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This is a more family version to a great holiday classic!  Enjoy!

December 25
Dearest Dave,

I went to the door today, and the postman delivered a partridge in a pear tree. This was a delightful gift! I couldn't have been more surprised or pleased darling!

With truly the deepest love,
Agnes

December 26

Dearest Dave,

Today the postman brought me yet another of your sweet gifts. The two turtule doves that arrived today are adorable, and I'm delighted by your thoughtful and generous ways.

With all of my love,
Your Agnes

December 27

Dearest Dave,

You've truly been too kind! I must protest; I don't deserve such generosity. The thought of getting three French hens amazes me. Yet, I am not surprised--what more should I expect from such a nice person.

Love,
Agnes

December 28

Dear Dave,

Four calling birds arrived in the mail today. They are truly nice but don't you think that enough is enough? You are being too romantic.

Affectionately,
Agnes

December 29

Dearest darling Dave,

It was a surprise to get five golden rings! I now have one for every finger. You truly are impossible darling, yet oh how I love it! Quite frankly, all of those squarking birds from the previous days were starting to get on my nerves. Yet, you managed to come through with a beautiful valuable gift!

All my love,
Agnes

December 30

Dear Dave,

When I opened my door, there were actually six geese a-laying on my front steps. So you're back to the birds again, huh? Those geese are dear, but where will I keep them? The neighbors are complaining, and I am unable to sleep with all the racket. Please stop dear.

Cordially,
Agnes

December 31

Dave,

What is with you and those stupid birds!? Seven swans a-swimming!! What kind of sick joke is this!!?? There are bird droppings everywhere! They never shut up, and I don't get any sleep!!! I'm a nervous wreck! It's not funny you weirdo, so stop with the birds.

Sincerely,
Agnes

January 1

O.K. wise guy,

The birds were bad enough. Now what do you expect me to do with eight maids a-milking? If that's not bad enough, they had to bring their cows!! The front lawn was completely ruined by them, and I can't move in my own house! Just lay off me or you'll be sorry!

Agnes

January 2


Hey loser,

What are you? You must be some kind of sadist!! Now there are nine pipers playing, and they certainly do play! They haven't stopped chasing those maids since they got here! The cows are getting upset, and they're stepping all over those screeching birds. The neighbors are getting up a petition to evict me, and I'm going out of my mind!

You'll get yours!
Agnes

January 3

You rotten scum!!!

There are now ten ladies dancing! There is only one problem with that! They're dancing twenty-four hours a day all around me with the pipers upsetting the cows and the maids. The cows can't sleep, and they are going to the bathroom everywhere! The building commissioner has subpoenaed me to give cause as to why the house shouldn't be condemned! I can't even think of a reason! You creep! I'm sicking the police on you!

One who means it!

January 4

Listen you evil, sadistic, maniac!

What's with the eleven lords-a-leaping?!? They are leaping across the rooms breaking everything and even injuring some of the maids! The place smells, is an absolute mad house, and is about to be condemned! At least the birds are quiet; they were trampled to death by the cows. I hope you are satisfied--you rotten vicious worthless piece of garbage!

Your sworn enemy,
Agnes

January 5

The Law Offices of
Badger, Rees, and Yorker
20 Knave Street
Chicago, Illinois

Dear sir,

This is to acknowledge your latest gift of twelve fiddlers-fiddling which you have seen fit to inflict on our client, one Agnes Mcholstein. The destruction of course was total. If you attempt to reach Ms. Mcholstein at Happy Daze Sanatarium, the attendants have instructions to shoot you on site.

Please direct all correspondence to this office in the future. With this letter, please find attached a warrant for your arrest.

Cordially,
Badger, Rees, and Yorker

A friend of mine is visiting Greece at this time.  Today she sent me this e-mail.  I thought y'all might be interested on what has been going on over there.  Remember, no matter how hard your life might seem; somebody always has it worse.

Dear everyone,

Forgive me for not writing sooner to assure you of my safety. Today is the first day I've been able to be online for more than ten minutes. The only places here with internet connection are downtown, and all the riots have been going on... you guessed it.
I can't remember who said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", but that's the first thing that went through my mind as I walked outside this morning. The entire city is in a fog of smoke and teargas residue, so even living in the "suburbs", it takes the lungs some getting used to before oxygen can actually go through.
Yesterday was the fourth day of the riots. I am not kidding when I say that the center of Thessaloniki feels like a third-world country war zone. Public transportation (the way about 75% of Greeks get around, including myself) is down. Banks are torched, post offices are smashed, police stations are barracked, cars, including squad cars, are upside down and on fire in the streets, the terrorist youth is setting huge trash bins on fire and throwing them into traffic in broad daylight, and the university is completely trashed. I, personally, helped put out three trashcans just yesterday. I have never seen more police incompetence in my life and I have never felt more in need of an uzi. The anarchocommies have been torching, burning, looting, and destroying for four days. I was walking down the main street of the city this morning and I felt I was in the Gaza Strip. I was at a Starbucks a couple nights ago and the next morning when I went back it was cinders. There was a hole in the glass behind the spot where I was sitting, and my spot was remnants of an explosion. They torched every Starbucks but one in town. I included pictures of some of the damage. I was walking home last night and a rock from a "protester" nearly sent me to the pearly gates. Other people weren't as lucky. People have stopped going out to the center after 4pm. This morning I was in a store and we had a ten minute lockdown because the rioters were passing by outside. Iron doors were brought down and we were trying to be quiet so they don't try and break through. It's hell here, but my heart is mostly with the families that have lost their livelihoods in this horrible time. Greece is 80% mom and pop stores, passed down from father to son/daughter, and it's how Greeks make their living. So many people were destroyed, and in this economy, this is nearly as bad as losing your life. There is nothing like going out early in the morning and seeing a grown man crying on his knees in front of his destroyed and looted store, crying to heaven "How am I going to feed my family now?!" Please, please, keep them and me in your prayers, and I will try to write back as soon as possible.
All aside, there have not been any intentional murders, so please don't worry. I will keep inside as much as I'm able, so I'll be safe. I love you all.

Love to all of you, and blessed holidays. [name edited out for privacy]

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Abortion Linked to Disproportionately High Rate of Black Premature Births

Article says dangerous suction abortions violate international code of research ethics

By Kathleen Gilbert

TUCSON, Arizona, December 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A report published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons links the disproportionately high rate of preterm births (PTB) among black babies to the high rate of abortion among the black minority.

The article, written by Dr. Brent Rooney et. al., notes that since PTB "has a serious adverse effect on children's health, with a disparate impact on black children," it is "crucial to discover the cause of the disparity."  Rooney is the research director of the Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition.

The report notes that black American women are at three times higher risk for giving birth prematurely, and four times higher risk for giving birth extremely prematurely.  Infants born extremely premature suffer a 129 times higher risk of cerebral palsy than infants born full-term.  PTB also increases risk of mental retardation, autism, epilepsy, visual impairment, hearing disability, gastrointestinal injury, respiratory distress, and severe infections.

Six studies were cited to show consistent evidence that women who had undergone induced abortions displayed a significantly increased risk of PTB.  As the abortion rate in the black community is 4.3 times that of non-blacks - nearly one out of every two black American children is killed in utero - abortion was pinpointed as the likely cause for PTB. 

Other confounding factors, including maternal age, parity, history of PTB, were excluded in the control methods of the report's cited studies.  Rooney noted that PTB rates in Poland dropped drastically after abortion was banned.

The article cites prominent abortion advocate Malcolm Potts, who conceded in 1967 that, “There seems little doubt that there is a true relationship between the high incidence of therapeutic abortion and prematurity."

Accordingly, Rooney concludes that because of a failure to test the procedure on animals or small human trials prior to widespread use, vacuum aspiration, or "suction" abortions violate the Nuremberg Code of ethics.  The code, which was implemented in reaction to Nazi human experimentation, requires the safe validation of a medical procedure before being made available to the public. 

"Millions of women have been subjected, without safety testing, to a procedure for which there is substantial evidence of serious health risks both to women and their future offspring," concludes the article.  At the very least, it says, the risks "need to be explicitly included in consent forms."

The report was co-authored by Dr. Bryan Calhoun of West Virginia University, and Lisa Roche, president of the Women's Investigative Network.

African-American pro-life leaders have frequently expressed outrage that Planned Parenthood has concentrated abortion clinics in black communities, facilitating the deaths of approximately 15 million African-American children.  Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider, was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who explicitly pursued the subjugation of blacks and other poor ethnic groups.

To view the article, go to: http://www.jpands.org/vol13...

See related LifeSiteNews.com articles:

New Study Claims Abortion Rate Has Dropped: Minority Rate Still Disproportionately High
http://www.lifesitenews.com...

Abortion Increases Women's Mental Health Problems: New Study
http://www.lifesitenews.com...

One Quarter of Black Population Missing from Abortion Genocide Says Dr. Alveda King
http://www.lifesitenews.com...

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Blinded by Science?

Don't Be; That's Just the New Atheists Masking Their Faith Choice

by Terrell Clemmons

In the November 2006 cover story of Wired magazine, Gary Wolf thoughtfully gave ear to some of atheism’s most aggressive voices and labeled the movement that they lead “New Atheism.” Envisioning a brave new world in which science and reason overcome religious myth and superstition, New Atheists labor to purvey a comprehensive worldview that explains who we are and how we got here (Darwinian evolution), diagnoses our most urgent ill (ancient superstitions about God), and, most importantly, prescribes a cure for that ill (eradication of religion).

In the same month that Wired reported on New Atheism, Time magazine artfully depicted the science and religion quandary with a combination double helix­rosary on its cover. The title, “God vs. Science,” might have led a casual reader to expect a story about a theologian opposing science, but the article actually covered a debate between two scientists. Geneticist Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and biologist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University weighed in on Time’s questions about science, belief in God, and whether the two can peaceably coexist in an intellectually sound world-view. Collins said they can; Dawkins said absolutely not.

Recent battles over textbooks in America lend credence to the notion of science and religion as perennial foes, and ABC News, reporting on a survey of atheism among scientists, casually commented that “the clash between science and religion is as old as science itself,” as if that’s what everybody with any gray matter already knows. But historians of science reveal a different story, one that is more in line with the view of Dr. Collins.

In his course Science and Religion, Lawrence Principe, professor of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University, meticulously untangles the historical accounts of events commonly bandied about as proof that religion suppresses science, such as the trials of Galileo and John Scopes. Principe teaches that, contrary to irreligionist lore, the two disciplines were generally viewed as complementary until a little more than a century ago.

Principe identifies two late-19th-century publications as the origin of the idea of warfare between science and religion: A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, written by skeptic scientist John William Draper in 1874, and A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, published in 1896 by Andrew Dickson White, first president of Cornell University. It is noteworthy that both writers seemed to want the church to back off; Draper wrote at the request of a popular science publisher, and White in response to criticism that he had received for establishing Cornell as the first American university with no religious affiliation.

Principe reveals that the premise of both books—that science and religion have occupied separate camps throughout history, and that religion has always been the oppressor of science—is unfounded, calling Draper’s book “cranky,” “ahistorical,” and “one long, vitriolic, anti-Catholic diatribe,” while White’s is “scarcely better.” Still, he credits the two sub-scholarly works with crystallizing in the popular mind the image of ongoing, intractable warfare between science and religion. Today’s New Atheists echo and amplify their war cries.

Are We Talking Science or Faith?

Skeptics ardently defend their right to reject religious dogma and make up their own minds about ultimate reality. Certainly, atheists, scientific or not, are free to adopt whatever belief system they choose, but can they legitimately claim science as the basis for atheism? Put more simply, has science disproved God, as the irreligionists maintain?

A closer look at Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins sheds light on that question. The most significant difference between the two scientists is not that one believes in biblical creation and the other in Darwinian evolution. Both affirm Darwinism. The salient distinction is that Collins allows for the possibility of God, whereas Dawkins does not.

But it wasn’t always so. The fourth son of two freethinkers, Francis Collins was homeschooled until age ten. His parents instilled in him a love for learning but no faith, and the agnosticism of his youth gradually shifted into atheism as his education progressed. He was comfortable with it, discounting spiritual beliefs as outmoded superstition, until he began to interact with seriously ill patients as a medical student. When one of them, a Christian, asked him what he believed, he faced a rationalist’s crisis. “It was a fair question,” he wrote in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. “I felt my face flush as I stammered out the words ‘I’m not really sure.’” At that point, Collins realized that he had never seriously considered the evidence for and against belief.

Determined to practice authentic, what-are-the-facts science, Collins set out to investigate the rational basis for faith. Reluctantly, he found himself feeling “forced to admit the plausibility of the God hypothesis. Agnosticism, which had seemed like a safe second-place haven, now loomed like the great cop-out it often is. Faith in God now seemed more rational than disbelief.”

In contrast to Collins’s rational inquiry and personal struggle over the question of God, Richard Dawkins, the de facto spokesman for scientific atheism (think Madalyn Murray O’Hair with a PhD), lays out his case for unbelief without struggle or reservation. In chapter four of The God Delusion, titled “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God,” Dawkins introduces his “Argument from Improbability,” and though the chapter waxes long, its reasoning distills to something like this:

1. The universe we observe is highly complex.
2. Any creator of this complex universe would have to be even more complex than it.
3. It is too improbable that such a God exists; therefore, there almost certainly is no God.

The first two statements qualify as acceptable premises, but the conclusion that Dawkins reaches simply does not follow from them. This isn’t legitimate reasoning. It’s rationalization—that is, finding some plausible-sounding explanation for arriving at a conclusion that he has already chosen.

Dr. Dawkins is certainly free to choose to disbelieve, but his conclusion was not derived through scientific or rational means. Rather, it hints at an underlying personal, philosophical faith choice to disbelieve. Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionary biologists, made a similar observation when he analyzed reasons for disbelief among his Harvard colleagues. “We were all atheists. I found that there were two sources,” he said. One group “just couldn’t believe all that supernatural stuff.” The other “couldn’t believe that there could be a God with all this evil in the world. Most atheists combine the two,” he summarized candidly. “The combination makes it impossible to believe in God.”

Former atheist and biophysicist Alister McGrath concurs, noting that most of the unbelieving scientists he is acquainted with are atheists on grounds other than their science. “They bring those assumptions to their science rather than basing them on their science.” Dawkins’s rationalization, as well as the observations of McGrath and Mayr, reveal the choice to disbelieve for what it is—a personal, philosophical choice made apart from reason or scientific inquiry. I call it a “faith choice” because it involves choosing a foundational presupposition concerning a realm about which we have incomplete (but not insufficient) knowledge.

A Choice of Faith

Francis Collins’s conclusion, that the God hypothesis is not only plausible, but compellingly supported by evidence, flatly controverts New Atheism’s premise that faith constitutes an irrational belief without evidence. It also reveals that the real conflict isn’t one of science versus God. It’s a conflict between those who allow and those who disallow the possible reality of God.

Polemicists will continue to clamor for converts to their side on the question of God because between the poles live thoughtful, educated people—not necessarily working scientists, but people who value science. Some believe in a supreme being called God, and others haven’t made up their minds. It is these theological moderates that New Atheism seeks to recruit with pithy epigrams such as “God vs. Science” and “My beliefs are based on science, but yours are based on faith.” What believers need is a calm, judicious counter-strategy when New Atheism advances under the guise of science, one that can transform verbal sparring into illuminating dialogue. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

My friend Dana has known Sam for decades. Over the years, Sam has peppered her with questions about her faith. Despite feeling intimidated—Sam is a highly respected leader in their community—she has answered as best she could and maintained their friendship. One evening over dinner in her home, Sam turned his questions on her teenagers, essentially asking them, “Do you really believe all that stuff and why?” Dana allowed them to speak for themselves for a while before intervening.

“Sam,” she started agreeably, “you and I have discussed this many times. I’ve told you what I believe and why, and you’ve told me all of your reasons for not believing.” Then she posed a question that she had never put to him before. “What if there really is a God, but you just don’t know about him? Are you willing to consider that possibility? Are you willing to ask him if he’s out there? Something like, ‘God, I’m not even sure if you’re there, but if you are, would you show yourself to me?’”

Dana let her question hang in the air. The teenagers likewise waited for Sam to break the silence. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not willing to do that.” And he hasn’t brought the subject up since.

Dana gently—but powerfully—pierced the facade of scientific skepticism with one question: Are you willing? It is not a question of scientific reasoning, but a question of choosing, of making a personal faith choice that, once made, establishes the starting point for one’s reasoning. Atheism isn’t founded on science or reason any more than theism is based on faith devoid of reason. The atheist, too, has made a faith choice. He has just chosen differently. •

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Futher studies warn that women who kill their unborn children increase the risk of mental health isssues.  This is contary to the lies being spread by the anti-life nazis. 

 http://www.lifesitenews.com...