Our Story (Short Version)

Our Story (Short Version)

We moved to McIntosh County Georgia in 1999. I was very sick and my mind was messed up because a doctor misdiagnosed my case and gave me meds that nearly killed me and messed up my brain chemistry.  The locals did not like us because my wife and I have Cherokee decent and were opposed to their racism. They began to tear up our property at night, poisoned our horses, stole one of our dogs, and were shooting at us while we worked. I have to admit, at the time I was till sick and fought back without thinking they could use it against me later. And they have spread many false rumors about us. The current sheriff is evil, and the local GBI and FBI are on his side. We are basically on our won, unless we get the new sheriff elected. While my wife was fighting leukemia they fired loud weapons when I politely asked them if they would not, just to make it rougher on her. They have torn up our horse feeder pens several times and put out things to harm our horses in feed. They were here last night with a sheriff's deputy vehicle as their back up. If we did not pray we probably would not be making it. They pick on us because we are in our 60s and basically no one in our neighborhood would care if we did not make it.
They even had planes diving over our property to cause our horses to panic and shot very loud weapons that caused our horses to panic. We are all alone. We have written the ACLU, Amnesty, and many other organizations. No one will help.

PETITION: Justice for Obie and Bebe- The English Bulldogs Killed in Arkansas Fire

PETITION: Justice for Obie and Bebe- The English Bulldogs Killed in Arkansas Fire

http://www.causes.com/actions/1693277?causes_ref=email&recruiter_id=154226573&template=activity_invitation_mailer%2Factivity_invitation&utm_campaign=action_invitation_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes

Pit Bull Puppies Poisoned At Pit Bull Awareness Event

Pit Bull Puppies Poisoned At Pit Bull Awareness Event

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/pit-bull-puppies-poisoned-at-pit-bull-awareness-event.html#ixzz29xLhKcEG

• by Megan Drake
• October 19, 2012
• 4:00 pm

Pennsylvania is not known as very animal friendly as evidenced by the legality of live pigeon shooting in the state.  Now comes an alarming story of six 8-week-old pit bull puppies who were poisoned while attending a pit bull awareness event in Hollidaysburg.  How’s that for irony?

Founders of A Darrah Bull Bully Rescue (ADBBR) brought the pups to the first annual Central Pennsylvania Pit Bull Awareness Day on Saturday, October 13.  At about 2:00 p.m. Renae Metz, one of the founders, noticed that one of the puppies, Yogi, looked like he was having trouble.  “His stomach was bloated, he had glazy eyes and couldn’t hold his head up,” said Metz.

Yogi was rushed to Ebensburg Animal Hospital where he died.  The other five pups – Niayah, Mongy, Aramis, Deacon and Takoda – were sent to the animal hospital for observation and given IV fluids.  Tragically, Takoda also died.

A necropsy confirmed poisoning.  Brittany Miller, another founder of ADBBR, spoke with me by telephone and relayed the veterinarian suspected bleach or a bleach-based product was put in the water bowls.  This caused their livers to start bleeding.  Two days before, the puppies were given a clean bill of health by the veterinarian.

ADBBR is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to a conviction of the perpetrators.  The money was generously donated by some of the adoptive parents, and others, with a $1,000 donation from a single person.  Both the Pennsylvania State Police and the State Dog Warden are actively investigating this poisoning.

All of the surviving puppies have been approved for adoptive homes.  Media coverage brought numerous applications.   Niayah, Aramis, Deacon and Mongy are all back in their foster homes awaiting final adoption.  Brittany told me the veterinarian wants to wait a little longer to spay/neuter because of the poisoning.  He wants to ensure it is totally out of their systems before surgery.

Understanding Bully Breeds

ADBBR rescues all bully breeds — from Rottweilers to bulldogs and pit bulls.  They are dedicated to educating the public about bully breeds.  Did you know in the early twentieth century pit bulls used to be called “nanny dogs” because they were so dedicated to protecting the young children of their household?

It’s important to understand that any dog has the potential to bite humans.

Without proper socialization as a puppy within a loving home, any dog can become aggressive.  If a dog – any breed – is raised to be violent you have the possibility of aggression causing harm to humans and/or other animals.

It is also imperative that people — especially children — be taught humane education and the proper way to interact with unfamiliar dogs and other animals.  According to the American Humane Association (AHA), of the 4.7 million estimated dog bites each year almost 800,000 require medical intervention.  Fifty percent of the attacks were on children under the age of 12.

Many townships have passed breed-specific legislation (BSL) but this only serves to provide a false sense of security, because any dog can become aggressive.  BSL is expensive and often poorly-enforced, therefore providing little protection to the general public from dog bite incidents.

The AHA reports 25 different breeds of dogs were involved in 238 fatal dog attacks in the U.S. and sites “responsible breeding and ownership, public education and enforcement of existing laws are the most effective ways of reducing dog bites.”

Check out events for the 6th National Pit Bull Awareness Day, being held this year on October 27.

So yes, that adage “it’s the deed, not the breed” is something we should all be aware of.

Take a look at some photos of the poisoned puppies Brittany Miller shared with me.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/pit-bull-puppies-poisoned-at-pit-bull-awareness-event.html#ixzz29xMD1Aep

PETITION: Arrest Cyber Bullies Responsible for Amanda Todd's Death October 12 ·

PETITION: Arrest Cyber Bullies Responsible for Amanda Todd's Death

October 12 · Started by Amanda Saracen · Invite Friends

To: Royal Canadian Mounted Police & Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Cyber bullying is a serious crime that needs to be addressed. Please show authorities that we want the people that bullied Amanda Todd to death arrested and held responsible for their actions. We may have not been there to help Amanda when she was alive but we can do something to make a difference now.

http://www.causes.com/causes/797178-demand-that-the-people-that-bullied-amanda-todd-to-death-are-held-responsible/actions/1692427?causes_ref=email&recruiter_id=125553287&template=activity_invitation_mailer%2Factivity_invitation&utm_campaign=action_invitation_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes

http://youtu.be/0ocvs5kNDSs

SAVE NATIVE BURIAL SITE 36LA1100 LANCASTER PA

SAVE NATIVE BURIAL SITE 36LA1100 LANCASTER PA

http://www.causes.com/causes/797389-save-native-burial-site-36la1100-lancaster-pa

PETITION: To stop Hogan and Herr contractors from erecting homes on ancient Native American burial grounds.

This site known as Shenks Ferry 36LA110 in Lancaster pa, is considered to be one of the most significant finds on the Northern East coast.

We want Hogan and Herr to respect and recognize that these Native American people once lived and died here.

The remains were found placed in ceremonial burial positions

They were removed and placed in storage in a museum in Pennsylvania.

We are petitioning to designate a small portion of this land to be recognized as a burial site and our ancestors be reburied in the ceremonial positions that they were found in,

Respectfully,
Gregory Ghosteagle Payne
Karen Young
A.I.M. Lancaster Pa

-- 
"When crazy people call you crazy, you know you're sane. 

When evil people call you evil, you know that you are a good person. 

When lairs call you a liar, you know that you are truthful. 

Know who you are and don't let others tell you who you are." - Dave Kitchen

Romney and the White Horse Prophecy

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/mitt_and_the_white_horse_prophecy/

(Personal Note: Scary.)

A close look at the roots of Romney's -- and the Mormon church's -- political ambitions

BY SALLY DENTON

The White Horse Prophecy foresaw Mormons in politics. (Credit: iStockphoto/66North/Reuters)

When Mitt Romney received his patriarchal blessing as a Michigan teenager, he was told that the Lord expected great things from him.  All young Mormon men — the “worthy males” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it is officially known — receive such a blessing as they embark on their requisite journeys as religious missionaries.  But at 19 years of age, the youngest son of the most prominent Mormon in American politics — a seventh-generation direct descendant of one of the faith’s founding 12 apostles—Mitt Romney had been singled out as a destined leader.

From the time of his birth — March 13, 1947 — through adolescence and into manhood, the meshing of religion and politicswas paramount in Mitt Romney’s life. Called “my miracle baby” by his mother, who had been told by her physician that it was impossible for her to bear a fourth child, Romney was christened Willard Mitt Romney in honor of close family friend and one of the richest Mormons in history, J. Willard Marriott.

In 1962, when Mitt — as they decided to call him — was a sophomore in high school, his father, George W. Romney, was elected governor of Michigan.  Throughout the early 1960s, Mitt collected petition signatures, campaigned at his father’s side, attended strategy sessions with his father’s political advisors, and interned at his father’s office during all three of his gubernatorial terms.  He attended the 1964 Republican National Convention where his father led a challenge of moderates against the right-wing Barry Goldwater. Although he was fulfilling his spiritual obligation as a Mormon missionary in France in 1968 while his father was the front-running GOP presidential candidate, Mitt was kept apprised of the political developments back in the U.S.

Upon completion of his foreign mission, he immersed himself in the 1970 senatorial campaign of his mother, Lenore Romney, who was running against Phillip Hart in the Michigan general election. That same year, the Cougar Club — the all male, all white social club at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City (blacks were excluded from full membership in the Mormon church until 1978) — was humming with talk that its president, Mitt Romney, would become the first Mormon president of the United States. “If not Mitt, then who?” was the ubiquitous slogan within the elite organization. The pious world of BYU was expected to spawn the man who would lead the Mormons into the White House and fulfill the prophecies of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr., which Romney has avidly sought to realize.

Romney avoids mentioning it, but Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an “army of God” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that “they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them.”  Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church.  He had predicted the emergence of  “the one Mighty and Strong” — a leader who would “set in order the house of God” — and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.

Smith’s insertion of religion into politics and his call for a “theodemocracy where God and people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteous matters” created a sensation and drew hostility from the outside world.  But his candidacy was cut short when he was shot to death by an anti-Mormon vigilante mob. Out of Smith’s national political ambitions grew what would become known in Mormon circles as the “White Horse Prophecy” — a belief ingrained in Mormon culture and passed down through generations by church leaders that the day would come when the U.S. Constitution would “hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber”  and the Mormon priesthood would save it.

Romney is the product of this culture. At BYU, he was idolized by fellow students and referred to, only half jokingly, as the “One Mighty and Strong.”  He was the “alpha male” in the rarefied Cougar pack, according to Michael D. Moody, a BYU classmate and fellow member of the group.  Composed almost exclusively of returned Mormon missionaries, the club members were known for their preppy blue blazers and enthusiastic athletic boosterism. Romney, who had been the assistant to the president of the French Mission where he was personally in charge of more than 200 missionaries, easily assumed a leadership position in the club.

Both political and religious, the Cougar Club raised funds for the school and its members emulated the campus-wide honor and dress codes, passionately disavowing the counterculture symbolism of long hair, bell-bottom jeans and antiwar slogans that were sweeping college campuses throughout America.  They held monthly “Fireside testimonies” — Sacrament meetings at which each member testified to his belief that he lived in Heaven before being born on Earth, that he became mortal in order to usher in the latter days, and that he recognized Joseph Smith as the prophet, the Book of Mormon as the word of God, and the Mormon church as the one true faith.

Such regular testimonies encouraged the students to live devout lives and to resist the encroaching outside influences overtaking the nation at large. “It helps them cope with such external pressures as evolution-teaching professors and cranky anthropologists who expect answers that conflict with LDS teachings,” according to James Coates, author of “In Mormon Circles.”

They traditionally hosted frat-like parties (Greek fraternities were banned from the campus) to raise a few thousand dollars for the college’s sports teams.  But Cougar president Romney drove the young men to aim higher, orchestrating a telethon that raised a stunning million dollars. Romney’s position as head of the club was widely seen as a calculated steppingstone for a career in national politics.

So it seemed disingenuous to his former club mates when, in a 2006 magazine interview, Romney denied his longtime political aspirations. “I have to admit I did not think I was going to be in politics,” he toldthe American Spectator.   “Had I thought politics was in my future, I would not have chosen Massachusetts as the state of my residence.  I would have stayed in Michigan where my Dad’s name was golden.”

Michael Moody says political success was an institutional value of the LDS church.

“The instructions in my [patriarchal] blessing, which I believed came directly from Jesus, motivated me to seek a career in government and politics,” he wrote in his 2008 book.  Moody recently said that he ran for governor of Nevada in 1982 because he felt he had been divinely directed to “expand our kingdom” and help Romney “lead the world into the Millennium. Once a firm believer but now a church critic, Moody was indoctrinated with the White Horse Prophecy.  Like Romney, Moody is a seventh-generation Mormon, steeped in the same intellectual and theological milieu.

“We were taught that America is the Promised Land,” he said in an interview.”The Mormons are the Chosen People.  And the time is now for a Mormon leader to usher in the second coming of Christ and install the political Kingdom of God in Washington, D.C.”

In this scenario, Romney’s candidacy is part of the eternal plan and the candidate himself is fulfilling the destiny begun in what the church calls the “pre-existence.”

Several prominent Mormons, including conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, have alluded to this apocalyptic prophecy.  The controversial myth is not an official church doctrine, but it has also arisen in the national dialogue with the presidential candidacies of Mormons George Romney, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and now Mitt Romney.

“I don’t think the White Horse Prophecy is fair to bring up at all,” Mitt Romney told the Salt Lake Tribune  when he was asked about it during his 2008 presidential bid.  “It’s been rejected by every church leader that has talked about it.  It has nothing to do with anything.”

Pundits  and scholars , rabbis  and bloggers , have repeatedly posed the question during Romney’s run: Is a candidate’s religion relevant?  With a startling 50 percent  increase of recently polled American voters  claiming to know little or nothing about Mormonism, another 32 percent rejecting Mormonism as a Christian faith, a whopping 42 percent saying they would feel “somewhat or very uncomfortable”  with a Mormon president, and a widespread sense that the religion is a cult , the issue is clearly more complicated than religious bigotry alone.  Judging from poll results, Americans seem less prejudiced against a candidate’s faith than concerned about the unknown, apprehensive about any kind of fanaticism, and generally uneasy about a religion that is neither mainstream Judaic nor Christian.

Just as the Christian fundamentalism of former GOP candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry informed their political ideology — and was therefore considered fair game  in the national dialogue — so too does Mormonism define not only Mitt Romney’s character, but what kind of president he would be and what impulses would drive him in both domestic and foreign policy.

Romney’s religion is not a sideline, but a crucial element in understanding the man, the mission and the candidacy.  He is the quintessential Mormon who embodies all of the basic elements of the homegrown American religion that is among the fastest growing religions  in the world.  Like his father before him, Romney has charted a course from missionary to businessman, from church bishop to politician — and to presidential candidate.  The influence that Mormonism has had on him has dominated every step of the way.

The seeds of Romney’s unique brand of conservatism, often regarded with intense suspicion by most non-Mormon conservatives, were sown in the secretive, acquisitive, patriarchal, authoritarian religious empire run by “quorums” of men under an umbrella consortium called the General Authorities.   A creed unlike any other in the United States, from its inception Mormonism encouraged material prosperity and abundance as a measure of holy worth, and its strict system of tithing 10 percent of individual wealth has made the church one of the world’s richest institutions.

A multibillion-dollar business empire that includes agribusiness, mining, insurance, electronic and print media, manufacturing, movie production, commercial real estate, defense contracting, retail stores and banking, the Mormon church has unprecedented economic and political power. Despite a solemn stricture against any act or tolerance of gambling, Mormons have been heavily invested and exceptionally influential in the Nevada gaming industry since the great expansion of modern Las Vegas in the 1950s.  Valued for their unquestioning loyalty to authority as well as general sobriety — they are prohibited from imbibing in alcohol, tobacco or coffee — Mormons have long been recruited into top positions in government agencies and multinational corporations. They are prominent in such institutions as the CIA, FBI and the national nuclear weapons laboratories, giving the church a sphere of influence unlike any other American religion in the top echelons of government.

Romney, like his father before him who voluntarily tithed an unparalleled 19 percent of his personal fortune, is among the church’s wealthiest members. And like his father, grandfather and great-grandfathers before him, Mitt Romney was groomed for a prominent position in the church, which he manifested first as a missionary, then as a bishop, and then as a stake president, becoming the highest-ranking Mormon leader in Boston — the equivalent of a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Called a “militant millennial movement” by renowned Mormon historian David L. Bigler, Mormonism’s founding theology was based upon a literal takeover of the U.S. government. In light of the theology and divine prophecies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, unamended by the LDS hierarchy, it would seem that the office of the American presidency is the ultimate ecclesiastical position to which a Mormon leader might aspire.  So it is not the LDS cosmology that is relevant to Romney’s candidacy, but whether devout 21stcentury Mormons like Romney believe that the American presidency is also a theological position.

Since his first campaign in 2008, Romney has attempted to keep debate about his religion out of the political discourse. The issue is not whether there is a religious test for political office; the Constitution prohibits it.  Instead, the question is whether, past all of the flip-flops on virtually every policy, he has an underlying religious conception of the presidency and the American government.  At the recent GOP presidential debate in Florida, Romney professed that the Declaration of Independence is a theological document, not specific to the rebellious 13 colonies, but establishing a covenant “between God and man.”  Which would suggest that Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.

Georgia Pacific employees "encouraged" to support Romney

11:53 am October 15, 2012, by jgalloway

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/10/15/georgia-pacific-employees-encouraged-to-support-romney/?cxntfid=blogs_political_insider_jim_galloway

According to the pro-union website In These Times,  tens of thousands of Georgia Pacific employees have been given voter information packets telling them that their jobs could depend on the results of the Nov. 6 presidential contest – and that the owners are big fans of Mitt Romney.

Georgia Pacific is headquartered in Atlanta and has 35,000 employees. State by state, Georgia has the largest cache of GP workers — about 7,000 at 20 facilities, according to the company website. 

From the cover letter by Koch Industries President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson:

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.

The packet included an anti-Obama editorial by Charles Koch, a pro-Romney editorial by David Koch, and a list of candidates, apparently different for each state, “that have been supported by Koch companies or by KOCHPAC, our employee political action committee,” according to the Robertson letter.

Before your underwear is twisted beyond all recognition, keep in mind that, outside Georgia, the GP workforce in every state numbers 1,500 or less.

Inside Georgia, remember that metro Atlanta businesses this summer attempted to show their clout by encouraging their traffic-delayed employees to support the one-cent TSPLOST.

It didn’t seem to work.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider