When Will We See This In Schenectady!

From FNC-

A needle exchange program in Puerto Rico is testing a vending machine that provides drug users with clean syringes after-hours to fight the spread of HIV and hepatitis C.

Drug counseling offices that distribute syringes are open only during daylight hours.

The vending machine program targets young addicts reluctant to seek help.

Drug users can get syringes, cookers, cotton filters, gauze and sterile water to prepare drugs for injection by inserting a special card.

At least it’s for people getting drug counseling.  If they leave the program can they still get the needles?

And how long before we surrender to the drug war up here and we see the machines in LA?

In NYC?

In Schenectady!

Using A.I. for 100th Post

Image via CrunchBase

This is my one hundredth post. It’s a traditional place for a retrospective. I’d like to use it to commemorate all the people so far that I’m bringing along with me on my journey through the blog universe.

For example there’s the best blogging tool so far that I’ve found for promoting your blog called “Alpha Inventions.” It’s a bit clumsy at first but well worth the trouble.

A. I. is also a handy tool for discovering like-minded bloggers you might not have otherwise met.

Places like Conservatives Defending Liberty

Insight Analytical-Grrl

Gospel of Jesus Christ

Rights For Mothers

and an awesome music page about the most incredible rock band of all time (IMHO)

YES!

Now as far as fellow Word Press, Blogger, and Type Pad folk found the usual way,

there’s fellow NY Capital area blogger According to Kim, (whose command of the English language is far better than mine)

Plus a number of bloggers who know more about what’s going on in the world than ever lovin’ Fox News.

There’s News Max reporter Pam Geller’s blog,  Atlas Shrugs ,

a team blog that gives libtards a reality check about our enemies

called Bare Naked Islam, (It’s not Islamophobia, if they’re really trying to kill you!)

Hannity’s show prep blogs (At least it seems like they are) Gateway Pundit

and Pundit and Pundette and Christian Bloggers

Caffeinated Thoughts and Sword at the Ready,

these plus some local help from The Daily Gazette and Capital News Nine

have been my inspiration for these 100 posts and will certainly give me inspiration for a hundred more in the weeks to come.

-LarryK12309

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

I know it sounds crazy but at first I was going to go along with the school on this one. But then I got more details on the story and it is just crazy.

What are they thinking sending a six year old to reform school!  This is cruel and unusual punishment.  A judge needs to step in.

From Fox :

Six-year-old Zachary Christie was so excited to become a Cub Scout that he brought his camping utensil to school. The tool serves as a spoon, a fork and a knife, and Zachary wanted to use it at lunch.

What Zachary didn’t know was that the gizmo violated his school’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. And now the Christina School District in Newark, Del., has suspended the first grader and ordered him to attend the district‘s reform school for 45 days.

With children younger and younger performing violent acts it’s understandable why the school has a zero tolerance policy. And even though it seems unfair, the rules are the rules.  So perhaps a suspension is enough, but REFORM SCHOOL!  That could traumatize the boy for life!

Where’s a good ambulance chasing lawyer when you need one?

A Ball of Florida confusion

It was hard to watch O’reilly last night. The real interesting story was on the news crawler at the bottom of the screen.

That’s where Fox relegated the possible precedent setting custody case involving 17 year old Rifqa Bary. She’s the girl who feared for her life at the hands of her Muslim family after she converted to Christianity.

If all you had to go by was the tiny attention Fox gave this story, you’d think young Miss Bary was flying back to Ohio at this very moment.

Not true!

The real story here is the thread of hope the judge gave at the last minute!

Rifqa won’t be going back to Ohio until her parents can produce the proper papers proving they are in this country legally.  Up until now they’ve been dragging their feet on this even risking contempt of court charges.

But who needs FNC anyway?!  This is the 21st Century!  This is the blogging age!  We have super blogger Pamela Geller live blogging the case as best as she can, courtroom restrictions and all.

For those who still think Fox is really an arm of the Republican Party or is at the hands of a group of Christian conservative zealots, this is all the proof they need to the contrary.

Fox News is a for profit enterprise whose main agenda is to MAKE MONEY!  This is not a criticism, it’s just a fact.  Unlike the not for profit liberal enterprises like NPR, PBS and MSNBC, Fox goes with what sells.  That would be center right news coverage spiced up with some good old sexy gossip.

So even though the Rifqa Bary custody case could very well be yet another sign of the Islamization of the West.  Or worse yet it it could be the real introduction of Sharia law into the USA.  That doesn’t matter, Fox goes with what sells.

The bottom line for all people of faith is to keep on praying for Rifqa Bary and to keep on praying for America.

Yes! We Are Relevant!!!

Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever tried to explain something to someone and then find a website that does a much better job?

For example one of my latest rants was about Fox News saying Protestant churches might be becoming irrelevant.

In response I wrote that it was more than just a decline in mainline denominations.  It was really a shift to active growing evangelical mega-churches.

Well here’s a site that explains it far more eloquently than your humble opinion blogger ever could.

See!

Yes We are relevant!!!

Are we becoming Irrelevant?

Are we becoming Irrelevant? Those of us who consider ourselves Christian, are we making a difference?

You wouldn’t think so if you listened to Fox News or if you looked at a recent survey.

In conjunction with reporting on a story about Muslims worldwide, Fox brought up a report on religious affiliation here in the USA where the number of professing Christians fell from 86% to 76%.

Which made the Fox writer ask “Where have all the Christians gone?”

Which left me with more questions than answers.  Thankfully there’s google to clear things up.  That’s how I found the page “Public Theology.”

They helped clear things up and helped me read between the lines.  It looks like there’s a shift going on not a decline.

“The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.

Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as “Christian,” “Evangelical/Born Again,” or “non-denominational Christian.” The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.”

So there you have it.  People are leaving some denominational churches they feel no longer speak to them.  But others from many backgrounds are joining one of the many mega-churches.

Since I belong to a mega-church I freely admit to being biased.  But here’s my opinion anyway.  My church is one of many of the small but growing mega-churches in the Albany NY area.  We’ve all enjoyed a steady growth trend since the turn of the century.

And one thing the survey didn’t mention was the house church movement.  These people don’t belong to an official church but they are still Christian nevertheless.

These two patterns if they’re nationwide could make that  76% number  start to go back up again.  So in spit of what Fox thinks we’re becoming more relevant than ever.

Update *** Be Still My Heart *** Update

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Well as you can guess a presidential visit can cause quite a stir. It turns out the biggest reaction locally was getting to see Air Force One land and take off from Albany International Airport.

For those in and around South Troy NY there was the presidential motorcade going by to and from Hudson Valley Community College.

Fox News even mentioned the visit. Not about what the president said in his speech but about all the gossip over Governor Patterson running for reelection.

As for the speech itself, (what I could hear of it at work), Obama even mentioned my city of Schenectady in his speech.

(Oh my heart, flutter flutter)

But there’s no way of knowing if it was on the teleprompter or if he just added it on his own.

The morning talk shows on Tuesday made fun of all the names of people and places the president mispronounced.  This in itself would be no big deal except for two things.

1. The media never missed a chance to make President Bush look like an idiot when he mispronounced something.
2. Obama always tries so hard to pronounce words like “Koran” for all his middle eastern buddies, why can’t he get a few names right?

Nevertheless it was still a big honor to have him here, mispronunciations and all.

More Like North Korea Every Day

Analysts believe the biggest reason for North Korea‘s food crisis is too much government control.

http://larrysinternetsoapbox.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/why-we-must-never-be-socialist/

Are we headed down the same path?  In California they are facing one of their worst droughts in history. 

To make matters worse much of the water needed to save California’s farms has been diverted for the sake of a tiny fish.

Here’s the story from Hannity on Fox News . .

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject

=9707417&referralPlaylistId=playlist

Image via Wikipedia

Farmers in one of the most fertile places on earth now must wait in line for their food.  Unbelievable!

That’s what we see in third world countries, BUT NOT HERE!

All because of the federal governments concern over a stupid little fish!

Yes we need to be careful with the environment, but when there are unintended consequences it’s time to pull the plug!