Monthly Archives: December 2016

OBAMA: EIGHT LONG YEARS AND MANY FAILURES!

31 Saturday Dec 2016

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As we prepare to close out 2016, it’s tempting to reflect on many of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected president — specifically, to address failures of President Obama to offer the kind of “hope and change” he’d promised voters before taking office eight years ago.

In fact, Obama made a lot of promises then that ultimately weren’t kept as well as delivering many legislative surprises that voters hadn’t expected. When conservatives and media pundits called him out on his misdeeds, he continually smiled and gave press conferences to talk about fudged numbers, military debacles and endless “victories” in the dubious category of social justice.

There were times when it seemed that if Obama could have found a way to bring a million transgender ISIS terrorists in favor of affirmative action into the country, he would have signed as many executive orders as it would have taken to accomplish such a feat.

At times, it was difficult to figure out exactly which constituency Obama felt like he was serving with his speeches, his initiatives, his cabinet appointments and his military actions. To be sure, Obama toed the Democratic Party line on many issues, including allowing federal funding for abortion, protecting Planned Parenthood, disallowing oil drilling on federal property, blocking the Keystone pipeline and pushing gun control bills.

But in other areas, Obama took the presidential ball and ran with it, as when he intervened militarily in Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen. Rather than discontinue some unsavory practices of the Bush administration such as drone strikes and surveillance of American citizens, he expanded on them and made his administration far more opaque to the press despite vows to the contrary early in his tenure.

His promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was as worthless as the one made to Obamacare enrollees that they’d be able to keep their physicians after the program rolled out.

And when Obamacare did roll out, it was a disaster, with its $5 billion website crashing from Day 1, resulting in angry enrollees who ultimately were shocked to discover that their health care premiums had skyrocketed instead of decreased. In fact, it’s common knowledge that Obamacare is prohibitively expensive except in cases of catastrophic care, and we all know how common those are.

It’s telling that not one Republican voted for either Obamacare or Obama’s 2009 $787 billion stimulus bill. Rather than blithely surpassing the debt ceiling, Republicans chose to shut down the government in 2013 in an effort to rein in Obama’s and the Democrats’ spending.

Voters watched in horror as the government bailed out Wall Street institutions such as AIG (which promptly turned around and gave almost all its bailout money in bonuses to employees) and automakers Chrysler and GM. Only one major banker was sent to prison during Obama’s two terms despite vast numbers of Wall Street scandals, frauds and cases of waste.

To make matters worse, Obama encouraged banks to start making subprime loans again to minority borrowers — as if the entire financial crisis of 2008 never happened!

In 2012, 2014 and 2015, the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray outraged America, but rather than attempting to propose solutions or renew policing efforts, Obama fanned the flames of racial controversy and got behind social justice groups such as Black Lives Matter. Instead of helping racism and racial issues to wither away, Obama seems content to draw attention to them and keep Americans divided.

Obama ramped up the number of troops in Afghanistan not just once, but twice and stood idly by as more American soldiers died there than during the administration of President George W. Bush. Obama increased military intervention to the point whereby at the end of his tenure, the U.S. was bombing no less than seven countries, nearly doubling the nation’s debt through his unending commitments to seemingly interminable conflicts.

At the same time, Obama seemed to be in love with Islam. His first presidential interview was with Al Arabiya television. He gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt where he promised to “deepen ties’” with global Muslim communities.

He pledged to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S., even in the face of ISIS-related attacks in San Bernardino, California and Orlando, Florida. When mass shootings occurred in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, he tried to ban assault weapons and expand background checks, both of which would have had a negligible effect on shootings elsewhere.

And when terrible ISIS-related violence occurred worldwide — whether in the U.S. or not — Obama seemed to have a verbal prejudice against using the words “Islamic terror,” no matter how many people had died or how horribly. Even when an American such as journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS in August 2014, Obama scarcely took time off from his golf game to make a statement to the press.

Obama was happy to appoint gaffe-prone John Kerry to be his Secretary of State in the wake of the walking fiasco that was Hillary Clinton. Clinton was all too happy to use her office to craft deals for herself and her husband and grease the wheels for her own presidential run in 2016 but through her own negligence got U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens killed.

Kerry didn’t do much better, signing the noxious Iranian nuclear deal on behalf of Obama, who trumpeted that “key parts of the [Iranian nuclear] program will be held back.” Left unsaid was how bad the terms were for the U.S. and how many cash ransom payments for U.S. hostages would be necessary to consummate the deal.

Obama stayed committed to his immigration policies even when federal judges shot down his orders, such as his planned deferment of four million scheduled immigrant deportations in Texas in 2015. Immigrants seemed nearly to be Obama’s favorite demographic group, perhaps second only to the transgendered, to whom he seemed endlessly devoted.

At least the latter people can vote legally (although that didn’t stop Obama from encouraging illegals to participate as well in the most recent presidential election). Given his enormous commitment of support for transgendered persons, one might be forgiven for thinking that they make up more than one hundredth of one percent of the U.S. population; but no, that’s not the case, unless the White House houses one or two we don’t know about!

As Obama’s time in office wore on, people began to see through his spin, his exaggerations and his lies, which GOP Representative Joe Wilson memorably called him out on (famously yelling out “You lie!”) during a 2009 speech Obama gave to a joint session of Congress.

Obama’s approval rating dropped to as low as 40 percent in 2014 as people realized that despite Obama’s sunny talk of the economy getting better and unemployment being reduced that they had even less money in their pockets, and those people who had found work often were toiling in low-paying service-sector jobs, instead of the industrial or productivity positions they’d formerly been employed in.

And so, for all of these reasons and many more, Americans clearly felt it was time to change course for the better. Over the much-better-funded and organized campaign of Hillary Clinton, voters elected Donald Trump, who’s clearly shown he’s ready to actually enact the positive changes that Obama promised but failed to deliver.

Trump wants to deeply cut Obama’s wasteful spending, military adventurism, outrageous overtures to illegal immigrants and giveaways of good jobs and good money to overseas companies. He wants to put America on the right track again, even if it means protectionist and nationalist measures. Those aren’t dirty words if they mean higher wages and better trade for all Americans.

Hopefully, Obama will become nothing but a bad memory, despite any of his attempts to create a “shadow government” to harass Trump’s administration over the next four years as some commentators have claimed he’s preparing to do.

Even before Trump has taken office, he’s shown that he’s committed to helping the American people vis à vis deals such as the one he made at air conditioner manufacturer Carrier in Indianapolis, Indiana, which saved more than 1,000 jobs.

In short, Trump is the real hope and change people have been seeking, and he comes not a moment too soon at this crucial time in American history when the people, the infrastructure and the economy are crying out for positive improvement.

I’M SO BLESSED AND FORTUNATE THAT THIS WAS EMAILED TO ME TODAY, AND I WANT TO SHARE IT WITH ALL WHO WANT TO HEAR AND SEE TRUTH!!  THIS “CRUM-BUM (OBAMA)” HAS DONE A NUMBER ON OUR AMERICA!!  I READ THIS WITH THE HOPE THAT EVERYONE WOULD ALSO READ IT AND REALIZE………..!  I SURELY COULDN’T HAVE SAID ANY OF THIS BETTER!!

I THANK GOD THAT ENOUGH GOOD AMERICANS WANTED A NEW AND BETTER PATH FOR OUR COUNTRY AND ELECTED DONALD J. TRUMP TO BE OUR 45TH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT!!  I ATTRIBUTE ALL OF THIS TO DIVINE INTERVENTION!!  MAY WE BLESS GOD WITH OUR THOUGHTS, WORDS, ACTIONS, AND DEEDS; AND MAY WE HELP OUR NEW PRESIDENT MAKE OUR AMERICA GREAT AGAIN WITH GODS’ DIVINE GUIDANCE AND DIRECTION!!

–WOLF–

 

OKAY, (OBAMA) OBUTTHEAD HAS SHOWN ALL OF US SANE, NORMAL, AND WELL INFORMED AMERICANS, THAT HE IS CRAZY, DANGEROUS, INSANELY DEVIOUS, AND EXTREMELY UN-AMERICAN! THIS SORRY ASS PIECE OF CRAP; THIS UGLY/NASTY TURD-BIRD, IS DOING EVERYTHING HE CAN TO SET FIRE TO AND DESTROY EVERYTHING POSSIBLE IN HIS LAST FEW DAYS!! MAY OBUTTHEAD, HIS WHOLE ADMINISTRATION, JOHN KERRY, HILLARY CLINTON, AND ALL OF THEIR ILK, INCLUDING ALL RADICALLY MOTIVATED LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, AND THEIR ENTIRE EVIL AND COMPLICIT MEDIA GO STRAIGHT TO HELL!! –WOLF–

30 Friday Dec 2016

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READ THIS ARTCLE BY “THE CENTER FOR IMMIGATION STUDIES”. IT’S MORE IMPERATIVE THAN EVER TO SEE AND UNDERSTAND THE MOTIVATIONS AND GREED BEHIND WHAT’S GOING ON BEHIND THE SCENES WHEN IT COMES TO THE MASSIVE PUSH BY OUR GOVERNMENT AND IT’S VERY WILLING ACCOMPLISES, TO FLOOD OUR AMERICA WITH REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS AT ALL COSTS! MOSTLY, “TO HELL WITH AMERICA AND WHAT MOST AMERICANS THINK AND WANT!” IT’S GOTTEN MUCH WORSE IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS! I HOPE AND PRAY THAT OUR NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CAN PUT THE BRAKES ON, AND REVERSE MUCH OF THIS WITH OUR HELP AND INFLUENCES ON OUR GOVERNMENT, ETC.!! FOLKS, WE AMERICANS REALLY DO HAVE THE POWER WHEN WE HAVE THE RESOLVE, COMMITMENT, AND INTESTINAL FORTITUDE!! WE HAVE TO HELP SAVE OUR AMERICAN CULTURE, ETC.!! –WOLF–

03 Saturday Dec 2016

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Religious Agencies and Refugee Resettlement

By James R. Edwards Jr. March 2012

James R. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D., is a Fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies and coauthor of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform.

While illegal immigration usually raises the ire of the public and politicians, few look closely at refugee programs. Most Americans, including Christians, reject the pro-amnesty stance fashionable among religious elites from the U.S. Catholic Conference to the Southern Baptist Convention to the National Association of Evangelicals. Yet many faith-based organizations, including arms of major religious entities, engage in resettling refugees.

This Memorandum briefly reports on the financial stake certain religious agencies have in U.S. refugee resettlement. It shows that refugee resettlement has become dependent on U.S. taxpayers and is a disruption to American communities, with nongovernmental agencies profiting from it.

The United States admitted 56,424 refugees in FY 2011, down from the prior year’s 73,311 admissions,1 but still far higher than the rest of the world’s developed nations combined.2 And the main reason for last year’s drop was the steep decline in admissions of Iraqi refugees after two such refugees were arrested for plotting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq.3 That total does not include other categories of humanitarian admissions that offer the same financial benefits to the religious agencies as refugees, such as asylees and Cuban-Haitian entrants, each with more than 20,000 admissions.

It is to the United States’ credit that our nation has, from her founding, provided a safe haven for the unjustly persecuted. However, even well-meaning efforts require accountability and should be balanced against other important, competing priorities. Without appropriate balance and oversight, helping refugees shifts from being a worthy humanitarian gesture in truly exceptional cases to an avenue for government largesse, enriching private bureaucracies while feeding public cynicism.

Background

Colloquially speaking, refugees are persons displaced by natural disasters, war, civil unrest, and similar causes of danger and persecution. Ideally, they can return to their homeland once conditions are restored. Traditionally, refugees being brought to America received ad hoc assistance from the State Department and from private charities spending their own money. Refugee decisions tracked U.S. foreign policy interests, with refugees being admitted mainly from the Middle East and communist countries.

In 1968, the United States effectively became party to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. This adopted the broad U.N. definition of “refugee,” expanded the rights afforded refugees, and prohibited refugees’ return to their home country if they claimed fear of persecution. The 1980 Refugee Act further aligned U.S. refugee policy with U.N. policy and established a federal refugee resettlement program.4 The president now sets an annual refugee cap. However, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, whose office processes displaced persons and determines whether one meets the definition of “refugee,” drives the process.

Private entities, such as Church World Service, an agency started by 30 Protestant denominations in 1946, formerly bore the full costs of resettling refugees. Such agencies helped refugees secure sponsors, such as a local church. The sponsors assumed responsibility for providing a refugee’s housing and other needs, finding him or her a job, and seeing that he or she became self-sufficient in the community.5

Since 1980, the new Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) in the U.S. State Department has referred individuals’ files to one of 10 “voluntary agencies”, or “volags”, which in turn assign cases to local affiliate agencies. The majority of volags are religiously affiliated (see Table 1). Volags receive a Reception and Placement Grant from the PRM for each refugee they are assigned. Volags also collaborate with “mutual assistance associations”, which focus mainly on ensuring that their charges retain strong ethnic and homeland ties.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) works further with volags and local affiliates, enrolling refugees in a broad range of welfare programs for which refugees automatically qualify after 30 days. They are not subject to the seven-year federal bar on welfare participation for immigrants, and those who naturalize remain eligible for welfare dependency beyond their first seven years here.

In addition to federal assistance, a number of state and local welfare programs also underwrite refugee resettlement in their locales. The system is structured so that it is in refugee assistance organizations’ self-interest to get a refugee to a receiving locality, enrolled in public welfare programs, and move along to the next refugee.

For the Love of Money …

Similar to what happened to private charity when the government took over many of its functions (and became less effective and efficient as a result), a refugee assistance industry has built up around government-run refugee bureaucracies and funding streams.6 It resembles other conglomerations of associations, agencies, and professional pleaders focused full-time on protecting and expanding their share of the public till, from public housing advocates to lobbies surrounding each “human services” program.

Program “stakeholders” that receive millions of taxpayer dollars usually continue to receive funding year after year, with little accountability. These groups’ mission becomes guarding the government golden goose rather than helping people achieve self-sufficiency or maximizing efficiency in usage of public money. This same phenomenon seems to have influenced the refugee resettlement industry, including its religious agencies.

The amount of funding up for grabs for refugee resettlement is significant. The Reception and Placement Grant was $900 per refugee assigned to a volag from 1980 until 2010. In 2010, the RPG level doubled to $1,800 per assigned refugee. A resettlement agency pockets $700 of each per-refugee grant.7 ORR further funds volags and affiliates through separate grant programs. Table 2 shows the amount of federal funding allotted to several of the private refugee resettlement organizations.

Click on Table 2 for a larger version.The volags that “resettle” refugees also maintain significant lobbying offices and advocacy programs, where public policy and politics are the coins of the realm. Because money is fungible, the more dollars these groups collect from the government the more private monies can go toward other purposes like political advocacy and lobbying. These groups certainly have a First Amendment right to petition the government, but they have no right to force taxpayers who may disagree with those agencies’ agenda to pay for their advocacy.

Love Thy Neighbor?

One of the evils stemming from the apparent love of taxpayer money relates to the adverse effects resettlement agencies cause for the American cities where refugees are settled. A 2010 report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that resettlement organizations essentially force refugees on U.S. towns and cities, without consent or even notice. Table 3 shows the U.S. metropolitan areas receiving the largest numbers of refugees. Table 4 ranks metro areas by the share of new immigration that is the result of refugee resettlement — i.e., those cities most affected by federal refugee policies.

This insensitive practice by volags and their associated agencies imposes a significant burden on unsuspecting host communities. As the Senate report said: “These newcomers place demands, sometimes significant, on local schools, police, hospitals, and social services. Local governments are often burdened with the weight of addressing the unique assistance refugees require, yet they rarely have an official role in influencing how many refugees are resettled by local voluntary agencies and often are not even informed in advance that new residents will be arriving.”8

As the resettlement groups persist in their revenue-producing refugee activities, their purported love of neighbor gets palmed off on others to see through and deal with for the long term. As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concluded: “While offering safe haven to persecuted populations throughout the world remains a humanitarian imperative, the administration should avoid biting off more than local communities are capable of chewing. Especially in a difficult economic climate, force-feeding refugees into a broken system is proving to be detrimental to the longer-term interests of refugees and to the cities that receive them.”9

More and more cities have had second thoughts as refugees have brought problems and caused costs to skyrocket. The problem has become so bad that some localities have sought a moratorium on taking in refugees. Ft. Wayne, Ind., one of the American cities overwhelmed by refugee resettlement and a case study in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, has lodged such a request for a halt on refugees. Manchester, N.H.,10 has made a similar request for the same kinds of reasons. Detroit has adopted a requirement that it will only take refugees with close family already there.11 Other overwhelmed communities, thanks to forcible refugee residence, include Clarkston, Ga.,12 Lynn, Mass.,13 and Omaha, Neb.14 The Tennessee legislature last year passed the Refugee Absorptive Capacity Act, the first-ever state law trying to give local communities some say in resettlement decisions.15

Conclusion

Refugee resettlement has become quite remunerative for the voluntary agencies that now receive government payment for this line of business. Some 11 private refugee bureaus received about $37 million in government funding in FY 2011 alone.

The constant focus on amassing taxpayer money in large quantities seems to compete mightily as motivation for religious refugee agencies which, before taxpayers could be tapped, appeared truer to the biblical imperatives to love your neighbor as yourself and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When money becomes an idol, it skews focus and perspective. The temptation naturally becomes to put preservation of government funding sources ahead of maintaining pure motives and focusing on the charitable work.

Volags and their local partner organizations have a vested financial interest in raising the number of refugees admitted for resettlement in the United States. The more refugees taken by this country, the more cases assigned to each volag. The more refugee cases a volag is assigned, the more money the federal government hands over to the private agency. In some ways, the model resembles those charities that spend inordinately on fund raising and administration instead of on actually helping needy people.

Clearly, refugee resettlement policy and programs, from top to bottom, are overdue for congressional scrutiny and reform. Those organizations, including religious ones, receiving federal monies deserve close assessment. It is morally incumbent on religious refugee bureaus to examine their own hearts. As Christ said, it is impossible to serve both God and money (Luke 16:13). Their efforts would be a lot more honest and effective and a lot less harmful to their fellow countrymen and communities if they returned to reliance on private funding alone.

End Notes

1 Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS), operated by the Refugee Processing Center (RPC) of the U.S Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, http://www.wrapsnet.org/WRAPS/Reports/AdmissionsArrivals/tabid/211/Defau….

2 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports data by calendar year; in 2010, the most recent data available, the United States resettled 71,362 refugees, more than 72 percent of the total 98,761 refugees resettled worldwide that year. See UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2010, p. 152, http://www.unhcr.org/4ef9cc9c9.html.

3 Aamer Madhani, “Terror threat slows flow of Iraqi refugees here”, USA Today, February 6, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2012-02-06-Iraqi-refugees_ST_U.htm.

4 As a result of the 1980 Refugee Act, a “refugee” is now defined in 8 USC 1101 as, in part, someone who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

5 Jessica Eby, Jenifer Smyers, and Erol Kekic, “The Faith Community’s Role in Refugee Resettlement and Advocacy in the United States”, Church World Service Practice Paper, September 2010, http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/DocServer/Faith_Based_Humanitaria….

6 See Don Barnett, “Show Me the Money: How Government Funding Has Corrupted Refugee Resettlement,” Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, April 1999, http://www.cis.org/GovernmentFundingRefugeeResettlement. Also, for fuller background on U.S. refugee policy and how it has expanded over time, see Don Barnett, “A New Era of Refugee Resettlement”, Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, December 2006, http://www.cis.org/RefugeeResettlement.

7 Sen. Richard G. Lugar, “Abandoned upon Arrival: Implications for Refugees and Local Communities Burdened by a U.S. Refugee Resettlement System That Is Not Working”, Report to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 21, 2010, p. 3, http://lugar.senate.gov/issues/foreign/refugee/report.pdf.

8 Lugar, p. 2.

9 Lugar, p. 14.

10 Abby Goodnough, “After Taking in Refugees for Years, a New Hampshire City Asks for a Pause”, The New York Times, November 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/manchester-new-hampshire-seeks-halt….

11 Goodnough.

12 Lugar, p. 11.

13 “City Council, Crime Round out Top 10 for Lynn in 2011”, Daily Item, January 1, 2012, http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2011/12/31/news/news03.txt.

14 John Rudolf, “Sudanese Refugees in Omaha Wrestle with Rise of Street Gangs”, Huffington Post, December 23, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/23/sudan-sudanese-refugees-omaha-n….

15 http://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/tennessee-takes….

James R. Edwards Jr.

 

 

 

WE CAN’T SAY GOOD-BYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE LOUD ENOUGH AND FAST ENOUGH TO AMERICAS’ CHIEF DESTROYER, LIAR, AND SCANDALIZER! MAY OUR COUNTRY HEAL FAST AND MAY OBAMA SINK DEEP DOWN INTO THE DUST BIN OF FORGOTTEN HISTORY! I CAN’T IMAGINE THAT ANYONE COULD HAVE DONE MORE DAMAGE THAN HE HAS TO OUR COUNTRY AND THE WHOLE WORLD! “BOY, DID HE, HILLARY, AND THE LEFTIST’S EVER HOOD-WINK AND SCREW WITH THE MINDS OF THE UNINFORMED AND MISS-INFORMED SHEEPLES AND MASSES! AMERICANS, WAKE UP TO NEW AND BETTER DAYS AHEAD–THANK GOD THAT MANY GOOD PEOPLE VOTED TO CONDEMN AND SPIT ON OBAMA AND HILLARYS’ AGENDA’S AND PLANS TO FURTHER SCREW US AND OUR AMERICA!! THESE TWO ARE WORSE THAN THE SCUM AND STENCH IN AN UNTREATED SEPTIC HOLE!!

02 Friday Dec 2016

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PLEASE ENJOY MY VIDEO PERFORMED BY CARDBOARD MANN 1

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BARRY-O MUST GO!

I PRAISE THE LORD EVERYDAY FOR TRUMP/PENCE AND THEIR HEALTH, SAFETY, AND SUCCESS IN HELPING TO SAVE OUR AMERICA!  I’M THANKFUL THAT THEY ARE COMMITTED TO MAKING OUR AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!–AND, WITH OUR PRAYERS, OUR HELP, AND OUR SUPPORT!  I’M SO VERY THANKFUL THAT OBAMA WILL SOON BE GONE AND OUT OF OUR HAIR!   MOST OF ALL: SEEING, REALIZING, AND RELISHING IN THE FACT THAT THE “HILDABEAST” GOT BEAT DOWN AND LOST TO TRUMP MAKES MY DAY!—EVERYDAY!—WE CAN NOW HAVE HOPE IN OUR AMERICAS’ FUTURE, AND KNOW THAT OUR RIGHTS, FREEDOMS, AND LIBERTIES WILL BE PROTECTED!—PRAISE THE LORD!!

–WOLF–