Sunflower Desert

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted anything and I’ve found this story quite interesting. Why? A few reasons:

1. A state lawmaker in AK grabbing national MSM headlines
2. The state legislator is Richard Foster and is a Democrat
3. The said Democrat has a love of weaponry
4. In 1991 this AK state representative faced federal gun charges for 6 unregistered machine guns and a 50 mm Soviet mortar
5. The man is ill and I wish him a speedy recovery. He has many friends willing to come to his aid too.

The entire article is interesting. Then again, so is the state of AK.

Apr 30, 7:21 AM (ET)

By ANNE SUTTON

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - In 1991, the state representative from Nome faced federal gun charges. Six unregistered machines guns and a 50 mm Soviet mortar were found in Richard Foster’s possession.

In many other places, such troubles could be grounds for a recall or at least cold shoulders. Instead, Foster’s constituents threw a fundraiser to help pay for his defense.

Now facing a more serious challenge - he has a life-threatening kidney disease and needs a transplant - friends once again are rallying to Foster’s side.

Half a dozen people at the Alaska Capitol have offered him one of their kidneys, and more than 200 legislators, staff, lobbyists and well-wishers turned out in Juneau last month to raise money to help cover out-of-pocket expenses for him and his wife, Catherine.

“I was real touched and humbled by it, especially by the donors who came out of the woodwork to help,” said Foster, the father of eight adult children and one teen. “You have all these people in the building here and they are at each other’s throats sometimes but when someone needs help they are the first to step forward.” Silver-haired and easy-going, with a ready, somewhat manic laugh, Foster has a knack for making friends. At the fundraiser, the stories flowed thick and fast about the Democrat’s corny jokes and biting sense of humor.On the House Floor, Foster rarely joins in legislative debate and is often observed leafing through a gun magazine. He is better known for his birthday roasts to colleagues, and for “Fridays at Foster’s,” the end of the week music jam he hosts in his offices.

Foster said most legislative bills aren’t relevant to residents of his far-flung, often icebound northwestern district. He represents Nome, population 3,540, and 28 small native villages - of which only two are connected to each other by road and none to the greater world.

As a lawmaker, his single-minded focus is on the capital budget and its ability to build jobs and infrastructure in remote, cash-poor villages. In homes there, the toilet is often a bucket behind a curtain in a corner off a main room. Seat belt laws mean little to people who rely on all-terrain vehicles or snowmobiles.

“The question is trying to get good safe conditions, water and sewer mostly, and affordable power,” Foster said.

His constituents certainly recognize the importance of seniority and Foster’s success in bringing projects home.

In recent years, those have included schools in White Mountain, Sheldon Point, Hooper Bay, Chevak and Stebbins, the repaving of several airport runways, and smaller community projects like laundromats and dust and erosion control.

The senior member of the House of Representatives, Foster is now in his 10th two-year term. He has also remained a member of the House majority during his long tenure despite a shift in power 14 years ago from Democrats to Republicans.

He kept his party affiliation but joined the Republican caucus with three fellow rural Democrats. The move angered those who were left in the minority, but former lawmaker and Anchorage Democrat Ethan Berkowitz said he came to appreciate the pressures that the state’s handful of rural lawmakers work under.

“If I don’t get a capital project, no big deal. We’ll get it later on,” Berkowitz said. “If he doesn’t get a school, that means his family, his friends, aren’t going to get the education they deserve. That’s a very heavy burden.”

Foster inherited his passion for firearms from his father, former state Sen. Neal “Willy” Foster, who also shared his air taxi business and Will Rogers-style humor with his son.

It was the younger Foster’s zeal for collecting weaponry that landed him in trouble 16 years ago. A Vietnam veteran and former Army captain, Foster grabbed the attention of federal agents when he asked a Juneau machinist to craft some submachine gun parts.

But a sympathetic Nome jury acquitted Foster - to the applause of the gallery.

Former Nome mayor Leo Rasmussen is not surprised that people in the capital are now rallying again to his support.

“Richard is just good old Alaskan in the true sense,” Rasmussen said. “The old Alaskan doesn’t fit the mold of today. They have a genuineness to them that by and large the country has lost.”

At the fundraiser on his behalf, Foster was characteristically low-key. He has been disappointed several times, though he is now undergoing dialysis and has a friend who is being tested as a possible donor.

“I hope this is not an obituary,” he told well-wishers with a soft laugh.

Cry me a freaking river. If this isn’t the stupidest story I’ve seen in ages, and I’ve seen some stupid stories. What a moron. Really, can people get any stupider?

By JULIA SILVERMAN, Associated Press WriterWed Apr 25, 3:27 AM ET

If Gov. Ted Kulongoski seems a little sluggish this week, he’s got an excuse: he couldn’t afford coffee.

In fact, the Democratic governor couldn’t afford much of anything during a trip to a Salem-area grocery store on Tuesday, where he had exactly $21 to buy a week’s worth of food — the same amount that the state’s average food stamp recipient spends weekly on groceries.

I was always given the impression that food stamps were to be considered supplemental. Supplemental to me means that you should provide some food for yourself and not expect taxpayers to foot your entire bill.

Kulongoski is taking the weeklong challenge to raise awareness about the difficulty of feeding a family on a food stamp budget.

Has the idea of getting a job been mentioned to any of these people? If $21 per week is not enough to feed yourself or your family — get a job.

Accompanied by reporters and food stamp recipient Christina Sigman-Davenport, Kulongoski headed straight for a display of organic bananas, only to have Sigman-Davenport steer him toward the cheaper non-organic variety.

The governor pined wistfully for canned Progresso soups, but at $1.53 apiece, they would have blown the budget. He settled instead for three packages of Cup O’Noodles for 33 cents apiece. Kulongoski also gave up his usual Adams natural, no-stir peanut butter for a generic store brand, but drew the line at saving money by buying peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

“I don’t much like the looks of that,” said Kulongoski, 66, staring at the concoction.

Other shoppers in the store were bemused by Kulongoski’s quest.

“Obviously, he doesn’t shop often,” Barb Sours of Salem said, as Kulongoski bounced around the aisles in search of granola. “He’s all over the place.”

Kulongoski did pause to chat with shoppers John and Bonnie White of Salem, telling them all about his $21 limit.

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” John White warned.

Along the way, Sigman-Davenport, a mother of three who works for the state Department of Human Services and went on food stamps in the fall after her husband lost his job, dispensed tips for shopping on a budget. Scan the highest and lowest shelves, she told the governor. Look for off-brand products, clip coupons religiously, get used to filling, low-cost staples like macaroni and cheese and beans, and, when possible, buy in bulk.

At the check-out counter, Kulongoski’s purchases totaled $21.97, forcing him to give back one of the Cup O’Noodles and two bananas, for a final cost of $20.97 for 19 items.

After the hourlong shopping trip, Kulongoski said he was mindful that his week on food stamps will be finite and that thousands of others aren’t so lucky.

“I don’t care what they call it, if this is what it takes to get the word out,” Kulongoski said, in response to questions about whether the food stamp challenge was no more than a publicity stunt. “This is an issue every citizen in this state should be aware of.”

Seriously, every citizen should be aware of this fiasco just so that they are aware that their tax dollars are going towards feeding people who are 9 times out of 10, just too lazy to get a job. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw a few months back:

Work Hard! Millions on welfare are counting on you!

UPDATE: Because I realize I sound a little jaded here, I’m gonna throw a scripture into the mix:

Proverbs 19:15 (New King James Version)

15 Laziness casts one into a deep sleep,
And an idle person will suffer hunger.

From OneNewsNow:

Jim Brown OneNewsNow.comApril 23, 2007

A retired military officer has told an audience of top-level Israeli and American experts that the main problems the U.S. and Israel are having in the war on terror are not military ones. He made his comments at a Washington, DC, conference hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Israel Project called “Democracies Fighting Terror: What Can Israel and the U.S. Learn from Each Other’s Experiences?”

One of the speakers at the conference, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters (U.S. Army-Ret.), observed that the fundamental problem the U.S. and Israel face in fighting terrorism is a crisis in leadership in both countries. He said he believes the “worst possible immorality” for the government of either country would be to lose.

“We’re obsessed upon the misbehavior of the individual soldier or the squad at the roadblock,” Peters asserted. “And I’m not advocating war crimes or indulgence of atrocity — by no means,” he said. “But we need to keep things in perspective. And when Israel or the United States lose, civilization suffers.”

The retired Army officer told the conference crowd that, in order to increase their military effectiveness, both the U.S. and Israel need to reexamine their assumptions about what is moral in war time. He pointed to the bombing of Dresden in World War II as an example.

“It was moral to firebomb Dresden, and actually, I have no problem with the firebombing of Dresden,” Peters says, “but a lot of people that you could have described as technically innocent died. And yet, if a soldier shoots one civilian, it’s a war crime.”

And so, the lieutenant colonel continued, “you have this bizarre discrepancy where pilots can kill hundreds of the innocents and their careers advance. If we have an incident — especially if the media is there, of course — where one or two or three civilians die in a misunderstanding at a roadblock, there’s a huge investigation.”

Peters is author of the forthcoming book, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century (Stackpole Books, 2007). He says he remains an adamant supporter of Israel because it is willing to live in peace with its neighbors, while significant numbers of its neighbors want it destroyed and every Jew dead.

Go figure. Tieki Rae posted the story before leaving for work this morning. A must read.

I commented on the HotAir VTech thread over the weekend, and see-dubya thought this story was as obnoxious as I do. Here is part of Cornell’s President Skorton’s speech:

“We are one,” said Cornell President David Skorton. “We are one community, one people, one planet. We are here today to affirm that oneness … We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our family at Virginia Tech University who have met an untimely and terrible fate.”

And, he said, “We are here for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed.”

He added that those present were there to “join with our friends in the Korean and Korean-American communities for we are all one family, most especially today we share the same sorrow and the same need for comfort and reassurance.”

As if honoring a killer isn’t bad enough in your speech. According to the Cornell Daily Sun:

The bells of McGraw tower rang 33 times before the service, once for each of the victims, and the daily afternoon chimes concert began just as people began filing out of Sage Chapel.

What a disgrace.

UPDATE: Tieki Rae elaborates for us. Excellent post at her place.

Wow, this is a Republican candidate I could vote for. Of course, I still like Brownback too. It’s not like I have to make my mind up today and I honestly believe Brownback most likely has the same view on the 2nd Amendment as Fred does. But, this post is about Fred. So, I need to give Fred the stage for the time being. My child will browbeat me for using the term electability, so I’ll skip that for now.

By Fred Thompson

One of the things that’s got to be going through a lot of peoples’ minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke, and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms — and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.

The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. More to the point, incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.

Still, there are a lot of people who are just offended by the notion that people can carry guns around. They view everybody, or at least many of us, as potential murderers prevented only by the lack of a convenient weapon. Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus.

In recent years, however, armed Americans — not on-duty police officers — have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. Evidence from Israel, where many teachers have weapons and have stopped serious terror attacks, has been documented. Supporting, though contrary, evidence from Great Britain, where strict gun controls have led to violent crime rates far higher than ours, is also common knowledge.

So Virginians asked their legislators to change the university’s “concealed carry” policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older who have passed background checks and taken training classes. The university, however, lobbied against that bill, and a top administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.

The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on “the authorities” for protection.

Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled “shoe bomber” Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.

When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I’ve seen one of those “Gun-free Zone” signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I’ve always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don’t mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

Hat Tip to Allah over at HotAir. Something tells me Fred’s his man.

I was clicking over to FOX news and saw this. I just had to swipe it. LOL.

Are we suppose to answer that?

Let me start by stating that I hate polls. That being said, I like this one. It seems honest and anyone with common sense has to realize that gun owning restrictions only help criminals. Apparently, 19% of Americans (or people polled) have no common sense. But that’s neither here nor there. Who cares?

The latest FOX News poll finds that about one of five Americans (19 percent) believes tougher gun laws can help stop shootings like the one at Virginia Tech, while a 71 percent majority disagrees.

Majorities of gun owners (78 percent) and non-gun owners (64 percent) alike believe that so-motivated individuals will always find ways around gun laws.

Democrats (29 percent) are more than three times as likely as Republicans (8 percent) to say they think tougher gun laws could help stop these kinds of shootings.
You can read the entire article ….

Lol! The bit above just proves what most of us have known all along. Democrats are 3X more likely not to have common sense than Republicans.

I’m blogging from personal experience with this particular ministry. My husband and I have been involved in youth ministry since 1989 and were actually youth pastors from 1996 through 2006. Extremely rewarding. Teenagers are awesome, but we are glad to be in a different chapter of life right now

As a matter of fact, my husband has just started a daily devotional that he sends out Monday through Friday via email. If you can overlook a typo here and there, and a little grammatical incorrectness and would like to be on his mailing list, just let me know. There is no solicitation for money. He just loves ministering to people.

I found this article on BattleCry at OneNewsNow. So, if you have teenagers, listen up!

Allie Martin OneNewsNow.comApril 18, 2007

The founder of Teen Mania Ministries says more teenagers are ready to take an offensive stand in the culture war. This past weekend, more than 30,000 teenagers attended a “BattleCry” event at Ford Field in Detroit, where they were encouraged first to make sure they have a relationship with Christ, then to give up their love for the world and focus on Jesus.

Ron Luce is founder of Teen Mania Ministries, which sponsors these evangelical stadium events that give teenagers the opportunity to accept Christ as Savior, and then commit to live out their faith on a daily basis.

Luce says parents should make a lasting investment in the lives of their teens by getting them to a BattleCry gathering. “A lot of parents are like, ‘I’m frustrated with my kids, I don’t know what to do to get through to them, I don’t know how to help them.’” And when their young people have real problems, he adds, many of these parents say they end up paying a lot of money for a psychologist or the like.

But the Teen Mania Ministries spokesman believes the kind of spiritual help offered at a BattleCry event can be just the kind of life-changing experience teens need. He says tens of thousands of teenagers have already been impacted through the events.

“Wouldn’t it be worth loading up your kids in your car, maybe getting some of their friends and going to an event that could absolutely transform their life?” Luce asks. “They’d see five, ten, twenty thousand of their peers worshipping God and hearing the Word of God preached,” he notes; “and, sure, it’s a little sacrifice for you, but a little sacrifice could end up being a miraculous encounter for your own kids.”

The final BattleCry event for this year takes place next month in Virginia. Luce says Christian teenagers must be encouraged and taught to break free from the lure of popular culture, which is what these dynamic, youth-targeted stadium ministry events are all about.

Our daughter has gone on 2 short term mission trips with Teen Mania Ministries, and we’ve also sent at least a dozen other teenagers in our youth groups on short term trips with them. They are extremely reputable, and they really do impact the lives of youth throughout the nation. We have probably attended 10 Acquire the Fire youth rallies. Good times

UPDATE: Per Velvet’s request:

This is our small group waiting to get in the doors (2004)

Below is Ted with our friend Josh McDowell

Ron Luce:

And, how about a baby picture of Harley just to round things off:

Oh my, I could use a little good news today and this is just the ticket.

Hat Tip: Allah at HotAir.

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON Apr 18, 2007 (AP)— The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Read the entire article ….