Today NC Speaker Thom Tillis cited a law passed in the United Kingdom, that he found out about on Wikipedia, no less, as justification for paying 2 stff menbers after they resigned. Read it here.
Apparently Speaker Tillis is unaware that the laws you are required to obey are the laws of the country in which you live.
Also it appears that he is doing his research on Wikipedia, a site known for having a fair amount of incorrect information. maybe that’s why he sometimes is confused with the facts. That one about William Shakespeare being the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I and Adolf Hitler, I am pretty sure, is not true.
I’m going to get off the political stuff today. Sometimes it is just a little too intense to constantly stay immersed in it, so I decided for a little diversion.
One of our sponsors, actually our only sponsor right now, has just published a new book; The Book of Daniel. It is from CreekSide Publishing Company and so far is only available in ebook format. They say the print version will be out in a couple of weeks.
The Book of Daniel
Anyway, the author, Stephen Payseur, has done some research about one of his ancestors, Daniel Payseur. It seems that many people believe that he might have been The Lost Dauphin, the Crown Prince of France, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Anoinette. He says that he escaped execution in France, changed his name ot Daniel Payseur, and hid out in North Carolina
Seems a little far fetched to me. But in reading the book, the author pointed out some strange coincidences, like all the French people who suddenly turned up in Lincoln and Gaston counties. People like Jean Laffite, Marshal Michel Ney, even Lafayette. There are things like chests full of gold, visits by Jesse James, and other peculiar stuff.
Is any of this true? I certainly don’t know. There are some things that were hinted at in the introduction that were barely touched on. Things like Freemasons, Illuminati, and Abraham Lincoln.
Maybe there will be a follow up book to explain how they are connected. All in all it was a pretty good read.
I have just watched some trailers for this film, Fake It So Real that was released last year and filmed in Lincolnton, NC. It features a group of homegrown semi pro wrestlers. One of which worked briefly at Fausto Coffee Shop in Lincolnton.
From the New York Times
Major Pain, Minor Glory
By ANDY WEBSTER
Published: January 12, 2012
The taunts in the ring may be make-believe, but the slams against the mat are agonizingly genuine in Robert Greene’s vivid documentary “Fake It So Real,” which examines the weeklong preparations for a Saturday night independent-wrestling match in Lincolnton, N.C.
Mr. Greene follows members of the Millennium Wrestling Federation — burly performers with stage names like Solar, Pitt, Van Damage and Mikado — as they mercilessly punish their bodies for the roar of their small-town audience (often children), and for barely any money.
There is backstage drama: the group’s manager, Jeff Roberts (a k a Outlaw), has an infection that may force him to miss his first bout in a decade; Richie Owenby (J-Prep) describes an asthmatic childhood spent tormented for his prodigious posterior; Gabriel Croft, a fresh-faced initiate into this costumed fraternity, on probation stemming from a fraught breakup with a girlfriend, has adopted the guise of his namesake angel as his gimmick.
We watch the members of the group rigorously choreograph the show’s boasts, brawls and arguments and comment on one another. And the rehearsals, to say nothing of the actual event, can be brutal: each missed landing and leap from the ropes onto the mat (sometimes a hardwood floor) ends with excruciating impact. There’s no mistaking the grimaces as these men suffer dearly for their homegrown art.
The big night is sheer carnival hokum, an undistilled backwoods theater of makeup, masks, vinyl trunks and relentless pounding. And yet the post-bout exhilaration offstage is palpable, even for a pursuit that can only be a one-way ticket to lower-back pain.
Take a look.
Reviews and News
April 19, 2012:Roger Ebert gives FAKE IT SO REAL 3.5 stars, saying it’s “alive at every moment” and it “filled me with affection”
The NC Amendment One passed with flying colors on Tuesday. As you may have guessed, I voted against it. I had some serious philosophical concerns about amending the Constitution, and some serious concerns about the amendment itself.
Those opposing the Amendment said that their would be ramifications to those who wished a same sex union, or even for others who were in a relationship but weren’t married.
Proponents said that was simply a scare tactic that had no merit. Those particular people had nothing to worry about. Nothing would change, except that NC would not recognize same sex marriages. However, NC would also not recognize domestic partnerships or civil unions.
These people were either lying or manipulated. I believe most of them were manipulated. I believe most of them naively believed what they were told by those with a political agenda. The amendment was used simply to ”energize the base” to turn out at the polls. The same thing will happen in November.
Only two days after the vote, The Mecklenburg County Commissioners are meeting to decide whether they should eliminate benefits for those who are in a committed relationship without the benefit of a marriage license. The very thing that the proponents called a scare tactic and that it would not happen, started within two days of the amaendment’s passing.
Somebody didn’t tell the truth.
I am a practicing Christian, but I don’t often use Scripture to back up my posts, but today I make an exception. Many of the backers of Amendment One quoted Old Testament Scripture to justify their support for the amendment. However, Christians believe that with the life of Jesus, He ushered in a “new covenant” with his believers.
“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,” …
“And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38 KJV)
“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:39-40 KJV)
I have never understood why the State is even involved in marriage. As most of the signs that I saw in people’s yards said, we were voting on “Holy Matrimony.” The key word here is holy. The State is now regulating something that is holy. That is, the State has put into it’s constitution a specific definition of a religious tenet and can now regulate and enforce it. Do you really want the State to tell your religion what it can believe? You might agree with this one, but believe me, it won’t be long until they tell you what you believe that you completely disagree with. That’s the way it works.
A church should be free to marry or not marry anyone they choose and the politicians should keep their nose out of it.
Don’t be manipulated again. I try to determine who will benefit if a law is passed. Usually it is not us regular folks. It is usually someone who can further his own personal agenda. That is to keep his job, get a tax break ,or line his pockets. I’m afraid that is what happened here. The legislators who proposed it, did so for their own advantage, not for yours or mine.
Roger Williams and his wife Mary arrived in Boston in 1631. He was immediately given the post as assistant pastor and teacher in the Puritan Church.
“He asserted that the civil magistrates may not punish any sort of “breach of the first table [of the Ten Commandments]“, such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that every individual should be free to follow his own convictions in religious matters. Right from the beginning, he sounded three principles which were central to his subsequent career: Separatism, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.”
In 1636 he bought some land from the Narragansett Indians and established the settlement of Providence, later to become Rhode Island. He set up a government there which had jurisdiction over civil matters only. Thus he became the first person in modern history to establish a government with the separation of religion and the state.
In 1638, he established the first Baptist Church in America. He soon left the church because he felt that all organized Christian religions had been ruined by the “apostasy of Rome.”
He felt, “The state must confine itself to the commandments that dealt with the relations between people: murder, theft, adultery, lying, honoring parents, and so forth. He regarded any effort by the state to dictate religion or promote any particular religious idea or practice to be “forced worship”. And he colorfully declared that “forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God”.
Quotes by Roger Williams
“All civil states with their officers of justice in their respective constitutions and administrations are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual or Christian state and worship.”
‘The state of the Land of Israel, the kings and people thereof in peace and war, is proved figurative and ceremonial, and no pattern nor precedent for any kingdom or civil state in the world to follow.”
“God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.”
“He owes protection to the persons of his subjects (though of a false worship), that no injury be offered either to the persons or goods of any…….The God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly seal this truth, and confirm this witness, and make it evident to the whole world, that the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. Amen.”
We hear a lot from people who want us all to support Amendment One. Most say it is because they want to protect the family. I have even read that theyare in favor of it because children need a family wiht a mother and a father. That’s probably a good idea, but the amendment will not do one single thing to change the fact that 35% of NC children are in single parent homes.
The so-called marriage amendment is really not concerned with marriage. If it was, there would be a provision in it outlawing divorce. That would keep people married, but would it really help kids? I don’t think so.
Then we hear the argument that they are for it because marriage between one man and one woman is the only union sanctioned by God. How does King Solomon figure into this equation. He was one man married to a whole bunch of women. King David also had more than one wife.
The Bible speaks against homosexuality. And against divorce. And working on the Sabbath. It says you can’t eat shellfish or pork. No one is proposing an amendment against any of these.
What the proponents are doing is trying to force people into obeying a Biblical precept. This is extremely ironic to me, as the entire basis of the Judeo/Christian faiths is allowing people to make a decision as to whether they will accept the precepts or not. If you believe in God, you know that being omnipotent and omnipresent, He could make anyone do anything at anytime. He chooses not to do so.
The entire cornerstone of the Jewish and Christian religions is choice, and it is as old as the Bible itself. Adam and Eve had a choice and they made it.
Today we have a group of people who apparently know better than God does. They want to not only limit an individual’s choice, but eliminate it. They want to deprive certain people of a secular privilege accorded to everyone else. God doesn’t do that, so why should we?
I have no probelm whatsoever if a religion or denomination of a religion does not feel that it fits with their own brand of theology to not sanction a marriage. That is their right and it is not my right to over rule it. I may not like it, but again, I can exercise my God given “choice” not to support those groups.
To single out one particular group for second class citizenship based upon a couple of verses of Scripture, makes me wonder why we do not do the same for the bacon lovers, oyster roasters, and merchants who are open on Sunday.
In the 1780s the brand new United States was trying to organize its govenment and ratify its constitution. This was a monumental undertaking with ramifications that extended beyond the borders of the fledgling nation, and in fact, even extended beyond the borders of time itself.
The Constitution was approved by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and sent to the individual states for ratification. North Carolina refused to ratify it by declaring that it neither approved nor rejected it. The stumbling block was that North Carolina wanted assurances that the rights of the individual would be protected in that documented. That eventually led to the first ten Amendments to the Constitution. We call them the Bill of Rights.
North Carolina was the next to last state to ratify the Constitution, but the third state to ratify the Bill of Rights. These facts are important. In the first instance, just because almost everyone else had done it, we didn’t feel the need to follow. In the other case, just because almost no one else had done it, we had no hesitation.
Doing what was right was the right thing to do.
One of the arguments that the supporters of Amendment One make is that many others states have already passed their own “amendment one.” Thay say, “Thirty one states have approved a similar amendment,” or, “We’re the only state in the southeast who doesn’t have a similar amendment.”
So what.
In the time leading up to the Civil War, North Carolina was the last southern state to secede from the Union. In other words, we were the only one. We ultimately did secede, but we did it on our own terms, for our own reasons. We didn’t do it simply because everyone else had.
Supporters often say that we need Amendment One on the ballot to gauge what the citizens of the state want. By not having this Amendment, we are going against the will of the majority and you just can’t do that in a democracy.
Not only can you do this, but you are morally required to do this if the majority is wrong. If there had been an amendment to the State Constitution, on the ballot, in 1952 stating that inter-racial marriage was illegal, I’m sure it would have passed.
Had an Amendment been proposed in 1872 saying that white, Christian males, who own property, were the only legal voters recognized by the State of North Carolina, it would have likely passed.
The majority is often wrong and wrong headed. Remember, Hitler was elected by the majority of voters in Germany.
North Carolina has an opportunity to reclaim the spot it has held for two centuries in the South. Sure, there have been mistakes and there have been things that many of us are not proud of, but we have always managed to eventually muddle our way to the correct moral decision.
Let’s do the right thing this time, the first time. Let’s not disenfranchise an entire class of people. Let’s lead by example, just as we have done before. Let’s reject Amendment One
If you have ever wanted to write for a blog, let me know. We’ll give it a try. Here’s how we will work it.
Write a blog post or two. Send it to me via email
I’ll look it over and let you know what I think.
You need to know that sometimes I get a little cranky, so if I don’t want to post your first one, don’t give up. It’s not personal, I just might not be in a receptive mood that day.
I prefer that you have a fake author name like I do. I prefer a name like one of the Founding Fathers. I think their names are cool.
You will also need to find a picture of the particular author’s name you are using, so we can put it in your blog post. Like my fake picture at the top. Now, if by chance someone wants to write some posts for this blog, and the name you want is already taken, you’ll have to pick another one and get another picture. First come, first served.
Generally, The Call blog is about political issues, but, we’ll consider other things. It basically comes down to whether I like it or not. That’s probably not terribly fair, but it is the truth. Not that I’m particularly proud of it. Not ashamed either.
So, sharpen your pencils, or limber up your fingers, and drop me a line at paine@thecallblog.com
This is just for fun. I am putting a few links of things that I like. Tell me what you think. Do you like them? Hate them? Don’t care? Let me know, I’m curious to see what others think.
Today NC Speaker Thom Tillis cited a law passed in the United Kingdom, that he found out about on Wikipedia, no less, as justification for paying 2 stff menbers after they resigned. Read it here.
