Leaderboard

and you base your *facts* on what? That he "finally* gave an emotional rebuttal after being harassed and accused and bullied for weeks and weeks and weeks by Democrat mudslingers of the 1st order — both in congress and in the media? It's all in what you choose to believe about a person. And, apparently, you choose to believe the worst about a person. Judges, even Supreme Court judges, are not God. None of them are perfect. None of them are without partisanship in one manner or another. Expecting God-like qualities from *anyone* as a prerequisite of fitness is nonsense. Nay, it's more than nonsense.... it's juvenile whining from adults who are apparently unable to understand that life is neither fair nor perfect. Just makes me sick the way Democrats are treating Kavanaugh and the Congressmen (and others) who support him. It's absolutely shameful. And the [mostly] female bullies yelling and shouting and making total a$$es of themselves by getting in the faces of those with whom they disagree are doing nothing to further the cause of abused women and men in society. They've turned it into a *political* issue, when it indeed is not.

I lost my expectations of the "Church". It is a human institution that potentially could be the arm of God but only when it is empowered by the Spirit. When Jesus is no longer the focus, then anything can become the focus.

In recent news, most networks are conceding that Kavanaugh will be confirmed on Saturday by 1 or 2 votes. Thank God truth and justice may prevail. Have any of you seen this? https://michaelsavage.com/is-dr-ford-deeply-tied-to-cia/ https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-23/exposed-cia-honeytrap-set-kavanaugh-accuser-cia-ties

**pffftttt** Stevens should look back at his *own* confirmation hearings. He wasn't exactly a beloved-by-women candidate. From the Dec 9, 1975, Salisbury, Maryland, Daily Times:

What I noticed most of all: The Republicans on the Committee were respectful - of BOTH Ford and Kavanaugh. The Democrats were not respectful of a long serving federal judge. They acted like school-boy bullies!

[ taken from http://www.newsregister.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=173533 ] Former rocker chooses life over fame Published: November 22, 2003 Louis Torres was hurtling hell-bent down a path to self-destruction when, at age 21, he decided to quit his "dream job" as bass guitarist with Bill Haley and the Comets and, instead, turn his life over to God. In the long term, that decision in the late 1960s most assuredly saved his life, Torres said. But in the short term it led him to put his life on the line as an Army medic. "When I left Bill Haley to become a Christian, I also became honest," he said. "So I wrote the draft board and said, 'I've been evading the draft, but here I am.'" Very shortly after coming clean with the draft board, he received a letter with its reply: "You are hereby inducted...." Torres served as a medic in the Army in Korea, trying to save lives. Some of his friends didn't make it back. After completing his service, he studied for the ministry in the Seventh-day Adventist faith. It was an unlikely outcome for a youth who grew up in almost unimaginable poverty and found early success in a vicious inner-city gang. Torres, who is Puerto Rican, grew up in Brooklyn in a world he said was very similar to that depicted in "West Side Story." Along with his five brothers, he grew up desperately poor. And along with them, he was eventually seduced by the power and money that could be theirs as gang members. He got involved in gang activities before he reached his teens, and eventually became a leader in the New York Dragons, the largest Puerto Rican gang in the city. It wasn't the kind of success their mother had hoped - for any of her six sons. "Mother raised us, even though Dad left when I was just a few months old," Torres said. Others offered to take in some of the children and raise them, he said, but his mother was determined to keep her family together. "I am very, very grateful that she kept us together," he said. His mother's spirituality was her own special blend of Catholicism and spiritism, he recalled, and she was very devout, in her own way. Every time air raid test sirens went off in the city, which was quite often, she would stop wherever she was, raise her hands and pray aloud for the safety of each of her children, by name. "It didn't matter where she was, she did this right out in public," Torres said. "If I was with her, it embarrassed me, and I would try to get away and pretend I wasn't with her." Louis got interested in music as a possible way out of poverty when he was 11. The family was much too poor for him to take lessons. Still, his mother somehow managed to give him a guitar that Christmas. It was a dime store guitar, though, and not the bass guitar Torres needed to take his place in a band. "Some friends and I were trying to put a group together, but there were already two guitarists in the group, so the only opening for me was to be bass guitar," he explained. He used the ingenuity born of poverty to make it work. He taught himself bass guitar by loosening the strings on the gift guitar "to make them produce as low of notes as I could," he said. Then he took an old phonograph and listened to 45 rpm records at 16 rpm, trying to hear and replicate the bass part. "I suppose that's a good thing about being poor ®¢ it motivates you and you have to use ingenuity," he said. But that ingenuity also led to some bad things. "I became a warlord. I made toy cap guns into zip guns that shot real .22 bullets. We used them in our gang fights because we couldn't afford real guns." Torres became more and more open about ridiculing religion and anyone who was involved in religion. When he was about 13, he joined friends in forming a band, Donnie and the Twilights, and experienced some success. It was heady stuff. "We had tailor-made sharkskin suits," he recalled. By the time he was 15, his band was part of the rock 'n' roll scene in New York City. That brought another of the trappings of "success." "Drugs came into our lives," he recalled. The band's lead singer, Donnie, had been a really good kid and wanted to be in a band only because he loved to sing. But he was found dead on the ground outside his home, apparently of a drug overdose. "He had such a beautiful voice that Count Basie wanted him to come sing with him," Torres said. "It was devastating." Without Donnie, the band reformed as The Vampires. They found more success, and with that came more drugs and degradation, Torres said. "It isn't anything you plan on. You get caught up. It's part of the environment," he said. The young musicians were invited to hang around and party with performers who had been their idols. "When I saw that they were doing drugs, I thought, 'Well, that must be cool, because they're cool.' Now and then I would feel a sense of guilt, but I was so young and I wanted to be rich and famous. I felt I had to accept the bad things as part of the package." One all-night drug party stands out in Torres' memory. "When we were all high, someone raised the question, 'Who is God?' We talked about that all night. And I remember thinking then, 'If there is a God, I'm really in trouble!'" It frightened him so much, he said, he pushed the thought away. Eventually, he was invited to audition with Bill Haley and the Comets, and he got the job. He was happy for a lot of reasons, he said, including his belief that with this band there would be no drugs. "They were so reputable, and I thought surely they were not involved in that depth of wickedness. "I was wrong. One of the band members had a $200 a day drug habit, which was a huge amount of money in the '60s. After the concerts, he would lock himself in a room and do drugs." Though Haley was not involved with drugs, Torres said, he frequently overindulged in alcohol. Torres increasingly struggled with ambivalent feelings about his so-called success. "I would feel a void. I tried to fill it with alcohol and drugs, but that just wasn't working. " Shortly before he was due to leave on a major tour with the band, he went home to New York, where things had changed considerably among his brothers. One had become Christian, joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church. "He talked to me about the coming of Christ and it infuriated me," Torres recalled. "But I could see he was different now. There was a peace about him and he didn't need to go fight or carouse." Still, Torres refused to allow his brother to speak of religion. Then another of the brothers was baptized, and Torres reluctantly went to the service out of respect. "After he was baptized, my brother, who had seen and done terrible things in our gangs, and had seemingly felt nothing over them, he cried!" Torres said. He left that service wondering about Christianity. "I wondered if it was possible for me to change," he said. "But outwardly, I still argued whenever they tried to talk to me about it." He figured he could put those thoughts on hold until after his world tour with The Comets, but the tour was postponed. While he was waiting, he went to a dance in his old neighborhood. He went up to the balcony and looked down at the scene. "I realized it was all empty, all vanity," he said. At 21, he took the first step toward a new life. I asked, "'God, if you're there, do for me what you did for my brothers.' I prayed, I felt guilt and I cried for the first time in years ®¢ it was as though I had had no feeling for years ®¢ and I asked forgiveness." He quit his job with the band and wrote that fateful letter to the draft board. He has been a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, and more recently an evangelist, ever since graduating from Union Pacific College. He married, and his wife has been an important partner in ministry. His brothers and mother all became Seventh-day Adventists. "Two of us are pastors and others are teachers. Our mother lived to see that, and it made her very happy." Torres and his wife live in Laurelwood, near Gaston. His wife, Carol, is the president of Mission College in the former Laurelwood Adventist Academy facility there. The couple has three grown children and five grandchildren. He is working in evangelism and has written several books, including "Left Behind or Sincerely Taken?", that he hopes will help others. "I spend much of my time trying to encourage young people," Torres said. "I'm trying to help people find new hope. The Bible wants us to have hope.

https://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/story12953-adventist-woman-plants-hundreds-of-churches-in-china

Both my wife and I have LG Nexus 5X smart phones and we use Googlefi as our carrier. [We have found GoogleFi to be much cheaper than our previous Virgin Mobile.] Yesterday, my wife's phone failed. On the Internet I discovered that it was "boot-looping." It was out of warranty, but I decided to call LG this morning and discuss it with them. I had an extended conversation that went on for an hour and 40 minutes, and involved LG telephoning Googlefi and other people. It also involved some self tests that they instructed me how to perform with a dead screen. In the end, LG agreed to fix hour phone for free. They e-mailed me a pre-paid sticker to Fed-X the phone to them. Her phone is now off to them. This is customer service. The phone was out of warranty. They did not have to fix it. But, they did/will. You know, we just might purchase from them again. Gregory Matthews

Have you or anyone close to you ever been accused and basically convicted publically of something as serious as rape or attempted rape? Totally innocent but judged guilty by many without one shred of proof? Your career/ livelihood ,destroyed. Your reputation in tatters, your family ostracized , everything you have worked for 30 years at risk? Based only on the word of one that has serious gaps in credible accusations? If the answer is yes, did you remain calm and reasonable at all times, never stressed to the max as you tried to defend yourself? The difference is that doctor was perfectly honest about everything she did. And you know Kavanaugh was not perfectly honest about what he did HOW? A

IMHO.... 1. As members of the SDA organization, the...um..."Rebels"...have learned the above strategy FROM THE CHURCH. 2. At what point did a difference of opinion become "falsehoods?" 3. (Not that this will ever happen, but) All entities and parties should abandon name-calling and inflammatory language of any sort and work towards understanding and consensus. It is the Holy Spirit that unites. The elephant in the room is the arrogance and persecutory spirit of the nature of the discussion. One has only to add political/civic power and SDA has its own Inquisition. But that is just my opinion.

JoMo, Stinsonmarri is using a little known translation of the Bible that inserts words for the name of God into the text that she prefers to use. In discussions with me, she has agreed to cite that translation that she is using. I recent times, she has forgotten of our agreement and is not doing so. I do believe that she will take this gentle reminder to heart and begin doing so again.

Praise God for the work done by the Holy Spirit in and through those willing and surrendered.

The fundamental issue here is not the ordination of females. It is not likely that Africa is going to approve of such. The fundamental issue here is the centralization of authority. Africa does not want authority centralized in the General Conference.

Late in last December, we purchased a new refrigerator from Sears, which also installed it in our home. We quickly learned that the front doors did not seal properly to keep the cold in. The 1st warranty visit was made n early January. The tech decided that the doors were not properly mounted and made some adjustments. That soon failed. Another tech decided that there was a defective part that needed to be replaced. That part took somewhere between 4 and 6 months to obtain and to be installed. That installed part did not remedy the situation and we informed Sears that we wanted a brand-new replacement refrigerator,along with free installation. The sent a tech out again. That tech took one look, declared the doors to be improperly installed and told us that in 15 minutes he would be gone and the issue would be fixed. So, he went to work with his screwdriver and shortly after he was gone. It worked. The doors now seal properly and keep the cold in. He knew exactly what he was doing and how to fix it. I wonder how much Sears expended in four (4) fix-it visits and the cost of the replacement part that took many months to obtain. Well, I can only say that Sears stuck with us and eventually it was fixed--9 - 10 months.

Revive us again ?

It was Kavanaugh's reaction's at this event this that exposed him, not her accusations. I read some doctor's rant about all the wild things she did as a college student then said should i not be allowed to practice now because of those things? She was in defense of the judge. The difference is that doctor was perfectly honest about everything she did. Kavanaugh historically holds the position that no president can be indited while in office. This may have lead him to be a preferred choice for the President. He undermines public education and has been an arm to serve the interests of right wing fundamentalist. He indeed reflects the current dominant GOP politics. He is politically emotionally loaded, and truly partisan. He cannot be expected to be impartial or neutral in his judicial decisions. This is actually non professional as a Supreme Court Judge. He never presided over a court as judge until appointed by Bush in 2006. In this respect he is not an experienced Judge and was never elected or chosen by legal peers.