Archive for July, 2008
Is Rick Warren Ignoring Sin in Search for ‘Peace’?
I know this does not make me popular among some Christians, but as a Christian myself, I have been bothered for some time about some of Rick Warren’s decisions and choices. I just don’t trust his judgment and sadly, too many people are just following what he says blindly. Good article below.
Is Rick Warren ignoring sin in search for ‘peace’?
Jim Brown – OneNewsNow –
Christian broadcaster and author Tom McMahon says evangelical pastor Rick Warren’s belief that the church must take the lead in solving the world’s problems of poverty, disease, and war cannot be reconciled with the scriptures.
Pastor Warren will be hosting an interfaith meeting next month with 30 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders “to discuss cooperation for the common good of all Americans.” Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. plan mobilizes churches to address global problems. But McMahon, president of The Berean Call ministry, says the popular Christian author is introducing evangelical Christianity to the social gospel that he learned from his mentor, social scientist Peter Drucker.
“As a Christian, as a biblical Christian, I have real concerns about this because I don’t find this in the scriptures,” McMahon explains. “You see, it’s true the world has all kinds of problems, but he’s working on the symptoms and avoiding the root cause, which is the sin nature of humanity. So how can you work with all kinds of people [who are] called ‘people of faith,’ but it’s not biblical faith?”
McMahon contends that only the biblical gospel can change the heart of man, and that Warren is compromising that by working with people who reject the gospel of Christ. He says that although Pastor Warren claims his life’s calling is “to proclaim the gospel truth of salvation in Jesus Christ,” it is doubtful that gospel will be proclaimed at the interfaith meeting.
“I believe that Rick has a low view of prophecy,” McMahon contends. “Well, I think he needs to heed the words of Jesus [in Luke 18:8]: ‘When the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith upon the earth?’ Well, ‘people of faith’ yes, but certainly not the faith that Jude exhorts true believers to contend for.”
LINK: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=192888
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )A Few More Items about Obama that Tick Me Off
A Few More Items about Obama that Tick Me Off
Is he really this stupid??
Obama says: We can save all the oil they want to drill for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzZNP4tTfV0&eurl=http://www.gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/
Whoa, you think a lot of yourself, don’t you Obama?
Obama: I’m a Symbol of ‘America’s Best Traditions’
http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/07/30/obama-im-a-symbol-of-americas-best-traditions/
Oh please!!
Obama suggests reparations to blacks, Native Americans
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=71043
He seems to be the only one bringing up race and then he blames others??? I think we KNOW who the racist is!!!
Obama plays the Race Card himself, then blames McCain
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/RichLowry/2008/07/31/obama_and_the_racism_card
John Edwards’ Adultery (The story the Mainstream Media won’t cover)
I have NEVER liked John Edwards. In fact, his voice grates on my nerves every time I hear him speak, and I’m originally from North Carolina, so it’s not his accent, it’s his fakeness!!! Well, we’ve finally seen what he’s really like (even though the mainstream media won’t report the story) and I have been proven correct about his character, or lack thereof. It’s scummy enough that a man would cheat on his wife, but it’s even scummier that he would do it while she’s battling cancer. Come on MSM, report the story like you would if it were a conservative caught cheating!!!
The Real Victims of John Edwards’ Adultery
by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
The clock read 2:40 a.m. A 54-year-old man with perfectly coiffed hair slipped quietly out of a Beverly Hills hotel room. He jumped on an elevator for a ride down to the ground floor. When the doors sprung open he was shocked to find several National Enquirer reporters waiting to confront him.
His face reportedly turned white with his eyes widening. This man, who has mastered the art of political debates and has run the gauntlet of several national campaigns, nonetheless looked like a deer caught in headlights. Trying to escape the reporters, he ran. He ducked into a hotel men’s room. Soon the crowd grew beyond reporters. It took hotel security to break up the late-night crowd outside the toilet.
The ensuing headlines trumpeted Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards’ rendezvous with his mistress. It made news only because he is a well-known public figure, but sadly, infidelity takes a toll in the lives of millions of lesser known couples.
According to polling by the Associated Press, 22 percent of married men and 14 percent of the married women in the America have had “an adulterous affair.” Put another way, that is 19 million men and 12 million women who are married and have committed adultery.
Edwards’ exposure by journalists doesn’t make him a victim as some pundits have argued; the real victims are his wife Elizabeth and their children. Adultery hurts families. They feel betrayed. Trust is destroyed. Family stability and lives are shaken, not to mention the baby conceived as a result of the Edwards affair.
A common belief today is that infidelity is strictly an individual’s own business. But in reality, the damage spreads and severely harms the innocent.
Last October, when the story of Edwards’ affair broke, he denied it. Yet he continued to see his mistress. To make matters worse, his wife Elizabeth is suffering from cancer. She heroically encouraged him to run for president despite her illness. She demonstrated that her vows “to love and cherish” had deep meaning by her selfless actions.
In his book “Broken Hearth,” Bill Bennett writes about the moral collapse of the American family. “The family is already reeling from the effects of the sexual revolution,” he says, “which replaced the traditional marriage ethic with a code that has sought to free both marriage and human sexuality itself from restraint and commitment. We have reaped the consequences in promiscuity, adultery, cohabitation, divorce, and out-of-wedlock births.”
In the 1970s, Bennett said “experts” of the era promoted the idea that “husbands and wives needed to respect each other’s need for individuality, ‘self-awareness,’ and ‘personal growth.'” Couples were told to “get in touch” with their own feelings by “rejecting such rigidly defined social roles as ‘husband’ and ‘wife.'” Bestselling books on “open marriage” and other “new forms of relationships” were sold to the American public. Although the concept of an “open marriage” and the like were not adopted by most people, Bennett says “there can be no question that the radicalizing talk had an effect, fracturing the lens through which many people viewed commitment, marriage, or parental authority.”
“Adultery is about broken promises,” says Miami-based Pastor Rich Wilkerson. “Every day, millions of men and women break their marriage vows — to their spouses, their children, and even worse, to God.”
At weddings, couples promise and commit to love, cherish, honor, in sickness and in health, to forsake all others .till death do us part.
Recently, messages to the contrary repeatedly tell people “you deserve to be happy” and “it’s all about you” and we are collectively taught to selfishly think of only of ourselves.
In July 2000, when the story of mother and married actress Meg Ryan’s affair with actor Russell Crowe hit magazine racks, Ryan’s mother, Susan Jordan, commented. Although her daughter’s image as America’s sweetheart “may never recover,” Jordan said, at least she [Meg Ryan] was “being honest” about her feelings. “I think Russell is exciting and is giving her something that was clearly lacking in her marriage.” Ryan’s husband divorced her and six months later Crowe dumped the actress. Her career and life have never been the same.
Adulterers place their own “needs” and desires above those of their families. The consequences of infidelity spread like wildfire, burning all those directly and indirectly involved. And it scorches society.
Of course, most who commit adultery don’t have journalists lying in wait to catch them and reveal their infidelity to the world. But even if they are never caught, they are still hurting spouses and children just the same.
In this case of infidelity, John Edwards can kiss good-bye his aspirations of becoming Obama’s vice president.
The Spoiled Children of Capitalism
Well said, Mr. Goldberg. Well said!!!! He is exactly right!! To all you whining liberals who blame capitalism and America for everything, you are UNGRATEFUL and are biting the hand that feeds you!
The Spoiled Children of Capitalism
by Jonah Goldberg
It’s an old story. Loving parents provide a generous environment for their offspring. Kids are given not only ample food, clothing and shelter, but the emotional necessities as well: encouragement, discipline, self-reliance, the ability to work with others and on their own. And yet, in due course, the kids rebel. Some even say their parents never loved them, that they were unfair, indifferent, cruel. Often, such protests are sparked by parents’ refusal to be even more generous. I want a car, demands the child. Work for it, insist the parents. Why do you hate me? asks the ingrate.
Of course, being an old story doesn’t make it a universal one. But the dynamic is universally understood.
We’ve all witnessed the tendency to take a boon for granted. Being accustomed to a provision naturally leads the human heart to consider that provision an entitlement. Hence the not-infrequent lawsuits from prison inmates cruelly denied their rights to cable TV or apple brown betty for desert.
And so it goes, I think, with capitalism generally.
Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.
People ask, “Why is there poverty in the world?” It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. As individuals and as a species, we are born naked and penniless, bereft of skills or possessions. Likewise, in his civilizational infancy man was poor, in every sense. He lived in ignorance, filth, hunger and pain, and he died very young, either by violence or disease.
The interesting question isn’t “Why is there poverty?” It’s “Why is there wealth?” Or: “Why is there prosperity here but not there?”
At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own.
For generations, many thought prosperity was material stuff: factories and forests, gold mines and gross tons of concrete poured. But we now know that these things are merely the fringe benefits of wealth. Stalin built his factories, Mao paved over the peasants. But all that truly prospered was misery and alienation.
A recent World Bank study found that a nation’s wealth resides in its “intangible capital” – its laws, institutions, skills, smarts and cultural assumptions. “Natural capital” (minerals, croplands, etc.) and “produced capital” (factories, roads, and so on) account for less than a quarter of the planet’s wealth. In America, intangible capital – the stuff in our heads, our hearts and our books – accounts for 82 percent of our wealth.
Any number of countries in Africa are vastly richer in baubles and soil than Switzerland. But they are poor because they are impoverished in what they value.
In large measure our wealth isn’t the product of capitalism, it is capitalism.
And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.
These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.
This is the patient leaping to embrace the disease and reject the cure. Recessions are fewer and weaker thanks in part to trade, yet whenever recessions appear on the horizon, politicians dive into their protectionist bunkers. Not surprising that this week we saw the demise of the Doha round of trade negotiations, and this campaign season we’ve heard the thunder of anti-trade rhetoric move ever closer.
This is the irony of capitalism. It is not zero-sum, but it feels like it is. Capitalism coordinates humanity toward peaceful, productive cooperation, but it feels alienating. Collectivism does the opposite, at least when dreamed up on paper. The communes and collectives imploded in inefficiency, drowned in blood. The kibbutz lives on only as a tourist attraction, a baseball fantasy camp for nostalgic socialists. Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of poverty.
And yet the children of capitalism still whine.
LINK: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JonahGoldberg/2008/08/01/the_spoiled_children_of_capitalism
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Top Ten Things that Creep Me Out About Obama
I love it, I love it, I love it!!!!!! I totally agree – He creeps me out too!
TOP TEN THINGS THAT CREEP ME OUT ABOUT OBAMA
By Rick Moran
I know it is not politically correct to say that Obama “creeps me out.” That’s because immediately after uttering such blasphemy, our friends on the left would put me on the couch and matter of factly inform me that I am suffering from “The White American Disease” and recommend a torturous rehabilitation that would include watching 6 hours a day of “Blaxploitation” films and continuous viewings of Roots in order to inculcate the proper amount of white guilt and outrage directed against white males into my racist psyche.
That’s fine. Just don’t include the execrable remake of Shaft in with the bunch. I much prefer the original with Richard Roundtree as the title character. Now that brother was kewl. He oozed class. And when it came to getting back at the man, he had no equal – all others were pale imitations. Samuel L. Jackson may be a better actor. But he’s something of a nerd, isn’t he? Roundtree, despite not being a gifted thespian, was anything but a nerd.
Anyway, this was a hard list to compile, especially since I didn’t want to get into his physical appearance. I understand he’s very healthy and works out all the time but good Lord, can’t we put some meat on the poor guy? He makes Jack Sprat look like Arne. No doubt there is a standing rule in the Obama campaign that absolutely, under no circumstances, is the candidate to be photographed next to a bean pole.
People can’t help how they look so perhaps it’s best we not include any physical attributes in this creep out list. Besides, Obama’s most obvious distinguishing physical characteristic is hard to miss. Lots of people have commented on it and been chastised for their shallowness. Considering how it dominates his appearance, it is strange that he never did anything to lessen its impact.
No, dummy. I’m talking about his ears.
TOP TEN THINGS THAT CREEP ME OUT ABOUT OBAMA
10. It creeps me out that whenever Obama makes an appearance, the rain stops falling and the sun comes out. As a rationalist I am loathe to ascribe a direct cause and effect to this phenomenon except that it happens quite frequently and the rainbow created by the sun breaking through the clouds spells out “Yes We Can!”
Probably just a coincidence…
9. It creeps me out that there are about twice as many women at Obama rallies as there are men. Now I am not of the Melvin Udall School of anti-feminist thought (when asked how he writes women so well, Udall responds “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability”). But what is one to think when watching the reaction of females as Obama is speaking? I’m sorry, but it is hard to imagine a man covering their mouth, chest heaving, barely able to contain himself and then ooooohing and aaaaaahhing when the messiah says something particularly vapid and innocuous.
Elvis, I can understand. But a politician?
8. It creeps me out that the press seems hypnotized by this guy. Grown men and women blubbering like babes when talking about how exciting he is, how mesmerizing he is when he speaks. It’s as if “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” has come to life and the pods have been placed in every newsroom in America. It isn’t just Crissy Mathews and MSNBC. It’s news anchors at CNN, reporters for Time and Newsweek, editorial writers at WaPo and the New York Times. Big media is in the tank for this guy in a big way. They have thrown off all semblance of fairness (never mind objectivity) and just don’t care that people know they are in Obama’s corner. They can’t be shamed into changing. They evidently won’t be deflected from doing their best to elect Obama.
This kind of thing causes the hairs on the back of my neck to prick up – like walking through a graveyard at midnight. It is just plain creepy – no other word for it.
7. It creeps me out that Obama’s rhetoric about America is so apocalyptic. It is “the worst” this or “the most” that. He is a serial exaggerator – so much so it would be impossible for anyone to debunk all of his outrageous “doom and gloom” claims.
And what’s really, really creepy is that after addressing this litany of horrific evils perpetrated by Bush and the Republicans, he holds himself up as just the man to fix everything. If the United States were as bad as he describes it, no sane person would want to live there. And yet, Obama will ride to the rescue and “restore” America.
Shining knights on white horses riding to save us is one thing – we’ve seen that before many times in American politics. But Obama’s powers extend beyond Coolidge’s Hoover’s promise of a “chicken in every pot” to a promise to heal the souls of America and Americans.
I don’t know what’s creepier. The candidate saying it or his supporters believing it.
6. It creeps me out that with the exception of most conservatives, Obama’s radical associations and radical past – including his being on a first name basis with an unreconstructed terrorist – doesn’t seem to bother many people. What am I missing here? When Obama makes an actual political alliance with a radical Maoist organization like The New Party, going so far as to attending their meetings and recruiting their members to work on his state senate campaign, why is there no call for the candidate to explain himself? Nor has there been any effort – save a couple of scattered stories in the National Review and elsewhere that detail Obama’s association with the radical group ACORN.
It’s as if the entire “Obama movement,” made up mostly of good, mainstream Democrats, is so in thrall to the candidate that they can’t see the warning signs of this fellow’s true radicalism. They dismiss his past by simply pointing to the here and now and saying “See? He really is a moderate kind of guy after all.” We don’t know that because no one has ever – ever – asked him to explain why he sought the endorsement of a radical communist group when running for the state senate and why he associated himself with the radical group ACORN.
Beyond creepy. Truly scary…
5. Has there ever been a creepier presidential hopeful’s spouse than Michelle Obama? She actually said this to a political gathering last February: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
Rarely has there been a creepier utterance by a major candidate for president or his spouse (Ron Paul has said some very, very creepy things). This one set off alarm bells in my head the moment I heard it. It elicited the question that many of us who oppose this guy have been asking more and more frequently lately.
Just who in the hell does this guy think he is? “Require” us to do what? “Demand” what? Besides coming off sounding like Evita Peron, Michelle Obama has a very weird view of the art of politics which works by persuasion and not by compulsion.
That one registers a 8.5 on the Creepy-O-Meter.
4. It creeps me out that Obama continues to speak as if he is president already and that the election is some mere formality that if he had his druthers, we could do without. His use of the royal “we” is very weird as well. Jack Tapper of ABC News noticed the same thing about Obama and his staff. Just one example of many: During an interview with ABC’s Nightline, he said he “wouldn’t be doing my job as Commander in Chief” if he just did whatever the generals said in Iraq. Obviously, it is not his job. And this is not the only example as Tapper points out in that Newsbusters piece.
A couple of times where the candidate falls into the mental state of what he would do as president and referring to himself as already elected would be understandable. Obama does it all the time and is seemingly unaware of how it makes him appear.
3. I find it very creepy that Obama removed the American flag at the back of his plane and replaced it with a great big “O?” Tell me that doesn’t creep you out. The flag and the “O” would be just fine. But why remove the flag?
Judging by the way he has flip flopped all over the place on the flag pin mess (which I believe is a non-issue whether or not he wears it but the flip flopping is of legitimate concern) it should call into question just what this guy believes. Again, warning bells should be going off in everyone’s head and either the press is too cowed to ask him questions about it or they just don’t care.
2. I can’t believe every American wasn’t creeped out by Obama’s fake presidential seal that he featured for exactly one day at a conference of governors. This story actually gave me a slight feeling of panic wondering if this guy is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur or…what? I couldn’t think of another reason any candidate would have the audacity of overweening pride and destructive ambition to create, approve, and then display such an artifact. Did someone bother to ask the candidate what he was thinking when he approved the use of that seal?
I thought not. The press may not have liked the answer.
1. The number one thing about Obama that creeps me out is the ease and comfort with which he lies. All politicians lie. Presidential candidates lie more than other politicians. But Obama’s lies are brazen and breathtaking. His explanation for why he allowed his kids to be interviewed by “Entertainment Tonight” was so ridiculous as to be a parody of the truth. But he was allowed to get away with it because the venues he chose to “explain” his demonstration of parental stupidity were friendly or, as in the case of Good Morning America, hardly a news outlet at all.
Presidents lie all the time. They do so for a variety of reasons – mostly to save their political hides. But Obama lies as a matter of course and has a familiarity with the practice the begs for an explanation. Krauthammer thinks it’s ego. He sums up everything that creeps me out about Obama here:
Obama may think he’s King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” which, translating the royal “we,” means: “I am the one we’ve been waiting for.” Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule-it was pointed out that he was not yet president-induced him to take it down
He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, “you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish”-a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how “embarrassing” it is that Europeans are multilingual but “we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, ‘merci beaucoup.'” Obama speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism … that you come out of your isolation. … Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall-I’m no expert on this-Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
I try to laugh and make fun of the candidate’s hubris, the wild eyed, gyrating women who nearly swoon when he speaks, the supporters who walk and talk as if they were programmed – but my heart is rapidly losing the desire to make sport of this situation. Unless he shoots himself in his own foot, this man is going to be the next president of the United States.
And that is the creepiest thing of all.
This post also appears at The American Thinker
LINK: http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2008/07/27/top-ten-things-that-creep-me-out-about-obama/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 5 so far )New Slogans for Barack Obama
Haven’t they noticed that:
He continually exaggerates?
If he’s not exaggerating, he’s outright lying?
He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about?
If he doesn’t have a teleprompter he stumbles all over his words?
He’s constantly making ridiculous gaffes? How about the ‘bomb’ dropped on Pearl Harbor that he mentioned? Or the 57 states? Or the
He changes what he says based on who he’s talking to?
His ‘community fundraising’ days are not quite like he explains?
The ‘housing program’ he keeps bragging about is a disaster?
He has some very shady associates?
He has made some very shady business deals in the past?
He is associated with racists and anti-semites?
He is a socialist?
He honestly sickens me!! He is so full of himself that I can barely stand to see him on TV.
No one wants to call him on his lies, half-truths and exaggerations, therefore he gets by with everything!! It is truly appalling what has happened to the mainstream media in this country! He has no idea of how to run a country, but he certainly has a lot of ideas for destroying one!
by Ben Shapiro
Barack Obama’s messianic tour of Europe is over. And, like Jesus, he has risen again — in the polls. According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Obama is now up 8 percent among registered voters. According to Rasmussen, his lead is a whopping three points. (According to USA Today/Gallup, John McCain actually leads Obama among likely voters by 4 percent. But God knows that Jesus’ poll numbers are always vacillating, too.)
Obama’s return has meant jubilation in the streets. Demure virgins wave palm fronds over the triumphant conqueror as he wanders the highways and byways of the campaign trail. Obama gracefully offers them water bottles when they are overcome — and they are miraculously healed.
Obama has it all. All except for one thing: a new slogan. Hope and change are all well and good, but they seem tired. After a year and a half, hope and change begin to wear thin, despite the Holy One’s profound enunciation of those shallow incantations.
And so I, a humble member of a planet dedicated to the glory and power of Barack Obama, offer the following suggestions:
When Experience, Knowledge and Honor Just Aren’t Good Enough. Vote Obama.
Hope. Change. And All That Other BS. Vote Obama.
More Experience Than a Fifth Grader. Vote Obama.
Standing Up For the Power of Horse Manure. Vote Obama.
Talking Big. Doing Nothing. Vote Obama.
This Election Is All About You. Voting for Me. Vote Obama.
Sure, I Remember Voting In the Senate That One Time. Vote Obama.
Kim Jung Il, Hamas and Fidel Castro Can’t Be Wrong. Vote Obama.
Pass the Arugula. Vote Obama.
You Say Corrupt Land Deal. I Say Creative Financing. Potaytoe, Potahtoe. Vote Obama.
Like Black People? Vote Obama.
The Man With The Iraq Plan. Yeah, The Plan That Didn’t Work. So What, Racist? Vote Obama.
Flag Pins Are Stupid. But I’m Not Unpatriotic. You Racist. Vote Obama.
Don’t Like My Pastor? Shut Up, Racist. Still Don’t Like Him? I Guess I Don’t, Either. Vote Obama.
Watch the Oceans Recede. Watch the World Make Peace. And Watch As I Saw This Woman In Half! Vote Obama.
Fooling All of the People All of the Time. Vote Obama.
Cut Military Funding. Dictators Are Nice. Vote Obama.
Yes We Can. Or Rather, I Can. Vote Obama.
Barack Obama will not adopt any of these slogans any time soon, I admit. But here’s the irony — he could adopt such slogans and still win the election. That’s because his followers do not hear a word he says. They watch him wave his arms; they scream and cheer as he fist-bumps his wife; they keel over in the aisles when he coughs, and jump up and down when he sneezes. He’s part Neville Chamberlain, part Rolling Stones. His devotees are all moonstruck teenyboppers.
Back in March, Obama spoke in Wisconsin. “People question if words matter,” he thundered. “Words do matter. Words challenge us to reach higher. Words are a catalyst for change and words motivate us to chase our dreams.” Obama was wrong. When it comes to his campaign, words don’t matter in the slightest. Obama could perform mime, and his followers would applaud wildly. All that matters is the Obama persona. And that persona doesn’t rely on words, ideas or policies. It relies on stupidity. And where his followers are concerned, stupidity is in no short supply.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )If They’re Wrong about Global Warming, So What?
Larry Elder 3/15/2007
Dear Larry,I’m a Democrat, and I enjoy your work. And I get very frustrated by those on the left who whine and are thin on the facts.
This brings me to my reason for this letter: Global warming.
The global warming debate is unique to humanity. If those who advocate “wait and convince more scientists” are wrong, following their advice may affect hundreds of millions of people, with possibly many killed by famine and flooding. On the other hand, if the people who advocate doing something now are wrong, the worst is mostly economic. That’s a price I’m more than willing to pay to hedge my bets to protect the millions of lives at risk, as well as the ecosystems and animal species facing extinction.
Following the advice of the vast majority of the world’s atmospheric scientists sounds like a bet all humans should take. – Mr. Ph.D.
Dear Mr. Ph.D.,
Progress! At least you do not say, as does Al Gore, that the debate about global warming in the scientific community “is over.” Nor do you assert, as does CBS’s Katie Couric, that “all the experts agree.” The debate is not over, nor do all experts agree.
You suggest that if the scientists are wrong, the worst case comes down to a few lost bucks. No, the worst case results in lots of lost bucks, retarded economic growth, lost jobs and weakened worker pensions, all while making nations, especially Third World countries, less prosperous and thus less capable of adapting to whatever damage might occur as a result of global warming.
The Kyoto Accords cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and figure to increase the gap between the rich and the poor. More will starve, with countries becoming less financially capable of dealing with diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc. Funds directed toward combating global warming mean less money for immediate crises like those mentioned. This can result in greater political instability and tyranny, with more failed states receptive to the Islamofascist lie that rich nations become so “at the expense of poor ones.”
Furthermore, many scientists and economists see a small-benefit to high-cost ratio, again therefore diverting money otherwise spent on improved technologies that could wean us away from environmentally polluting energy sources, some of which come from hostile, politically unstable nations. This means less money for R&D on wind, solar, nuclear and other non-fossil fuel alternatives.
Life involves trade-offs. You underestimate the cost side while overestimating the benefit side.
“Environmentalists” like Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” helped to create the hysteria that eliminated DDT. The result? The return of malaria and needless deaths.
Kyoto already fails to meet its objectives in European countries that ratified the accords. Non-signatories like India and China, on the other hand, will soon become the biggest CO2 emission polluters. Neither nation has or will likely sign on to Kyoto. Thus any benefits – and again many scientists expect only negligible, if any, post-Kyoto benefits – will be offset by polluting nations like India and China.
Why does government need to mandate our way “out of this”? The Toyota Prius caught the public’s fancy less because of government inducements and government R&D, and more because the company provided a product that consumers wanted. Understand this: the more prosperous a nation, the more its citizens can afford to demand “clean” means of production. Poor nations face bigger concerns – like feeding their population, and providing housing and other basic services. Right now, neither India nor China can afford the luxury of “green” policies before things like food, housing and clothing.
The environment, like people, adapts. Entrepreneurs, right now, pour billions into “alternative” technologies as the costs of fossil fuels – both financial and political – go up, while the price of “clean” fuels go down. These things take time.
Even some United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists say it’s too late to reverse global warming. If so, oh well. Still others expect the “damage” to materialize centuries down the road, giving us plenty of time to change or adapt.
Why does speculating about things like global warming replace direct and immediate threats? Iran, for example, seeks a bomb. If they use it – and they threaten to – imagine the environmental damage to the planet, to say nothing about the genocide-like loss of human life. But where is the urgency?
Soon baby boomers will join the ranks of those on Social Security and Medicare, thus requiring younger workers to substantially increase their payroll taxes in order to allow boomers the same benefits enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. Where’s the urgency?
Policy-makers face immediate, predictable and foreseeable – and especially in the case of Iran – serious around-the-corner issues. Yet we divert time, money and energy fretting about hypothetical “calamities” of global warming rather than dealing with real world/real time threats.
You’ve gambled on global warming. I just hope we’re alive to place a bet.
– Larry
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Sanctuary-City Policy Results in 3 People Dead
Thanks to that idiot Gavin Newsome (mayor of San Fran) and to the people of San Francisco 3 men are dead because they let illegal immigrant CRIMINALS remain in their city!! This is disgusting and I hope the widow of Anthony Bologna makes Newsome’s life a living hell!! He and the city should be sued and held accountable for their illegal stance on this issue and for causing the death of these 3 people.
Bush Should Strip Sanctuary Cities of Federal Funds
by Michael Reagan
Three good men are dead thanks largely to San Francisco’s outrageous sanctuary-city policy, which forbids city authorities from notifying federal immigration authorities when they arrest illegal aliens for crimes they commit, and it’s time for President Bush to crack down on all the cities in the United States that follow this absurd policy.
On June 22, Anthony Bologna and his sons Michael and Matthew were shot to death by Edwin Ramos, 21, after a brief traffic incident when Anthony Bologna allegedly briefly blocked Ramos’ car from making a left turn, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ramos, an alleged member of the vicious the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13, should never have been around to kill the three men, and wouldn’t have been — were not for the city’s sanctuary-city policy. Ramos, an illegal immigrant, was found guilty of committing two felonies when he was 17 — involving a gang-related assault of a Municipal Railway passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman — yet was never surrendered by the city’s juvenile justice authorities to federal officials for possible deportation as required by federal law.
Ramos was taken to juvenile hall on charges of assault and participating in a street gang, and was later convicted in juvenile court and put in a shelter. Under federal law, he should have been referred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) but the Juvenile Probation Department’s policy for dealing with offenders stipulated that “probation officers shall not discriminate in any fashion against minors based on their immigration status.”
On April 2, 2004, Ramos was released to the custody of his mother, despite the fact that he had already been flagged by federal authorities as an illegal immigrant. He was still considered a ward of the court and was on probation. Just four days later, records show, he committed another crime at 19th and Mission streets, two blocks from the site of the attack on the Muni passenger. He was released after city prosecutors declined to charge him in connection with an arrest in March on suspicion of weapons and gang violations.
There is a dispute revolving around the question of whether ICE was ever notified of the Ramos arrest, but the fact remains that for the last 10 years the city’s juvenile justice authorities have followed a policy of not turning over illegal-immigrant felons to the federal government, basing the practice on San Francisco’s sanctuary-city status and state law barring local officials from surrendering them for deportation.
After a storm of protest following the slayings of the Bologna family men, San Francisco’s ultra-liberal Mayor Gavin Newsom belatedly rescinded that policy earlier this month following a report in the Chronicle that the city had flown a number of youths out of the country on its own, in possible violation of federal law, and then housed some in unlocked group homes from which they quickly escaped. His action came too late to save the lives of the Bologna men.
Those are the facts in this shocking case. They illustrate the lethal effects this idiotic and dangerous sanctuary-city policy can have on the safety of innocent Americans.
Sanctuary-city policies defy guidelines from the 9/11 Commission Report, which called on state and local authorities to help federal agencies crack down on illegal immigration. “There is a growing role for state and local law enforcement agencies [for the enforcement of immigration law],” the report stated. “They need more training and work with federal agencies so that they can cooperate more effectively with those federal authorities in identifying terrorist suspects.”
Instead, a host of cities across the United States classify themselves as havens for illegal aliens, despite the fact that such policies result in creating safe havens for illegal aliens who are criminals and potential terrorists. They allow criminal aliens to avoid deportation because they prevent local police from reporting them to ICE.
President Bush should issue an executive order denying any federal funds to those cities which either officially or unofficially provide sanctuaries enabling illegal aliens who commit crimes to escape deportation. They need to learn there is a price to be paid for exposing their citizens to criminal activities by aliens here illegally.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )CAIR’s Medical School Grievance
If you are not going by proper medical practices then you should NOT be allowed to practice medicine in this country. If they don’t like it, then they can go practice in a country where people don’t care about germs and spreading diseases through their nasty practices. This crap just infuriates me!! It’s going too far!!! I don’t care if they are offended or not. This is America and this is how we do it here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CAIR’s Medical School Grievance Theater
By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 17, 2008
When Iram Qureshi of Dublin, Ohio was dismissed from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine last month after having to repeat her first year and then failing two “systems” in her second year after she stopped attending classes, she did what any normal American Muslim woman would seem to do these days – she called the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and sued.
Tragically, perhaps fatally one day for one of her future patients, a Kanawha County Circuit Court judge has granted her a temporary restraining order so that she could resume her “studies” and clinical rotation beginning this month while her dismissal appeal is reviewed, the Charleston Gazette reports. Curiously, the Charleston Gazette waits until half-way through their article before telling readers that the cause of her dismissal was poor academic performance, not religious discrimination.
Her academic failure, however, hasn’t stopped her attorney, James McQueen, from making a series of allegations of religious discrimination in her defense, including her reluctance to conduct chest and pelvic examinations on male subjects. She claims that her alleged persecution grew so bad, she stopped attending classes altogether and is now forced to take anxiety medication.
Qureshi’s pretended plight has garnered significant attention in the medical community nationwide, with at least one medical student online forum engaging in extensive debate about the situation, including some of Qureshi’s classmates. Many of the participating students seem unsympathetic to her claims for preferred treatment even beyond what many other female Muslim students have agreed to, as the following comments represent:
“I do not think it would be fair for Muslim or any other students to be assigned to same sex partners during lab. There are plenty of female Muslim students who have successfully completed programs who I’m sure all have not been afforded this preference. I can see if you choose an area of women’s health as your residency, but for your 3rd and 4th year you are going to be required to treat both men and women. If it an issue for the student not to be touched, the same argument could be made that they would not feel comfortable touching a man, which as a student of medicine is not feasible.”
And –
“Regarding the religious issue: we had Muslim women in my class too. I know occasionally they requested pairing with a female, but most of the time they knew they’d have to learn how to do techniques on male patients too so they just dealt with it. And they also were required to test on randomly assigned partners – which could be male. No problems. They were fully aware that medicine involved both learning about BOTH sexes. It sounds like she was dismissed for academic reasons. I hope the school stands their ground.”
This drama is yet another episode of CAIR’s cultural jihadist grievance theater, a widespread phenomenon I’ve reported on previously. The medical jihad is a somewhat new phenomenon in the US, but has already reached the level of open warfare in the UK.
For instance, earlier this year it was reported by The Sun that Muslim medical students were refusing new directives on washing “bare past the elbow” to prevent the spread of aggressive “superbugs”, such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile. Reports from Leicester, Sheffield and Birmingham Universities found female Muslim students refusing to wash their wrists and forearms in accordance with Department of Health guidelines – putting the lives of patients at risk (as I can personally attest, having survived a near-fatal MRSA infection).
In that instance, the Muslim students were supported by the spokesman of the UK Islamic Medical Association, Dr. Abdul Majid Katme, who said, “No practicing Muslim woman doctor, medical student, nurse or patient should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow”. An Islamonline article on this topic quoted Muslim medical student claiming that the issue was being used by the “racist media” to fuel religious hatred. (In fairness, the Islamic Medical Association of North America issued a press release expressing their disagreement with the IMA’s stance and supporting the British Department of Health hygiene measures.)
This is not the first time that IMA’s Dr. Katme has waded into scientific controversy. Last year he publicly urged Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases, such as measles, mumps, and rubella, condemning the practice as “un-Islamic”. “If you breastfeed your child for two years – as the Koran says – and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system,” he told The Independent. Dr. Katme is a psychiatrist.
Another disturbing pattern seen by Muslim medical professionals in the UK is the promotion of the view that the practice of medicine is primarily to advance the Islamic religion and to better the health of Muslims, and not all patients, as specifically expressed in the constitution of the Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association UK:
2. Objects and powers
2.1 The objects of the association shall be:-
2.1.1. To advance the Islamic religion in the practice of medicine in the United Kingdom.
2.1.2. To advance medical education in relation to the doctrines, practices and traditions of the Islamic religion.
2.1.3. To promote research in various aspects of medical science and to disseminate and publish the useful results of such research.
2.1.4. To promote the preservation and protection of the good health of Muslims in the United Kingdom.
No mention is made in their objectives about the preservation and protection of non-Muslims.
As with many Islamization trends, what has begun in Europe inevitably spreads to the US. It is also worth noting that one additional dangerous trend amongst Muslim medical professionals – refusing to use standard alcohol rubs – is currently an entirely Western issue as virtually all Middle Eastern hospitals use the rubs, including 200 hospitals in the Saudi Kingdom and the Gulf States. Even the revered medical journal, The Lancet, has spoken out on the issue.
With that in mind, US health authorities had best begin to address these issues of preferential accommodation and potentially lethal claims of exception by Muslims, because as the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine situation has clearly shown, the issues are quickly jumping the pond.
CAIR’s medical school grievance theater with respect to Iram Qureshi’s claims of religious discrimination to mask her academic failure and the push to Islamicize the medical field in the US and elsewhere portends is that not all eventual victims of the “Civilizational-Jihadist Process”, aka the global jihad, will be from terrorism.
LINK: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=9A4CCF32-4D2C-428B-8352-9BAD41F5C91A
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