Tag Archives: Democrat Party

Commentary

Thinking practically about the gospel with an illustration from a war movie

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The city of Mogadishu, in Somalia, Africa
The city of Mogadishu, in Somalia, Africa

I decided to re-post one of my favorite posts for Memorial Day.

First, let’s get an overview that helps us understand the context and goals of the mission we are going to discuss.

The scene is set in Somalia, Africa, in 1992. There a civil war between two warlords: Ali Mahdi and Mohammed Farah Aidid. The war has destroyed agricultural operations, and the people are starving. The United Nations are trying to help, but Aidid hijacks the food from UN aircraft so that he can use the food to gain control of the people. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are dying of starvation. The UN requests American military forces to secure the air-dropped supplies so they can be distributed to the starving people.

In December 1992, President George H.W. Bush answers the call, sending 25,000 troops to Somalia to protect the food from the Somali warlords. However, in 1993, Bill Clinton is elected. He orders that the number of U.S. troops be reduced to 12,000. Following an attack by Aidid on Pakistani peace-keepers, the U.N. issues a resolution to capture those responsible. The U.S. armed forces have the arms and training to battle evil, so they get the call to capture Aidid and his lieutenants.

In late August 1993, Task Force Ranger is deployed to Mogadishu to capture Aidid and his lieutenants at the Olympic Hotel. The U.S. force consists of 440 troops from the Army Rangers and Army Delta Force special forces, commanded by General William Garrison. Garrison requested light armored units (Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles) that would offer more protection than the unarmored HMMWV Humvees. Garrison was denied the light armor by the Clinton administration. Garrison requested heavier air support (AC-130 Spectre gunships) that would offer better fire support than the UH-60 Blackhawk miniguns. Garrison was denied the air support by the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration did not want the American forces to appear too heavily armed for the peace-keeping role.

The actual mission turned out to be much harder than it needed to be, because of the resources denied by the Clinton administration. Although the Aidid lieutenants were captured, Aidid himself escaped. Eighty-four American soldiers were wounded. Eighteen American soldiers were killed, and their bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. This was shown over and over by the media, and it undermined American resolve to help the Somali people. As a result, Clinton had the excuse he needed to retreat the American military.

(Source: Nova Online)

Two heroes lost their lives

Today, I want to talk about two of the men who lost their lives in Operation Gothic Serpent. They are Master Sergeant Gary I. Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randall D. Shughart – a Delta Force sniper team.

Here is a clip from the movie Blackhawk Down, which shows what happened to them:

The pilot of the downed Blackhawk was protected by the two men who volunteered to go in after him. They requested that they be inserted at the crash site, even though they knew that reinforcements were likely not going to be there in time to save them. They made the request to go and help the pilot three times before being allowed to go in. Their first two requests were denied by their commanding officer, because the odds against their survival were so overwhelming. The rescued pilot was later released by his captors, and the two heroes were awarded the Medal of Honor for their brave actions.

A Congressional Medal of Honor
A Congressional Medal of Honor

Here is a description of the requirements to be awarded a Medal of Honor:

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration that may be awarded by the United States government. It is presented by the President of the United States, in the name of Congress, and is conferred only upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty:

  • While engaged in action against an enemy of the United States;
  • While engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or
  • While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

You can read the official details of their actions.

The point of this post

It is important for Christians to be familiar with real-world examples of people giving their lives in order to save the lives of others. When we see real-world examples of self-sacrifice, it helps us to understand what Jesus really achieved for us, and what he must have felt making that hard choice to volunteer to go in and rescue us. In general, my philosophy when it comes to the Bible is to make every effort to connect what the Bible says to the real world. We must not push Christianity into some far-off world of piety and feelings. We must make connections to real evidence and real life, so that what the Bible says becomes practical, and so that we have a deep friendship with and sympathy for God revealed in Jesus Christ. In real life, being willing to give your life to save someone else is hard. Understanding how that really happens will help us to value what Jesus has done for us.

Bible verses

I saw this verse on the ground outside the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, NC, where I went for my summer vacation in 2015. (Thanks to my friend Curby who hosted me)

Isaiah 6:8:

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

Here is the picture I took (yes, that is my running shoe):

“Here am I, send me” Isaiah 6:8

When confronted with an opportunity to imitate Christ in his self-sacrifice, we should think less about ourselves and our own desires, and take the opportunity to serve others effectively. We do not do what makes us happy, and we do not pursue fun and thrills. We do what heals, we do what helps others. We do not push away our responsibility to imitate Christ by caring for those in danger. Christianity is not just about “not doing bad things”. It’s the good things you do because of your relationship with Jesus that show your real allegiance, and give you the experience of being a Christian in deed.

And here is another good verse:

John 15:13:

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

If you get a chance to watch the movie Blackhawk Down, then do so. I highly recommend it. You can also read the book that the movie is based on.

I love the Medal of Honor books by Edward F. Murphy. He writes about all the people who have been awarded the Medal of honor in different wars: World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

If you check my reading list, you’ll find that I usually read two military books for every one book on another subject.

News

Trump will cut $60 million of taxpayer-funding of Planned Parenthood

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Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama speaking to Planned Parenthood

The money will instead be given to women’s health care providers who do not perform abortions. I looked around to find an article that didn’t just report the decision, but also what PP would do about it, and how that was likely to work out for them. In cases like this, it really matters how the policy is phrased. That determines whether it can stand up to a court challenge.

Life News reports:

The Trump administration is announcing new regulations today to partially defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses of tens of millions of tax dollars. This is the second time Trump has taken steps to revoke taxpayer funding for the nation’s biggest abortion business — after yanking taxpayer from from International Planned Parenthood during his first week in office.

The United States spends about $260 million in Title X funds annually for family planning for low-income individuals, and Planned Parenthood is a huge recipient of those funds, as much as $50-$60 million annually.

But under the proposed “Protect Life Rule,” Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses would not receive any of those tax dollars unless they completely separate their abortion business from their taxpayer-funded services, The Washington Examiner reports. That would mean housing their family planning services elsewhere — potentially in separate buildings and coordinated by separate staff and organizations from its abortion enterprise.

“This proposal does not necessarily defund Planned Parenthood, as long as they’re willing to disentangle taxpayer funds from abortion as a method of family planning, which is required by the Title X law,” a Trump administration official said. “Any grantees that perform, support, or refer for abortion have a choice – disentangle themselves from abortion or fund their activities with privately raised funds.”

Of course, Planned Parenthood is unwilling to do so. Abortion is its primary focus, and it already is threatening a lawsuit to stop the defunding. However, the proposal is modeled after similar Reagan administration rules that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Rust v. Sullivan in 1991.

The Life News article also had some helpful paragraphs about how this new policy builds on the previous pro-life policies of the Trump administration:

The Trump administration has cut several other streams of funding to Planned Parenthood as well. Soon after Trump took office, he signed the Mexico City Policy to prevent the funding of groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. This includes the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which received tax dollars under the Obama administration.

In addition, in 2017, the Trump administration cut millions of dollars in grants to Planned Parenthood through the failed Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. HHS spokesman Mark Vafiades told the New York Times last year that there is very little evidence that the program was successful. However, the abortion chain recently filed a lawsuit challenging the cuts.

Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in America, aborting approximately 320,000 unborn babies every year. Its most recent annual report showed a record income of $1.46 billion, with about half a billion dollars coming from taxpayers.

In addition to reversing the Obama administration’s funding of abortion, the Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration’s policy of forcing Christian organizations to provide health insurance coverage for abortion.

Life News reported on that, as well:

A federal district court issued an order Tuesday that permanently prevents the federal government from enforcing the Obamacare abortion-pill mandate against four Christian universities in Oklahoma represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. The order also declares that the mandate violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Obama-era mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception through their health plans under threat of heavy penalties. The Department of Justice, under the Trump administration, abandoned its defense of the flawed mandate, which the Department of Health and Human Services implemented during the previous administration.

“Religious organizations have the freedom to peacefully operate according to their beliefs without the threat of punishment by the government. Today’s order fully affirms that freedom and provides permanent protection from the mandate,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor.

“These universities no longer have to fear being forced to pay fines for simply abiding by the Christian beliefs they teach and espouse, and they are no longer required to fill out forms authorizing coverage for abortion-inducing drugs,” Baylor explained. “The government has many other ways to ensure access to these drugs without forcing people of faith to violate their deepest convictions.”

ADF attorneys represent Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Oklahoma Baptist University, and Mid-America Christian University, all of which specifically object to providing abortifacients.

I don’t think most Democrats realize just how pro-abortion the Obama administration was. But they should have been able to predict it from the multiple times that Obama voted for abortion born-alive infants when he was a state senator in Illinois. Although Trump’s record on abortion was mixed before the election, he’s been good at canceling out some of Obama’s pro-abortion policies. Good for him.

News

Democrat Nancy Pelosi joins the mainstream media in defending MS-13 gang from Trump

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By now, everyone has heard that Donald Trump, in answering a question about MS-13 from Fresno, CA police, called MS-13 gang members “animals”. The Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media disagreed with characterizing MS-13 gangsters as animals. Let’s see a few reactions from the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media, then we’ll see what MS-13 does.

First, the facts, from the non-partisan Real Clear Politics:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi responded to President Trump calling violent MS-13 gang members “animals,” at her weekly press briefing Thursday morning. Pelosi says Trump’s comments as reported are a new low, and make her wonder if the president believes “we are all God’s children” or not.

“When the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these are not people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? In the dignity and worth of every person? ‘These are not people, these are animals,’ from the president of the United States.”

“Every day you think you’ve seen it all, along comes another manifestation of why their policies are so inhumane,” she said.

“Calling people animals is not a good thing,” she said, before ending the news conference and walking out.

Even radically leftist CNN makes it clear that Trump was talking about MS-13:

CNN agrees: Trump was calling MS-13 "animals"
CNN agrees: Trump was calling MS-13 “animals”

But that makes no difference to Nancy Pelosi. She wants to open the borders to let them in, because they have a “divine spark”. Pro-amnesty groups joined Pelosi in denouncing Trump’s condemnation of MS-13. Liberal journalists from National Affairs and Huffington Post and Business Insider and CNBC and MSNBC and Think Progress and the New York Times and NBC News (Andrea Mitchell) the Washington Post (Jennifer Rubin) and CBS News defended MS-13. (See this Daily Wire article for all the tweets from those sources)

Here’s MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell:

Trump is Hitler, says the mainstream news media
Trump is Hitler, says the mainstream news media

Those tweets are still up! This is not a misunderstanding – they know Trump was talking about MS-13.

So what does MS-13 do, exactly?

Beating little girls with baseball bats: (ABC News)

The source explained Ayala-Rivera, a high-ranking local MS-13 leader who goes by the nickname “Noctorno,” pimps out a number of underage girls from a number of states. On Aug. 1, 2017, the source said Pena-Rodriguez, Romero-Rivera, Ayala-Rivera, plus two other men, used a solid bat to beat the girl behind the single-family home along Valley View Avenue. The men reportedly took turns whacking the 15-year-old girl’s flailing body — 28 swings in total. Her injuries included an “indented” buttocks, discolored arms and legs, and visible bleeding from the neck down.

A second unnamed source would later tell cops that Ayala-Rivera (‘Noctorno’) ordered the backyard clubbing because he felt the victim was “not doing a good job as an MS-13 prostitute.” The same source revealed Ayala-Rivera (‘Noctorno’) raked in a lot of money by trafficking teenage girls to men of all ages.

[…]According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Romero-Rivera is in the United States illegally.

Gang-raping little girls: (Washington Post)

The petite young woman was a 16-year-old Laurel High School student three years ago when she decided to skip classes one day to join two other girls at a party at a Hyattsville apartment.

At the party, she said, Oscar Ramos “Casper” Velasquez took her into a bedroom, where he kissed her and told her that if she didn’t have sex with him, as many as 15 other teenagers and young men at the gathering would have sex with her.

When she resisted, two more young men entered the room, the woman told jurors yesterday in federal court. One man threw her on the bed and choked her, the other held down her arms and “Oscar pulled out a gun,” she testified.

“He put it to my head, and he said if I didn’t shut up, he was going to kill me,” the woman told jurors.

Eight men raped her, the 19-year-old woman said. Two assaulted her simultaneously. Outside the room, she said, she heard one man say, “Five minutes each.”

Murdering little girls: (ABC News)

An MS-13 gang member has been convicted in the 2001 murder of a 13-year-old Whittier girl.

On June 28, 2001, the naked body of Jacqueline Piazza was found in Elysian Park. She had been shot twice in the head, a statement from the district attorney’s office said.

Her murder remained unsolved for nearly a decade, until the Los Angeles Police Department uncovered new information and presented it to the district attorney’s office, the statement said. Four men were charged in the crime in 2012.

Prosecutors said the men kidnapped the victim the night before she was found and drove her to a remote area of the park, where they allegedly sexually assaulted and killed her.

On Thursday, a jury found Jorge Palacios, 39, guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one count of kidnapping to commit rape.

Sex-trafficking little girls: (Washington Post)

The 12-year-old runaway was desperate — she was out of money and had no place to stay. So she turned to the one man her friends said could help: a top MS-13 gang member.

The day after they met at a party, the man drove the girl home, let her take a shower and gave her some fresh clothes. Then he told her, “We’re going to work.”

At first, the girl didn’t understand what the man meant. But everything became horribly clear after they pulled into a pharmacy parking lot and she watched another gang member return to the car with a box of condoms. The next stop was her first customer.

For three months, the girl was prostituted almost daily in dingy apartments, motels and even at an auto repair shop.

[…]The 12-year-old was one of dozens of prostitutes, many juveniles, being sold for sex in the Washington area by members of Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, the region’s largest and most dangerous street gang.

Lots more here.

Democrats and their mainstream media allies support sanctuary cities for MS-13. Anyone who disagrees is “Hitler”.

Watch Nancy Pelosi defend MS-13 in her own words:

Leftists are generous with other people’s money and other people’s lives. It’s not the rich Democrat elites and their rich allies in the mainstream media who suffer from MS-13. Nancy Pelosi has a net worth of nearly $30 million. The Democrat Party elites and the mainstream media talking heads live in gated communities, and have security systems and armed guards. They’re safe from MS-13. They little girls who run away from home don’t matter to them.