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A Crackdown on Televangelists?

Laura Strickler of the CBS News Investigative Unit reports

CBS News has learned Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating six prominent televangelist ministries for possible financial misconduct.

Unless they have evidence of political campaign financing, or specific contractual material obligations that have not been fulfilled, then I think it would be hard to demonstrate financial misconduct in the legal sense.

Letters were sent Monday to the ministries demanding that financial statements and records be turned over to the committee by December 6th.

It will be interesting to see how the Left reacts to this, given the outcry over the IRS investigating a Pasadena church’s pre-election sermon that was accused of being anti-Bush.

According to Grassley's office, the Iowa Republican is trying to determine whether or not these ministries are improperly using their tax-exempt status as churches to shield lavish lifestyles.

Do you mean to tell me that the heads of charities aren’t allowed to have lavish lifestyles?  I know some charities voluntarily restrict that, but would that really be illegal for the head of a charity to accept a high salary or extensive expense reimbursement?

The six ministries identified as being under investigation by the committee are led by: Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of Paula White or Eddie Long.  The others I know because of their heretical and erroneous teachings and bizarre practices.  Many televangelists focus on teachings that pervert the actual Gospel, encouraging their viewers to give to get.  They claim that Jesus, during his earthly life, was rich and they should be, too.  From a legal standpoint, it should be left up to the individual as to whether or not they want to send money to these people.  It is up to Christians to call out the errors and heresies and bad practices and protect their own from spiritual deception,

Three of the six - Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar - also sit on the Board of Regents for the Oral Roberts University.

Hmmmmmm – I think we found the real reason for all of this.  Funny how quickly “separation of church and state” can disappear when it is convenient.

My advice?  Turn off the TV and open a Bible.  Go to a church that actually teaches the Bible and practices Christian service - a church that proclaims the universal creeds.

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A Living Wage, Your Fair Share, and All the Benefits

So often we hear that people have a right to a “living wage”, a right to health insurance, a right to “affordable” housing, even a right to never lose their job.

If you can get the following...

A steady, reliable income
Enough food to make you obese
Shelter with all of the trimmings
Health insurance, medical care, and medicines
Higher education
Entertainment

...without a job, then what is the incentive to work?

Or, if any job will get you those things, what is the incentive to push yourself, to take on more responsibility, to work harder, to innovate?

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Rosie On PMSNBC?

Oh boy!  Rosie may get a chance to regularly appear on TV again to spew her bizarre views.  Of course, nobody will see her rants run on MSNBC.  Instead, we'll see them on video websites later on.
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Another Mexican Refusing to Return to Mexico

Must be a great place.

The Los Angeles Times ran another “air violin” piece today about the plight of an illegal alien – Gregory W. Griggs is the writer.

Liliana spends her days taking care of her 7-month-old son, mostly within the comfortable confines of a parsonage at United Church of Christ in Simi Valley.

If the church is tending to her needs and she is completely off the American dole, then great!

"I'm a mother, not a criminal," said the slight, soft-spoken woman during a recent interview at the church on Royal Avenue.

Well that’s great logic for you.  I’ll try that if I ever commit a crime.  “Hey officers – I’m a father, not a criminal.”  What if I tried that one down in Mexico?

But opponents of illegal immigration disagree wholeheartedly. To them, Liliana became a criminal the moment she crossed the U.S. border with Mexico in the late 1990s without proper documentation.

Only opponents of illegal immigration recognize that people who enter the U.S. illegally are breaking a law?

A native of Michoacan, Mexico, Liliana, speaking through an interpreter, said she came to the United States in 1998 when she was 19. She was unable to obtain a student visa in Mexico City, but she traveled north anyway. Liliana was detained while attempting to cross the border, but secretly entered the United States within a few weeks.

She’s a determined one, isn’t she?

Thank God I was born in the U.S.  One of the things I love about our country is that, through legal immigration, we can have wonderful people and culture from Mexico, while preventing the negative aspects of Mexican culture (such as the corruption)  - the stuff Mexicans are fleeing - from taking root here.  But for this to work, immigration has to be orderly.
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Playful Walrus Update

Posting is likely to be light for the next week as I stay busy with some other things.  Thanks for continuing to visit The Playful Walrus.  You can comment about the blog in general by commenting on this posting, and you can always send me a message via the e-mail address found in the right column.  Thanks!
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Spammer Goes To Jail

Good.  Now there's only a few million others running loose out there.  This guy was sentenced to two years.
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Hollywood Writers: What To Do With Free Time

With a Hollywood writers strike in the news, it occurred to me that the writers could be facing a lot of free time.

So what to do with all of that free time?

First and foremost, I'd suggest the writers attend a decent church, synagogue, or temple, and pay attention.  Talk with the other people there.  You may be surprised to find that some of them are quite normal.

Spend more time with family.  This can be done in conjunction with the first suggestion.

Go watch the classics.  No, I'm not talking about "Full House".  I'm talking about programming and movies from before you were born.  See how things were done?  See how things could be funny, entertaining, and educational without being preachy, boring, or vulgar?

Take some time to understand what conservative families are really like and what their values really are, and why they live the way they do.  Sit down and talk with a couple who has been happily married for more than thirty years.

Ask if you can do research by following around a CEO or other top business exec.  Maybe you'll learn just how hard many of them work and how they are always working, and that they aren't all just a bunch of fat cats who sit back and get rich for doing nothing.

Come to think of it, this advice can be applied to others idled by the strike, too, since they'll need to understand where the writers are coming from.

In all seriousness, these writers don't get a lot of respect from many of the people with whom they work, even though it is impossible to have most of the entertainment without writers.  Writers should get the same consideration as actors, directors, etc. when it comes to the profits generated from their work, regardless of the medium in which it is being distributed.
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City of Los Angeles Loses Bid to Control Private Workplace

I can’t believe I still get shocked by the shenanigans of the L.A. City government.  Howard Fine of the Los Angeles Business Journal reports:

L.A. Superior Court Judge Ralph Dau issued a tentative ruling voiding the city ordinance that passed in December 2005 that required supermarket retailers to retain existing workers for 90 days after any market with more than 15,000 square feet changes ownership. The law was passed after pressure from unions seeking to retain unionized workforces as the supermarket industry has consolidated; however, it exempts markets with collective bargaining agreements.

The California Grocers Association challenged the ordinance, saying it violated the state food and safety code and that it violated equal protection laws by setting an arbitrary size threshold and discriminating between those stores that have collective bargaining agreements and those that don’t.

Plus, why just grocery stores and not, say, factories?  Why not all businesses?  What a messed up city government.

It’s an undue intrusion on free enterprise.  If the previous owner puts the stipulation into the sale agreement, then that’s fine.  But to have the city intrude and be so arbitrary is ridiculous.  Can you imagine buying a business, finding out you have a bunch of bad employees or a bloated payroll, and you have to keep them all for 90 more days?  I wonder if it would have been possible for the prospective buyer to ask to review the employees and the payroll and demand layoffs or firings before formally agreeing to the purchase?

No matter – for now, the ordnance is voided.  But this is the kind of nonsense that goes on when Big Labor has too much influence over elected officials.

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8 Simple Rules For Dating as Adults

8 Simple Rules For Dating as Adults

You've heard about "8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter" - the book by W. Bruce Cameron and the sitcom.  Well, here are 8 Simple Rules For Dating as Adults, with thanks to Dr. Laura.  Although I'm happily married, I have family and friends who are unmarried, some of whom are looking for a spouse.  So I think about stuff like this.

1. Figure out why you are dating (free or shared entertainment/dinner, sex, casual companionship, appearances, social/familial/professional status or advancement, to find a roommate, to find a spouse) - and seek someone compatible with you who will meet that need.

2. “No”, “don’t”, or “stop” means “no”, “don’t”, or “stop”, despite where you are and what the other person is or isn’t wearing or doing, but going certain places and doing certain things does place someone more at risk for rape, assault, or sex that they later regret and is therefore stupid, even though it doesn't excuse the actions of the other person.

3. Accept the person you date “as-is”.  Do not expect the person to get any better or any more compatible with you and what you are looking for than they are now. If you discover that the person doesn’t meet your needs or has a red flag, stop dating them.  Do not nag, whine, pout, beg, plead, demand, cajole, pressure, or wait any longer.  By dating you are figuring out if this person is right for you, not trying to change them.

4. Marriage prospects are usually no younger than 25 and do not have any minor children.  Parents should be focusing on their kids.  (If you have minor children, you do not date.)

5. Marriage prospects meet each others’ friends and family after an appropriate amount of time, and spend a lot of time with each other, but do not shack up or fornicate.  Fornicating or shacking up is for people who do not want to get married and stay married.

6. Marriage prospects get engaged after about 18-24 months, not three months, not five years of going steady.  “Engagement” means a ring and a date, and is only entered into by people who are reasonably sure they want to marry each other and can stay married to each other.  No ring means being able to date other people.  There is no moving for someone to whom you are not engaged or married.

7. If you are a man who wants children, do not propose to or date a woman who will not either stay home to raise them or happily support you as you stay home to raise them.  If you are a woman who wants children, do not accept a proposal from or date a man who will not either happily support you as you stay home to raise them or will stay home to raise them himself with your respect.

8. Communication that happens while you are apart, through an electronic device, does not replace or count as face-to-face time together.

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Re-Ordering Our Society to Coddle Illegal Aliens

I keep noticing instances where we are asked to change to accommodate, comfort, or assist illegal aliens, or to clean up the problems or complications that they create.  We are asked to do these things instead of cracking down on illegally entering this country or overstaying a welcome.  Amanda Carpenter has the latest example of this.

The “undocumented” have been given plenty of documents to help them enjoy the benefits, perks, and privileges of American citizens.  We are asked to change our laws, and not interfere with identity theft.  We are asked to all learn Spanish.  We are asked to relax code enforcement.  We are asked to make our border EASIER to cross illegally.  We are asked to boost our social programs to help more of them.

Legal immigrants should be the ones conforming to our culture, and most do.  After all, they came here, in large part, because of our culture..  It is absurd that we would go along with conforming to the whims of illegal aliens, and it is an insult to legal immigrants.

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Troops in Middle East For Fifty More Years?

It shouldn't make headlines that a General mentions that our troops could be in the Mideast for fifty more years.

It shouldn't make headlines, but of course it always will.

Why should Iraq be any different than Germany or Japan, as far as how long our troops stay?  Yet, we don't see the MSM clamoring to stir people up over our troops being in all of these other places in the world, long after wars ended.
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Does ‘Dear Margo’ Judge Unfairly, Yet Go Easy on a Louse?

Ah, Margo Howard.  Quite often, she’s good for a laugh.

If Dear Margo got a letter that said this:
DEAR MARGO: I am a very happily married woman with a problem: well-intentioned friends and family. My wife and I are lesbians and not ashamed of it. She is wonderful and is my family.  The problem is that people assume we are just going through a phase. Other than an indelicate "Butt out," is there any way to get them to see that we are really happy and stable? We've been married for five years – we made it official here in our home state of Massechussets. – HAPPILY GAY
Do you think this would be her reply?
DEAR HAP: You may not be ashamed of it, but you have to know that this arrangement would strike most people as being somewhere between odd and morally wrong, it being quite far from the norm. I am not sure why you felt the need to breeze it around that you and your wife are “happy lesbians.”

Because you have, however, essentially invited people to "butt in," you are a little bit stuck in terms of asking them to butt out. I guess the only way to prove yourselves happy and stable is for you two to continue to thrive with your, uh, happy lesbianism.--- MARGO, BEWILDEREDLY
Not a chance.  But you can see for yourself how she responded to a wife who wrote in about the regular female “third wheels” she and her husband share.  For some reason, Margo doesn’t give this wife the same respect, support, and response she would have given a lesbian.  How does Margo know that this woman wasn’t born “polyamorous”, just like her husband?  How can she judge love?

But then there’s the second letter from the same Dear Margo edition.  Imagine she got a letter like this:

DEAR MARGO: I am 25 and married a year. My wife, "Michelle," must've been crafted from the dreams of men to be as perfect as she is. She is the only one in the universe who knows me for me and loves me despite it all. My world without her is simply not a possibility.

But of course, as all your letters detail, there's one teensy-weensy issue. Our lovemaking has become, well, "married": occasional, to-the-point and certainly without any sense of "new." For me, the forbidden element, the adventure, is the exciting element.

I've tried asking specifically for what I think I want, suggesting mild role-playing, and yet I am still drawn to other women. I find myself now in a situation where I am, uh, (seeing? interested in?) occasionally kissing a new friend. It's pure lust, but I really enjoy feeling passionate, desired and sexy. (I've done no more than heavy kissing and have no intention to.)

Sex with my wife is better . . . as long as I am thinking of someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with me? I'm naturally flirtatious and a model to boot, requiring me to get close to fit women, very unlike "Michelle’s" physique. Is it OK to use other women to fuel my wonderful marriage?--- SIZZLE AND SPARK

Do you think this would be her response?

DEAR SIZZ: How lucky you are to have the woman of your dreams. And fortunate, too, that fantasies work for you. They are definitely OK, as well as natural and quite common. They are also a far better solution than fooling around for a temporary thrill and the guilt that goes with it.

"Married lovemaking" cannot sustain the heat of the new, but there are pleasures that come with the familiar. Nothing is wrong with you, except perhaps a little immaturity. Give yourself permission to fantasize all you want, and try to give up the furtive "heavy kissing" with women who look hot to you. Initiate playtime with Michelle and spice it up however you like.

I would think nothing is as sexy as being with a woman you think is terrific. I am betting Michelle  (along with Angelina Jolie, Jessica Simpson, or whoever turns your lights on) will respond.--- MARGO, IMAGINATIVELY

No way. I think Margo would have gone after the guy as a louse.  But you can see how she responded to a woman who wrote a letter like that one.

But then what should I expect?  Margo is just being partial to her own sex and agendas.  It is her column – that is her freedom.  I just think people should be aware of it.

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Can We Please Stop Using the N Word?

Isn't it high time that everyone, regardless of color, stop using the n-word?  I know very few white people who've ever used that word.  But it is time they stopped.  It isn't okay in a rap, it isn't okay in private, it isn't okay in a comedy routine.  Maybe in an academic discussion of history.  Stop it already.
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All Saints Day Is Almost Here

To pull a Biden, I will steal a good line:

Perhaps the greatest deception Satan ever pulled off was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.

Satan does exist.  He was Lucifer, an angel, but he went bad.

There is evil.  Evil is the corruption or the diminishing of good.

Likewise, dark is the absence of light.

Death is the absence of life.

Thankfully, Christ conquered the darkness, defeated death, and overcame evil.  He is the Light and Satan is no match for Him.  I'm also thankful for the saints who have spread the Gospel far and wide.

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True Rights Do Not Obligate Others Without Their Consent

With the latest Democrat debate being less than 24 hours old, I want to remind everyone that true rights do not obligate others without their consent.  Health insurance paid for by someone else?  Not a right.  A formal education - higher or otherwise?  Not a right.

Life? Yes, that's a right.  While pregnancy is an obligation, unless it was a rape, consent to that obligation was implied by behavior.
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