Cat’s Inspired

After seeing Amazing Grace and Facing the Giant’s, Cat’s Inspired, writing:

Put these two movies together, and I am wondering – Where are our Wilberforces? How can we stand against the giants in our lives?

And suddenly, God’s still small voice reminded me: *I* am a Wilberforce. The very God of Creation dwells within me, waiting for me to turn to Him and to use His power in my life. God desires to use me as another David, who faced down Goliath with nothing but a sling and a stone – and unshakeable faith in God. God wants me to be His Nehemiah and rebuild the walls of my own Jerusalem in spite of seemingly impossible odds. God wants me to be a Lazarus; He wants to call me out of the grave of sin and give me new life – eternal life.

I can free slaves. I can slay giants. I can rebuild a city. I can walk on water. I can keep from sin. I can do the impossible!

Read the whole thing, you’ll be glad you did.

Yea Verily, ‘Tis a Good Concept

While I ranted against Sony’s pagan video game debut, this one sounds like something else altogether. A game to teach 2nd and 3rd graders the Bard, a worthy goal.

Shakespeare

Monday Night Talk

On Tonight’s Podcast:

-Campaign Finance’s Assault on Free Speech
-A Carbet Offsets Bargain

-Democratic Freshman Flip Flopping, Betraying Our Troops
-Why Americans are So Down
-Can Christians Be Fooled?
-Is Batman Afraid of Al Qaeda?
-Warning: Don’t Send Money to TBN
-Victory for Rhode Island College Republicans
-Sony’s Pagan Offering

Click here to download. Click here to add my podcast to your I-tunes.

‘

Related Stories:

Club for Growth:

Free Speech Victory

Michelle Malkin:

“I’m ready for my fatwa”

Ed Driscoll:

Episode 4: A New Hopelessness (Hat Tip: Instapundit)

Get Your Free Carbon Offsets (Hat Tip: Instapundit)

One News Now:

Ministry Watch/TBN At Odds Over Donor Alert

Pastor Says Bidens Strategy Won’t Fool Religious Voters

Majority Accountability Project:

Flip Flop Iraq

CNS News:

Move to Derecognize College Republican Chapter Overturned

Fox News:

Sony Uses Killed Goat at Video Game Launch

Politico:

Thompson mulling summer announcement

Lieberman: ‘Bloggers Have Added Another Dimension of Vituperation … (Think Progress)

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, DragonLady’s World, The Pet Haven Blog, Shadowscope, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, Pet’s Garden Blog, third world county, Faultline USA, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Some Get It, Some Don’t

I won’t catch the intelligence or integrity of Randy Stapilus, but perhaps his sense of humor can be questioned after he quoted an obvious satire of Congressman Sali and his supporters for insights into what Sali supporters think.

As a Conservative satirist who for many years wrote from a “liberal perspective,” I was often mistaken for being straight. However, to fall for such puerile satire as is written by billsalifan requires a disrespectful and low view of the other side of the debate.

Stapilus also observed, as if to suggest this was unusual:

“Sali’s hasn’t posted his reasons for the vote on his web site.”

Of course, he didn’t. What Congressman posts his reason for every single vote on his site? None that I know of.

Podcast #245: Telling the ACLU to Shove It

A North Carolina county defies the ACLU. It’s time others do the same.

Click here to download. Click here to add my podcast to your I-tunes.

‘

Related:

One News Now:

NC board will continue invocations

No Fault Exit From Iraq

Iraq’s most famous blogger, Omar from Iraqthemodel.com expresses confusion at recent Congressional action on Iraq:

“Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say ‘well, it’s not worth it, so it’s time to leave’. Evidently to them my life and the lives of twenty five million Iraqis are not worth trying for…”

It’s a stunning quote. It’s hard to come up with an answer to Omar for the actions of those in Congress whom I’m ashamed to call my countrymen. There are many truly inconvenient truths that war opponents prefer not to discuss.

Sixty-five percent of Americans supported the war going in. I was not among them, but when we went in, I wrote the following on the eve of the war:

“That support for our President and our troops must not be abated because of high causalities. This is the risk of war. If we look at a loss of military life and we say, ‘For 10,000 lives, it’s not worth it,’ we should not send them at all. Support our troops, remain steadfast in standing behind this war. Retreat is not option, only victory or defeat.”

What is at stake in Iraq is not only the lives of the Iraqi people, but the honor of the United States of America. If we leave Iraq, we will never have the credibility to wage war again no matter the circumstance, we’ll become the new France, known as cowards who run, and as a worst, a people without honor.

When I try and explain this, I’m given blank stares. After some thought, I’ve reached a conclusion. We’ve become to apply the laxity of our personal lives to our views of national affairs.

In a country of no-fault divorces and disposable marriage, we’ve forgotten the meaning of commitment. All the time, marriages break up for reasons as stupid as “the music died.” As a society, we’ve learned to say many things we don’t mean or won’t have the guts to follow through on when things get tough. We escape in order to avoid hard and uncomfortable work that’ll be necessary to preserve the marriage and sanity in the lives of our children.

While divorce is sometimes necessary, the flippant nature with which our society has embraced it leads us to a point where most American civilians have no grasp of commitment. Our military gets it, so do the Iraqis. Our covenant with the Iraqi people has been sealed by the blood of more than 3,000 American soldiers, and thousands of Iraqi soldiers, policemen, and innocent men, women, and children who have perished at the hands of terrorists. Our soldiers want to finish their job. While those who only watch the evening news tremble, our soldiers re-enlist in record numbers. They heed the words of Lincoln, “and from these honored dead, take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” They refuse to let these deaths be in vain, so they fight on through the attacks of foreign terrorists who’ve overrun Iraq, a poisonous atmosphere of death and mayhem where they can’t tell friend from foe, and most painful of all, the lack of confidence in them expressed by the American media and a squishy coalition of Americans without honor.

I won’t argue that we made the right decision to go into Iraq. That was yesterday’s argument, which we can debate with 20/20 hindsight. Today, the issue is whether we’ll honor our commitment to millions of Iraqis who have dreamed of freedom, or through our premature withdrawal bring utter and complete darkness on a land that we promised freedom to.

While, we must make changes to our Iraq policy, running away is not the answer. There is no “good divorce” in Iraq, only a swath of death. Those who think otherwise, have gotten a divorce from reality.

Of Course, Wikipedia Is Trustworthy

As a source of biographies of Batman Supporting Characters, Pokemon, and fictional DAs on Law and Order. For mental health information in California? Not so much.

Helping the Victims

From Persecution Blog:

If you’ve been moved by all of the stories this week about the martyrdom of our brothers in Turkey, then I have some good news.

You can participate in ministering to the widows and the orphaned children by supporting Operation Esther.

According to Candelin one way to show love for the five children that now have lost their fathers is to give a love gift for their future education. This love gift operation is called “Operation Esther” after the five year old daughter of one of the murdered Christians.

Gifts will be distributed via the Protestant Church in Turkey and anyone interested can contact Johan Candelin, Executive Director Religious Liberty Commission, E-mail: candelin@kilumbus.fi

The Snow Man’s Perspective

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow continues his fight against cancer with amazing perspective:

“I am actually enjoying everything more than I ever have,” he said. “God hasn’t promised us tomorrow, but he has promised us eternity.”

Democrats Frequent Excitement Attacks

While Democrats are excited about a new executive director, the Idahoan reminds us we’ve heard it all before.

The Difference Between Haiti and Iraq

Chris at Unequivocal Notion accuses Larry Craig of hypocrisy, writing:

And, let us not forget that Senator Larry Craig voted against funding the military while they were in Haiti. I guess things are different when you have a Republican President and when you have a Democratic President. Republicans have no shame when it comes to playing politics with the men and women in uniform.

Well, there was actually difference between the Haiti operation and the Iraq operation on a number of levels. First of all, the invasion of Haiti was to put the thug Aristede back in power. Secondly, the vote Chris cited was against allowing funding for operations IF Congress did not authorize the action. There were no forces yet on the ground in Haiti at the time of the vote and the UN resolution authorizing the invasion didn’t pass until July, 1994 and the abortive invasion wasn’t to occur until the following September. There’s a big difference between saying no to an action in advance and voting against funding our troops on the ground, fighting or trying to force them out of a meaningful combat.

Why the Slippage?

Dennis Mansfield asks an interesting question about recidivism in prisons over at his blog:

It’s heart-warming to see men in the depths of their lives, choose to change directions.

Yet, some still crash and burn…..why?

I thought about it, as I drove home (and have since continued to think about it):

What does it mean to “follow” Christ?

Really…not the TV evangelists deal, not the “no-one-looking-around, all-eyes-closed” sort of orchestrated thing. If God is so big and so powerful…why do people make decisions for Christ…and then shipwreck their lives? Where’s God? Absent? Hmm…

He suggests the problem may be preoccupation with the world and not with God, but admits he doesn’t have the answer.

I think he has part of it, he has an answer. But perhaps, it’s more applicable to the general Christian rather than to the prisoner.

I’ll share an observation and it relates more to people who’ve been to prison, but here goes.

At a church I used to be at, there was a kind older couple who had a great prison ministry. Prisoners would even tithe to the Church on the earnings they made. When they were released, they would come and visit, but only stay for one service. Despite pastors advising us to make them feel welcome, it didn’t really happen, I’m sorry to say. Could it be that churches sometimes fail to help the prisoner get back to society make him feel forgiven and accepted in the body of Christ as a new creature in Him.

Also, what about mentoring? Is that happening? That’s a key question as well, because despite our individualistic pre-suppositions, Christ made the church to care for one its members, the older to help the younger to the end that people would become more like Christ. Are our churches doing that, or are we leaving them to fend for themselves?

The third question I think we have to ask ourselves is do we have a true passion for Christ. If our churches don’t have passion for Christ, it causes trouble.

To people in prison, they know their prisoners. There’s no “non-criminal” who looks down on them, they have a minister who comes and cares about them, they have felt the true forgiveness of God and know his real presence in their lives. What happens when our churches fail to live up to that? While, I like Dennis don’t have the full answer, I can’t help but feel that’s a piece of the puzzle.

Lesson 10: Podcasting

Of all the lessons we’ve covered, these last two will be the ones that are most revised, because they are the least fully formed of new media technologies.

What is podcasting:

No doubt, you’ve seen the popular I-pods that are everywhere, generally these are used for downloading music, but some enterprising individuals have had the idea of creating files like talkshows which can be downloaded onto I-pods, thus Podcast.

A Podcast will be:

1) A MP3 File
2) Accessible through an RSS feed so that Itunes and other readers can download them.

There are numerous ways to achieve this. There are services that hosts podcast, which will give you a free feed. You can also upload podcasts onto your own server and then link to them on your blog, and feed your blog through Feedburner.

You also want to insure you add your podcast to the Itunes Store.

The Benefits of Podcasting:

1) It is less time consuming

2) It is a pioneer market

3) It is accessible to our culture.

Hosting Your Podcast (what you need)

1) I reccomend a Skype Account. Skype is a great service that allows you to call any number in America with no charge for $29.95 a year. You can also call up to nine different people at once, so you can easily call multiple guests at once and it’s right at your computer with your news stories that you’ll want to talk about.

2) A good headset. When I first started out, I used a cell phone. Then I used a little strap on headset that had come with a camera phone. My reccomendation is a good over the ears, stereo headset with a good mike. Since I began to use that, it’s fundamentally changed the way I podcast. I’m getting better sound, I’m feeling more comfortable because I don’t have to fiddle with a phone or ear clip microphone.

3) Audacity. If you’re going to podcast, you need Audacity. This goes back to why I reccomend you record through Skype. When you do, you can set audacity to record your podcast as a back-up. One of my big frustrations early in podcasting,(which led to early retirement from podcasting) is that I would phone in a podcast and it would not post and I’d have to call it back in. Using Audacity, you never have to do that, if you’re using Skype as well. Set Audacity to record Stereo Mix and it will record everything you’re saying as well as anything guests are saying to you and you can upload it later.

4) A Way to Publish Podcasts: There are many phone only services out there, where basically you phone in your show, do it live and that’s that. I used these for the first 200 odd podcasts and I don’t reccomend them. Any good podcasting service will have the ability to upload files. This way you can upload a back-up in case your phone recording fails.

I reccomend TalkShoe because I use it. One of the most interesting benefits of it is that TalkShoe pays you to podcast on the basis of how many downloads you can get. It also provides you interactivity by allowing people to call in and join the show. Blog Talk Radio is another service that does the same thing, but without paying you for doing podcasts.

Now, some people will consider networks that pay to be somewhat base. Make money? How impure. Well, there’s no better way to make something easier to do it than to throw in some money for doing it.

In my opinion, it beats the alternative of the costs on the other end of the podcasting spectrum. Hosting a podcast on your own server can be an expensive and time consuming proposition.

Success can become your enemy. What do I mean? Well, a good quality MP3 is going to take a little less than 1 MB for every single minute. If I do a half hour show, it’s going to take 28 MB. If I have 200 MB of disk space, after about 7 shows, I’m going to run out of space. Even if I have 400 or 500 MB, I’m going to run out. But there’s another issue that’s an even bigger concern. It’s called Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of downloaded information that’s allowed to come off your server. Everytime someone downloads your 28 MB podcasts, it takes away 28 MB of bandwidth. If you have a reasonable server size, lets say 3 GB of Space, and 200 GB of Bandwidth, you’re going to go along for quite sometime without any problem.

But success will come back to bite you. I took a look at last week’s downloads and found that 62% of downloads from my political podcast where from prior weeks. Basically, once you post these things, these podcasts get downloaded months and years later. What does that mean for you? As your podcast grows, more people will download your podcast, more people will download your prior episodes and it won’t be too long until you have more than 7142 download attempts of your podcasts in a month. If you’re going to do this on your own server, you’re going to need high capacity bandwidth limits.

A great service I’ve heard of is Ten Buck Terabyte where you can get a Terrabyte of space for about $4.69 a month. You will really want to stay up on your usage to make sure you don’t go over, because then you’ll want to upgrade. But for a half hour show, that’ll mean 35,000 downloads a month and you’ve got that type of traffic, I’d humbly suggest it’s time to monetize to help pay for some of your expenses.

But I’d rather not worry about it, so I prefer to use another service and just link to the podcast on my blog. If you’re interested in finding out more about Talkshoe, e-mail me, and I’ll send you a link and information. I’ll be honest that I get referral credit on it. It doesn’t cost you any money, but if you decide to use them and make money with TalkShoe and you heard about it hear, it’d be nice to get credit for it. There’s no cost to you for me getting the referral credit.

Regardless, I hope you consider the world of podcasting, because it truly will be the next thing in new media.

Click here to download the podcast.

Weekend Podcast: No-Fault Divorce in Iraq

Tonight on the True and Hope Report:

-Why Americans Want to Leave: No-Fault Divorce in Iraq
-Cutting the Budget: One Agency Under Attack
-The Pro-Abortion Side of the March for Dimes

-Making Abortion More Available in the Abortion Capitol of the United States
-Hillary Clinton Hypocrisy
-The Looming Crisis in Social Secuirty
-Tax Reform and Identity Theft
-Why America Hates All of Its Politicians
-Baseball Update: Sosa, Clemens, Schilling, and Koulfax
-Google’s Map Booble
-An Incomplete Reality Show Idea on Politics

Click here to download. Click here to add my podcast to your I-tunes.

‘

Red State:

Omar Has a Question

Cheney Rates Higher Than Reid

Reasoned Audacity:

How To Cut The Federal Budget at a Government Agency by Lurita Alexis Doan

Jill Stanek:

The March of Dimes Marches for Death

Michelle Malkin:

Hillary Violates Her Own Rutgers Pledge

Pro-Life Blogs:

New York Governor Plans To Make Abortions More Accessable

CNS News:

Congress Urged to Act Quickly on Social Security, Medicare

Evangelical Outpost:

Family Facts #13

Family Facts #14

Fox Sports:

Sammy Sosa hits 595th home run

Sox insist Schilling’s bloody sock is for real

ESPN:

Clemens in the majors? By end of May we’ll know

Israeli baseball team drafts Koufax in tribute

Reuters:

Chile: Google Earth moves a village to Argentina

MySpace, Burnett to Launch New Reality Show

U.S. Survey Shows What Not to Wear to Work

ID theft task force urges tougher penalties

Podcast #244: The God of Ego

How self-worship is destroying our civilization.

Click here to download. Click here to add my podcast to your I-tunes.

‘