Easter Sunday: On Pastor Rob Bell And Hell ( Author: Love Wins)

Hopefully everyone had a happy Easter and Passover. I happened upon an article in TIME Magazine about 42-year-old Pastor Rob Bell and the idea that Hell may not exist, while watching the Lakers v. Hornets NBA Playoff Game. (The kind of thing I do after a big Easter meal with my Mom and Godparents - have a mix of the entertaining and thought-provolking.)

Pastor Rob Bell's book, Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is one I've not read, yet. But the presentation of the basic idea of the book as explained by TIME, is that Pastor Bell holds that regardless of our belief in Jesus and the Lord, all of us will be admitted to Heaven. Period.

The concept is called "universalism," and while I don't have a massive problem with it, I also choose not to believe it. Although Pastor Bell's take does make any reasonable person think about their belief system.

So far, mine has been reinforced on this Easter.

To this blogger, if one believes in Heaven, which is good, then one must believe in Hell, which represents that which is bad. Moreover, there are a set of behavioral systems that lead one to a "Heavenly" good soul. I prefer to maintain that path, and to battle evil.

My take on Pastor Bell's idea is that it lets evil off the hook, and makes it OK for Hitler to run amok: for evil to basically do evil.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir recently interviewed Bell, and tried, I guess, to trip him up by starting off with a question about how God regards the events in Japan. That was the wrong take. What Bashir should have asked Bell is, does he believe Hilter is in Heaven?



That would have been a more interesting conversation.

What do you think?

Stay tuned.

Football Reporters' NFL Mock Draft-A Palooza 2011

By the Staff of Football Reporters Online with Special Guests

This past Thursday evening was very special for us at The FRO! Not only was it our annual Mock Draft-A-Palooza Show it was also the 3rd Anniversary of our First Broadcast on Blog Talk radio! To date we have had over 1.7 Million live listeners and total downloads. We want to thank our listeners for their support, and to all of our Mock Draft GM's, Our regular staff that took part, Bill Carroll, Don Stokes, and Ralph Garcia, Anthony Carrillo, Our new writing intern Mark Kern of Kansas State, as well as several Guest GM's for the evening, Matt Elder, Eric Dolan, Joel Barker from First Round Exchange, and our "Celebrity" Draft Prospect who joined us, Mike Montoya, a RB from Laurier College in Canada. Here then we present our 2011 Mock Draft-a-Palooza!

1.

Carolina Panthers- Nick Fairley





2.

Denver Broncos- Marcel Darius

3.

Buffalo Bills- Cam Newton

4.

Cincinnati Bengals- A.J Green





5.

Arizona Cardinals- Von Miller

6.

Cleveland Browns- Robert Quinn





7.

San Francisco 49ers- Patrick Petersen

8.

Tennessee Titans-Julio Jones

9.

Dallas Cowboys- Prince Akamura

10.

Washington Redskins- Jake Locker

11.

Houston Texans- Cameron Jordan

12.

Minnesota Vikings- Blaine Gabbert

13.

Detroit Lions- Tyrone Smith





14.

St. Louis Rams- Anthony Castonzo

15.

Miami Dolphins- Mike Pouncey





16.

Jacksonville Jaguars- Da Quan Bowers

17.

New England (from Oakland)- JJ Watts





18.

San Diego Chargers-Corey Liuget





19.

New York Giants- Ben Ijalana

20.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers- Mohammad Wilkerson





21.

Kansas City Chiefs- Aldon Smith

22.

Indianapolis Colts- Derrek Sherrod

23.

Philadelphia Eagles- Mark Ingram Jr.





24.

New Orleans Saints- Ryan Kerrigan







25.

Seattle Seahawks- Jimmy Smith





26.

Baltimore Ravens-Torrey Smith





27.

Atlanta Falcons- Gabe Carimi





28.

New England Patriots-Nate Solder





29.

Chicago Bears- Ras-I-Dowling

30.

New York Jets-Phil Taylor





31.

Pittsburgh Steelers-Kyle Rudolph





32.

Green Bay Packers- Cameron Heyward

Chrissy Lee Polis - McDonalds Beating Victim Baltimore Speaks

Here's a major update in the case of the "Violent Beating In McDonald's Baltimore County Restaurant:" Chrissy Lee Pollis, the beating victim, is alive and well, thank God, and talked to the Baltimore Sun via video on Saturday.

Polis confirmed that the beating actions in the video, and by the 14-year-old girl, and the 18-year-old-girl were a hate crime against her. It really more seems that it was because she was talking to "their men." You have to listen to the video, and remember that we're talking about teenagers who are 14 and 18 years old.

"Well, by the time I got there, the guy told me I needed to order something if I was going to use the bathroom," Polis said, "but I was there, really to use the bathroom. A guy approached me, asked me how I was doin. So I said 'Not now.' So I went to go and use the bathroom, and come out and the girl spit in my face, and said 'Are you trying to talk to my man. 'No, I didn't know that was your man at all.'

Chrissy says the other girl came up and spit in her face, and started 'ripping my hair. Throwing me on the floor.' And that's when the beating started that was captured on video.



So, according to Chrissy's statement, the girls didn't call her race names, or refer to her being a trans-sexual, so this blogger's confused. Emotions aside, thinking cap on, it looks like there were two violent teenagers who were just looking for a fight.

The McDonald's employee named Vernon "Charm" Hackett is reported to have "taken credit" for filming the beating, said that the woman we now know as Chrissy Lee Pollis was a "man," so from that perspective, it does look like some one of the three: the two girls and Hackett, at some point knew she was a trans-sexual, and that was used as additional motivation for their actions.

But their original motivation was teenage girl jealously. Still, regardless, it was ugly and both should be prosecuted.

McDonald's Employees Just Stood There

In the video statement, Chrissy Lee Polis says that the McDonald's Employees "all sat their and watched. They all sat there and watched." Ms. Polis says that one of the girl attackers (though it's not clear because her words come as she's talking about the McDonald's Employees) prevented her from calling the police.

McDonald's Restaurant At Fault

The bottom line, is that McDonald's Restaurant is at fault for this, and there's no getting around it. The employees of the McDonald's store just sat and watched the incident unfold, and then the camera guy tried to warn the girls the police were on their way.

This is outrageously bad for a corporation to have employees who would even think to act like that.

The Racists Come Out - Go Away

Equally offensive are the racists who come out and leave stupid comments containing their psychotic ideas about African Americans. In the case of my YouTube channel, I have proudly blocked and banned people, and not to curtain their speech because I disagree with it, but because the speech in its way is as verbally abusive as the two girls were physically abusive to Chrissy Lee Polis.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and as Martin Luther King said, an eye-for-an-eye leaves us all blind.

The good people of America have to stop hiding and take back their country from the bad people, like the racists and the girls in the video. We have to say 'Enough Is Enough; and mean it. I certainly do.

Beyond Race And Color

This incident reflects a problem with the teenage demographic that goes to McDonalds, and it touches all races. Moreover, it seems - seems - that women, really teenage girls, are far more involved in these violent stories than boys.

This is but a snap-shot of a problem that impacts American schools, and where teenage girls are regularly involved in sexual activity at school, and in some cases right in class. So, the problem is beyond race and has come because of the rise of single-parent families and not enough good job opportunities for them.

Moreover, I've noticed that when black and Latino teenage girls were having kids at rates that were gaining notice, it was a "problem in the black and Latino community," but when white teenage girls do it, they have TV shows called "Teen Mom," and the girls wind up on the cover of gossip magazines like Star and US Weekly.

All of this rhetorical crap masks the real problem of teenage violence and sexual activity. And now, it's out of hand. My fear is the racists will try and stop us from getting to this real problem.

Something's really screwed up. But the racists need to stay out of this, and go home.

Stay tuned.

Violent Beating In McDonalds Baltimore County; McD's Responds

This update in the story of the video showing the violent April 18, 2011 beating of a 22-year-old woman by two teenage girls at a McDonald’s Restaurant on Kenwood Avenue in the Baltimore suburb of Rosedale, Maryland. A story that has not only gone viral, but because it involves someone white, and two black teenagers, has seemingly brought out every racist animal in existence. Moreover, how it happened has provided a platform for the problems McDonald's Corporation faces with the patrons it serves and hires, regardless of color.

If you've not seen the video, here's this blogger's video commentary and the incident itself:



McDonald's Corporation was quick to issue this statement on its website:

Our Concern Regarding the Baltimore Incident

We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling. McDonald’s strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for everyone who visits. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter. We are doing everything possible to make sure the right thing is done.

Indeed, as this space reported in the video, and in the first blog post, there's a larger problem of violence at McDonald's by teenagers regardless of color. In McDonald's fight video, after video, whites, Latinos, and Asians, mostly young women and girls, are getting into fights at McDonald's Restaurants.

That's too much for people who are already racist to hear; they want to use the McDonald's Baltimore Beating as a reason to support their own home-spun racist ideas on blacks, and have took to YouTube videos to vent their issues. But fortunately, their voices are countered by many who see the real problem, and it's not race, creed, or color.


Some say this incident is a hate crime, but a second review of it looks like it's actually a report of two girls who say a man dressed as a woman, but a man, not a tranny, had got into the woman's restroom.

The video was made by McDonald's Restaurant employee Vernon "Charm" Hackett, who explained, on his now-removed Facebook page, that the "woman" in the video wasn't a woman at all, but a guy with a wig trying to sneak into the woman's bathroom, and did so. The fight reportedly started in the women's bathroom.

Moreover, Hackett said the woman who was on the ground shaking with a seizure, got up when police arrived. But the video version with sound reports that the woman was "Bleeding, YO," by the Hackett, the cameraman.

Even if that's the case and the teenage girls though they were protecting themselves, the beating was still the wrong answer: calling the police was. In fact, what's galling about the video is no one is shown immediately calling the police at all. But there are people in the video who try to intervene and stop the teenagers, who seem intent on carrying out their anger.

ut, given the unfolding evidence, it's hard to believe what some racists want to think: that the two black girls were beating the white "woman" or man just because she or he was white.

There's more to this story; let's hope the truth isn't blocked by racists.

Stay tuned.

Violent Beating In McDonalds Baltimore County; YouTube Video Goes Viral

There's an ugly trend of fighting that's happening at McDonalds Restaurants, this one in Baltimore County. And a beating incident so awful that it reportedly caused the death of a young girl.  This is my YouTube video vlog commentary on this American Tragedy:



This blogger learned of it via an message from a YouTuber called benjamin42779, who did not make a version of the video. The tag on the first one read "Live Leak," so a search for that site revealed an account of the video that reads like this:

Here is another fine example of the trend of violence in fast food restaurants. Two females beating the hell out of a patron, while several employees stand by and watch. One male manages to provide the facade of assistance to the victim in this brutal attack.


The two females exit, then re-enter the store to continue the beating, until a an older woman attempts to stop them from dragging the victim outside into the parking lot. note: the male employees have disappeared from camera view, even though they are plenty well capable of stopping the attack.


At the end, the white victim is beaten until she has a seizure, at which point the camera operator warns the female attackers to flee, because the police are on the way. Note: he makes sure to repeatedly tell the criminal attackers to flee, instead of keeping them there for the police to apprehend.


4.19 pm EST UPDATE: response from Mc Donalds: "We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling. McDonald's strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for everyone who visits. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter."

LiveLeak offered downloads of the video, but the one that was able to work happened to have hard-rock music, and not the voices, on it.  So, I stripped the music off, made a notation referring to the difference, and surrounded the video with my commentary, thus differentiating it as a video-blog made for news commentary, and not a video that was just uploaded.

More searching revealed that Matt Drudge had links to the video and stories related to the incident on his website The Drudge Report. Of the links, the one most disturbing is from The Smoking Gun, and reports that a McDonald's employee named Vernon "Charm" Hackett is reported to have "taken credit" for filming the beating at the McDonalds in Baltimore County.

The Smoking Gun explains that the beating happened this week, April 18th 2011, and at "McDonald’s location on Kenwood Avenue in Rosedale, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb."

Moreover, the account reports that Mr. Hackett said, on his since removed Facebook page, that the "women" was actually a cross-dressing man, who was in the woman's bathroom, as if that's justification for his actions in making the video, and the 14-year-old and 18-year-old girls who beat up the woman. Hackett also said the woman got up when police arrived.  Comments report the woman may have passed away, but that's not confirmed as of this writing.

Also, the other problem is race: the two girls are black and the woman is 22-years old and white. That fact ignites those who already have racist issues with African-Americans, forgetting that these problems in McDonald's restaurants happen regardless of race.

For evidence, I point to the fight at the McDonald's next to AT&T Park in San Francisco and during World Series Game Two. There, the people, 90 percent women, were black, white, and Latino, and the melee reportedly involved 70 people and was not racially motivated. Here's that video:



Again, the demographic that tends to commonly use McDonald's is multi-racial, but seems to be used to violent actions, as is clear in this video below. In it, there's no one in the crowd who's black; the crowd appears to be a mix of Latino and Asian (perhaps Filipino). Here's that video:



And in this video, the two people, described as "Drunk Kids," are both white:



And in the next video from a security camera at a McDonald's drive-in, the woman is white, and so upset she gets out of her car in an attempt to climb in the window go after the clerk. Here's that video:



So people who use the Baltimore McDonald's beating to make racist comments about blacks aren't helping the issue, and really are pointing a finger at themselves. They seems to not want to believe that the issue is far beyond race, and points to a kind of class-based problem.

This is all in the hands of McDonald's Corporation. It must take action to train its employees and select workers based on some kind of evaluation system that makes this action not likely to occur.

Stay tuned.

Bay Citizen's Ad Message Errors In YouTube Video

The Bay Citizen is not a newspaper, it's a news website. But looking at it's new ad campaign, you'd think the news organization was either taking a dead aim at print, some attempt at attention by confusion, or something else - but nothing having anything to do with a website, or bringing traffic to it.

The ads for the Bay Citizen, the year-old news website started with $5 million in financing from legendary San Francisco Investment Banker Warren Hellman, are all over the place in Oakland, from downtown to Lake Merritt, and populating AC Transit bus shelters. But who knows what they're about? No one, unless they happen to know the news website's managers.

The ads read "In Today's Journalism Truth Is Indeed Stranger Than Fiction," and has, in much smaller print, more gibberish, then finally BayCitizen.org way down at the bottom.

To prove this, I created a video today using an ad at an AC Transit Bus stop on the 600 Block of Grand Avenue and next to the intersection of Grand and MacArthur, just off the I-580 Grand Avenue Exit. The people I talked to about the ad took several seconds, well, really minutes, to figure out what it was referring to.

Here's the video:



Two women looked and guessed until admitting it was hard to figure out what was going on without reading it, and even then, as stated above and obvious in the video, the ad did not refer to a website until one read down to the very bottom of it.

Let's face it: most people just aren't going to do that, especially if they're whizzing by in a vehicle of some sort.

The second man I talked to agreed to be in the video, and said that he actually knows the managers connected with the Bay Citizen.  He agreed that the ad was not communicating the right message - that its readers should check out the the Bay Citizen online.   Then, he gave a recommendation fitting for Linkedin, that I would be a great consultant to them.

They don't have the guts to approach me.  Won't happen.

What The Bay Citizen is trying to do in terms of hyper-local coverage is understandable, but, as I've said before, hyper-local is hyper-stupid.   Without national and international news, it's traffic is far less than needed to sustain itself, and it's revenue potential far less.

The Bay Citizen needs to be repaired in many ways,  else, it will burn through Mr. Hellman's money, and stop running online.   

Cisco Talks Future Of Flip, Pisses Off Facebook Fans

Well, as if Cisco Systems upset enough people, including this blogger, with its announcement that it's discontinuing the Flip Video Camera, it's Facebook Page message called the "Future Of Flip" has pissed off Flip fans even more.

In a nutshell, Cisco says the following:

1) Tech support will be provided until December 31, 2013
2) If you buy a Flip, they will support the 1-year warranty
3) Flip Share Software and support will be available through December 31, 2013
4) Flip Video Cameras will be available online and in stores until supplies run out.

Finally, Cisco Systems reports:

The teams have been reading your comments from emails and our social media community pages and are touched by the overwhelming number of thoughts and messages.

We hope you will continue to have fun with your Flip video camera, and we appreciate your loyalty and business.

Well, this blogger's video message still stands:



But reading the Facebook page, there are a lot of people just as angry as I am for Cisco's action. Here's a sample of the comments:

Stacy Marie Arvelo-Kaegi - I got one as a gift the very same day Cisco announced their exit. :(......And I love it so much and so do my students. :)

Jinger S. Pasternak - I'm beyond angry! I bought my flip for near 200 bucks the day before this was even announced not to mention bought the extended warranty as well! So what happens in 3-4 years before my warranty ends and I need a replacement.. am I going to still get it? Doubt it! *pissed*

Peter Coopersmith - To NOT support flip share past 12/31/13, means the product becomes useless for the very pupose many bought the Flip. Most consumers assumed that a company the size of Ciso would not put out a product that they didn't plan on supporting for years to come. Cisco is using profoundly bad judgement... I will NEVER buy or SUPPORT another Cisco product. I have had Cisco rounter in my home for 20 years.... MY next purchase will be anything but...

Derek Hoiem - I'm even a CSCO shareholder and they should at least sell the company to someone who wants to buy and nurture it. There's a market and a future for pocket sized devices that do ONLY video. Just because phones have cameras doesn't mean that the digital camera market went away.

Robert Ng - Why buy the company and then kill it? SMH

Gina Elwood - Gill I recently used mine on a Patriot Guard Ride for a fallen hero. I too am sad to hear this. I will continue to use mine. (I won my Flip as a prize)

Chris Robinson - Well that sucks, My flip HD is less than a year old and now its gone the way of the vcr. I know thats a lil oversimplifying but it is what it is.

Or maybe more like a useful Pet Rock.

Mary Johnson - I love my flip, too... maybe someone *cough google* will buy it

Jill Cooper - the writing was on the wall with all the smart phones... but I still love my flip and like someone else said, I'll use it until it dies.

Tom Levier - Stupid stupid stupid...

Mark Frank - why not just try selling flip div.?

Alison Heller - So sad you guys are closing. iphone cameras don't compare. The videos I post here with my Flip are clear, beautiful and good quality. iPhone videos are grainy and sound like putting a child in a garbage disposal. I think you're making a huge mistake. I NEVER use my phone as a video camera. I use my Flip.

John Tucker - Contact Cisco and let them know of your disappointment and concern. Hopefully they will listen if they get enough emails.

Whatever the case, Cisco's done it again: proved that it totally missed the social media boat in promoting Flip Video Cameras in the first place.  And the Forbes blog post stating that Cisco "probably" made the right move is completely baseless; the post doesn't even explain why the move was a good one.

Stay tuned, and check out the blog Love My Flip!