Searchingtoo's Blog

Ben Stein

If in fact the government will make no laws in respect to religion, then why are churches on the law as tax exempt?

They will be able to write of f anything that is donated to charities, or used for charitable expenses.. just like anybody else.The utilities, building, payroll expenses, pamphlets they hand out, all would be an expense of doing business.

Do  ministers pay taxes? It is a salary and they go to work like everyone else.

Is a house given to a minister, considered as part of his pay? Or does he pay Capital gains on it? Or at the very least does the church pay gift tax?

If a church is truly blessed, wont God provide plenty of money to give unto God what is God's and give unto Ceasar, what is Ceasar's?

Why did this practice begin? If they werent tax exempt, then they could feel free to have all the same freedoms of speech as everyone else. And if the speech was blessed, wouldnt God make sure they they had all the money that they needed to do his work?

Just curious....

The following 'speech' was written recently by an ordinary Maine-iac [a resident of the People's Republic of Maine ]. While satirical in nature, all satire must have a basis in fact to be effective This is an excellent piece by a person who does not write for a living. But beautifully written and so much of it is true!

The speech George W. Bush might give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying 'My Fellow Americans.' Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.
I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.
Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media.

Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied...People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?
Now some of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan , a nuclear ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to Al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to re-elect him. He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel . Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy
The New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that 's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America .

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

Here is the video of Philip Berg talking about his case against Obama...

All I have to say is What are you hiding Obama?

Produce the documents....

i have put up two blogs in the last week and fox took them down.. Ok one has a picture of a guy impaled on a fence.. it was funny and gory... but ok.. lived with that one.

When i addressed a story on  their front page that they reported SIDS deaths down by half in 15 years due to babies sleeping on their backs.. I refuted this claim. Laying out all the other changes that took place in the last 15 that would account for the SIDS death decline.... They took it down

WHAT KINDA NAZI organization is this turning into?

Well, I wondered when Bush and his cronies were going to pull this out of their pockets:

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
October 3, 2008

In House debate on the banker “rescue” bill, Rep. Brad Sherman told his fellow Congress critters the government will declare martial law and the stock market will drop 3,000 points if the bill is not passed. “The panic-mongers were to the point of telling people the market would drop 3,000 points and there would be martial law,” said Sherman.

Sherman’s comment was not in the same context as a comment issued by Rep. Michael Burgess earlier in the week. Burgess, who appeared on the Alex Jones Show, said Pelosi threatened to invoke House rule XIII(6)(a), described as “martial law,” intended to suspend normal procedures and safeguards and thus allowing the House leadership to operate in a more authoritarian fashion. Sherman, however, said martial law would be declared on Wall Street, not in the House.

Rep. Sherman said the “exaggerated fear-mongering turned out not to be true” and the House “can draft a good bill,” regardless of the pressure put on representatives to pass the banker bailout bill.

The bailout plan is not only “economic fascism,” as Richard Viguerie has correctly noted, designed to loot the U.S. Treasury and reorganize and further consolidate elite control over the economy, but it is also a brazen effort to impose a martial law and dictatorship. Paulson’s role as financial dictator, not answerable to Congress or the American people, fully compliments additional steps taken over the last few years.

As former California congressman Dan Hamburg said earlier this year, the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act gives the executive the power to invoke martial law in case of “major public emergencies,” not limited to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack,” but also “any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.” Obviously, a financial crash and ensuing social chaos of the sort now being implemented by the ruling elite would be characterized as a dire emergency and a near perfect excuse to impose martial law, a long standing goal of the elite.

As well, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, codifying indefinite imprisonment of dissidents, and the National Security Presidential Directive 51, ensuring the “continuity of government” in the event of a “catastrophic emergency,” are tools the government will most assuredly use after the economy implodes, now a foregone conclusion according to many economists.

Numerous Bilderberg pronouncements, dutifully reported here at Infowars and Prison Planet but ignored by the larger corporate media, reveal what the global elite have in mind for us — an engineered economic crash followed by a consolidation of wealth under fire sale conditions. In order to successfully accomplish this, the elite must impose martial law and “maintain public order,” that is to say force the public to accept their terms by military force.

As the Army Times reported last month, a battle-hardened “homeland” brigade is now “going domestic” after spending time in Iraq. It appears this illegal deployment (under Posse Comitatus) is designed to respond to “public disorder” as the economy is deliberately and cynically dismantled at the behest of our rulers who are now investing in the Treasury and the executive, with the complicity of Congress, dictatorial powers heretofore unheard of in America.

Sabrina Walker, who spent $267,000 of a state check within hours after learning it had been issued to her by mistake, got a nine-month sentence.

By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune

Last update: October 3, 2008 - 12:15 AM

Sabrina Walker

.

• For the first time since she erroneously received aa $2.6 million check from the state and went on a spending spree that included cars and jewelry, Sabrina Walker told her story Thursday, tearfully saying she never imagined herself in court for a criminal sentencing.

"Indeed this was a mistake. I didn't create this," she said. "I didn't swindle the state. I didn't trick anyone. I have suffered greatly from the moment this has been done. My dreams have been shattered."

Walker, 38, of Minneapolis, asked for mercy and compassion. District Judge Marilyn Rosenbaum noted that after calling the Department of Health and Human Services about the check and establishing it wasn't for her, Walker went out and spent $267,000 within a few hours.

Rosenbaum said Walker had already been given some mercy and sentenced her to nine months in the workhouse -- three months longer than a presentence investigation report prepared by the county suggested. She agreed to allow Walker to be released for classes and work.

Late in March 2007, a check intended for the Hennepin County Medical Center was addressed and sent to Walker when a state employee typed a single digit wrong.

The typing was proofread, but the error went unnoticed. Walker had a state vendor number because she had been paid $84 in October 2006 as a witness who testified in Hennepin County District Court. The bigger check cleared the state treasury on April 4, 2007.

Walker and her then-boyfriend, Charles Lockhart, went on a spending spree, buying several vintage and luxury automobiles, jewelry, retirement accounts and a U.S. Treasury bond worth $500,000. She also used $100,000 to pay off a student loan.

Some charges were dropped

Walker pleaded guilty in late July to failure to pay over state funds. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to ask for no more than a nine-month sentence and three years' probation, although they could have asked for a year in jail.

In exchange for Walker's plea, four other charges were to be dropped, including theft by swindle, appropriating lost property, concealing criminal funds and theft of more than $35,000.

Lockhart also faced similar criminal charges when the incident came to light in the summer of 2007, but charges against him were dismissed in exchange for his cooperation.

Walker's lawyer Eric Olson noted that one witness in the case, a bank employee, said Lockhart appeared to be a driving factor during banking transactions. Lockhart received no jail time for his role, Olson told the judge.

But Rosenbaum said she didn't handle Lockhart's case and wouldn't consider his role. "I had no part in or understanding of what went on," she said.

The judge said Walker's "thread that someone else was to blame" is "not credible."

Olson talked about how Walker will continue to pay back her debt, stay employed and never be before the court again. She also is working on her master's degree and has managed to continue to make payments on her town home.

Rosenbaum said to her, "I hope that you're not back. I hope nothing goes wrong in the next three years so you don't have to see me again."

Walker is on probation for three years. With good behavior, she could be out of the workhouse in about six months. She also will receive credit for the 17 days she served in jail after her arrest in 2007.

Walker said those days were the worst of her life and have caused a continuing case of depression.

Money was for needy patients

Before sentencing, assistant attorney general Cara Hawkinson, who works with human services, said the state has not been made whole since the check was cashed by Walker. She noted the funds sent to Walker were intended to cover health care for needy patients.

Prosecutors say some $2.1 million has been recouped as well as various cars and funds. "A lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of energy and effort" have gone into reclaiming the funds, Hawkinson sai

iDIOT.. she knew that wasnt her money.. she checked on it first.. then proceeded to go crazy.. if you know it is wrong.. it is wrong... this wasnt YOUR dream.. this was flat out thieving!

City officials suspended classes after finding the victims, most of whom had been bound and tortured.Some were only partially clothed, said Prisna Perez, state police spokeswoman in Tijuana.

Baja California state attorney General Romel Moreno said that seven of the victims had their tongues cut out. He said a plastic bag containing five human tongues was also found near the bodies. "We're in a war," Moreno told a news conference late Monday. "We're in a constant battle."

Moreno said at least three of the victims were teenagers.

He said the federal attorney general's office has taken over the investigation.

Baja California attorney general's office spokesman Jose Manuel Yepiz said the 12 bodies were discovered next to a message written on a white piece of cardboard that read, "This is going to happen to all of those who are with 'The Engineer' for being blabbermouths."

Minutes after the grisly discovery, four other bodies were found in another empty lot in Tijuana, and two other bodies were discovered late Sunday in a lot next to a factory.

Investigators believe 16 of the victims were killed by warring drug gangs. The other two were victims of street crime, Yepiz said.

He said police also found a message with the four bodies found in an empty lot in a residential area that read, "I'm not a traitor but I don't like to be with in the company of cowards."

Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, said the killings come as the Arellano Felix cartel suffers internal strife and seeks to fend off Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's push into the region.

Tijuana is among the cities hardest hit by violence as Mexico's drug cartels battle for lucrative smuggling routes past the border to supply illegal drug users in the United States.

Nearly two years ago, President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide battle to take back territory controlled by some of the world's most powerful drug gangs, and the cartels have responded with unprecedented violence.

The violence has battered Tijuana's once-boisterous tourist economy, silencing discos and shops.

And the War in Mexico lives on..........

In Lusby, MD a seven year old girl was found wondering around the streets, obviously abused. When investigators went to the girl's home, they found the bodies of two siblings in the freezer incapsulated in ice. All were adopted.

Here is the whole story, including mugshot of the mother-- I use the term loosely.

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. -- Ted White wants to know what it takes to fire a police officer. White was falsely accused of child molestation and spent five years in prison. Ten years ago, Lee's Summit police Officer Richard McKinley was the lead detective in the case that focused on White. However, a jury didn't know that McKinley was having an affair with White's wife. McKinley also ignored evidence that could have cleared White.

Here's the whole story