Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Twin Survives Several Abortion Attempts, Doing Fine

(By request of the owners of the photos, I took them down.  But here is a video of the twins, at http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1114191272) 

                                     Mother Rebecca Jones: 'It's a miracle'

This story is in The Daily Mail, here, and was also broadcast on Fox News on 11/05/07.

Rebecca and Mark Jones had to make a heart breaking decision about the unborn twin boys in her womb.  One, Gabriel, was weaker than his brother, only half his brother's size, with an enlarged heart 3 times normal size.  Doctors told her that if Gabriel died in the womb, his brother Ieuan could die too.  So with much grief, the Jones let them operate to take Gabriel's life.

But things took an unexpected turn.  First, when they tried to sever Gabriel's umbillical cord to cut off his nutrition, it was so tough they couldn't sever it!  Then they divided the placenta in half instead, to preserve Ieuan's life in case Gabriel died. 

  Gabriel, right, with his twin brother Ieuan, is now a healthy 12lb 6oz at seven months

But tiny Gabriel, weighing less than a pound, put up a fight.  His mom felt him kicking strongly in her womb, the day after the surgery.  His enlarged heart began to shrink, and he gained weight.  He managed to live 5 more weeks until delivery by caesarean section.  The doctors thought what had happened was that when they divided the placenta, that unexpectedly evened out the nutrition between the twins, allowing Gabriel to survive.  At birth, Gabriel weighed nearly 2 pounds and Ieuan weighed 3 1/2 pounds.

At seven months, Ieuan weighs 15 pounds and Gabriel weighs 12 pounds and 6 ounces.  Now they are back at home in Stoke, England - and are so close they are always holding each other's hand.  If one cries, the other reaches out to comfort him.

It seems that nothing was able to break the bond between them.

Methodist-Endorsed Coalition Defends Partial-Birth Abortion

                       (Image from ariustile.com)

The United Methodist Church officially opposes partial-birth abortion.  In fact, delegates to the 2004 UM General Conference voted overwhelmingly to include such opposition in the UM Social Principles. 

Yet two UM agencies - the UM Women's Division and the UM Board of Church and Society - both belong to a group which supports partial-birth abortion.  That is the Washington-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), which has denounced the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the U.S. law that prohibits this gruesome procedure. 

How is it that any UM agencies whatsoever feel free to publicly defy positions taken by the UM General Conference - the one and only law-making body in the UMC?  That is possible because of their being largely independent of what anyone in the UMC thinks or votes - even free from rulings of the General Conference, in effect.  They simply go their own way.  Regardless.

At one time, the Bishops had more responsibility for what the UM agencies did.  But I think I remember that at some point they gave up most of their authority over the agencies.  Since then, the UM agencies have been largely unaccountable to the UMC.  They have done mostly whatever they want, regardless of the official positions of the UMC.  They frequently make public statements supporting exactly the opposite of UMC official positions.  And obviously, they give many the impression that they are speaking for the UMC in such statements.

Even more strange, these largely-autonomous, unrepresentative agencies are given their own delegates to the quadrennial UM General Conference, along with the elected clergy and lay delegates.  This adds to their power.

Two more things can be said about the UM agencies. 

First, the UMC agencies are distressingly unproductive and incompetent. They are huge, swollen, ineffectual bureaucracies.  They accomplish little that is actually helpful to UM congregations or their pastors.  Instead of helping the church to grow, they have presided over its decline.  What they are tasked to produce - help for the church in fulfilling its mission - is of poor quality, largely inferior to what could be obtained by outsourcing with various excellent, more expert para-church ministries from outside the UMC.

Examples?  Sunday school materials, for one.  Pastors have complained for years, or suffered in silence, because the UMC-produced materials are so inadequate.  Much better material can easily be obtained from outside the UMC.

Missions, for another. The General Board of Global Missions (GBGM), on an operating budget of $67 million, fields only 127 missionaries.who are commissioned as salaried, career missionaries overseas.  Even then, most of these are not actually traditional missionaries - evangelists and church planters that is - but teachers of English, etc.  Then there are also hundreds of non-missionary staff.  Yet over 100 years ago, when the Methodist church was a fourth of its present size, it sent around 3000 domestic missionaries, just within the U.S. alone.* 

Today, the Mission Society for United Methodists (MSUM) presently fields 210 missionaries on a budget of only $8 million, with a support staff of only 33   This tiny independent Mission Society, with money voluntarily given, without compulsion, by Methodist individuals and congregations, outstrips the performance of the bloated and far richer GBGM, with 1/8 of the budget and a fraction of the staff.**

Second, the UMC agencies are prohibitively expensive.  Even after successive budget cuts because the denomination is shrinking, these agencies still spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  Further, these funds are forced giving through the compulsory "apportionments" required of all UMC churches.  Methodists are given no choice about such giving.  Yet, what they get in return for such compulsory giving is getting it spent lavishly on atrociously low productivity. 

The UMC agencies are certainly not the sole reason the UMC continues to decline even while the population grows.  But they are a huge part of the institutional "brake" impeding the forward motion of the UMC.  In addition, their continual defiance of the rulings of the General Conference, with public pronouncements so contrary to the beliefs of a great majority of the UMC, do in fact have a negative effect on many congregations, tending to increase the further decline of the UMC.

Can Methodists not manage to do something about their out-of-control agencies? 

_____

* See http://www.ird-renew.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=391221&ct=4075395

** For more detail, see their website, www.themissionarysociety.org  .

Fred Thompson - Laws on Gay Marriage, Abortion

(Click here http://www.blogsforfredthompson.com/fred-thompson-would-support-constitutional-amendment-banning-gay-marriage-and-supports-overturning-r to play the video pictured above.)

In it, Fred Thompson states that he would support a constitutional amendment ruling out gay marriage, and that he thinks Roe v. Wade, the court decision legalizing abortion, should be overturned.

Update: Fred Thompson does NOT support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.  He supports the right of each state to make its own laws concerning marriage, but does not believe states should have to accept the marriage laws of other states.  If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment to prohibit that.

Hillary, George, Methodists and Homosexuality

(Image from home.centurytel)

This one can be a bit tricky to follow, but not really hard.  It is from the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, Best of the Web Today, June 7, 2007, editor, James Taranto (available free by email.)  Here is the story:

"ABC News reports that in 1991, the United Methodist Church--Hillary Clinton's denomination--considered 'changing its view that homosexuality violates Christian teaching.'

"During its deliberations, the church sought an expert opinion from a physician, James Holsinger, who produced an eight-page paper titled 'Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality.'  Holsinger's paper did not address the question of whether 'homosexuality violates Christian teaching.'  Rather, it discussed reproductive anatomy and the medical risks of certain types of male homosexual activity.

"Ultimately, the UMC did not change its position.  As noted here, Mrs. Clinton's church still adheres to the view that 'the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.  Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in the United Methodist Church.'   

"The separation of church and state notwithstanding, the United Methodists' deliberations on homosexuality have suddenly become a subject of interest to the U.S. Senate, because the president has nominated Holsinger to be surgeon general.  According to ABC, 'Doctors who reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over science, and Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say the paper will make his confirmation hearings problematic, if not downright bruising.'

"So what did the paper say?  ABC's Web site headlines the article '"Homosexuality Isn't Natural or Healthy."'  It puts these words in quotation marks even though they are not a direct quote.  We have read the paper and will link to it as soon as we get done warning you that it contains a lot of discussion (in clinical, not vulgar, terms) of the mechanics of sexual intercourse as well as other, less familiar sexual behavior.  OK, here's the link. 

"Here are Holsinger's two main claims:

  - The sexes are "fully complementary."

  - Compared with ordinary intercourse, erotic activity that involves the alimentary tract poses far greater risks   of injury and infection.

"The first of these is obvious to all human beings and probably most lower mammals as well.  The second is obvious to anyone who has occasion to think about the subject.  (To those readers who would rather not, our apologies.)

"At some level this is sort of funny:  Mrs. Clinton's church had to find itself a medical expert to explain the facts of life.  But what is chilling is that Holsinger now finds himself under political attack for stating the obvious.

"This column takes a live-and-let-live approach on this subject, pretty much across the board.  Mrs. Clinton's church's position on homosexuality is nobody's business but Mrs. Clinton and her coreligionists'.  What consenting adults do in private is no one else's business either.

"But when political activists try to render the complementarity of the sexes a taboo subject, and when one of the two major parties seems ready to accede to this Orwellian effort, something is seriously askew in our political culture." (Bolding added.)

(Interestingly, George and Laura Bush are also United Methodists, although that was not mentioned in this article.)

CAN MORE HUMAN PARENTS LOVE THIS MUCH?

In a Zoo in California, a mother tiget gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs, here.

But the cubs were born prematurely and died.  The mother tiger recovered from the delivery, but suddenly, although physically she was fine, her health declined.  Veterinarians felt she was depressed because of the loss of her cubs.  They recommended that she "mother" another mother's cubs.

But no other tiger cubs were available anywhere.  Mothers of one species sometimes have "adopted" babies of another species, but never before in a zoo.  Would it work?  The only orphans that could be found quickly were a litter of weaner pigs.

"The zookeepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger.  Would they become cubs or pork chops?"  Look at the photos.  It worked.  Just as it has many, many times before on farms throughout history.

What is this powerful urge to mother, in fact, to parent?  Is it as strong for humans as for animals? 

Science is confusing here.  On one hand, it may deny that humans have "instincts."  On the other hand, evolutionary science assures us that humans are mere animals, more highly evolved, but still with animal characteristics.

Then there are all the many studies showing that both animal and human would-be mothers even try, sometimes, to steal the infant of another mother. There are news stories every few years about infant-stealing by desperately would-be human mothers  It happens with animals too.  My own German Shepherd almost killed my toy poodle when the poodle insanely tried to "adopt" the shepherd's just-born pups.  The poodle was a long time in healing from the near-fatal gashes and shaking.

It is also widely acknowledged that adults, both humans and animals, grieve more severely when an infant or child is lost than for the loss of a mate or parent.  The death of a child is the worst of all griefs for us humans.

Then what about human anti-parenting behavior?  What about abortion?  Infanticide?  Child neglect?  Child abuse?  Where are the protective mother and father and parenting instincts then?  Apparently they can be distorted or minimal in some people at some times.  Obviously cultural indoctrination can do this.  So can distortions caused by mistreatment in early childhood.

But even when the parent thinks killing or injuring a child is acceptable, there are many indications that the parent is scarred as well.  For instance, a very large percentage of women who have abortions have life-long depression afterwards.  Although these figures are suppressed, too many are known for this result to be denied.  Then there were the women I knew in prison who had killed their own children.  We eventually learned that every one of them lived in some form of mental hell. 

It the drive to parent strong in us?  Look at how many Americans substitute pets for children.  They may love them as children.  Some even dress them up like people.  The "Dog Whisperer" has to train pet owners not to make their dogs psychotic by treating them as people - instead of as dogs.  Why do so many of us treat pets as friends, even as our children?  Is it because our drive to parent is so powerful?

The generations since the sexual revolution of the 60s have tried to suppress or deny their drive toward being parents, in order to live free from the distractions of children.  We know that has harmed children.  But it has harmed the rest of us too.  We know now that the resulting low birthrates of the post-60s generations are causing the de-population of the West.  And that this de-population already threatens our existence as a civilization, here.

Humans obviously do have a basic drive to be parents.  Can we strengthen it?  Re-instate it in our culture?  On time?   Can we learn to parent at least as well as this tiger mother?  For the survival of the West, including the U.S., we somehow have to make it happen.

REPUBLICANS RUSHING OVER CLIFF - AGAIN

Republicans are getting the itch again.  In fact, their fever is soaring.  Ignoring the last time, they are rushing forward again.  "Show them we mean business this time!" is the cry.  "Show them they can't treat us this

      (Image from Univ. of Kent, UK)

way!"  A cliff ahead?  Who cares?  Too late!  All or nothing!

Could we all just slow down a minute?  And take a backward look or two?  Just a few minutes, that's all.

You former Democrats old enough to remember the 1968 elections - remember trashing your candidate, Hubert Humphrey, even knowing that was giving the election to Nixon?  And feeling it was worth it, to show your party they could not disrespect you that way?  Then remember how you felt once Nixon hit his stride, tore down things you had struggled for and started things that horrified you?

You Republicans who were so angry at Bush I that you either stayed home or voted for Perot, knowing that would hand the election to Clinton - remember how you felt as the Clinton years progressed?  (Of course, at least you didn't go so far as to actually vote Democrat.  But in effect, you might as well have.)  Remember trying to reverse the tide in the 1996 Presidential elections, and getting steam-rollered?  No way out, for 8 endless years?  How that felt?

But so what?  You turned it around again in 2000, didn't you?  With Bush. (Remember how glad you were to have him as a candidate?  How you prayed for him?  Didn't some of you even fast, beg and weep as well as pray?)

But remember - we almost lost. Gore won the popular vote.  Remember how incredibly close it was?  How the election was not final for months?  How we then lost the Senate when Jeffords defected?  Couldn't get anything much done?  Even when we barely took the Senate back in 2002?

Remember, after 9/11, how hard it was to get things lined up to go into Afganistan?  Then Iraq?  Remember the constant beating Bush was taking in our press and the world press?  How he was accused of "lying us into Iraq?"

At some point, a lot of us started believing what the MSM (Main Stream Media) were saying (even though those of us who keep up realized they were liberal and anti-Bush.)   We started drawing away from Bush. The numbers showed it. 

At first it was only those conservatives who do not really keep up with what is happening.  But gradually the more knowledgeable began to join them.  The MSM just wore us down.  (Like they did in 1992, when they kept claiming there was a recession - until right after Clinton won, when they admitted the economy was great. "Talking the economy down" - what Clinton later claimed we were doing when his recession started, a little before the 2000 elections. He should know: he invented it.)

Bush was our guy again in the 2004 elections, when we saw what the alternative was.  And when we saw him campaigning hard enough to kill a less healthy man.  But we forgot fast.  Soon the polls showed we were again deserting him.  Then a downward cascade came - Katrina, then Harriet Meiers, then the Dubai port deal, then illegal immigration.  At every step the Democrats and the MSM hammered him harder and louder.  And at every step, more and more of us deserted him.

Of course we were deserting Congress too, but that was less dangerous.  Deserting our own president was the real danger.  Why?  Because it made him too weak.  Too weak to make hard deals internationally.  Too weak for our enemies to fear us.  Too weak to get what we wanted through Congress.  Congress has to fear a President for that to happen. (When you want to move Congress, just support the President against them.  Worked for Reagan.)

Even George Friedman, head of Stratfor and a Democrat, wrote with alarm about how that was hurting the U.S. internationally, both in diplomacy and in war.  (See my post, "Prez Bashing Weakens the U.S." under "Global War on Terror" in column at left, based on what Friedman wrote.)

In short, we made the President weak ourselves.  We did that by constantly bashing him ourselves in order to push our agendas.  We also did that by accepting some or most of what liberal bashers were saying, even when we knew better.  And we chose to ignore that, as a war president, he had to consider things that he could or should not tell us about.  So he got none of the "benefit of the doubt" that previous war-time presidents could count on. 

All that drove his poll numbers down and down.  He was strong enough in character to keep on anyhow.  But by deserting him in droves, we had made him too weak politically to do most of what we wanted. 

Now many are ready to take the next step: deserting the Republican Party.  Already we are talking about staying home or voting independent next time.  OK folks.  Full cycle back to 1992.  Eight more Clinton years, anyone? 

As Hugh Hewitt wrote yesterday, "To paraphrase a great man, 'You go to war with the Party you have, not the Party you want."  I might add, "if you think your party is bad, how much do you want to be ruled by the other party?"

We could jump off the cliff all over again.  We could continue our history of winning elections sometimes, but only when we're not too angry to get out the vote for the only party we might possibly live with, and which also has some chance of winning.  Or we could get serious about governing.  That requires us to develop a longer-term view.

Why?  Courts, for one thing.  Taking back the courts is a marathon, not a sprint.  Bush has gotten 2 of his nominees on the Supreme Court.  But as Hugh pointed out yesterday, 6 of the 9 Justices are over 65.  More vacancies will be coming up.  What President do we want to fill them?  Ours, or theirs?

For another reason, all the legislation we have won during this administration. For instance: the tax breaks, and what they brought - booming economy, millions of new jobs, less deficit.  Every single gain we made can be reversed by a new party in power. 

For another reason, all the future legislation we don't want.  Gay marriage legalized?  Polygamy? More losses of freedom of religion?  Freedom of speech?  Dumb energy policies?  Our armed forces diminished again?  Premature pull-outs from Iraq?  No military responses anymore to anything?  Our education system getting even worse?

So what am I saying - take it easy on illegal immigration issues?  Actually, no.  But it's tricky.

Here's the least we have to do.  Go ahead and push on illegal immigration.  (Just be aware that you're getting pretty shrill.)  But when the legislation is over, win or lose, put on the brakes, at least for now.  There's an election coming in just 6 months.

You have bashed Bush and the Republicans down to the ground.  Now you have to try to turn that around.  And it is important to do it loud, clear and often.  Why?

Because most people do not pay as much attention as those of you who are reading this.  All most of them are going to remember is that they got very mad and disgusted with the Republicans and with Bush.  You helped get them there.  But now, most of them will not change back.  Not in time for this election and maybe several more. 

Unfortunately, they remember to be angry more than they remember why.  This is the great danger in making the big push and stirring up people enough to get their attention.  You can't usually move them back again.  So you have to try as hard or harder than before.

We need to decide; do we want to govern, or not?  If we don't want to do what it takes to govern, then we deserve to be governed by our opponents.  If we don't want to govern in this post 9/11 world, we even deserve to be governed by our enemies!  It could happen.  Think of Europe.  To govern, we have to get together and stay together.  That means in one party.  We have to support our party, and those we elect, before, during and after elections.

Isn't there any other way?  Yes.  But it is a long way down from the top of the cliff.