Abe's Feed house - Best Seafood in South Arkansas?

Abe's Ole Feed House - somewhere in backwoods South Arkansas.

Best seafood in South Arkansas?

These charming fellows greeted us at the door for our evening of fine dining.

SeaFood Buffet

Posted via web from caseyp's posterous

Barna: Jesus' Health Care Plan Would Include Everyone

One of my biggest pet peeves is people bringing in the religious trump card: "Jesus supports my politics!" into a political debate.  Look at what George Barna has to say:

Popular Christian pollster George Barna weighed in on the health care debate this week, asserting that Jesus would support universal coverage.

Looking at the Bible for guidance, Barna wrote that he found stories of a Jesus who healed hundreds of people who were poor and suffering. Whether the people believed in Him or not, Jesus had no condition to healing someone who was sick.

“You can describe Jesus’ health care strategy in four words: whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever,” wrote Barna in an editorial.

Jesus confronted illnesses and problems from paralysis and leprosy to demon possession and death. And he asked his followers to also heal others to put into action their love and compassion for those in need.

“Often, those whom He healed did not thank Him, and He was never paid for his medical care – but He healed them regardless, because it enabled Him to love those who lacked hope,” he said.

Based on the Bible stories, Barna said the health care strategy exemplified by Jesus called for “people to help people.” But if God’s people fail to serve others in need, then he suggested they support the government, which is “acting as a national safety net,” to run programs to help the needy.

But ultimately, it is God’s people, or collectively the Church, who are responsible for caring for the poor and sick, Barna maintained. He applauded Christian efforts to set up medical clinics, pregnancy centers and hospitals in the country.

“Imagine what an impact the Church would have on society if it truly reflected the model Jesus gave us of how to care for one another!”

The Christian pollster said he was prompted to write the editorial because surveys continually show that Americans are struggling to figure out what to think about health care reform. In the editorial, he looked at specific accounts in the New Testament that guides Christians on how to view the poor and deal with people’s medical needs.

On the Web: http://www.barna.org/

via christianpost.com

Seriously?  Barna should know better.  God is above politics and squabbling.  JESUS wouldn't be for the health care plan . . . Jesus would just go miraculously heal people.  And unless the Obama Administration has THAT little trick up their sleeve, I don't believe you can compare the two.  Yes, the Church is called to care for the poor, sick, needy, widows, and etc.  Yes we have failed miserably at that task.  Yes the health care system is in serious need of reform, and people on both sides of the aisle can agree on that.  But claiming Jesus is involved in this political nit-picking, and that he is on Obama's side?  That's jumping the shark, Mr. Barna.

Next, I'm imagining Mr. Barna will be encouraging us to worship Obama as the Messiah himself.  After all, Jesus is already supporting, him... maybe he IS Jesus!!!!?!?!?!?!

Posted via web from caseyp's posterous

Finishing Up: Wordpress MU and Your LAMP Server

Months ago, I chronicled my battle with setting up my own web server, and installing WordPress MU to setup this site. I walked through all the problems and solutions I discovered, and from what I've heard back, I at least helped a couple people along the way. A few nagging issues remained, however. WordPress is a pretty straight-forward installation, but WPMU is a rather unwieldy beat, by comparison, especially for someone who was only comfortable editing small details in a file to tweak someone else's theme.

The community around WPMU is very different than WordPress. I was used to combing through hundreds of themes, and finding the ones I liked. Finding plugins to do literally anything in the world. And with WPMU, it's difficult to find much for the site as a whole, and compatibility is an issue for typical plugins from regular WordPress. Luckily, I stumbled across WPMUDev.org. They have a compilation of tons of free plugins, but the real magic happens for your site with the Premium account. The collection of WPMU plugins on the free site are nice, and there are several worth having, but they suffer the same fate as many WP plugins in that some are seldom updated, and poorly supported. WPMUDev Premium, however, offers a smaller number of extremely high-quality plugins that can quickly transform your site into the feature-rich offering you want it to be. They have a package of themes for your users, and several themes to choose from when developing the difficult-to-make home page.

And let's be honest . . . the home page is the part of WPMU that makes people throw up there hands and forget all about their projects.  WPMU Premium plugins make everything from Avatar-enabled site wide feeds, to custom branded admin areas, and everything in between as easy as popping in a plugin and a widget.  Stomaching the $79 monthly fee is something that is difficult to grok the value of immediately, especially if you're into the open-source WP Plugin world.  But if you're serious about developing a top-of-the-line site, I don't see a better or more efficient way to do it that using WPMU.  Plus, they're professionally supported, and don't end up not updated for the latest version of WPMU.

We use most of their premium plugins on this site in one manner or another, but the few you simply MUST have for any WPMU site are:

• Site Wide Feed


• Avatars


• Terms of Service


• Login / Logout Redirect


• Rebranded WPMU


• Multi-DB - not incredibly important starting off, but better to do it at setup than with a full site of blogs.  You'll be glad you did.