts either way but he has 36K followers to my 26K -- I would agree that his numbers speak for themselves but 26K is nothing to sneeze at. Neither one of us compare to the millions that follow rock stars - just keeping perspective. I know Stephen does, that is why he's such a great guy and so many of us like him.)

There are awards I don't even apply for any more. The fact is that most awards in education judge your pedigree as a major factor in the awards and I don't have it. I'm a private school teacher who didn't go to a school of education. That is OK. So really, there are just a few things I can "go for." Those very few things I can... I do.

The fact is that links build traffic and if your business is online and you are writing books and creating projects that depend upon social media and education, it is important to your livelihood and life to get on every list and awards program you can. I love my babies and this blog is helping send them to college.

I gave up a 6 figure income to go into teaching and am just fine with that but now in a year my first child will go to college. Everything I may get from this blog or book writing is heading to help pay for college. Honestly, today, I have no idea how we're going to do it. If I put my name out there and let people know and they choose to vote for me, then that is great. If I get more people who find my blog and like it because of it, that is a good thing. But I'm not going to sit around and say "poor me" and not at least ask. No way. I love my babies. It is a risk I'm willing to take. I'm putting out there my motivations and not hiding them -- that is transparency. For you to judge me any other way is to judge but certainly that is your right.

I really wanted to get accepted as one of the TED Teachers. I worked sooooo hard on that nomination and even had about 10 of you on Twitter join in and nominate me. It was risky to even mention it on Twitter because if you're doing anything in this world some people are going to love you and some people are probably going to hate you. It is the nature of doing anything worthwhile.

So, we were supposed to hear from TED on Monday. They said we would. We haven't. To me, this means, I didn't make the list or even the cut. Am I dissapointed... of course. Will I try again... sure. Will I take anything away from the 10 who get picked -- NO. I'll tweet them and blog them and share them. They are winners and we all win when we encourage good teachers.

Jealousy is a bitter lunch that will make you sick and anemically unable to contribute.

So, the only way to become a loser is to act like a loser.

Losers wallow in self pity. Losers only care about themselves. Losers whine when they don't get their "fair share."

Well, life isn't fair and few people share.  Awards are part of life but if you teach or blog, you should be doing it for the rewards of the conversation and helping people but if an award happens, then, great.

Win with your actions
Winners encourage others. Winners share in the conversation. Winners root others on and congratulate the winner.  Winners look at their rewards and keep perspective about awards.

Awards are flawed measures. They are an attempt to find best practice and we certainly need that.

If they spur us on to excellence, then great. I know they spur me on to excellence because I want to be the very best I can be. Not because of the awards but the rewards but I make no secret about wanting to be world class.

OH, but you can judge me.

"Vicki needs validation. Vicki should be happy with all her readers and followers."

Oh, yes I am. I'm thrilled with those things. Every time a major newspaper or someone asks me to write - I'm in heaven. I love to write.

But I've lost more awards, competitions and contests than I've won. I've lost 5 beauty pageants and won 1. I lost 15 elections before I started winning as I ran for offices. Each time I competed, I became better.

Competition is life. Awards are part of them. Some choose to compete and some don't want to. That is a personal choice.

But anything that recognizes and rewards excellence in the field of education - as long as the system of judging is fully disclosed -- has my vote.

Keep perspective. You are a winner because you are a teacher -- that is your reward. Awards come to only very few and if you're fortunate enough to be one of those, use it well

but if you don't win --- don't be a loser. 

You're a winner for just being in the game at all. (Please do not imply that I think Joe Bower is a loser for his post. I think he actually expresses his thoughts in a respectful way.)

Remember your noble calling teacher. The only way to lose your nobility is to give it away by acting in ways unbecoming to your profession.

Happy Holidays and thank you for taking the time to read all the way to this extremely long, rambling post. Just had to get this off my chest.

Yemisi Ogbe writes in Farafina:

At the risk of losing my faith in the Nigerian church, I began to ask what the real relevance of Christianity is in Nigeria, especially the unglamorous Christianity of carrying crosses, following paths of repentance, seeking a God of love, and endlessly turning the other cheek. Would Nigerian men of God and congregations cease deceiving themselves, and would over 30 million Nigerians who profess Christianity make a difference to a precarious economy? Would the biblically proscribed need for integrity in our relationship with God and other human beings gain its rightful place in the church? Is there a danger in giving more and more power to men who believe it is their God given right to determine the course of other people's lives? What would happen if it becomes difficult to continue to control people with the threat of a God who avenges insubordination to his representatives? Would men of God then find ‘more effective’ means of keeping people under control, keeping themselves relevant?

Religion can truly be an opiate for the masses,John Lloyd at the FT writes:

Again, as soon as the service ended, Kayanja strode off. I had seen people give what seemed like substantial sums to a church whose leader flaunted his wealth, and who promised they could be rich like him – richer, even, the more they gave. They had responded as if they were uplifted; saved. As people in Britain who were Nonconformists did decades ago, and as tens of millions of Americans, Latin Americans and Koreans do now, they had given money to a church that gave them in return the belief that they would go to heaven: more, that they would achieve earthly health and wealth...[continue reading]

America is an exceptional nation- a nation that was founded and built on traditions and ideas in a way that no nation had previously tried and no other nation has since duplicated. The ideas are put forth in our Declaration of Independence- all men are created equal, no man is better than you at deciding how you run your life, government is created for very limited purposes, and that these mainly are to protect your freedom of choice, to protect your life, and to protect your property which was the product of your hard work and labor. As I have written about many times, these ideas are under daily attack by those unexceptional nations who would drag us back into their petty jealousies, and by those who support these nations out of belief that America has something to apologize for or that the monarchs and empires of the past are to be admired and emulated.

Traditionally, our nation has been a nation of immigrants who come here expecting nothing other than to be rewarded for their hard work and not be judged based on their race or class, and traditionally our nation has been a nation built on rule of law, not rule of strong men ruling by decree. These traditions are also under attack by those who immigrated here expecting others to work hard for their benefit, and rule of law is slipping badly in our nation.

One other great tradition that America was firmly built on is Christianity. This Christian spirit animated our nation and our nation's leaders from the beginning to today, and is firmly a part of our character. While other Christian nations around the world have had slipping church attendance and little vigorous debate on the nature of God and God's Word, in our nation many still go to church and healthy and moral debates continue to be engaged on the nature of God.

This traditional Christian character of our nation is an important part of our tradition, and has been enshrined in our Pledge of Allegiance, which we all know and say from birth as:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

But this tradition is under attack as well, by well meaning individuals who believe that out nation will be improved or strengthened in some manner if God is driven underground and killed. They object to saying the pledge, usually by hiding behind nameless others who might possibly be offended by saying that the United States of America was founded and remains as one nation under God. They seek to remove the words 'under God', believing that it is possible to pick and choose what parts of America they like and support. Today they remove the phrase 'under God', but it has always been my fear that once that phrase is permitted to be removed, others will soon follow, and our traditions will be torn asunder and our foundations as a nation will shatter and we will fail.

Sadly, this is what is now happening. The election of Barack Obama was a bad gamble that our nation took, a leap of faith on someone who did not earn it, and the empowering of the liberal wing of his party, a Democratic Party that has moved far away from most people, further took our nation down a path of failed ideas and rejection of traditions. On Sunday, while many people sat down on a great Father's Day to watch the U.S. Open Golf Championship, they saw how far our nation has gone down this path when one of the major networks altered our nation's Pledge.

NBC on Sunday decided to cut the words "under God" from the reading of the Pledge of Allegiance that accompanied the beginning of its coverage of the U.S. Open Golf Championship. Seconds after that, there was another reading of the Pledge, and this time, in addition to cutting out the words 'under God', NBC went further and cut out the words 'one nation' as well, dishonoring all of the thousands of dead who fought to keep our nation one nation during the US Civil War. Watch the video yourself.

NBC later issued an apology, but I wonder, what is next for the liberals who run NBC, who support Barack Obama, and support the liberal radical left of the modern day Democratic Party? Will they next drop out the words 'with liberty', since they don't believe that I truly have the liberty to run my own life however I want and need to be ruled over by elites in Washington? Will they drop out 'to the republic', or maybe alter it 'to the democracy', thereby changing our nation from a nation of laws into one where strong men can do what they do and the rest of us must suffer under their tyranny? What is next for our nation, if the traditions of our nations can be so casually rejected by a major network?

For your classroom, think about getting one of these posters- I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the USA - Classroom Motivational Poster or I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America - Classroom Motivational Poster.

Although I am no expert on foreign policy, I do have an undergraduate degree focusing on it, and so I'm always interested in events like those going on in Honduras. The situation is really quite simple, and summed up nicely by the WSJ via Powerlineblog. I'm going to copy the whole story down here, because it is complete and does a great job at showing just how clear the situation is:

Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

Again, I'm no expert, and I don't want to oversimplify things here, but the bad buy is the former President and the good guys are whoever is getting rid of the brutal communist who is trying to illegally stay in power. If I were the President of the United States, I would be supporting those people on the side of good- those who want law, freedom, and prosperity. Perhaps I would wait a bit just to make sure my initial take on events was correct, but probably my statement would be supportive of what is going on, or at least as neutral as Obama's statements were on the overthrow of evil dictators by forces of good in Iran.

But Democrat President Obama sees things differently. He quickly sided with the bad guy, and stood shoulder to shoulder with other bad guys (Castro, Chavez, Ortega) in being "deeply concerned" about the ouster of the tyrannical president. Again, he quickly sided with the bad guy- Obama's first impulses, those that show his qualities and character the most, are to side with bad guys. He further makes a call to restore the tyrannical president to his place, and appears to be 100% supportive of the bad guy in this situation.

I've hammered Obama about his domestic policy, where it appears as if he is trying to destroy the United States for no reason at all. Let's not forget Obama's foreign policy though, where he is attempting to hurt our best friends (British, Israel, Georgia) while attempting to give everything to our worst enemies. Not to make this oversimplify or black and white, but Obama appears to be helping the bad guys. That's why he is a bad President.

The rain didn't stop the show at the 23rd annual Black Family Reunion Celebration yesterday September 6, 2008. The National Council of Negro Women, Inc. moved the ecumenical prayer breakfast indoors to the basement of Union Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church. Afterall the church is where it all began. I was happy to be an invited guest. The Howard University Gospel Choir directed by Mr. Clifton Ross, III rocked the house with their gospel musical renditions. Their performance brought to mind the old adage to be young, gifted and black. Wow ! There was nary a dry eye in the house. Bishop Eddie Long of Lithonia, Georgia gave the keynote address with an awe inspiring speech that encouraged African-Americans to not give up on the dream that an African-American would become our next president. Bishop Long encouraged all to find their 'inner child' and dream like we were children- that change is a-coming.

Festivities for the Black Family Reunion celebration continue today on the Washington National Mall beginning at 10:00 a.m.