ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100224

ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100224
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable

Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!



"Daily Motivations"

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." -- Daniel J. Boorstin

Learning how to "connect" with people remotely and get results from a distance is your key to virtual leadership success. -- Debra A. Dinnocenzo

"A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book." -- Irish Proverb



"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)

I want you to be merciful. (Matthew 9:13)

Many years ago in Korea, Dr. Joon Gon Kim and his family were enjoying an evening together. Suddenly, an angry band of Communist guerrillas invaded their village, killing everyone in their path. In their trail of blood, the guerrillas left behind the dead bodies of Dr. Kim's wife and father. Dr. Kim was beaten and left for dead. In the cool rain of the night, he revived and fled for safety with his young daughter to the mountains. They were the sole survivors.

Dr. Kim knew from Scripture that he must love his enemies and pray for those who persecuted him. The Spirit of God impressed upon him to seek out the Communist chief who led the guerrilla attack, and tell him that he loved him. Then he was to tell him about God's love.

Dr. Kim obeyed. When he met the Communist chief, the man was dumbfounded because he had believed that the guerrillas had killed him. He knelt and committed his life to Christ. Within a short time, more Communists came to Christ, and Dr. Kim helped build a church for them. He was a living demonstration of God's mercy.

As I walk in the Spirit and grow in appreciation for the mercy of God to me, I find that mercy overflows from my life into the lives of others. And if I plant the seeds of God's mercy in the hearts and minds of others, they produce a harvest of love for God and repentance of sin.

Your View of God Really Matters …

Do you love mercy? Ask the Lord to make you a person who loves mercy, and who extends mercy to others as Dr. Kim did. Is there someone who needs you to extend God's mercy to them today?



"The Patriot Post"

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

"No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." --Joseph Story

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." --George Washington, letter to the residents of Boston, 1789

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson



Government & Politics

The Leftist Vision for Government

The Obama deficit will weigh the nation downAs we noted last week, Barack Obama is now paying lip service to fiscal conservatism by calling for a "freeze" on federal spending in the face of huge deficits. Yet the freeze would apply to only a small fraction of spending and save a measly $15 billion -- and not until 2011. With Monday's budget release, in which outlays will reach $3.72 trillion for fiscal 2010 and $3.83 trillion in 2011, this political posturing becomes all the more disingenuous.

While the projected deficit will hit a record $1.56 trillion this year and a cumulative $5.08 trillion over the next five years, spending will reach 25.4 percent of GDP this year, a post-World War II record. The phony freeze simply sets a new floor for government largesse -- a floor that's nearly 30 percent higher than in 2008.

The Wall Street Journal reports, "Despite talk of 'tough choices' in [Monday's] document, the Administration wants $25 billion in new spending for states for Medicaid, $100 billion for yet another jobs 'stimulus,' big boosts in spending for low-income family programs, for health research, heating assistance and education." Additionally, the budget moves Pell Grants out of the "discretionary" spending column and into the permanent entitlement one at a cost of $307 billion over 10 years.

To finance this growth in government, including the assumption that ObamaCare and cap-n-tax become law, the budget includes nearly $2 trillion in tax increases over the next decade. Yet Obama had the gall in his SOTU to declare, "Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes." Characteristically, the budget drops one of these cuts after 2012 -- the $400 payroll tax credit.

When Congress repeals the Bush tax cuts and returns the top rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, Obama's budget will increase taxes by $1 trillion for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples earning $250,000. The 33 percent rate would also rise to 36 percent. Capital gains and dividends would be taxed at 20 percent, up from 15 percent now. Some deductions for higher wage earners would also be reduced. Yet the Obama budget would extend the Bush tax cuts for singles and couples under the $200,000/$250,000 threshold. With this, we suppose, would come a grudging admission that the Bush tax cuts benefited everyone.

Obama's class warfare and targeted tax increases are outrageous, to say the least. Many of those so-called "wealthy" people who he thinks can spare a dime are small business owners and entrepreneurs who will now be unable to hire that additional employee because of higher taxes.

These are just a few examples of the appalling items in the new budget. Our primary objections, however, are rooted not in numbers but in the nation's founding ideals. Most of the present federal budget is extraconstitutional. Provisions for Medicaid, jobs, family programs, health research, heating assistance and education -- all items mentioned above -- are nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

For someone like Obama, for whom everything begins and ends with government, the Constitution is little more than parchment under glass. He repeatedly asserts "that Washington is the answer to everything," writes columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan. In his SOTU, she adds, "The people are good but need guidance -- from Washington. The middle class is anxious, and its fears can be soothed -- by Washington. Washington can 'make sure consumers ... have the information they need to make financial decisions.' Washington must 'make investments,' 'create' jobs, increase 'production' and 'efficiency.'"

While he was California Governor, Ronald Reagan said, "This is the issue [at hand]: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

The budget is further proof that Obama and the Democrats think that they can spend your money and plan your life better than you can. That's the antithesis of liberty.



Hope 'n' Change: Obama Crashes GOP Retreat

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to change the culture in Washington. But this "change" has been little more than trying to force people to support his socialist views, then labeling them as obstructionist when they don't. That plan was on full display as Obama paid a visit to the House GOP conference retreat. He spent a lot of camera time explaining what the Democrats were trying to do with health care, and he hammered Republicans for being "obstructionist."

At the same time, he slyly confessed that he hasn't kept those campaign promises, one of which is that people could keep the health insurance they have after ObamaCare mauls the market. "There's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating," the president said of various White House pets, such as bribing Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, that made it into the health care bill. Furthermore, the "we" symbolizes the fact that the Democrats completely rejected any input from Republicans in crafting health care legislation -- and they have no one to blame but themselves for the public's rejection of their plan.

Speaking of public backlash, Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts was finally sworn in Thursday, meaning Senate Democrats no longer enjoy a 60-seat super majority in the upper chamber. Losing what the media continue to call "Ted Kennedy's seat" in last month's special election was a severe blow to Democrats and is, we think, a harbinger of things to come in November.

Obama isn't deterred, however. He told Senate Democrats, "All that's changed in the last two weeks is that our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second largest Senate majority in a generation." Doesn't sound like he's learned anything.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in 34 states have expressed their concern over the potential for federal meddling in health care by filing or proposing amendments to their state constitutions that would reject broad health insurance mandates by Washington. The plan, which is widespread but not necessarily coordinated across state lines, calls for creating a legal barrier that would prevent the federal government from forcing people to purchase health insurance and prevent businesses from being compelled to provide certain coverage standards.



This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award

"A little bit of time and quiet could help. Maybe over time, people will have a chance to understand what is in the legislation." --Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), whom the LA Times describes as a "conservative Democrat," but who received a 4 out of 100 rating from the American Conservative Union last year

Memo to Mark: Maybe people already do understand what's in the legislation, and maybe that's precisely why it's dead in the minds of most Americans. Leave it that way.



"The Web"

Dallas Tea Party Invites the White People of MSNBC

http://dallasteaparty.org/3365/



CBO to White House: We can’t score your health care crap sandwich

By Michelle Malkin Ok, they didn’t say “crap sandwich.”

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/02/22/cbo-to-white-house-we-cant-score-your-health-care-crap-sandwich/

But the message is clear on the CBO Director’s blog:

“This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it—a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved. Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.”

Long live transparency and the deliberative process!



Reading the President's Personal Mail

http://chosenrebel.blogspot.com/2010/02/reading-presidents-personal-mail.html

I normally don't send on chain emails, but this one is too good. It also has the advantage of being true.

Pictured to the right is a young physician by the name of Dr. Roger Starner Jones. His short open letter to the White House first appeared in the "letter to the editor" column of a Jackson, MS newspaper and accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis".

Notice that Dr. Jones is not trying to take his patient's right to live her life the way she has. He is objecting to the rest of the nation having to pay for it and go bankrupt in the process. He is spot on. The nations "health care crisis" is really a crisis of cultural values. Until we solve the latter, we will never solve the former.

Note to Christians: The way to solve the latter, the cultural crisis, is the preaching of the gospel. Starting loving people enough to tell them the truth.

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer. And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our Nation's' "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses.

Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me".

Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,

STARNER JONES, MD



Obama's healthcare plan - 'more of the same'

Bill Bumpas - OneNewsNow

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=909320

The nation's largest faith-based association of physicians is weighing in on President Obama's nearly $1-trillion healthcare proposal.

Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), is concerned that Obama's healthcare overhaul, which many thought was dead, appears to have been resurrected. "The question," he says, "is whether it's still dead and people just are pretending it's alive."

Stevens says the president's plan is "essentially more of the same -- a tweaking of the Senate Bill and grabbing a few things out of the House bill." He says the focus of reform needs to be on costs. "Including preventing runaway malpractice suits; allowing more competition across state lines; allowing lower premiums to encourage healthy lifestyles; [and giving] a tax credit to people who don't have insurance if they go out and buy it themselves," he suggests.

The CEO says he and most members of his organization are concerned that there is nothing in this latest proposal on healthcare reform about discrimination against medical practitioners based on their religious or moral beliefs. They are worried, he notes, that the Obama plan will essentially replace healthcare right-of-conscience protections with something much weaker.

"All it does is provide protection for doctors who are not willing to do abortions that they won't have to do them. It doesn't provide [protection] for any other healthcare professionals - nurses, pharmacists, or whatever," he explains. "It doesn't prevent you from being forced to refer for an abortion, which makes you morally complicit in that act."

The Christian physician argues that inadequate protections could drive believers out of the medical field. "We did a survey of 2,800 faith-based healthcare professionals -- physicians, nurses, and pharmacists -- [and] 95 percent of them said they would quit medicine before they violated their conscience," he tells Associated Press.

Stevens says even as it is now, faith-based healthcare professionals face discrimination for their views on abortion and other issues.



Morning Bell: Can They Make Obamacare Worse? Yes They Can!

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/23/morning-bell-can-they-make-obamacare-worse-yes-they-can/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Flacking for President Barack Obama’s “new” health care plan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters assembled for yesterday’s press briefing: “The president posted ideas of his on the White House website today. We hope Republicans will post their ideas either on their website, or we’d be happy to post them on ours, so that the American people could come to one location and find out the parameters of what will largely be discussed on Thursday.” And this might have been a small bit of successful Obama administration gamesmanship on health care and transparency in government except for one small problem: reality. Not only do House Republicans already have their own health care plan, not only is it already available online, but the White House’s own website already links to it!

And speaking of the President’s behind-closed-doors plan, don’t believe any of those headlines showing a $950 billion price tag. That is an Obama administration-created number that should not be afforded any more credibility than Gibbs’ grasp of the contents of his own website. In fact, the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published this about the President’s new plan yesterday:

Preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.

In other words, even with over a year to prepare for the moment they would finally release their own plan, the White House could only manage to obtain an “incomplete” grade from the official budget scorekeeper in Washington. So every time you hear the President say “my plan is paid for” or “my plan reduces the deficit,” just remember you are going to have to take his word for it.

And where the President’s plan is more firm than fuzzy, it only makes the scheme worse:

Cornhusker Kickback for All: Instead of just eliminating the Cornhusker Kickback, the White House chose to solve their Medicaid problem by extending the deal to all 50 states. Now all new Medicaid spending through 2017 and 90% after 2020 will be picked up by the feds.

Weakens and Delays Cost Control: The White House’s proposal is silent on whether all collective bargaining agreements will be exempt from Obamacare’s new health insurance tax, but the new plan does go ahead and weaken what was the only thing in the entire bill that even liberal health care experts thought had a chance of containing health care costs. The plan delays implementation of the new tax until 2018 (when President Obama is well out of office) and raises the threshold for taxation to $27,000.

Steals More Money from Medicare: To pay for Cornhusker Kickbacks for all, increased subsidies for health insurance, and the health insurance tax delay, the White House raises the Medicare payroll tax and extends it for the first time ever to investment income. The least they could have done is slate this new $120 billion in taxes to help plug Medicare’s existing $38 trillion unfunded liability, not fund a brand new entitlement.

Creates New Price Control Authority: The President’s plan also creates a new Federal Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would provide federal “assistance and oversight” to the states conducting reviews of “ unreasonable rate increases” and “unfair practices” of health insurance plans. This, of course, establishes for the first time a legislative basis for the imposition of price controls on health insurance. If government can control both health benefits and health care pricing, that’s the proverbial ball game. Private health care is private in name only.

Providing an overview for the President’s new plan, the Associated Press reports: “Starting over on health care, President Barack Obama knows his chances aren’t looking much more promising. A year after he called for a far-reaching overhaul, Obama unveiled his most detailed plan yet on Monday. Realistically, he’s just hoping to win a big enough slice to silence the talk of a failing presidency.” The problem is, the plan the President released yesterday is not a “start over” … it is just a continuation and expansion of the same Washington-centric policies that the American people have clearly rejected over the past year. There still is a chance for Obama to save his presidency, but yesterday’s plan will not do it.



Earth to Paul Krugman

Posted by Sean Trende

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2010/02/22/earth-to-paul-krugman/
Krugman writes:

And the deficit came. True, more than half of this year's budget deficit is the result of the Great Recession, which has both depressed revenues and required a temporary surge in spending to contain the damage. But even when the crisis is over, the budget will remain deeply in the red, largely as a result of Bush-era tax cuts (and Bush-era unfunded wars). And the combination of an aging population and rising medical costs will, unless something is done, lead to explosive debt growth after 2020.

So many things wrong with this paragraph. The reference to the "temporary surge" in spending is the first error. Here, you can check the summary tables of the President's latest budget proposal. In 2009, fiscal outlays are estimated at $3.5 trillion. In 2010 they are $3.7 trillion. In 2011 they are $3.8 trillion. And so they go, until 2020, when they are $5.7 trillion. There's a slight dip in 2012 to $3.7 trillion, but the fact that Obama's spending never drops below 2010 levels, and drops below 2011 levels only once, gives the lie to the argument that the spending surge is "temporary."

Let's also be clear that an awful lot of this spending is Obama's spending, not Bush's. The summary tables for Bush's last budget (FY09) can be found here. Bush wasn't doing ten-year budgeting, but his outlays for 2011 were $3.1 trillion, for 2012 were $3.2 trillion and for 2013 were $3.3 trillion. That represents a $700 billion, $600 billion, and $600 billion increase over the baseline for spending that President Bush was anticipating. Even generously allocating $200 billion for putting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan back in the budget (where they should have been in the first place) and $200 billion for increased interest on the debt from 2008 and 2009 for TARP/stimuli, that's a pretty significant delta in the final Bush baseline and the initial Obama baseline, and it occurs well after the "temporary surge" in spending has supposedly wound down. And while Obama can argue that spending declines from 25.4% of GDP in 2010 to 22.8% of GDP in 2013 (before beginning an inexorable rise), that is still substantially higher than the 18.6% peak that President Bush foresaw.

Furthermore, and this bears repeating again and again -- the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. After that, they have zero impact on the budget, except for the interest on the debt that they created. After that, those cuts that survive are Obama's tax cuts, something for which I imagine he will gladly take credit. Obama campaigned on maintaining the Bush tax cuts for a very large chunk of the country -- including plenty of affluent taxpayers -- and moreover campaigned on cutting them even further (95% of taxpayers will receive a tax cut).

You won't count me among those who would defend Bush's overall approach to fiscal policies; individually many of them are defensible, but taken together they were a needless debacle. But let's be honest here, Obama is proposing massive budget increases that will significantly increase the yearly budget deficit – and they have nothing to do with George W. Bush.



Election 2010: Florida Republican Primary for Senate

Florida GOP Senate: Rubio 54%, Crist 36%

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/florida/election_2010_florida_republican_primary_for_senate

Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio continues to lengthen his lead over Governor Charlie Crist in the contest for Florida’s Republican Senate nomination.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Republican Primary voters finds Rubio leading Crist by 18 points, 54% to 36%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent are undecided.

Those figures reflect a five point increase in support for Rubio compared to a month ago. Support for Crist has changed little over the past month.

In December, the two GOP hopefuls were tied at 43% apiece. The new findings mark Rubio’s best showing to date and Crist’s worst. The good news for Crist is that Florida Republicans don’t pick their nominee until an August 24 primary.



"The e-mail Bag"

Irish College Entrance Exam

http://bitsandpieces.us/2009/05/26/irish-college-entrance-exam/


Here are the answers:

Thanks Gene