Christmas in Cali

Abortion at heart of stem-cell debate

John Kass
November 25, 2007 Chicago Tribune



I wouldn't dare try to explain the science of the new discovery last week that promises to shift the agonizing debate about embryonic stem cells.

But if the science is right, mature human skin cells can be manipulated in laboratories to act as embryonic stem cells and replace damaged or diseased cells in human beings.

Though I can't begin to explain the science, the politics seem clear, despite the Orwellian twisting of the language over the years, despite the political symbolism and political iconography. It's clear enough.


It's about abortion. It has always been about abortion, about the choices we make and how we fight to use or deny human embryos for research -- all of it like hands that shape our future culture.

There have been other scientific and funding aspects to the stem-cell debate, but at the retail political level, "stem-cell research" has long been a proxy for abortion rights and for the rights of human life unborn.

So "stem-cell" is code, a slogan, the fact understood by political consultants and their candidates, by the abortion rights groups and the politicians who seek their votes and by those that oppose abortion rights and seek those other votes.

Human embryos don't vote. Many Americans don't believe there is life in them at such an early stage. I do. But others don't.

Yet if left alone in a mother's womb, nurtured there, surely they'd be born to run and breathe and think and speak, and perhaps grow old enough to vote. And they'd want to survive and they'd express that desire through public policy debates, like this one.

Every creature born wants to live, many at almost any cost, and humans are instilled with the will to continue. If this means taking other human lives to ensure survival, well, hasn't that question been answered by centuries of human history?

We've killed one another by tribe and clan, over hunting and grazing land, with clubs and pointed spears, and killed over water. For the past several thousand years, we've killed one another over gold. Now we kill for energy. We kill one another for the power to live. We justify it with words. But the act remains the same.

And for all the years the embryonic stem-cell debate has dragged on, we've used words to obscure what we've been doing. We abandoned old notions of common morality to adopt a new code born of scientific rationalism:

That it is proper to take human embryos and use the human life going on inside them as a product to perpetuate other, more powerful lives.

This involves the questions I keep asking -- and have asked in various ways for years since this debate began:

What is the psychic cost of all of this? What debt is incurred by those who survive by destroying life? What of those who come after us? What world do we create for them by entertaining such choices and pretending that technology is without consequence? What happens to us in the act of avoiding these questions, so eager are we at the promise of new discoveries?

I'm sure I'm in the distinct journalistic minority on this. And I'm certain I'll feel that way when this is published. One buzzword in American newsrooms is "diversity," which I hope means more than mere differences in skin pigment.

I sure hope so, because I am opposed to abortion. I haven't always felt that way, but things changed when my sons were born. And my Greek Orthodox faith teaches me that abortion is wrong, that human life is sacred. Naturally all this shapes my view and others like me, and I know many of you differ.

Sometimes I wish that those who ridicule us for faith would acknowledge from time to time that their views may also shaped by an equally fervent faith -- the belief in modern scientific progress as the means to solve the world's problems.

But faith in God or faith in science doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. And the fact of embryonic stem-cell research remains:

Human embryos are converted into a medical product in the hopes of perpetuating the lives of other, more powerful humans desperate for a cure.

Now, though, that may be ending with the discoveries of last week. It must be unsettling to established interests. From loved ones of those who desperately seek rescue from terrible diseases and have no patience for politics; to abortion rights groups; to scientists uninterested in politics, except as it pertains to the funding of their research.

Early news accounts of the new scientific advance predictably framed the debate as rational scientists versus those ecstatic conservatives. Yet time may allow analysts to examine the discovery in the context of how it threatens the interests that have tied their politics to embryonic stem-cell research.

In a balanced news article on the new research last week, Tribune science writer Jeremy Manier quoted Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

"This approach provides medical advantages as well as clear moral advantages," Pacholczyk said. "That's an amazing development."

Another baby girl

Granmie time

This one works

Certified Doula

i am officially certified! yea! I am finally on the DONA webpage under birth doula's.
It is so awesome to finally have a skilled trade.

third times the charm


I sent my doula certification off yesterday. It only took me two years!

Tea Party

Well, Nathan said no way to working at Starbucks, so i guess I'm going to be pursuing the doula route! Pray I'll get clients! I'm also praying about pursuing a job with the county as a doula-so i can continue working with a lot of the hard cases-drug addicts, mostly. A lot of these women have no family involved, their living in shelters
or rehabs, and need help before, during and after labor. There is now no positions for a doula with the county, but I'm praying about how or even if i should approach the county about creating a position for one.

For those of you who love us

It's pretty certain right now that I need to get a job. Our rent went up to 1300 and we lost our missionary support. Please pray for us for wisdom!!!!!! I just did my last birth needed to get certified as a doula. I need to know what path to take-to pursue my doula career now or humble myself and work at Starbucks. Coffee morals aside, starbucks would be a big sacrifice as far as the kids are concerned. If i can even get them to hire me. Please pray that God would guide us.

Life
otherwise titled whoa, i have alot of daughters!

NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING VS CONTRACEPTION

For you, Granmie, because you are getting jipped

Amber

this is my friend Amber. I met her two weeks ago and she asked me to be her doula.


She labored for 28 hours


this is her beautiful daughter, Raina Ani, born June 13th, 11:10 p.m

i thought this was funny

PROVERBS AND FIRST-GRADERS

A first grade school teacher in Virginia had twenty-five students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the first half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb.

It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that these are 1st graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!

1. Don't change horses until they stop running.

2. Strike while the................................................bug is close.

3. It's always darkest before ...............................Daylight Saving Time.

4. Never underestimate the power of ....................termites.

5. You can lead a horse to water but ....................how?

6. Don't bite the hand that....................................looks dirty.

7. No news is......................................................impossible.

8. A miss is as good as a ...................................Mr.

9. You can't teach an old dog new ......................math.

10. If you lie down with dogs, you'll ...................stink in the morning.

11. Love all,trust.................................................me.

12. The pen is mightier than the............................pigs.

13. An idle mind is...............................................the best way to relax.

14. Where there's smoke there's...........................pollution.

15. Happy the bride who.....................................gets all the presents.

16. A penny saved is...........................................not much

17. Two's company, three's ................................the Musketeers

18. Don't put off till tomorrow what .....................you put on to go to bed.

19. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and....You have to blow your nose.

20. There are none so blind as.................................Stevie Wonder.

21. Children should be seen and not .......................spanked or grounded.

22. If at first you don't succeed ..............................get new batteries.

23. You get out of something only what you ............see in the picture on the box.

24. When the blind lead the blind ............................get out of the way.

And the WINNER and last one!

25. Better late than..............................pregnant

Sometimes the beauty of the world is so overwhelming, I just want to throw back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle, and I don't care who hears me, because I am beautiful.

jack handy

wow, the love of money really is the root of all evil

a Britain mother shares how her abortion affected her;

"Yes, I am filled with regret that my circumstances didn't allow me to have three children. If we'd had a bigger house and more money, I would not have had a termination and I'd be a very happy mother of three.

I realise my decision may affect me later in life, but I try not to dwell on my decision for the sake of my children. It was a difficult choice and it's certainly one I wish I hadn't had to make."

oh my gosh.

Breakups are HARD

but that's life, i guess. One breakup after another. My mind has been dwelling on this for a few weeks now. I was working out and listening to my music mix and madison greene came on. That band was so special to me, so incredibly precious, that when they broke up, my heart broke, too. I lived with them, traveled with them, rocked out to their music night after night for months. God really anointed their music with harmony and infectious joy. "all good things come to an end" So trite, but so true. I have come up with so many reasons why this is true. Situations in our life sometimes seem to mirror heaven, don't they? But we're not in heaven. We're not supposed to be totally comfortable here. We're not home yet. And I think that when those special times come along, it's just to awaken more and more that hunger for heaven that is in every one of us. Take prodigal project, for instance. When the ministry was busting at it's seams. Instead of me moaning because that all ended, i should be grateful i ever experienced it, and that it went on as long as it did. The only reason it was so awesome was because for a short while, we experienced a glimpse of heaven through it. Pure, breathtaking community.
why am i so geared to hang on to the past? I pray that my heartaches will live in my mind as beautiful memories, and lose their sting of loss. I am so desperate to glean every ounce of good out of every day now, because i know now how quickly this wave of life is carrying me.

Here you go, Granmie

Power of Prayer: Amelia White


Its hard not to ooh and awe when little three month old Amelia comes into the room. She is a picture perfect little girl. For mom and dad, she is a living breathing miracle.

Jennifer and Taylor White had been married for several years when they decided to add children to their family. A first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Then last March, Jennifer became pregnant again.

Just as the critical first six weeks approached a blood sample tested positive for spinal bifida. They headed straight to Dallas to a specialist who said that test was negative...but

"He told us, there was no amniotic fluid," says Taylor White. "And this was our first ultra sound of the pregnancy, this was our first time to even see...and there was no amniotic fluid, no kidneys of course because there was no amniotic fluid. We probably sat in the parking lot for maybe 30 minutes and just...dumb founded, and just awed and cried and just we didn't know what to do, we didn't know what to think."

"He told us then," says Jennifer White, "if I were you I would go home and pray, because it really doesn't look good."

The Whites had to another two weeks for final confirmation. 14 days later the news wasn't any better.

"I'm almost certain your baby has no chance of living," Taylor remembering what the specialist said. "In fact he used the word zilch, zilch chance. There is no amniotic fluid, there is not a genetic reason to explain this, it just happens. You can either terminate the pregnancy now or you can go through the pregnancy...and the baby will probably be still born or be born alive and die a couple of hours after being born."

"We decided," said Jennifer, "that we thought that was the best option, was to go ahead and induce early. I mean I would have a normal delivery you know and what understood the outcome would be the same, the baby was not going to make it either way. For me I could not imagine having to carry this baby to full term."

That early delivery would have happened at Tyler's Trinity Mother Frances Hospital. But because it was so early in the pregnancy, the hospital's ethics committee said no.

That's when Jennifer said she became angry... At God.

"And I thought you are going to make me carry this baby I can't, I can't do this I just can't. And the whole weekend I was just so mad that I was going to have to do this. By the end of the weekend I thought there is nothing I can do. I trust that God knows what He is doing though I don't understand. I don't think He does things to harm us even though we can't understand why they have to happen. And I just thought, okay, if I'm gonna make it through this I have just go to trust that You have a plan and that You are going to be there for us and carry us through this," says Jennifer.

"By that point," remembers Taylor, "our prayer was more, initially, or first reaction was to pray to God to help us make it through it. To comfort us. Shortly after that our mind changed and we said God we know you have the power to change this, and we're putting this in Your hands.

Regular sonograms for the next six months still showed no amniotic fluid. An inducement was scheduled six weeks before the due date. One last sonogram indicated something had changed. The Whites headed straight to their specialist in Dallas.

"His face just dropped," remembers Taylor, "just with amazement said I can't explain it. There is no other explanation than God just performed a miracle. There is a normal amount of amniotic fluid at this point he saw possibly one kidney. He said this is a perfectly healthy baby. There should be..she should have deformities, she should have not developed lungs and none of that was an issue at this point. When God performs a miracle he doesn't do it half way."

"we hadn't planned for a baby. We didn't have any furniture, anything. We didn't think we were going to have a baby. So just getting to...I mean we went that day and found a crib. It was amazing," says Jennifer.



Almost nine months after their ordeal began, little Amelia Faith White was born. A blessing for her parents. And a testimony they say to the power of prayer.



"We started this prayer and our local group started praying for us and they told people and they told people and they told people. To this day we still talk to people, churches we have never even heard of in Oklahoma or across the U.S. We get emails from people we have near heard...say hey listen we just heard the new about your baby I can't believe she is healthy," says Taylor

"we could feel that. Because, just that we had the strength to bear it and go on I just knew people were praying and God was with us," says Jennifer. "Whether He just wanted to show His power, show what He can do...I don't know. I truly believe that yes, that it was a miracle. The He chose to save her life."

"the people have seen a miracle," believes Taylor. "And in today's world people need to know that God exists. And this is just one proof that there is a God. That we are not in control of our lives. And people around here today are going to get to see that and its affecting people right now.

America’s Silent Killer: 48.5 Million Americans Lost

It may sound like a scenario from a super-secret nuclear contingency plan, but a silent killer has eliminated a population equal to that of America's 60 largest cities. Forty-eight and a half million Americans have vanished without a trace! According to Dennis Howard, who heads The Movement for a Better America, "that's not some imaginary nuclear contingency plan. It is in fact the cumulative impact of nearly 34 years of abortion on demand.”

According to a regular annual review by The Movement for a Better America, a non-profit, pro-life education organization headquartered here, "Forty-eight and a half million Americans have vanished without a trace."

"This is not some imaginary nuclear contingency plan. It is in fact the cumulative impact of nearly 34 years of abortion on demand,” says Dennis Howard, a former investigative reporter and market researcher who heads the organization and who has been tracking the nation's abortion statistic since 1992.

"What's amazing," Howard says, "is that the vast majority of Americans hardly seem to notice."

His organization doesn’t make these numbers up. They are all based on data collected by the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. “We simply take the most recent data and project it through the current period. Otherwise, there is always a 2-3 year lag in the estimates.”

Howard asserts, "The fact is that nothing has inflicted more permanent damage on our society than abortion. 48.5 million abortions is 43 times more than all the fatalities from all the wars in our nation’s history, including the ravages of the war on terrorism and the tragedy of September 11. Yet these numbers never seem to make the headlines.”

Howard, who began his career as an investigative reporter and later directed market research projects for major corporations, blames the media for their self-imposed censorship on the abortion issue. “A handful of casualties in Iraq will make the evening news, but the abortion industry will kill more people in two days than we have lost since 9/11, and that never gets a mention.”

”Imagine if we had lost 6,850,000 people in the so-called war on terror,” he said. “That’s how many children we have lost to abortion since 9/11."

Howard's analysis has uncovered a number of reasons for public apathy about the abortion toll:

“Politics can’t change things because of the extreme polarization between the two major parties,” he said. “That started when the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade by edict, instead of allowing normal democratic processes to deal with the issue.

“Roe v. Wade effectively split the country in three – left, right, and confused middle. So now we have politics by media sound bite and bumper sticker cliches instead of healthy, honest political dialogue.”

“In some ways, we’re like the ‘good Germans’ during World War II who never seemed to realize that there was a brutal holocaust going on,” Howard said.

Howard blames public apathy on the fact that the abortion industry operates behind a veil of protected secrecy. “Unlike the Germans, we don’t have industrial-scale concentration camps operating two miles out of town. Only 1 in 15,000 American women have an abortion on any given day, so no one notices. But if you multiply that by 365 days a year for 34 years, the total becomes astronomical.”

Howard has been tracking the economic impact of the abortion toll since 1992, when the count first reached 30.5 million. Since then, an estimated 18 million more babies have been aborted.

“The economic loss may be the least of our problems,” he said. “Abortion has also desensitized the culture to sex abuse, violence, and predation against children. Just look at what we see on television every night."

Nevertheless, Howard’s market research background led him to conclude that the trend had the economic impact of a major nuclear war.

“The human loss from abortion is the same as if all of our major metropolitan centers had been lost to a nuclear attack,” said Howard. “The only difference is that a nuclear war would be a dramatic, cataclysmic event, while abortions take place one at a time in the sanitized privacy of a medical clinic.”

“The long range impact on America's human resources is no different,” he said. “We measure the economic impact of other things like this all the time -- from alcoholism and drug addiction to AIDS and cancer. But the economic impact of losing a baby is far greater than when someone dies after a long life.”

A list of the top 60 cities with a population equivalent to the loss from abortion can be found on MBA's website: www.movementforabetteramerica.org

A few of the more obvious repercussions include:

Social Security: If half of the 48.5 million kids we aborted were working today, they would be contributing an additional $88 billion a year into the Social Security trust fund.

Taxes: The downstream loss in future tax revenues from abortion currently exceeds $18 trillion dollars. “Someone else will have to pay those taxes.”

The end of the Youth Market. “The 30% bite that abortion took out of the youth market is a major reason for the drop in daily newspaper circulation as well as increased competition for young audiences by other media. By supporting abortion on demand, the liberal media are killing off their own future audiences. Pro-choice politicians are doing the same thing. That’s why they have such a hard time winning.”

Labor shortages: There is a looming shortage of labor in critical fields such as nursing, teaching and even the armed forces. “We’re raiding countries like the Philippines for nurses today, and using citizenship as an incentive for immigrants to fill the ranks of the military. Where will that leave us in a major military crisis?”

Immigration: “The labor vacuum created by abortion is also related to the immigration crisis,” Howard claims. “Ross Perot had it wrong: The giant sucking sound was really the sound of illegal immigrants crossing the border from the south, not just jobs heading the other way. Right now, apples and peaches are rotting on the ground in Oregon and Washington because there aren’t enough workers to pick them.”

“As the Pete Seeger song says,” Howard concludes, “‘When will they ever learn?’”

I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.

deep thoughts by Jack Handy

Granmie Fix

Quote of the year


"I don't drink decaf unless it is absolutely necessary for social decorum. Decaf is evil. I am not exaggerating. Coffee by its nature has caffeine. To decaffeinate is to remove an essential good, albeit an accidental good, from the coffee. Therefore, decaf is evil because of the lack of good that ought to be present. Now where is my grinder?"

- Ragemonkey's Fr. Tharp

Just had to share this

Thank God some doctors still follow the Hippocratic oath

Dateline NBC

Open-fetal operation saves infant's life
An eleventh-hour attempt to save the tiniest of lives


Saving Garrett
May 13: Jan and Russell Morrison were hoping for a baby boy -– but the prognosis for the baby in Jan’s womb was grim. The baby had a huge tumor filling the left side of his chest. With a team of gifted doctors, they set out to beat the odds.





NBC News
Updated: 2:56 p.m. PT May 13, 2007


BONHAM, TEXAS - High school sweethearts Russell and Jan Morrison shared the same dreams and were happily on their way to living them in Bonham, Texas.

Russell Morrison: Two kids and my wife and just… you know, a perfect little family.

Baby daughter Carson was the start of that perfect little family. And in September 2005, Jan learned she was pregnant again.
Story continues below ↓advertisement

Rob Stafford, Dateline correspondent: Are you hoping for a boy?

Russell Morrison: I’m hoping for a boy but I’m happy either way.

But having their perfect family would take this couple on a medical odyssey far beyond anything they could have imagined. The odds were against them, the risks potentially fatal, the medical science turned mind-boggling. Still Jan and Russell, together with a team of gifted doctors, set out to beat the odds.

It began in January 2006, five months into Jan’s pregnancy. She had a sonogram to learn the sex of their baby. It was a boy.

Stafford: Just what you want.

Russell Morrison: Just what I wanted.

Jan Morrison: I was excited but it was a very short-lived excitement.

It was short-lived because Jan was noticing this ultra sound was taking longer than others she’d had.

Jan Morrison: The lady that did the ultrasound… she kept focusing on one particular image.

The little boy they were hoping for had a huge tumor filling the left side of his chest. It covered his heart and was pushing it to the other side. The prognosis was grim.

Jan Morrison: I was just mad. I was excited about being pregnant and didn’t wanna lose my child and wanted to do something about it and I couldn’t find an answer.

Russel began researching his son’s condition, and where it might be treated. In February 2006, two weeks after first learning about the tumor, the Morrisons traveled to Houston to consult with specialists at Texas Children’s Hospital. There the news was even worse.

Russell Morrison: We met with the cardiologist that morning and she told us that he was basically in heart failure.

The tumor appeared to have grown. It was 3 inches large, filling the chest of a 5 month old fetus which weighed a mere pound and a half. It was now squashing the heart, lungs, and diaphragm. Blood wasn’t getting to the heart, which was rapidly failing.

Stafford: How much time does he have?

Russell Morrison: They told us he had about a day and a half to live when we got there.

Jan and Russell decided all that was left to do was plan the inevitable. At lunchtime they began making funeral arrangements.

Jan Morrison: That was the only thing I could do so couldn’t help my child so I did what I could.

And they gave their son a name: Garrett.

Jan Morrison: It was my baby and he needed a name. And just was wanting to name him while he was still alive.

Russell Morrison: We needed something to put on his headstone.

With funeral arrangements underway, and seemingly out of hope, the Morrisons still had an afternoon meeting with more doctors. Among them, fetal surgeons Darell Cass and Oluyinka Olutoye. Who said something the Morrison’s did not expect.

Stafford: Can you remove this tumor?

Dr. Darrell Cass: Yes, we can.

Stafford: This is doable?

Dr. Darrell Cass: It is doable.

Doable, but these doctors would have to operate where few have ever tried—inside a mother’s womb.

Dr. Darrell Cass: It’s high-stakes surgery. It’s the only thing we do where you have to go through a normal patient to get to a fetus—another patient that’s dying.

It was risky for both mother and child. Jan faced the possibility of never having children again or worse: bleeding to death during surgery. And there was no guarantee her son would survive. Still, without the operation she would definitely lose her baby.

Stafford: Is there any question in your mind whether you’re gonna go ahead with the surgery?

Jan Morrison: No. It was Garrett’s only shot, and I wanted to go with it.

Stafford: How quickly do you need to operate?

Dr. Darrell Cass: Within hours. The child had only limited time to survive.

On Feb. 7, 2006, 21 hours after arriving at Children’s hospital for consultations, doctors prepped Jan for surgery.

Surgeons will open the womb, remove the tumor from a tiny 5 month old fetus, then close the womb so the pregnancy can continue... all this without triggering labor.

An ultrasound showed the doctors the baby’s position.

And it guided them in determining where to open Jan’s uterus.

A half hour into the procedure, the uterus was safely opened, and Dr. Cass saw Garrett for the first time.

Dr. Darrell Cass: It’s always a fairly dramatic moment to see this very, very young fetus, this developing human that’s dying.

Garrett’s tiny chest had to be opened to remove the tumor. To expose the chest, Dr. Olutoye had to raise Garrett’s left arm out of his mother’s womb. Right in the operating room, the doctor found himself actually holding the hand of this 5 month old fetus, which weighed less than two pounds.

Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye: Well, consider the size of my hand—being able to hold that tiny hand was actually quite dramatic.

Garrett now straddled two worlds. Part of him was delivered, and part of him still inside his mother’s womb. The doctors then opened his chest and found the tumor that was rapidly killing him.

Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye: I don’t think either of us really anticipated how big it really was gonna be up close and personal.

The tumor was so large, it filled about two thirds of Garrett’s chest cavity.

Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye: It was unbelievable that that size mass came out from such a small child.

Stafford: Now they faced one of the trickiest parts of the procedure: putting Garrett back in his mother’s womb and closing it up as well.

Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye: The last thing we want is for incision to pop loose and the baby come out of the uterus ruptured.

After two and a half hours in surgery, Dr. Cass gave Russell the news he’d hoped for.

Dr. Darrell Cass: Everything went fine for your wife.

Dr. Darrell Cass: He was doing as good as he can possibly be, but we were not out of the woods yet.

Garrett’s survival remained uncertain. His heart could still stop, Jan could go into labor and deliver Garrett too early to survive. These next weeks were critical and Jan had to remain in the hospital, in bed.

By the end of March, they were on the home stretch with just over six weeks to go. And Garrett’s chances of survival were getting better by the day.

Jan Morrison: The doctors are saying that Garrett looks like a normal 29 week old baby. And that his lungs have developed. And they’re looking normal and healthy.

But it was a temporary calm. Ten o' clock at night, Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006, Jan was bleeding and she was going into labor. If her labor continued, it could rupture her uterus.

Dr. Darrell Cass: There was absolutely no choice. Now was the time to deliver.

At 11:45 that night, Garrett was delivered, fighting for his life yet again.

Dr. Darrell Cass: Garrett comes out and he did look a little blue.

Russell Morrison: They they took him and hit the doors running.

Dr. Darrell Cass: I was worried. Did Garrett die somehow during this delivery process? But then, he began to move. And then, he began to cry. And so, it really became clear that he was doing great. It was an incredible relief. And a really a joyous, joyous moment.

The little fighter had made it two and a half months after miraculous surgery in his mother’s womb.

Stafford: You got your boy.

Russell Morrison: I got my boy. It was all coming together just like we hoped for.

Finally in May 2006, the Morrison’s perfect little family was home at last. Happy, and healthy. The only sign of what this baby endured was the scar on his chest.

Stafford: You look at him now and what do you think?

Jan Morrison: I think how perfect he looks. After all he’s been through, he looks so good. He’s just a miracle and God’s gift.

Here, at eight months old, Garrett’s heart and lungs are strong. His tumor was benign, no worry it will come back. Doctors expect him to have a completely normal life.

Russell Morrison: He’s had a pretty tough road, but he’s made it every step of the way. He’s a little fighter.

Garrett at one year old

"We forget that Christ adopted our human nature from the moment of conception. Christ did not incarnate into a non-human amorphous piece of tissue. It would have been beneath his dignity. He doesn't love tissue. Tissue is not made in God's image and likeness.

God became like us because he loved us; he became an unborn child because he loved the unborn child, like he loves Man at all the stages of his life. In fact, Christ has a special place in his heart for the unborn, as he does for all who are marginalized, weak, poor and vulnerable.

The liberal cannot fathom such a love for the unborn, because to him, he is not an equal. To him, the unborn child cannot live up to a man-made litmus test of "personhood". The child is a blob of tissue, a mere organism, a parasite. His worth is relative to his being able to demonstrate certain capabilities. He must have a heartbeat, or brainwaves, or feel pain, or have consciousness or self-awareness, or some other arbitrarily selected ability, in order to be deemed worthy.

But this is judging with human eyes. In God's mind, the human being's value is intrinsic and independent of any other consideration. From the moment a human being exists, God loves him. There is no performance test required. We may not be able to know who the unborn child is, but God does. God sees his virtues, talents, and future accomplishments. He is a somebody in light of his very existence."

from the Birth Story blog site

A glimmer of hope

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Friday in a speech at the University of Delaware said that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that effectively barred state abortion bans, is not a precedent he is willing to accept, the Wilmington News Journal reports. "When you give the court the power to insert new rights, you also give it the power to take out old rights," he said, adding, "The right to abortion on the part of a woman is the end of the right to live on the part of the fetus" (Miller, Wilmington News Journal, 4/28).

According to the AP/Washington Examiner, Scalia defended his "originalist" approach to interpreting the Constitution, saying that the document should not be subject to change based on the norms of society. He added that if U.S. citizens want to secure new constitutional rights, they should look to the legislative branch, not the Supreme Court. "The Constitution is not a living organism," Scalia said, adding, "It's a legal document." Several opponents and supporters of abortion rights staged silent demonstrations outside the theater where Scalia spoke, the AP/Examiner reports (Chase, AP/Washington Examiner, 4/27).

An Atheist Argues Against Abortion

David Hunt, PE

Yes, I am indeed an atheist. Raised as a Jew, I became an atheist in my late teens over two decades ago. I’m happy with it, and am stating it because of the perception that all atheists are pro-abortion. To my astonishment, however, I’m pro-life.

It started with a bumper sticker several years ago. That bumper sticker read, “If it’s not a child, you’re not pregnant.” The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with it in my gut. I started to do some thought experiments. The one that convinced me was this one:

A woman wakes up to another day of morning nausea. She buys a pregnancy test, and it comes up positive. From there, two scenarios unfold, admittedly at extreme ends of the spectrum. (N.B.: I do not discount that many women who seek abortions do so reluctantly, nor do I doubt that even the most enthusiastic mothers-to-be occasionally have twinges of doubt; I am using extremes for a reason.)

Scenario One: She is suffused with warmth, knowing that she is about to be a mother. Names flash through her mind. Visions of baby clothes, cribs, and everything else dance before her eyes as she starts making plans for one of – if not the – biggest events in her life.

Scenario Two: She curses, throwing the test into the trash. Upon leaving the bathroom, she reaches for the yellow pages for the phone number of an abortion clinic.

What’s different about these two women? They could be the same woman. Is one physically different from the other? No. Is the embryo inside her different? No. The sole difference is her perception of the nascent life inside her.

Therein lies the crux of the issue. In the first scenario, the growing clump of cells is a baby, less than a year away from entering the world squalling and welcomed. In the other, it’s a fetus, an unwanted clump of cells to be excised. The same physical entity perceived wildly differently.

Where else have we seen such a difference of the value of human life based solely on perception? Genocide. Throughout history groups have slain other groups, and the core of this appalling crime comes from the same source: The perception that some human life is, in fact, not human and may be exterminated. Just like a fetus is not human, and can be eliminated for convenience’s sake.

A human life is something of immeasurable worth. At times human life can ethically be ended, such as when defending your own in self-defense, or during war when engaging the enemy. But this presumes that the enemy, whether one-on-one against a rapist or on a battlefield with an enemy equally determined, is potentially capable to do the same to you. In contrast a fetus has no intent, no opportunity, no ability to intentionally injure. It is a total innocent, like the innocents herded from their homes, lined up beside trenches, and killed in countless tragedies throughout the world.

The dichotomy is stark. Aside from a few fringe nuts, every human being recoils in horror from genocides; the piles of Tutsi bodies in Africa or the ovens at Auschwitz. It’s almost impossible to comprehend such evil. We abhor this awful crime whose root cause is the dehumanization of a person. But pro-choicers celebrate the legal ability to destroy a fetus based on that same dehumanized perception.

Legal or not, abortions will still happen so long as people see abortion as just another method of birth control. After all, abortion is not the root problem – unwanted pregnancies are. Through encouragement of abstinence, through birth control training, through monogamy, through planning, and especially through adoption and financial assistance to encourage it, through all these multiple attacks on the real problem, we have the power to essentially eliminate the need for abortions as a method of birth control. Only when people perceive abortion as the snuffing out of a human life, not a method of convenience, will abortion end.

Abortion is based on the idea that a human life’s value is subject to perception; that it can be redefined to have none. By dehumanizing it in the tradition of every genocidal authority, by shifting our perception of life’s value, we slowly sacrifice our own humanity on the altar of convenience. Even without deity-derived rules from which to pull judgment, it’s a poor trade. And that’s why this atheist is pro-life.

Classic Memories

Nathan was brushing Hannah's teeth and Isabella was in the bathroom too and I heard her ask "Daddy, are you going to be here tommorrow when i wake up?" This was the third time in the past hour she had asked this. He told her no, honey, I'm going to be at work. She replied "But, Daddy, your not going to die, are you? You were just kidding?"
He asked her what she was talking about and she, in all seriousness answered "You said your back was killing you!

BITTER

I'm a bitter women lately. I got so caught up in being shocked at this whole new (?) futile care law, and the rhetoric, that i was missing the flaw in the arguments I've been hearing against it. Most people that are writing against it that are angry are upset because the hospital is trying to kill toddler Emilio Gonzales against the wishes of his mother. But it seems to me, after some reflection, that it's a tiny step from a decision that was made in this country years ago. The decision to place the life of a child in the hands of his/her mother. ABORTION. I wonder why it seems so horrifying to these people that are spouting off about how horrible it is. Is it because the mother isn't it control? Would it be alright if the mother was all for it and wanted her toddler to die? The decision for someone to live or die should never rest in human hands. It belongs in the hands of the Lord. And the sick thing is this issue isn't just about being hooked up to a machine that breathes for you and makes your heart breathe-it's about withdrawing food and water, too. If you withdraw food from any toddler, they'll die. They can't go get food on their own. They talk about giving only comfort care. What, patting their hand as they are starving to death? Dying of thirst? I'm so, so angry right now.
I heard a song yesterday that ripped my heart up and made me burst into tears.

Justice, by Seeds

They've got millions of dollars
still their greed's not met
So they build another factory
and they fill it with the labor
of little children in some far off foreign land
Keeping them out of sight
and out of mind
as the market place expands

When will Justice come upon the earth
When will the cries of the innocent be heard
When will power not be used for selfish gain
When will Justice Come?
When will Justice Come?

A generation of babies
have carelessly been slain
In the name of money
and convenience

While the poor and the elderly
are left alone to die
Keeping them out of sight
and out of mind
in the convenience of our times

An entire race of people forced
to leave their land
for the sake of someone elses' freedom
While another is enslaved cuz the color of his skin

TELL ME, WHEN WILL IT END?

We got Bosnia and Sudan
Rwanda and Iraq
Nations ripped apart before our eyes
Although we stand for justice
Although we fight the cause

In the end
I'm asking

When will Justice come?
When will Justice Come?
when will power not be used for selfish gain?
When will Justice Come?
When will Justice Come?
When will Justice Come?

While there's a Man who knows the pain of life
in the very deepest way
and He's coming soon to claim His rightful power
His kingdom it shall stand upon the righteousness He has
He'll give sight to our minds
as His kingdom comes at last

Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come
Then will Justice Come

Come Lord Jesus Come

How did you get so big?


Hannah left the ink pad on the floor


you love hanging out with the girls

you love your mommy

Birthday girl

can't believe it'll be a year tomorrow, sweet baby girl.

best friends #?

NAZI GERMANY, OR AMERICA?
It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out.

here's an article i found online.

Imagine visiting your 85-year-old mother in the hospital after she has a debilitating stroke. You find out that, in order to survive, she requires a feeding tube and antibiotics to fight an infection. She once told you that no matter what happened, she wants to live.

But the doctor refuses further life-sustaining treatment. When you ask why, you are told, in effect, "The time has come for your mother to die. All we will provide is comfort care."

Sound far-fetched? It's not. It's already happening.

Just as doctors once hooked people up to machines against their will, now many bioethicists advocate that doctors be permitted to refuse life-sustaining treatment that a patient wants but that they deem "futile" or "inappropriate."

Alarmingly, hospitals in California and throughout the country have begun to implement these "futile-care" policies that state, in effect: "We reserve the right to refuse service."

Medical and bioethics journals for several years kept up a drumbeat advocating the implementation of medical futility policies that hospitals -- for obvious reasons -- don't publicize. The mainstream news media have generally ignored the threat.

As a consequence, members of the public and their elected representatives remain in the dark as "futilitarians" become empowered to hand down unilateral death sentences.

Indeed, futile-care policies are implemented so quietly that no one knows their extent. No one has made a systematic study of how many patients' lives have been lost or whether futile-care decisions were reached according to hospital policies or the law.

The idea behind futile care goes like this: The patient wants life- sustaining treatment; the physician does not believe the quality of the patient's life justifies the costs to the health institution or the physical and emotional burdens of care; therefore, the doctor is entitled to refuse further treatment (other than comfort care) as "futile" or "inappropriate."

Treatments withheld under this policy might include antibiotics to treat infection, medicines for fever reduction, tube feeding and hydration, kidney dialysis or ventilator support.

Of course, physicians have never been -- nor should they be -- required to provide medical interventions that provide no medical benefit.

For example, if a patient demands chemotherapy to treat an ulcer, the physician should refuse. Such a "treatment" would have no medical benefit.

But this kind of "physiological futility," as it is sometimes called, is not what modern futile-care theory is all about. Treatments are not refused because they don't provide any medical benefit, as in the case of chemotherapy to treat an ulcer. Rather, they are refused because they actually sustain life -- such as a feeding tube does for a persistently unconscious patient.

It isn't the treatment that is deemed futile but, in effect, the patient.

Early attempts to impose futile care upon unwilling patients and families were often ad hoc. For example, a few years ago I received an urgent phone call from a distraught woman who told me that her 92-year-old mother's doctor was refusing to give the woman antibiotics for an infection.

When I asked why, she said, "He told me my mother was going to die of an infection sooner or later, so it might as well be this one."

I advised the woman to get an attorney and threaten suit. That apparently did the trick. She later called to tell me her mother was being treated and was well on the way to recovery.

In 1994, the parents of a premature infant sued to prevent the imposition of futile care upon their son, "Baby Ryan" Nguyen, after doctors told them they were ending his kidney dialysis.

Ryan would have died, but the Nguyens' attorney obtained a temporary court order forcing doctors to provide continued life-sustaining care pending a full trial.

The doctors and hospital did not take the Nguyens' defiance lying down. They filed an affidavit requesting the right to refuse to provide treatment, claiming that Ryan's condition was "universally fatal" and that continuing life-sustaining treatment was a violation of their ethics and autonomy.

Astonishingly, a hospital administrator even went so far as to report the Nguyen family to Child Protective Services for "physical abuse and physical neglect" of Ryan based on the parents' success in obtaining the injunction to keep their child from death.

The case could have had a major legal impact on the entire futile care debate. But the trial judge never decided who had the ultimate right to determine Ryan's fate. The case ended when Ryan was transferred to a Portland hospital, where a different physician successfully weaned him off dialysis. Ryan lived four years, a happy if sickly child who gave high-fives and was the delight of his parents' hearts.

Cases like Baby Ryan's led futilitarians to pursue a more sophisticated approach to securing their agenda. Rather than have doctors act on their own accord or file lawsuits seeking permission to refuse wanted care, which had been attempted on several occasions with mixed results, many futilitarians began to argue that hospitals adopt written futile-care policies establishing formal procedures by which wanted life-sustaining treatment could be refused.

Although given little attention in the news media, these policies have been extensively described in medical and bioethical publications, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Progress.

Most policies set up internal hospital procedures that work like this:

-- If a patient wants life-sustaining treatment that the physician wishes to refuse, social workers, chaplains and hospital staff attempt to mediate the dispute.

-- If the patient and physician cannot resolve their differences informally,

the matter is referred to the hospital ethics committee for adjudication.

-- If the ethics committee determines that the treatment is inappropriate, a decision based on the institution's own futile-care standards, life- sustaining treatments may be terminated even if the patient or family find another doctor willing to provide the desired care at that hospital.

-- At that point, the patient or family have three options. Acquiesce, which means the patient probably dies. Find another hospital -- not likely in our managed-care environment, since life-sustaining treatment treatment to continue, as did Baby Ryan's parents.

Futile-care protocols are designed to thwart legal action by patients or their families. The strategy is to stack the deck by convincing judges that they, mere lawyers, are ill-equipped to gainsay what doctors and bioethicists have decided is best.

In the Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics, authors urging implementation of futility policies wrote last year: "Hospitals are likely to find the legal system willing (and even eager) to defer to well-defined and procedurally scrupulous processes for internal resolution of futility disputes. "

Considering that California legislators recently enacted a statute that appears to authorize futile-care impositions upon the sickest patients, that may be a winning strategy. Section 4735 of the California Probate Code states that a doctor or hospital "may decline to comply with an individual health care instruction" that runs contrary to "generally accepted health care standards." This means that once futile care becomes mainstream, the law will permit doctors to refuse wanted treatment that runs contrary to their values --

even if such care is necessary to keep the patient alive.

This little-noticed law raises an urgent question: How many California hospitals have already promulgated futile-care policies? Unfortunately, no one knows. But there is little doubt that the number is growing fast.

Authors of the Cambridge Quarterly article surveyed 26 California hospitals,

including UCSF, Kaiser Permanente, Stanford, UCLA and Cedars-Sinai. Without identifying the hospitals, they reported 24 had protocols in place that "defined nonobligatory treatment" in terms that were not "physiology based" -- in other words, a treatment that has no medical benefit.

Of these, "nine policies assigned the final decision-making authority to the responsible physician."

Other policies gave the power to hospital committees, the chief of staff or the hospital administration. Tellingly, only seven protocols permitted the patient or patient representative to have the final say.

As if this weren't enough cause for alarm, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has introduced federal legislation to let doctors deny life-sustaining treatment against the will of the patient or the patient's family.

The Health Care Assurance Act (S24) is a 171-page bill with noble ambitions to expand health coverage for children and disabled people. Buried in the bill's bowels is a provision that permits hospitals to withhold care that is determined to be "either futile or otherwise not medically indicated."

The bill would be a disaster for the most vulnerable, disabled and defenseless among us -- patients who are too often dehumanized and callously viewed as parasites on limited health care resources.

Then there is the very real potential that bigoted doctors would apply futile-care policiesin a discriminatory fashion. Indeed, a 1996 study published by the Mayo Clinic found that "CPR was more likely to be considered futile if the patient was not white."

Implementing futile care to control health care costs doesn't add up. Since only about 10 percent of the nation's entire health care budget goes to end-of- life care, little would actually be saved.

But cost control isn't the ultimate point for futilitarians.

As many of them see it, if the nation were to swallow futile care theory, it would establish the principle that health care can be explicitly "rationed" -- a euphemism for discrimination against people who are elderly, disabled, chronically ill, dying or otherwise "expensive to care for."

Seen in this light, medical futility is the foot in the door that would begin the step-by-step descent from a health care system based on Hippocratic principles -- "First, do no harm" -- to a system in which access to medical care is restricted to some but open to others.

Futile care is not the finishing line of this important ethical and legal struggle, but merely the starting gate of a far longer race.

Wesley J. Smith is the author of "Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America."

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

How very Hallmark of you.

Excerpts from a book by Max Lucado

Our hearts are not large enough to contain the blessings that God wants to give

So try this
The next time a sunrise steals your breath.....
or a meadow of flowers leaves you speechless
remain that way

Say nothing and listen as heaven whispers "do you like it? I did it just for you."

Flooded by emotion, overcome with pride, the Starmaker turns to us, one by one, and says
"you are my child, and I love you dearly"


Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill.

Worship the potato? The idea seemed silly to me. But then I thought, what else is more deserving of worship? It's simple, it comes from the Earth, and it can kill you if you disobey it.

Jack Handy

I heard just about the best sales pitch in my life last night-simple me, I didn't know it was a sales pitch until I told Nathan about it, but anyways, here is what happened.

I was sitting in the car waiting for Nathan to get off work, and a street kids walked up. He made the usual icebreaking comment by complimenting my dreads, then leaned over and said "hey, I got a question for you"
I said "yes?" He said "What would you do if someone gave you an eighth of a bag of weed and 3 ounces of hash? I just don't know what to do with it"
I thought for a second and said "I'd throw it away. Drugs are evil. Just go throw it away, man.
As if he hadn't heard me he said again "I just don't know what I'm going to do with it.

I thought that this encounter was rather strange. Did he want me to buy it? Tell him to smoke it?
If it really was a sales pitch, he should become a businessman.

Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then, on the way out, slam the door.

jack handy

More deep thoughts be Jack Handy

It's funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating.

I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.

by the way, this is a sarcastic article-i don't believe abortion is EVER ok-never ever.
I just think it so funny in an awful terrible way that they try to deny the wrongness of it, but affirm the guilt and grief in so many ways. why would you need consolation if it's a right?

Greeting cards for abortion and other rights
By Jon Sanders

We Americans can certainly learn a lot from a nonprofit organization's idea for "abortion greeting cards." No, really.

The Associated Press reported this week that an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit called "Exhale" is offering "a series of electronic greeting cards that concerned friends and relatives can send to a woman after she chooses to have an abortion." For example, one card tells the woman she "did the right thing." Another "expresses sympathy, offering the gentle reminder that, 'As you grieve, remember you are loved.'" (For some reason — probably just an oversight — there's no sympathy card for the father.)


The Supreme Court and all our self-appointed elite agree: abortion is a woman's right. So you might ask how on earth could someone just exercising her right be cause for grief. But that's the wrong way to look at it, or else next thing you know, you might start wondering if there's not some other reason for women having an abortion to grieve. You might start to suspect there's a different cause for the guilt.

One of the cards even offers a chipper "God will never leave you or forsake you." You don't want to be caught thinking why just exercising a God-given right would make someone need that card.

Because if you start thinking along those lines, then pretty soon you'll start noticing that there are more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics. And then you might see that those centers work to help pregnant women find prenatal care, housing, clothing, charity, an uplifting vision of themselves as a mother and giver of life, friendship, hope, and maybe even God. And then you might be tempted (Earth-Mother forbid!) to compare that vision with the cynical vision of a pregnancy being likened to a tumor … a tumor that, hm, kicks and responds to ambient noise and grows and … well, the analogy tends to break down over a period of nine months.

So you don't want to pursue those lines of thought. If you were Al Gore, of course, you could wow feminists and eco-looneys by having your bogus company award every women having an abortion a free, "life"-time supply of "carbon credits" – for all the "carbon footprints" not left by her children.

But given the inconvenient probability that you're not Gore, try this idea instead. Obviously this California nonprofit has stumbled upon a new, potentially lucrative field of greeting cards for people acting within their inalienable rights. Because people doing what society and our Constitution agree is A-OK must be grieving and in dire need of encouragement.

People are hurting – for nothing. It must be an untapped market, and some greeting-card entrepreneurs could really rack up. As a classic liberal, lover of freedom, and humanitarian, I don't mind sharing these suggestions for the greater good:

For people who take the First Amendment step of bravely talking, there could be a range of cards. Feel guilty for speaking up? You could be told, "As you speak, remember that you are loved." Need encouragement? How about a silly rhyme: "Roses are red; you say they're blue. We have free speech; I'm proud of you." There could be a "Thanks for Talking!" line if you just want to send a "friendship" card to a vocal friend. Oh, and for the religious yap, a John 1:1 "Inspirations" card would remind him that "In the beginning was the Word."

Speaking of religious yaps, no doubt there'd be a huge demand for "Holiday Encouragement" cards, perfect for the loved one on your list who wigged out the local ACLU snitch with a hearty "Merry Christmas!" You could even have special "Beat Hell Soon" cards for Bible-believing invalids. Remember, people taking advantage of their mundane, God-given rights need all the encouragement they can get, the poor souls.

There could be a special line of "Not Missing You" cards for people practicing free assembly. Heartfelt "Good Luck (You'll Need It)!" cards for someone petitioning the government for redress of grievances. Friend buy a new gun? Why not a "Give It Your Best Shot" card? (Enemy buy a gun? It's not too late for "I'm Sorry.")

And who hasn't secretly wished just once to receive an "Atta Boy" for not housing a soldier? Are you seeking due process after your local government threatened to seize your land under eminent domain? If so, what could make you feel better than a musical greeting card serenading you to the strains of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land"?

Those are just a few of the cards possible in this new, promising line of "I Exercised My Rights and Now I Feel Bad" greeting cards. Look for them soon in the card aisle in your favorite grocery store. You're sure to find them right next to the new "Unbirthday" section.

To me, it's always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, 'Hey, can you give me a hand?,' you can say, 'Sorry, got these sacks.'
by Jack Handey

Super Granmie fix

excerpt from Chuck Smith's book, "a family together"

"In creating woman God created her different from man in physical structure - the man being the stronger and larger, the woman being the smaller and more frail."

this does seem to be the case generally, but i know some strong women!

"Along with the physical differences, certain emotional differences were created. In the emotional realm He created the woman with a higher sensitivity than the man. Emotionally, man is usually very coarse. His emotions move in a narrower spectrum. A woman's emotional spectrum is quite wide. She's capable of great highs; she's capable of great lows. Yes, a man can get excited and a man can get depressed. But, as a general rule, he cannot appreciate as much as a woman or enjoy as much as a woman. Men don't have the extreme highs that women can attain."

This is why i posted this. What planet do i live on? This one paragraph has shocked me more than anything has shocked me in years. Men are coarse?????!!!!!!!


"As far as intelligence is concerned, I don't believe that there's any difference at all between male or female. I believe that women are capable of as great understanding and thinking process as men, they may even have a slight advantage over man in the area we call intuition. Spiritually, of course, men and women are one in the eyes of God (Galatians 3:28)."
But having created us with different physical characteristics and a different emotional spectrum, God then set forth the rules of the relationship between husband and wife. By obeying these rules, man and woman can find the fulfillment, joy, and happiness from life, that God desires them to have."

ok, now is it just me, or is there traits that are common to manKIND, and people have them in differing amounts? Some of the most dreamy, sensitive people I know are men.
Kyle, if you're reading this, yes, i'm talking about you! I was reading this thing today that said women aren't logical at all-they have to learn from men how to be logical. Sheesh. They probably never met Cate or Amy Mooney. Or my mother in law!
This whole weird notion that men are unemotional cold hard beings and women are melting emotionally driven i don't know what has been messing with my head for so long now. Where did it come from? Not my reality or experience, thats for sure.
Please give me feedback on this