Dealt a resounding defeat in Illinois’ presidential primary, Republican Rick Santorum brushed off the latest loss to rival Mitt Romney and told his supporters on Tuesday to “saddle up like Reagan did in the cowboy movies” and help him narrow a seemingly insurmountable deficit in delegates.
Santorum had hoped to make a real contest of Illinois, the birthplace of actor turned president Ronald Reagan, but he was outspent in advertising by a 7-to-1 margin by Romney and his allies and fled the state before balloting began.
“We’re heading to Louisiana for the rest of the week, then we’re back here in Pennsylvania and we’re going to pick up a whole boatload of delegates and close this gap and then on to victory,” he told a packed hotel ballroom in Gettysburg, Pa., as more than 1,000 supporters waited outside.
Santorum won the Southern states of Alabama and Mississippi last week. Romney has not posted a win in the South since his January triumph in Florida.
“We’re feeling very, very good about winning Louisiana on Saturday,” Santorum said to cheers.
A 10-day break follows Louisiana before Washington, D.C., Maryland and Wisconsin have primaries on April 3. Santorum is not on the ballot in the nation’s capital, the latest example of his campaign’s struggle to organize.
But Santorum has shown new signs of political life. Aides said the campaign raised more than $9 million in February and has more than $2.6 million on hand for a Republican primary that shows no sign of ending soon.
Santorum campaign sought to downplay the Illinois results, instead looking at adding delegates from rural areas to Santorum’s column in any sum.
Who is funding all of this campaign spending? Here are Mitt Romney’s top contributors:
Here’s a post from Triablogue, the Internet lair of the most fearsome Calvinist bloggers!
Excerpt:
As you make donations over this Christmas season, are you including apologetics ministries in your giving? People will donate many millions of dollars to helping the poor, finding cures for diseases, and other such causes. Governments, universities, and other segments of society will also invest large amounts of money in such things. On an average day, you might hear a few advertisements for charities on the radio, see a few more on television, see a couple others in a magazine, and get an email about one from your employer. Part of the money you earn by going to work will go to government programs intended to do things like providing food and shelter for the poor, in this country and around the world. These efforts involve a tremendous number of organizations and individuals and a tremendous amount of time and money, among other resources. But you’ll rarely be encouraged to give a single penny to any apologetic work.
One of the excuses sometimes cited to justify Christian neglect of apologetics is that God doesn’t need apologetics in order to work in people’s lives. He doesn’t need to use something like a philosophical, historical, or scientific argument.
Let’s apply that same reasoning to other areas of life. God doesn’t need our prayers. Let’s stop praying. Or just let a tiny minority of the church do it occasionally. God also doesn’t need Bible translators and publishers, and He doesn’t need to have you read the Bible. He can just implant the information directly into your heart. He also doesn’t need parents. Or pastors. He’s omnipotent. He can accomplish things without using us. Let’s not just neglect apologetics. Let’s neglect these other things, too, and see what happens.
I’m convinced that one of the most significant weaknesses of the modern church is a neglect of apologetics. And we’re living in an information age, when apologetics is even more important than it was previously. What if God sometimes allows us to suffer the normal consequences of our intellectual carelessness? What if, instead of constantly supernaturally intervening in order to make up for our neglect, He sometimes lets us suffer the natural consequences of our bad choices?
Ideas have consequences, and persuading people to hold one belief rather than another can have major significance. It’s something that can “greatly help” (Acts 18:27-28). If you give money to alleviate something like poverty or a disease, then why not give money to uproot ideas that produce those symptoms? We’re often focused more on shallow solutions than ones that are deeper and more lasting. We give money in response to poverty, a tsunami, or the spread of a disease, but we give much less, if anything, in response to the false ideas that surround us. Instead of feeling guilty for giving money to an apologetics ministry rather than something like a ministry that helps the poor, we ought to feel guilty for giving such a low percentage of our donations to apologetic work. If you give all of your donations to non-apologetic causes and none to apologetics, the world will applaud you. But we should be judging things by a different standard.
That’s a perfect post, and I left some of it out. The Triabloguers also give a list of charities that they support, and I support those too.
But here are the ones I personally like best: (in alphabetical order)
Jim Wallace is a bit of a neat case, because as far as I can tell, he doesn’t accept donations. But I list him here anyway, because I respect him highly.
And by the way, if you know any Christian scholars who are busy getting their undergraduate and graduate degrees, why not fire them a book or two? I have five good friends on Facebook who are working hard on their degrees, and it’s a good thing for us to take an interest in their progress.
UPDATE: Justin Brierley, the force behind the recent Reasonable Faith UK Speaking Tour, writes this in the comments:
Well since we’re in a generous mood… follow the link below to contribute towards funding the production of the videos from the UK Reasonable Faith Tour!
The female bodybuilder who once ran a bicycle business with latest Herman Cain accuser Ginger White says the Atlanta woman never mentioned the Republican presidential candidate, who she says was her lover for 13 years.
“His name has never come up,” said Kimberly Vay, who told ABC News that she and White were former business partners.
But Vay, who filed and won a libel lawsuit against White, refused to comment directly when asked whether she considers White’s accusations about Cain credible. “When you see the details of my lawsuit,” said Vay, “they will speak for themselves.” She then referred ABC News to her attorney.
According to Vay’s suit, which was filed in June 2011, White and Vay were partners in a fitness coaching business called No Limit Cycling, and held spinning classes inside the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, which is owned by the City of Atlanta. In November 2010, claimed Vay, White asked to end their partnership, with White continuing to operate No Limit Cycling, and Vay agreed.
On December 9, according to the complaint, White sent a “defamatory” note to a master email list of the company’s clients and to city officials. The email said that White’s business had “come tumbling down [on] the day I invited Kim Vay into my life and my business” and that Vay had turned her “dream” into a “nightmare.” According to the complaint, the email alleged that Vay, a competitive bodybuilder, injected veterinary drugs into her system prior to contests,” and also said that Vay preferred to date black men but had made derogatory comments about black women’s hair.
Vay’s complaint termed the allegation about drug use “false, malicious, defamatory” and “reckless,” and therefore libelous.
Both women retained attorneys, according to Vay’s account, and reached an out-of-court settlement in April 2011. In June, Vay filed suit, claiming that White had failed to live up to the settlement and that she was entitled to sue for libel. Vay’s attorney Kurt Martin told ABC News that White had failed to honor the financial agreement that had settled the case.
Here’s a bit more about Ginger White from the NY Daily News.
Excerpt:
The Atlanta woman who says she was Herman Cain’s mistress for 13 years is a down-on-her-luck single mom who once sued a former employer for sexual harassment.
Ginger White surfaced in bombshell fashion on Monday, telling an Atlanta TV station that she’s “not proud” of what she described as long-running sexual shenanigans with the married GOP White House contender.
“I didn’t want to come out this way,” she said in an interview with Atlanta’s FOX affiliate WAGA-TV that put Cain on the defensive even before it was aired.
White described herself in the interview as a jobless former businesswoman. She is middle-aged, has two children and was evicted from her Atlanta home earlier this month, according to a background check done by the TV station.
WAGA reporters also found records showing she has been hit with several eviction notices in DeKalb County, Ga., over the past six years.
She filed for bankruptcy 23 years ago, the station reported. In 2001, she also filed a sexual harassment suit, which was later settled, according to the station.
Her former business partner, Kimberly Vay, once sued her and accused her of stalking, the station reported.
Vay, who did not respond to calls for comment Monday, also sought an order of protection against White, charging that she was bombarded with emails and texts “threatening [a\] lawsuit” and defaming her character.
A judge ruled in favor of Vay in a libel suit she had filed against White, the station reported.
It’s not surprising to me that a woman like this would make such accusations – she is getting a lot of attention, and possibly is being paid off by another candidate. There might even be a nice book deal for her.
The 20-year-old woman who claims teen idol Justin Bieber is the father of her child originally told her ex-boyfriend that he — and not Bieber — was the baby-daddy, the New York Post reported Friday.
“She came back here from California telling me she was pregnant with my child and I said this is impossible, you’ve been in California two months and back here for only a week,” said Las Vegas resident John Terranova, 19, about his ex-girlfriend Mariah Yeater, 20, who has sued Bieber for support for the son she later bore.
“After I told her that’s not my kid, you’ve only been here for a week, then she told me, ‘No, I got pregnant before I left by you,” Terranova told The Post. “But it didn’t make sense because she had a doctor’s note saying she wasn’t pregnant enough for that to be possible. It didn’t add up.”
Terranova said he had dated Yeater for nearly four years after meeting her at a Las Vegas high school that caters to students who had been thrown out of other schools. He said he broke up with her after he learned she had cheated on him.
Terranova scoffed at Yeater’s claim that it was the then-16-year-old Bieber who impregnated her in October 2010 during a 30-second sex session after the singer performed in Los Angeles.
“I know it’s not Justin Bieber,” Terranova said. “She just wants money. It’s a scam.”
His girlfriend Lacy Jensen, who herself is pregnant now, agreed.
“Poor kid. He’s worked so hard for his career and to deal with this. She just wants to get her name out there,” said Jensen.
“She’s a gold digger and just wants someone to take care of her,” Jensen said. “She was a really big party animal who got around a lot. She was a big slut. She’s scandalous.”
Yeater was arrested for battery last December for allegedly slapping Terranova in a jealous rage after she returned from her sojourn in California to find him dating a new girlfriend, Jensen.
I see no reason to think that White’s claims have any more validity than Yeater’s claims. It seems plausible to me that both women are making false claims for the same reason – they want fame and money.
Do women ever make false claims about sexual matters? Its more common than you might think. Studies show that false allegations are made about 20-40% of the time, depending on the study. These sorts of false accusations are usually made in order to 1) get attention or money, by trying to appear as an innocent victim, 2) in order to get an alibi for something the woman has done wrong (see below), or 3) to get revenge on someone who has mistreated the woman, as with the Duke lacrosse scandal.
The Hofstra freshman who had a raunchy restroom romp and then cried rape made up the twisted tale because she didn’t want her schoolmates — particularly her new boyfriend — to think she was easy, the beau told The Post yesterday.
“I think she needs a psychologist. She probably felt like, ‘They’ll think I’m a slut,’ ” her boyfriend, who asked not to be identified, told The Post.
Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.
She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student who’s been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.
The two had been dancing together at the Alpha Kappa Alpha mixer at the school’s on-campus club, Hofstra USA, but got separated when a fight broke out.
The boyfriend said he called her repeatedly, but she didn’t answer her cellphone, so he went to her seventh-floor dorm room at Estabrook Hall. Moments later she appeared.
“As I was about to leave, she comes up and she has no shoes on, she is holding them in her hands. She looked like she just finished hot sex,” he said. “I said, ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’ She told me, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ “
Ndonye then dropped a bombshell.
“I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just got raped,’ ” he said.
“It didn’t seem real to me. She was calm,” he continued. “Then she started crying and saying, ‘I was raped.’ She lied to me. I think she was embarrassed. I said to her, ‘You have to call public safety.’ She hesitated. It seemed like she didn’t want to.”
She then tried to backpedal.
“Oh, you know, no, it’s OK,” she told him, but he was incredulous.
“How could it be OK that you just got raped?” the boyfriend said.
So she relented — and a four-day nightmare began for four innocent men: Stalin Felipe, 19, his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, Jesus Ortiz, 19, and 21-year-old Rondell Bedward, a Hofstra senior who had invited the others to the party.
Cops also hunted for a fifth man, who has not been publicly identified.
False allegations of abuse are routinely used in divorce custody hearings. They virtually never go to trial.
In the absence of ANY evidence, why think that these anonymous charges against a black conservative who is leading in national polls are anything but greed and attention-whoring? Surely, we need to see some charges laid against Cain that where brought forward in a real criminal trial, so we can see the evidence. Otherwise, it just seems to me like another case of false paternity claims and false sexual allegations. We need to see real criminal charges, with real evidence and real witnesses from a real trial, before we can draw any conclusions.
My previous post analyzed the media bias evident in how this story is being covered.
WINTERY KNIGHT 