Steve Jobs: An Unexpected Pregnancy NOT Aborted

What would the world have been like had the Apple Computer founder never been born? Had a man like the late Steve Jobs, adopted as a newborn, been conceived in such an unwed mother in an age of Roe v. Wade, he would likely never had been born.

UPDATE 11/23/11: Steve Jobs wanted to find his birth mother to thank her "because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was 23 and she went through a lot to have me."

-- From "Steve Jobs Changed the World: Adoption Changed His" by Ryan Bomberger, LifeNews.com 10/6/11

Jobs was adopted as a baby and loved by his parents, Clara and Paul Jobs. The baby they took into their hearts and home had a purpose in life that would be unleashed by the powerful act of adoption.

. . . The nation’s largest abortion chain, aborting 340 children for every 1 woman that is referred for adoption, is the antithesis to this purpose. Planned Parenthood celebrates their founder who believed that “we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” Contrary to Margaret Sanger’s warped mentality that children are “marked when they’re born” as “diseased, delinquents, and felons”, none of us know the beautiful potential that every life possesses.

There are so many well-known adopted individuals that have impacted many of our lives in one way or another: Charles Dickens, George Washington Carver, Nat King Cole, Babe Ruth, Dave Thomas (Wendy’s), Bo Diddley (musician/performer), Dan O’Brien (Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist) and Faith Hill, just to name a few. Steve Jobs is among this list of infinite possibility. No matter the perceived worldly success of an adoptee, adoption is a loving act that transforms, not only the life of the child, but the entire family. And, sometimes, the world.

To read this entire opinion column, CLICK HERE.

Americans Flee California's Socialist Trends

"People coming to California in general do not have resources, and the people who do have resources and wealth are leaving the state."

Compare to the phenomenon common in Europe.

-- From "California population growth slows" by Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle Sacramento Bureau 12/18/09

More people left the state for other parts of the country than moved here, a difference of about 142,000 people. While that number is outweighed by people moving from other countries to California, it continues a trend of migration to other states that began in 2005.

Since that year, more than half a million more people have left California than have moved to the state. They mainly have moved to neighboring Western states, said Mary Heim, chief of the demographic research unit at the Department of Finance. In past years, more of those people moved to Nevada, but last year saw an increase in people moving to Oregon and Washington, she said. Texas also attracts a large number of Californians.

Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California, said he is not surprised by the data.

"Most people who move to or from California do so for economic reasons, specifically jobs. Our unemployment rate is significantly higher than the rest of the country and when that happens, California tends to send more migrants to other states than we receive," Johnson said.

California's birthrate and immigration from outside the United States, both legal and illegal, kept the state's growth rate positive at 0.92 percent.

Stemming the loss of population to other states has been a priority for Republicans at the state Capitol, who blame California's regulatory climate for pushing jobs, and thus residents, to other states.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Czech President: Obama Wrong to Lead U.N. 'Church of Global Warming'

[President] Klaus said global warming has turned into a new religion, an ideology that threatens to undermine freedom and the world's economic and social order.

-- From "U.N. climate meeting was propaganda: Czech president" by Louis Charbonneau, Reuters 9/22/09

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.

Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.

But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change.

"The train can't be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake," Klaus said.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

L.A. Mayor Sees Privatization as Solution to Failing Public Schools

Mayor Villaraigosa has recognized that public education is failing in its mission as a result of too much control by the institution of education -- the teachers' unions and bureaucracy.

Under a bill introduced by School Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, private operators could bid for control of 50 new campuses and hundreds of struggling ones.

-- From "Villaraigosa advocates letting outside operators bid for control of L.A. Unified schools" by Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times 8/11/09

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Tuesday he will push the school district to allow outside operators to bid for control of hundreds of campuses, a move he described as the centerpiece of education reform for his second term.

The proposal drew the ire of the teachers union, which has strongly criticized the mayor's own school-improvement efforts at 10 schools, including Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights. Villaraigosa, in turn, called the union "the biggest defender of the status quo."

The mayor's goal, embodied in part in a proposal by Board of Education member Yolie Flores Aguilar, would let charter-school organizations, the mayor's nonprofit and other groups compete to run 50 new schools scheduled to open over the next four years. The school board is scheduled to take up that motion later this month.

Villaraigosa also wants to allow outside groups or the district to shut down and restaff hundreds of existing schools that have long been rated "failing" under federal accountability rules. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and other officials have said that closing unsuccessful schools is a logical outgrowth of the Flores Aguilar plan.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

In Economic Crisis, Al-Qaida Claims Victory

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader appeared in a new video posted Friday calling on Americans to embrace Islam to overcome the financial meltdown, which he said was a consequence of the Sept. 11 attacks and militant strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- From "Al-Qaida No. 2 to US: Overcome meltdown with Islam" by the Associated Press 11/28/08

Appearing in a white turban and robe, [Ayman al-Zawahri] discussed the roots of the U.S. economic crisis. He said it was a repercussion of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, and that the crisis would continue "as long as the foolish American policy of wading in Muslim blood continues."

"The American economy was afflicted by a downturn and loss of investor confidence in the market following the events of Sept. 11," he said.

"The modern economy has been destroyed by the strikes of the mujahedeen (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and usury," he said, using the Arabic term for holy warriors.

Under Islamic Sharia law, usury, like drinking alcohol, is among the grand sins.

Zawahri then called on the American people to "embrace Islam to live a life free of greed, exploitation and forbidden wealth."

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.

Why Capitalism Needs Christianity

From "Why Capitalism Needs Christianity" by Chuck Colson, posted 4/2/07 at Breakpoint.

Last week, electronics retailer Circuit City announced that it was laying off 3400 employees.
What made these particular layoffs noteworthy was not their size but, instead, Circuit City’s stated reasons. They had “nothing to do with [employees’] skills or whether they were a good worker or not.” Instead, “it was a function of their salary relative to the market.”
In other words, Circuit City was laying them off so it could replace them with people who make less. Rotten!

To be fair, Circuit City is not alone in this practice. It is part of a “new way of controlling labor costs in the service industry.” Employers “determine the prevailing market wages for particular jobs in various geographic regions” and “then find ways to make sure that their workers’ salaries stay within that range.”

There is no consideration of an employee’s productivity or quality of work. Nor is there any claim that the company can’t afford to pay what the workers are currently making—only that it doesn’t have to.

It is hard to imagine a clearer example of how rapacious unrestrained economic power can be. With all due respect to the late Milton Friedman, corporations’ social responsibility goes beyond maximizing shareholders’ returns.

But even if you do not think that unapologetically getting rid of workers so that they can hire cheaper workers is degrading and dehumanizing, it goes against your self-interest.
That is because it undermines the moral and cultural consensus that sustains free-market capitalism. Michael Novak has written about what he calls the “three-legged stool” that makes democratic capitalism possible: economic freedom, political freedom, and moral restraint. Take away any of these three and the system collapses.

Christianity’s great contribution to this consensus was that it provided capitalism with a moral dimension that capitalism could not provide for itself. Its teachings about the necessity for moral restraint in the marketplace were rooted in the Old Testament concerns for social justice, fair wages, and care for the poor. It incorporated the consistent biblical teaching about human dignity, including the dignity of honest labor.

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