Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
Service to others brings resilience to kids, equalizing what is a challenging and even isolating time of life. -- Steven A. Culbertson
Believe In Your Heart
Believe in your heart that something wonderful is about to happen.
Love your life.
Believe in your own powers, and your own potential, and in your own innate goodness.
Believe in the goodness of others.
Wake every morning with the awe of just being alive.
Discover each day the magnificent, awesome beauty in the world.
Explore and embrace life in yourself and in everyone you see each day.
Reach within to find your own special uniqueness.
Amaze yourself and rouse those around you to the potential of each new day.
Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect; this is the essence of your humanity.
Let those who love you help you.
Trust enough to be able to receive.
Look with hope to the horizon of today, for today is all we truly have.
Live this day well.
Let a little sun out as well as in.
Create your own rainbows.
Be open to all your possibilities; all possibilities and Miracles.
Always Believe in Miracles.
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"I trust in God's unfailing love forever and ever." (Psalm 52:8)
God's sacrifice in planning for our salvation was set in motion in eternity past. There was never a moment when God did not purpose in His love to make the ultimate sacrifice for us. He planned to leave heaven's glory, beauty, and peace and take on the body of a man. You and I, who are not even worthy to call His name, are so loved that we were always on His mind!
Just before His betrayal, Jesus enjoyed the Passover meal with His disciples. His intentions during the Last Supper were to show his disciples "the full extent of His love." (John 13:1) First Jesus had a meal of fellowship, then He washed His disciples' feet.
As the Lord washed Peter's feet, Peter proclaimed, "'I'm ready to die for you.' Jesus answered, 'Die for Me? I tell you the truth, Peter - before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know Me.'" (John 13:38)
That is exactly what Peter did. During Christ's darkest hours, Peter turned his back on his Lord. As the soldiers bound and dragged Jesus through the crowd, Jesus caught Peter's eye. His look seemed to say, "Peter, I know you feel badly for what you have done. Please know that I still love you."
When we receive Jesus as our Savior and Lord, God envelops and infuses us with His everlasting love. John recognized this and exclaimed in 1 John 3:1, "See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are!" This love will never change.
"The Patriot Post"
"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." -- Alexander Hamilton
Remains of Gulf War Pilot Found
The remains of Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher were discovered and identified last weekend in Iraq. Capt. Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet was shot down over the Iraqi desert on Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the Gulf War. The Navy had struggled over the question of whether he was dead or alive for nearly two decades, changing his status several times from killed in action to missing in action and later to "missing-captured." Adm. Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, said the finding demonstrates the military's commitment to bring its troops home: "Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be."
Quote of the Week
"'Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.' We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away.... Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom. This has been recognized for centuries by some, but many others have not yet faced that reality, even today. If you think government should 'do something' about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don't have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom." -- economist Thomas Sowell
News From the Swamp: ObamaCare Costs More
The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 31-28 last Friday to approve health care legislation. The Senate Finance Committee is nearing a "compromise" bill, as well. The only real compromising going on, however, is that of the principles of so-called fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats. A public option insurance plan still dominates the House bill and the estimated cost is still about $1 trillion over 10 years, though we don't believe that low-ball figure for a moment. As The Wall Street Journal notes, "The press corps has noticed the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won't turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats' huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other 'pay fors.'"
According to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, new revenue to pay for health care would grow at 5 percent per year for the decade following 2019, while spending will increase at more than 8 percent per year. Worse, the Journal adds, "[T]he CBO score almost surely understates this deficit chasm because CBO uses static revenue analysis -- assuming that higher taxes won't change behavior. But long experience shows that higher rates rarely yield the revenues that they project. As for the spending, when has a new entitlement ever come in under budget?" Democrats may indeed win approval for their plan by claiming it will be "deficit neutral" through 2019, but that's what we call the BIG lie.
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.." -- Barack Obama
"The Web"
Empty Airport Sucks Up Stimulus
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7415354
Here's your new clock for 2009
Click here: My New clock
http://obamaclock.org/
Seniors’ Health Care Bill Of Rights
For More Information, Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302036.html
To Read RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s Op-Ed In Today’s Washington Post.
America’s senior citizens deserve access to quality health care and coverage that will not bankrupt them. Republicans believe that reforms to America’s health care system are necessary, but that reform should first do no harm, especially to our seniors.
That’s why Republicans are calling for a Seniors’ Health Care Bill Of Rights that will:
PROTECT MEDICARE AND NOT CUT IT IN THE NAME OF HEALTH CARE REFORM: President Obama and Congressional Democrats are promoting a government-run health care experiment that will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan. Medicare should not be raided to pay for another entitlement.
PROHIBIT GOVERNMENT FROM GETTING BETWEEN SENIORS AND THEIR DOCTORS: The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment will give patients less power to control their own medical decisions, and create government boards that would decide what treatments would or wouldn’t be funded. Republicans believe in patient-centered reforms that put the priorities of seniors before government.
PROHIBIT EFFORTS TO RATION HEALTH CARE BASED ON AGE: The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment would set up a “comparative effectiveness research commission” where health care treatment decisions could be limited based on a patient’s age. Republicans believe that health care decisions are best left up to seniors and their doctors.
PREVENT GOVERNMENT FROM INTERFERING WITH END-OF-LIFE CARE DISCUSSIONS: The Democrats’ government-run health care experiment would have seniors meet with a doctor to discuss end-of-life care that could mean limiting treatment. Republicans believe that government should not interfere with end-of-life care discussions between a patient and a doctor.
ENSURE SENIORS CAN KEEP THEIR CURRENT COVERAGE: As Democrats continue to propose steep cuts to Medicare in order to pay for their government-run health care experiment, these cuts threaten millions of seniors with being forced from their current Medicare Advantage plans. Republicans believe that seniors should not be targeted by a government-run health care bill and forced out of their current Medicare coverage.
PROTECT VETERANS BY PRESERVING TRICARE AND OTHER BENEFIT PROGRAMS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES: Democrats recently proposed raising veterans’ costs for the Tricare For Life program that many veterans rely on for treatment. Republicans oppose increasing the burden on our veterans and believe America should honor our promises to them.
Prayer
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/union-city-in/TPPMAAK727V6RG3MI
I got this in an email and thought I would share it. God knows this country needs all the help it can get.
Some folks passing through Texarkana last week noted signs in people's yards that said, " America, prayer is our only hope" with 2 Chron. 7:14 underneath. We certainly need God's help!
I have no idea who started this, but I certainly agree with this e-mail. I heard a preacher say "if we pray for our nation, things will turn around".
Our nation is/has been on the slippery slope for a long time. If you look around you will find corruption, greed, moral decay, and a steady move away from the things that made us great. The principles upon which this nation was founded are no longer our backbone. However, we can reverse this trend.
2 Chron. 7:14 in God's word he states, "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their Land."
I am convinced that we must pray for our nation and its leaders and ask for forgiveness So I ask you to join me in this plea to our Lord.
Would you please send this to people in your address book (send it to all believers); ask them to pray EVERYDAY. Just highlight and copy to an email.
25 to only the 5th power is 9,765,625 people. IMAGINE if each person reaches TEN others...or all TWENTY FIVE!
If you do and they comply, we will lift up millions and millions of prayers a day to our Creator. He will hear, and will answer.
A quote from Ronald Reagan "If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." I truly believe this is why the United States of America is in the shape we are in today. Most people have forgotten that we are one nation under God! Let us as Christians stand up and remind people of this.~ Have a blessed day!
A Special Report By Gary DeMar, President of American Vision
Almost anyone can be president as long as they meet three, and only three, basic requirements. They must be a natural born citizen of the United States and at least 35 years old. They must also have been a resident of this country for at least the last fourteen years. Of all the things our Founders could have required, they picked only these three.
There are no requirements concerning political philosophy and knowledge of how our government works.. You don’t even have to have any experience. Instead, they picked citizenship. Why? “The President of the United States was to be a citizen of this country, holding up this country’s values and ideals. He had to be loyal to this country alone.” Whether Barack Obama was born in the United States is important, but even more important is for him to demonstrate his constitutional loyalty to a nation built on Christian principles. Supreme Court Justice David Brewer wrote the following in his 1905 book The United States: A Christian Nation:
In no charter or constitution is there anything to even suggest that any other than the Christian is the religion of this country. In none of them is Mohammed or Confucius or Buddha in any manner noticed.... In short, there is no charter or constitution that is either infidel, agnostic, or anti-Christian. Wherever there is a declaration in favor of any religion it is of the Christian.
President Obama has been apologizing for America in every foreign country he visits, and he does it publicly. But it’s in Muslim’s nations that he has denigrated and dismissed America’s Christian heritage most forcefully.. For several years, first as a Senator and now as President, Mr. Obama has repeatedly claimed that America is not a Christian nation. On a recent presidential trip to the Muslim nation of Turkey he announced to the world that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Did he ask American Christians? During a trip to the Muslim nation of Egypt, he declared that America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” The Muslim population in the United States is less than one percent while the Christian population is nearly 60 percent. What’s going on here? (CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: America's 200-Year-War With Islamic Terrorism (PDF))
Obama is a Muslim sympathizer. It's possible that if his birth certificate is released, it might reveal a Muslim connection.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little put off by all of this and even a little frightened. The Muslim world, even if it’s only a minority of a billion radical Muslims, is terrifying. World domination is their goal, and there is no reason why we should be helping them to achieve it. So what do we do about it? While we put pressure on this administration any way we can to stop its tyrannical policies, we need to alert more Americans about President Obama’s Muslim sympathies and refute his rejection of America’s Christian history.
Kennedy requests special law be passed just for him
Carol Brown
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/kennedy_requests_special_law_b.html
Senator Kennedy is requesting that state legislators change the law just for him. He would like the governor to appoint a temporary replacement upon his death. As the law current stands, his senate seat would remain vacant until a special election be held. This election would not occur until at least 145-160 days, if not longer, after his death. But Kennedy has expressed his desire to have the state of Massachusetts have full representation during that time frame.
Obviously the time frame would likely overlap when Congress votes on health care reform. I wonder if the Governor of Massachusetts will see fit to quickly change the law to make sure the Democrats have every vote possible when health care comes up?
Speak out now! Speak out loud!
Why Wall Street Loves the Democrats
Dear Fellow Conservative,
What if you discovered that the vet who takes care of your dog was Michael Vick? Would you think twice about bringing Fido back for his annual shots?
Or what if you discovered that your auto mechanic was a member of Greenpeace? Would you think twice about having him work on your SUV?
Of course you would. Just as, I hope, you would think twice about trusting your retirement savings to someone who secretly despised -- or simply didn't understand -- the free-market capitalist system that makes profits and prosperity possible.
Yet that, believe it or not, is exactly the position millions of Americans are finding themselves in today -- as they discover that Wall Street, far from being a stronghold of "rich Republicans" and "laissez-faire capitalists," is actually dominated by liberal Democrats who support, overwhelmingly, the prosperity-wrecking big-government policies of Barack Obama and his merry band of neo-socialists.
Think I'm exaggerating? Consider the following facts and statistics:
According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2008 Obama campaign received $12.6 million from Wall Street "Securities and Investment" firms versus McCain's $7.9 million
The top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan
Employees of Lehman Brothers alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)
Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.
What's this all about? Well, you see, the financial industry takes care of Democrats -- and as we've seen in recent months, the Democrats take care of the financial industry. After all, it's a lot easier to get rich by taking money from taxpayers than to do it by choosing consistently profitable investments for your clients.
Fortunately, there is someone who can help you invest your money who is as financially savvy and devoted to the free-market system as today's Wall Streeters are financially illiterate and devoted to shaking down taxpayers.
His name is Mark Skousen, Ph.D., editor of the investment newsletter Forecasts & Strategies -- and he just might be the smartest financial advisor working today.
Skousen, after all, launched his career by predicting, during the 1980-82 recession -- and to the scornful laughter of nearly all the other so-called experts -- that "Reaganomics will work."
Boy, did he get that right. And boy, has he gotten it right ever since:
Just this past March he called the exact bottom of the market, telling his subscribers that "stocks are a screaming buy." In the four weeks following, the Dow soared a remarkable 24.5%.
In 2006 -- more than two years before the financial meltdown -- he warned subscribers that "we clearly are headed for fiscal disaster," and showed them how to protect themselves.
Just weeks before the NASDAQ collapsed in 2000, he warned his subscribers that tech stocks were dangerously overvalued.
He told his subscribers in 1995 that the NASDAQ would double, and then double again -- which is exactly what it did.
He called the Gulf War of 1990 "a turning point for U.S. stocks" -- and the Dow subsequently began a bull market that didn't end for nearly ten years.
And he issued a "sell everything" recommendation to his Forecasts & Strategies subscribers just 41 days before the stock market crash of 1987 -- then told them to get fully invested again several weeks later, just in time for the recovery.
It's because of calls like these, after nearly 30 years of publication, Forecasts & Strategies is still going strong, while literally hundreds of rival newsletters have gone the way of Janeane Garofalo's acting career.
And here's the best thing about Mark Skousen. He knows how to make you money even while President Obama is wrecking the economy with his "New New Deal."
After all, Dr. Skousen points out, the late billionaire John Templeton -- whom Money magazine called "the greatest stock-picker of the 20th century" -- began to build his vast fortune while FDR was wrecking the economy with his original New Deal.
Let's face it: Making money in Obama's America is about to get harder -- keeping it, harder still. So we can all use as much trustworthy financial advice as we can get. The best investment advice I know of, bar none, can be found in Mark Skousen's Forecasts & Strategies -- and I urge you, now more than ever, to give it a try.
Sincerely,
Ann Coulter
"The e-mail Bag"
A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor's office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
"Impossible!" says the doctor. "Show me."
The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left shoulder and screamed, then she pushed her elbow and screamed even more.
She pushed her knee and screamed;
Likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed. Everywhere she touched made her scream.
The doctor said, "You're not really a redhead, are you?
"Well, no" she said, "I'm actually a blonde."
"I thought so," the doctor said. "Your finger is broken."
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Obama, AG Holder, Destroying Federal Judiciary
Is President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder destroying objectivity in the Federal Judiciary and replacing it with pure left-wing, radical, liberal, Democrat Party partisan politics?
AG Eric Holder has now appointed John Durham as Prosecutor to; again, investigate the Bush Administration and their alleged violations of American law. The alleged treatment is against members of our US Military and other government officials, probing captured terrorist combatants. These captured terrorist are organized gangsters who are out to kill any and all Americans, any and all of the Jewish community, and destroy the freedoms of all Judeo-Christian beliefs. Members of our US Military and others were protecting Americans.
Some of these most left-wing, radical, liberal politicians in America are now destroying our US Military, the CIA, and other US Agencies who are functioning to save our own American lives and the freedoms within our US Constitution. These left-wing radicals are leading Americans to an occasion where we are going to be required under their revolutionary rule to require civil rights lawyers to be out front, then approve or disapprove, any and all military action.
Now, and at the same time, Obama’s AG Holder dismissed charges against Black Panthers in Pennsylvania who were intimidating citizens attempting to vote in the open 2008 General Election. Free and open voting is one of the most precious freedoms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU
According to the Wall Street Journal, Civil Rights lawyer Bartle Bull calls it "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn2DjQUgVF8
Mr. Bull says he heard one yell "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html
The Bush Administration Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party activists. The defendants failed to file any response or even appear in federal district court in Philadelphia. It appeared the US Justice Department won by default. For some ungodly reason, Obama’s AG Holder dismissed the case. Why? Why? Why?
America must recover jurisdiction of individual freedoms of our citizens, by defeating these left-wing radicals, who are destroying our legal system from within. It certainly appears some justice in the Obama Administration may be related to pure partisan politics rather than impartiality.
AG Eric Holder has now appointed John Durham as Prosecutor to; again, investigate the Bush Administration and their alleged violations of American law. The alleged treatment is against members of our US Military and other government officials, probing captured terrorist combatants. These captured terrorist are organized gangsters who are out to kill any and all Americans, any and all of the Jewish community, and destroy the freedoms of all Judeo-Christian beliefs. Members of our US Military and others were protecting Americans.
Some of these most left-wing, radical, liberal politicians in America are now destroying our US Military, the CIA, and other US Agencies who are functioning to save our own American lives and the freedoms within our US Constitution. These left-wing radicals are leading Americans to an occasion where we are going to be required under their revolutionary rule to require civil rights lawyers to be out front, then approve or disapprove, any and all military action.
Now, and at the same time, Obama’s AG Holder dismissed charges against Black Panthers in Pennsylvania who were intimidating citizens attempting to vote in the open 2008 General Election. Free and open voting is one of the most precious freedoms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU
According to the Wall Street Journal, Civil Rights lawyer Bartle Bull calls it "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn2DjQUgVF8
Mr. Bull says he heard one yell "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html
The Bush Administration Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party activists. The defendants failed to file any response or even appear in federal district court in Philadelphia. It appeared the US Justice Department won by default. For some ungodly reason, Obama’s AG Holder dismissed the case. Why? Why? Why?
America must recover jurisdiction of individual freedoms of our citizens, by defeating these left-wing radicals, who are destroying our legal system from within. It certainly appears some justice in the Obama Administration may be related to pure partisan politics rather than impartiality.
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20090824
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
WRITE THEM UP! Community editors of local newspapers are always looking for interesting stories. Why not let them write about the achievements of people in your work group? This unique form of recognition may be just a phone call away! -- Eric Harvey
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"Heaven and earth will disappear, but My words will remain forever." (Luke 21:33)
A woman received directions to a home for a baby shower, complete with the street name and the house number. But she never found the correct house and went home embarrassed. The next day she discovered some pranksters had switched several street signs in the area. She failed to reach her destination even though she had true directions.
If you have ever had an experience like that, you may be skeptical whenever you receive directions to an unfamiliar setting. That is how many people approach what God has said. They are not at all sure that His truth is absolutely accurate or applies to modern life. Maybe He has forgotten about a turn, a detour, or a switched street sign, they think. Times change, so how can we rely on truth given centuries ago?
Because God knows the end from the beginning, not one of His statements ever turns out to be a misdirection. He does not shade the truth or leave out an essential part. His absolute truth applies to every situation in history.
I encourage you to read Psalm 119, the greatest chapter in the Bible about the endurance and truth of God's Word. Verse 160 says, "All Your words are true; all Your just laws will stand forever."
Not only is God's truth absolute, but it lasts forever! We can count on it for eternity.
"Simple Truths"
"You never know when one act, or one word of encouragement can change a life forever." -- Zig Ziglar
"The Patriot Post"
"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness." -- James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790
"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it." -- Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789
"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776
"The Web"
GOP: Democrats Censoring Mail on Health Care
This is another example of the majority arrogant Democrats on Capitol Hill. When you try to explain their legislation, you are censored and prevented from doing so, although the Democrats cannot and will not explain why the minority Republicans are wrong. The majority Democrats have censored the term "government-run health care" in their mailings, and had to dub it "the public option" instead. How can anyone explain the Healthcare legislation other than it is a "government-run health care" program. When this legislation is written by and for the government, to "protect" the citizens, both legal and illegal citizens, it is a government Healthcare program. President Obama even says it is a single pay government "Healthcare" system! The majority Democrats are guilty of a violation of Amendment I which says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Censoring, as being used today on Capitol Hill, has never been used as the majority Democrats are forcing expression onto the American public.- oyh
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/07/gop_accuses_democrats_of_censo.html
House Republicans have been prohibited from mailing out this diagram of Democrats' health-care reform plan.
By Ben Pershing
The partisan debate over health-care reform has trickled down into one of the more arcane corners of the House -- the committee on free mail, otherwise known as the Franking Commission.
One of the perks of being a member of Congress is that each lawmaker is allowed to send "franked" -- or free -- mail, as long as it is related to official business. Members use that ability to send newsletters and legislative updates to their constituents. To ensure that privilege is not used inappropriately, a majority of the bipartisan six-member Franking Commission must approve each piece to ensure it meets some basic guidelines. Mail is blocked only on rare occasions.
But now the commission has gotten involved in the health-care fight, prohibiting several Republican lawmakers from mailing out reproductions of a colorful, labyrinthine chart that purports to diagram Democrats' reform plan. The controversy was first reported by Roll Call.
The chart was produced by the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee and has become a popular visual aide on the minority side of the aisle, as the GOP attempts to convince the public that the majority's plan will be a confusing disaster. But Democrats have argued that the chart is an inaccurate representation of their health-care efforts, and for that reason, the three Democrats on the Franking Commission say the GOP can't use it in official mail. House guidelines say that in franked mail, "Comments critical of policy or legislation should not be partisan, politicized or personalized." But what about information that's inaccurate, or -- arguably -- just misleading?
"We have never before censored anybody's presentation of facts this way," Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) complained in an interview Friday.
Lungren, the top Republican on both the Franking Commission and the House Administration Committee, said the commission has never traditionally played a fact-checking role. He pointed out that Democrats this year have sent out numerous pieces of franked mail touting the number of jobs created by the economic stimulus package, and while Republicans might disagree with those numbers, they've never moved to block the mail from being sent out.
"We let those things go by, even though we don't think it's true," Lungren said, adding that he knows of at least 15 Republicans who have asked to mail out copies of the health-care chart in question. (For some context, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) explains the chart's purpose here. Ezra Klein mocked the chart here, and includes a chart of Republicans' own health-care "plan." )
The controversy extends beyond the colorful chart. Salley Collins, a spokeswoman for House Administration panel Republicans, said GOP members were also being told by the Franking Commission that they could not refer to "government-run health care" in their mailings, and had to dub it "the public option" instead.
Democrats, led by Franking Commission Chairwoman Susan Davis (Calif.), say they are trying in good faith to negotiate a compromise with Republicans on this subject. If the impasse isn't resolved, watch for the GOP to turn up the volume on the controversy next week.
ACLU Seeking to Put School Officials in Jail for Praying
http://www.theacru.org/acru/aclu_seeking_to_put_school_officials_in_jail_for_praying/
A small school district in Florida made the mistake of bargaining with the ACLU when it sued them about prayer in schools. Now, under a consent decree written by the ACLU but signed by a federal judge, three school administrators are threatened with criminal trials and convictions for violating that order, by engaging in protected speech which even the US Supreme Court, today, recognizes as protected.
Some of the facts for this article, and some of the legal conclusions, come from an article by Ken Klukowski, an ACRU colleague, published on Fox News as a legal analysis piece on 17 August. It is entitled, "Never Make a Deal with the Devil About Prayer." It concerns criminal actions initiated against three officials of the Santa Rosa County School District in Florida for allegedly violating a consent order of a federal court concerning prayers.
As these outrages have mentioned many times before, the tactic of the ACLU is to attack school districts with small budgets. Prolonged litigation with the ACLU could cause such districts to lay off teachers, or stop buying books for classrooms and libraries. So, these districts tend to fold like a cheap lawn chair when the ACLU even threatens to sue, or in this case, actually files suit.
School officials gave up, and allowed the ACLU to write a proposed order which the federal court signed as a Consent Degree, not only forbidding prayer at any school function, but forbidding any school official from even acknowledging any private prayer by bowing his/her head.
Two school officials are now under investigation for allegedly violating that order by having grace before a meal for a Boosters Luncheon. As the original article points out, this was for adults who supported the school’s athletic and other programs. It was not a "school" event as described in the order, because no students were present.
What the article doesn’t mention is that the US Supreme Court decisions forbidding prayer at school functions (which, whether they are correct or not, must be accepted at face value by lower courts and US Attorneys), have done so because "students are impressionable" and "school officials are in positions of trust and authority over them." Neither parts of that reasoning apply to adults, such as those at the Santa Rosa Boosters Luncheon.
A competent judge who had read the Supreme Court decisions would never have referred these school officials for prosecution. A competent US Attorney who had read these decisions would have dropped the prosecution instantly.
There is another aspect of this Consent Order not in this article. Apparently, the President of the Senior Class was not allowed to speak at her own graduation. The reason was that she was known to be a Christian, and would not submit her speech to be vetted by the court and the ACLU, before hand. Presumably, if she had been a known atheist and ACLU supporter, she’d have been allowed to speak.
The members of the School Board who permitted this travesty to take place, should be removed and replaced as soon as possible. The judge should be asked to strike his unconstitutional order from the record, probably by the parents whose daughter was not allowed to speak at graduation.
All who read this Outrage should take this as an object lesson. Striking a deal with the ACLU does not end the fight. It only means that the fight will go on, but on far worse terms. The goal of the ACLU is to take down American society as it currently exists. Such people will not be satisfied with any bargains.
Source on the Net: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/17/klukowski-prayer-florida-aclu/
TIME FOR GOD
Read only if you have time for God. Let me tell you, make sure you read all the way to the bottom. I almost deleted this e-mail but I was blessed when I got to the end.
God, when I received this e-mail, I thought ... I don't have time for this ... And, this is really inappropriate during work.
Then, I realized that this kind of thinking is Exactly, what has caused lot of the problems in our world today.
We try to keep God in church on Sunday morning... Maybe, Sunday night... And, the unlikely event of a midweek service.
We do like to have Him around during sickness... And, of course, at funerals.
However, we don't have time, or room, for Him during work or play... Because... That's the part of our lives we think... We can, and should, handle on our own.
May God forgive me for ever thinking...? That t here is a time or place where.
HE is not to be FIRST in my life... We should always have time to remember all HE has done for us.
If, You aren't ashamed to do this... Please follow the directions.
Jesus said, 'If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.'
Not ashamed?
Pass this on ONLY IF YOU MEAN IT!
Yes, I do Love God.
HE is my source of existence and Savior.
He keeps me functioning each and every day... Without Him, I will be nothing. But, with Christ, HE strengthens me. (Phil 4:13)
This is the simplest test.
If You Love God ... and, are not ashamed of all the marvelous things HE has done for you... Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!
Now do you have the time to pass it on?
Make sure that you scroll through to the end.
Easy vs. Hard
Why is it so hard to tell the truth but Yet so easy to tell a lie?
Why are we so sleepy in church but Right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?
Why is it so easy to delete a Godly e-mail, but yet we forward all of the nasty ones?
Of all the free gifts we may receive, Prayer is the very best one ...
There are no costs, but wonderful rewards ... GOD BLESS!
Notes: Isn't it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Isn't it funny how someone can say 'I believe in God' but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also 'believes' in God).
Isn't it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing?
Isn't it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them.
Isn't it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me?
I pray, for everyone who sends this to their entire address book, they will be blessed by God in a way special for them.
“Letter From Heaven”
By Ruth Ann Mahaffey
http://321greetings.com/featured/letter-from-heaven/
To my dearest family,
Some things I would like to say,
But first of all, to let you know
That I arrived ok.
I’m writing this from Heaven
Where I dwell with God above,
here there’s no more tears or sadness
There is just eternal love.
Please do not be unhappy
Just because I’m out of sight.
Remember that I’m with you
Every morning, noon, and night.
That day that I had to leave you
When my life on earth was through,
God picked me up and hugged me
And He said, I welcome you.
It’s good to have you back again
You were missed while you were gone.
As for your dearest; family
They’ll be here later on.
I need you here so badly
As part of my big plan.
There’s so much that we have to do
To help our mortal man.
Then God gave me a list of things
He wished for me to do.
And foremost on that list of mine
Is to watch and care for you.
And I will be beside you
Every day and week and year.
And when you’re sad,
I’m standing there to wipe away the tears.
And when you lie in bed at night
The days chore put to flight
God and I are closest to you
In the middle of the night.
When you think of my life on earth
And all those loving years,
Because you’re only human
They’re bound to bring you tears
But do not be afraid to cry
It does relieve the pain.
Remember, there would be no flowers
Unless there was some rain.
I wish that I could tell you
Of all that God has planned,
But if I were to tell you,
You would not understand.
And to my many friends trust,
God knows what it best.
I’m still not very far away from you
I’m just beyond the crest.
And now I am contented that my life,
It was worthwhile.
Knowing as I passed along the way
I made someone smile.
When you’re walking down the street
And you’ve got me on your mind,
I’m walking in your footsteps
Only half a step behind.
And when you feel that gentle breeze
Or the wind upon your face,
That’s me giving you a great big hug
Or just a soft embrace.
And when it’s time for you to go
From that body to be free,
Remember, you’re not going,
You are coming here to me.
And I will always love you
from that land way up above.
I’ll be in touch again soon,
P.S. GOD SENDS HIS LOVE!
The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.
By JIM TOWEY
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html
If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.
Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
eBay seller releases video of 'Obama birth certificate'
Elusive Lucas Smith films alleged Kenyan document
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107678
Screen shot of whole document from Lucas Smith's video; close-up views available in clip below
A man who had claimed to have a copy of President Obama's Kenyan birth certificate, attempted to sell it on eBay and then disappeared from contact has reappeared, this time with a video of the document he claims proves Obama's foreign birth.
As WND reported, Lucas Smith, a former resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and known by the eBay handle "colmado_noranja," claimed online and in phone conversations with WND to have an authentic document from Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa proving Obama's birth there at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961.
After promising to reveal the document to WND, Smith then dropped communications with a team of people offering to help him verify the document, only fueling belief the sale – and therefore the alleged document – was a scam.
Since then, various images have appeared online, purported to be Obama's original birth certificate – along with pranksters taking credit for forgeries meant to fool Americans still waiting for Obama to release conclusive proof of his purported Hawaiian birth.
Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!
Lucas Smith, however, still claims he has an authentic Obama birth certificate from Mombasa, and a video of him showing the document – which includes a close-up shot of the document's raised seal and the alleged footprint of Barack Obama – appears below:
"My name is Lucas Smith, an American," the video states. "This is the birth certificate of Barack Obama."
In the video, Smith points to several features of the certificate, including information still unknown about the sitting president, such as the name of the attending physician at his birth – James O. W. Ang'awa according to Smith's video.
The video also shows a stamp suggesting – if legitimate – that Smith obtained the document on Feb. 19, 2009.
WND followed Smith's ongoing saga as "colmado_naranja" attempted several times to sell the document, or photos and stories surrounding it, on eBay, only to have the auctions repeatedly removed by site administrators.
WND also launched an investigation into "colmado_naranja," which led through several online aliases and reported collaborators, including Dawnella Wilson, "InspectorSmith" and, eventually, Lucas Smith.
Smith, whose background includes a lengthy criminal record and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of organ transplant, nonetheless insists that his motives are above board, even if his past looks dubious.
"I do have a background. I've made mistakes in my life," Smith told WND in an email. "It took a guy like me to go and get tangible proof about Obama. I don't mind breaking a few laws or policies here and there. I don't mind paying the military in foreign countries to look the other way ... The military [in Africa] will grant you access to anything for just a few dollars. People are starving. So yes, it takes a guy like me to get things done once in a while."
WND Senior Staff Writer Jerome Corsi traveled last year to both Kenya and Hawaii looking into Obama's history. He said despite contacts in government offices, the help of others and even the offer of financial reward, the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa would not confirm Obama's birth there nor provide access to records.
"When I was there, I tried to get records from that hospital, but I couldn't do it," Corsi said. "The hospital either had no records or wouldn't release them.
Corsi earlier wouldn't rule out the possibility that the eBay seller may have somehow obtained a genuine document but stated only that his efforts in Kenya proved fruitless.
Corsi also reported, however, that WND obtained an authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate, which does look distinctly different from the document Smith released in the video.
Authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate obtained by WND
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.
WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard in Pennsylvania
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"
The campaign followed a petition that has collected over 450,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Your donation – from as little as $5 to as much as $1,000 – can be made online at the WND SuperStore. (Donations are not tax-deductible. Donations of amounts greater than $1,000 can be arranged by calling either 541-474-1776 or 1-800-4WND.COM. If you would prefer to mail in your contributions, they should be directed to WND, P.O. Box 1627, Medford, Oregon, 97501. Be sure to specify the purpose of the donation by writing "billboard" on the check. In addition, donations of billboard space will be accepted, as will significant contributions specifically targeted for geographic locations.)
If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.
Zogby: Obama Hits Record Low in Poll
By: David A. Patten
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Obama_plummets_Zogby/2009/08/20/250566.html?s=al&promo_code=85C8-1
President Barack Obama's popularity has plummeted to a record low, with just 45 percent of voters now approving of his performance, according to the latest Zogby International poll.
Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president's job performance, just 45.3 percent of likely voters say they approve. That compares with 50.5 percent who disapprove of the job Obama is doing.
The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president's popularity.
Those numbers also indicate that Obama clearly is in serious political trouble, Fox News analyst and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
"As soon as Obama dropped below 52 percent . . . he was leaking real voters who had backed him in November," Morris tells Newsmax. "Now that he is down to 45 percent among likely voters . .. . he is in deep political trouble."
Of greatest concern to Obama may well be his decline among all-important independent voters. Just 37.5 percent of self-identified independents say they approve of how Obama is handling the presidency. That compares with 59.2 percent of independents who disapprove.
"There is nothing counterintuitive in any of these numbers," pollster John Zogby of Zogby International tells Newsmax. "The president is clearly taken a slide — most especially with independent voters, who play such an important role in any legislation or policy support.
"Interestingly, the president had been making some inroads with groups like investors, and frequent Walmart shoppers .. . . both typically conservative," Zogby says. "However, he has slipped considerably with them in this poll."
Zogby adds: "The healthcare plan appears to be consolidating conservative opposition and scaring independent voters."
Pundits pay especially close attention to trends involving swing voters.
Continued evidence of declining popularity there will ratchet up the pressure on congressional blue dogs and other conservative Democrats to go their own way on controversial proposals such as public-option healthcare and energy cap-and-trade, knowing they can't rely on presidential coattails to prop them up with voters.
As expected, Obama continues to score well with Democrats, who give him an 83.9 percent approval rating. But among GOP voters, Obama has flat-lined at a 5.7 percent approval rating — a problem in itself for a president who promised to bring a new, bipartisan spirit to Washington politics.
Obama's decline has been startling. Various polls had his approval rating at well over 60 percent at the 100-day mark of his presidency.
By mid-June, his approval number had dipped to 51 percent. In July, it dropped further to 48 percent of likely voters.
Experts say the failure of the $787 billion stimulus to deliver on Obama's promise of massive jobs creation, the ongoing economic woes, and the increasingly bitter fight over Democrats' determination to push the government-subsidized, public-option healthcare reforms are among the reasons for Obama's rapid descent.
"Clearly, the healthcare reform package is dragging him down," Morris tells Newsmax, "and will drag every Democrat down unless they realize that they cannot afford to alienate the elderly of America by cutting Medicare and rationing medical care."
The Zogby International interactive poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.
Charlie Cook: Dem situation has 'slipped completely out of control'
http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0809/Charlie_Cook_Dem_situation_has_slipped_completely_out_of_control.html
Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.
Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.
"These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low," he wrote.
"Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats."
Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.
"We believe it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact that this mood will have on Members of Congress of both parties when they return to Washington in September, if it persists through the end of the Congressional recess."
"The e-mail Bag"
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Even if you are on the right track, You'll get run over if you just sit there.
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason.
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
WRITE THEM UP! Community editors of local newspapers are always looking for interesting stories. Why not let them write about the achievements of people in your work group? This unique form of recognition may be just a phone call away! -- Eric Harvey
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"Heaven and earth will disappear, but My words will remain forever." (Luke 21:33)
A woman received directions to a home for a baby shower, complete with the street name and the house number. But she never found the correct house and went home embarrassed. The next day she discovered some pranksters had switched several street signs in the area. She failed to reach her destination even though she had true directions.
If you have ever had an experience like that, you may be skeptical whenever you receive directions to an unfamiliar setting. That is how many people approach what God has said. They are not at all sure that His truth is absolutely accurate or applies to modern life. Maybe He has forgotten about a turn, a detour, or a switched street sign, they think. Times change, so how can we rely on truth given centuries ago?
Because God knows the end from the beginning, not one of His statements ever turns out to be a misdirection. He does not shade the truth or leave out an essential part. His absolute truth applies to every situation in history.
I encourage you to read Psalm 119, the greatest chapter in the Bible about the endurance and truth of God's Word. Verse 160 says, "All Your words are true; all Your just laws will stand forever."
Not only is God's truth absolute, but it lasts forever! We can count on it for eternity.
"Simple Truths"
"You never know when one act, or one word of encouragement can change a life forever." -- Zig Ziglar
"The Patriot Post"
"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness." -- James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790
"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it." -- Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 1789
"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776
"The Web"
GOP: Democrats Censoring Mail on Health Care
This is another example of the majority arrogant Democrats on Capitol Hill. When you try to explain their legislation, you are censored and prevented from doing so, although the Democrats cannot and will not explain why the minority Republicans are wrong. The majority Democrats have censored the term "government-run health care" in their mailings, and had to dub it "the public option" instead. How can anyone explain the Healthcare legislation other than it is a "government-run health care" program. When this legislation is written by and for the government, to "protect" the citizens, both legal and illegal citizens, it is a government Healthcare program. President Obama even says it is a single pay government "Healthcare" system! The majority Democrats are guilty of a violation of Amendment I which says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Censoring, as being used today on Capitol Hill, has never been used as the majority Democrats are forcing expression onto the American public.- oyh
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/07/gop_accuses_democrats_of_censo.html
House Republicans have been prohibited from mailing out this diagram of Democrats' health-care reform plan.
By Ben Pershing
The partisan debate over health-care reform has trickled down into one of the more arcane corners of the House -- the committee on free mail, otherwise known as the Franking Commission.
One of the perks of being a member of Congress is that each lawmaker is allowed to send "franked" -- or free -- mail, as long as it is related to official business. Members use that ability to send newsletters and legislative updates to their constituents. To ensure that privilege is not used inappropriately, a majority of the bipartisan six-member Franking Commission must approve each piece to ensure it meets some basic guidelines. Mail is blocked only on rare occasions.
But now the commission has gotten involved in the health-care fight, prohibiting several Republican lawmakers from mailing out reproductions of a colorful, labyrinthine chart that purports to diagram Democrats' reform plan. The controversy was first reported by Roll Call.
The chart was produced by the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee and has become a popular visual aide on the minority side of the aisle, as the GOP attempts to convince the public that the majority's plan will be a confusing disaster. But Democrats have argued that the chart is an inaccurate representation of their health-care efforts, and for that reason, the three Democrats on the Franking Commission say the GOP can't use it in official mail. House guidelines say that in franked mail, "Comments critical of policy or legislation should not be partisan, politicized or personalized." But what about information that's inaccurate, or -- arguably -- just misleading?
"We have never before censored anybody's presentation of facts this way," Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) complained in an interview Friday.
Lungren, the top Republican on both the Franking Commission and the House Administration Committee, said the commission has never traditionally played a fact-checking role. He pointed out that Democrats this year have sent out numerous pieces of franked mail touting the number of jobs created by the economic stimulus package, and while Republicans might disagree with those numbers, they've never moved to block the mail from being sent out.
"We let those things go by, even though we don't think it's true," Lungren said, adding that he knows of at least 15 Republicans who have asked to mail out copies of the health-care chart in question. (For some context, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) explains the chart's purpose here. Ezra Klein mocked the chart here, and includes a chart of Republicans' own health-care "plan." )
The controversy extends beyond the colorful chart. Salley Collins, a spokeswoman for House Administration panel Republicans, said GOP members were also being told by the Franking Commission that they could not refer to "government-run health care" in their mailings, and had to dub it "the public option" instead.
Democrats, led by Franking Commission Chairwoman Susan Davis (Calif.), say they are trying in good faith to negotiate a compromise with Republicans on this subject. If the impasse isn't resolved, watch for the GOP to turn up the volume on the controversy next week.
ACLU Seeking to Put School Officials in Jail for Praying
http://www.theacru.org/acru/aclu_seeking_to_put_school_officials_in_jail_for_praying/
A small school district in Florida made the mistake of bargaining with the ACLU when it sued them about prayer in schools. Now, under a consent decree written by the ACLU but signed by a federal judge, three school administrators are threatened with criminal trials and convictions for violating that order, by engaging in protected speech which even the US Supreme Court, today, recognizes as protected.
Some of the facts for this article, and some of the legal conclusions, come from an article by Ken Klukowski, an ACRU colleague, published on Fox News as a legal analysis piece on 17 August. It is entitled, "Never Make a Deal with the Devil About Prayer." It concerns criminal actions initiated against three officials of the Santa Rosa County School District in Florida for allegedly violating a consent order of a federal court concerning prayers.
As these outrages have mentioned many times before, the tactic of the ACLU is to attack school districts with small budgets. Prolonged litigation with the ACLU could cause such districts to lay off teachers, or stop buying books for classrooms and libraries. So, these districts tend to fold like a cheap lawn chair when the ACLU even threatens to sue, or in this case, actually files suit.
School officials gave up, and allowed the ACLU to write a proposed order which the federal court signed as a Consent Degree, not only forbidding prayer at any school function, but forbidding any school official from even acknowledging any private prayer by bowing his/her head.
Two school officials are now under investigation for allegedly violating that order by having grace before a meal for a Boosters Luncheon. As the original article points out, this was for adults who supported the school’s athletic and other programs. It was not a "school" event as described in the order, because no students were present.
What the article doesn’t mention is that the US Supreme Court decisions forbidding prayer at school functions (which, whether they are correct or not, must be accepted at face value by lower courts and US Attorneys), have done so because "students are impressionable" and "school officials are in positions of trust and authority over them." Neither parts of that reasoning apply to adults, such as those at the Santa Rosa Boosters Luncheon.
A competent judge who had read the Supreme Court decisions would never have referred these school officials for prosecution. A competent US Attorney who had read these decisions would have dropped the prosecution instantly.
There is another aspect of this Consent Order not in this article. Apparently, the President of the Senior Class was not allowed to speak at her own graduation. The reason was that she was known to be a Christian, and would not submit her speech to be vetted by the court and the ACLU, before hand. Presumably, if she had been a known atheist and ACLU supporter, she’d have been allowed to speak.
The members of the School Board who permitted this travesty to take place, should be removed and replaced as soon as possible. The judge should be asked to strike his unconstitutional order from the record, probably by the parents whose daughter was not allowed to speak at graduation.
All who read this Outrage should take this as an object lesson. Striking a deal with the ACLU does not end the fight. It only means that the fight will go on, but on far worse terms. The goal of the ACLU is to take down American society as it currently exists. Such people will not be satisfied with any bargains.
Source on the Net: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/17/klukowski-prayer-florida-aclu/
TIME FOR GOD
Read only if you have time for God. Let me tell you, make sure you read all the way to the bottom. I almost deleted this e-mail but I was blessed when I got to the end.
God, when I received this e-mail, I thought ... I don't have time for this ... And, this is really inappropriate during work.
Then, I realized that this kind of thinking is Exactly, what has caused lot of the problems in our world today.
We try to keep God in church on Sunday morning... Maybe, Sunday night... And, the unlikely event of a midweek service.
We do like to have Him around during sickness... And, of course, at funerals.
However, we don't have time, or room, for Him during work or play... Because... That's the part of our lives we think... We can, and should, handle on our own.
May God forgive me for ever thinking...? That t here is a time or place where.
HE is not to be FIRST in my life... We should always have time to remember all HE has done for us.
If, You aren't ashamed to do this... Please follow the directions.
Jesus said, 'If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.'
Not ashamed?
Pass this on ONLY IF YOU MEAN IT!
Yes, I do Love God.
HE is my source of existence and Savior.
He keeps me functioning each and every day... Without Him, I will be nothing. But, with Christ, HE strengthens me. (Phil 4:13)
This is the simplest test.
If You Love God ... and, are not ashamed of all the marvelous things HE has done for you... Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!
Now do you have the time to pass it on?
Make sure that you scroll through to the end.
Easy vs. Hard
Why is it so hard to tell the truth but Yet so easy to tell a lie?
Why are we so sleepy in church but Right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?
Why is it so easy to delete a Godly e-mail, but yet we forward all of the nasty ones?
Of all the free gifts we may receive, Prayer is the very best one ...
There are no costs, but wonderful rewards ... GOD BLESS!
Notes: Isn't it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Isn't it funny how someone can say 'I believe in God' but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also 'believes' in God).
Isn't it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing?
Isn't it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them.
Isn't it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me?
I pray, for everyone who sends this to their entire address book, they will be blessed by God in a way special for them.
“Letter From Heaven”
By Ruth Ann Mahaffey
http://321greetings.com/featured/letter-from-heaven/
To my dearest family,
Some things I would like to say,
But first of all, to let you know
That I arrived ok.
I’m writing this from Heaven
Where I dwell with God above,
here there’s no more tears or sadness
There is just eternal love.
Please do not be unhappy
Just because I’m out of sight.
Remember that I’m with you
Every morning, noon, and night.
That day that I had to leave you
When my life on earth was through,
God picked me up and hugged me
And He said, I welcome you.
It’s good to have you back again
You were missed while you were gone.
As for your dearest; family
They’ll be here later on.
I need you here so badly
As part of my big plan.
There’s so much that we have to do
To help our mortal man.
Then God gave me a list of things
He wished for me to do.
And foremost on that list of mine
Is to watch and care for you.
And I will be beside you
Every day and week and year.
And when you’re sad,
I’m standing there to wipe away the tears.
And when you lie in bed at night
The days chore put to flight
God and I are closest to you
In the middle of the night.
When you think of my life on earth
And all those loving years,
Because you’re only human
They’re bound to bring you tears
But do not be afraid to cry
It does relieve the pain.
Remember, there would be no flowers
Unless there was some rain.
I wish that I could tell you
Of all that God has planned,
But if I were to tell you,
You would not understand.
And to my many friends trust,
God knows what it best.
I’m still not very far away from you
I’m just beyond the crest.
And now I am contented that my life,
It was worthwhile.
Knowing as I passed along the way
I made someone smile.
When you’re walking down the street
And you’ve got me on your mind,
I’m walking in your footsteps
Only half a step behind.
And when you feel that gentle breeze
Or the wind upon your face,
That’s me giving you a great big hug
Or just a soft embrace.
And when it’s time for you to go
From that body to be free,
Remember, you’re not going,
You are coming here to me.
And I will always love you
from that land way up above.
I’ll be in touch again soon,
P.S. GOD SENDS HIS LOVE!
The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.
By JIM TOWEY
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html
If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?
One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.
Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
eBay seller releases video of 'Obama birth certificate'
Elusive Lucas Smith films alleged Kenyan document
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107678
Screen shot of whole document from Lucas Smith's video; close-up views available in clip below
A man who had claimed to have a copy of President Obama's Kenyan birth certificate, attempted to sell it on eBay and then disappeared from contact has reappeared, this time with a video of the document he claims proves Obama's foreign birth.
As WND reported, Lucas Smith, a former resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and known by the eBay handle "colmado_noranja," claimed online and in phone conversations with WND to have an authentic document from Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa proving Obama's birth there at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961.
After promising to reveal the document to WND, Smith then dropped communications with a team of people offering to help him verify the document, only fueling belief the sale – and therefore the alleged document – was a scam.
Since then, various images have appeared online, purported to be Obama's original birth certificate – along with pranksters taking credit for forgeries meant to fool Americans still waiting for Obama to release conclusive proof of his purported Hawaiian birth.
Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!
Lucas Smith, however, still claims he has an authentic Obama birth certificate from Mombasa, and a video of him showing the document – which includes a close-up shot of the document's raised seal and the alleged footprint of Barack Obama – appears below:
"My name is Lucas Smith, an American," the video states. "This is the birth certificate of Barack Obama."
In the video, Smith points to several features of the certificate, including information still unknown about the sitting president, such as the name of the attending physician at his birth – James O. W. Ang'awa according to Smith's video.
The video also shows a stamp suggesting – if legitimate – that Smith obtained the document on Feb. 19, 2009.
WND followed Smith's ongoing saga as "colmado_naranja" attempted several times to sell the document, or photos and stories surrounding it, on eBay, only to have the auctions repeatedly removed by site administrators.
WND also launched an investigation into "colmado_naranja," which led through several online aliases and reported collaborators, including Dawnella Wilson, "InspectorSmith" and, eventually, Lucas Smith.
Smith, whose background includes a lengthy criminal record and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of organ transplant, nonetheless insists that his motives are above board, even if his past looks dubious.
"I do have a background. I've made mistakes in my life," Smith told WND in an email. "It took a guy like me to go and get tangible proof about Obama. I don't mind breaking a few laws or policies here and there. I don't mind paying the military in foreign countries to look the other way ... The military [in Africa] will grant you access to anything for just a few dollars. People are starving. So yes, it takes a guy like me to get things done once in a while."
WND Senior Staff Writer Jerome Corsi traveled last year to both Kenya and Hawaii looking into Obama's history. He said despite contacts in government offices, the help of others and even the offer of financial reward, the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa would not confirm Obama's birth there nor provide access to records.
"When I was there, I tried to get records from that hospital, but I couldn't do it," Corsi said. "The hospital either had no records or wouldn't release them.
Corsi earlier wouldn't rule out the possibility that the eBay seller may have somehow obtained a genuine document but stated only that his efforts in Kenya proved fruitless.
Corsi also reported, however, that WND obtained an authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate, which does look distinctly different from the document Smith released in the video.
Authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate obtained by WND
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.
WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard in Pennsylvania
Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"
The campaign followed a petition that has collected over 450,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Your donation – from as little as $5 to as much as $1,000 – can be made online at the WND SuperStore. (Donations are not tax-deductible. Donations of amounts greater than $1,000 can be arranged by calling either 541-474-1776 or 1-800-4WND.COM. If you would prefer to mail in your contributions, they should be directed to WND, P.O. Box 1627, Medford, Oregon, 97501. Be sure to specify the purpose of the donation by writing "billboard" on the check. In addition, donations of billboard space will be accepted, as will significant contributions specifically targeted for geographic locations.)
If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.
Zogby: Obama Hits Record Low in Poll
By: David A. Patten
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Obama_plummets_Zogby/2009/08/20/250566.html?s=al&promo_code=85C8-1
President Barack Obama's popularity has plummeted to a record low, with just 45 percent of voters now approving of his performance, according to the latest Zogby International poll.
Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the president's job performance, just 45.3 percent of likely voters say they approve. That compares with 50.5 percent who disapprove of the job Obama is doing.
The results are a strong indication that contentious national debate over healthcare reform has taken a major toll on the president's popularity.
Those numbers also indicate that Obama clearly is in serious political trouble, Fox News analyst and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
"As soon as Obama dropped below 52 percent . . . he was leaking real voters who had backed him in November," Morris tells Newsmax. "Now that he is down to 45 percent among likely voters . .. . he is in deep political trouble."
Of greatest concern to Obama may well be his decline among all-important independent voters. Just 37.5 percent of self-identified independents say they approve of how Obama is handling the presidency. That compares with 59.2 percent of independents who disapprove.
"There is nothing counterintuitive in any of these numbers," pollster John Zogby of Zogby International tells Newsmax. "The president is clearly taken a slide — most especially with independent voters, who play such an important role in any legislation or policy support.
"Interestingly, the president had been making some inroads with groups like investors, and frequent Walmart shoppers .. . . both typically conservative," Zogby says. "However, he has slipped considerably with them in this poll."
Zogby adds: "The healthcare plan appears to be consolidating conservative opposition and scaring independent voters."
Pundits pay especially close attention to trends involving swing voters.
Continued evidence of declining popularity there will ratchet up the pressure on congressional blue dogs and other conservative Democrats to go their own way on controversial proposals such as public-option healthcare and energy cap-and-trade, knowing they can't rely on presidential coattails to prop them up with voters.
As expected, Obama continues to score well with Democrats, who give him an 83.9 percent approval rating. But among GOP voters, Obama has flat-lined at a 5.7 percent approval rating — a problem in itself for a president who promised to bring a new, bipartisan spirit to Washington politics.
Obama's decline has been startling. Various polls had his approval rating at well over 60 percent at the 100-day mark of his presidency.
By mid-June, his approval number had dipped to 51 percent. In July, it dropped further to 48 percent of likely voters.
Experts say the failure of the $787 billion stimulus to deliver on Obama's promise of massive jobs creation, the ongoing economic woes, and the increasingly bitter fight over Democrats' determination to push the government-subsidized, public-option healthcare reforms are among the reasons for Obama's rapid descent.
"Clearly, the healthcare reform package is dragging him down," Morris tells Newsmax, "and will drag every Democrat down unless they realize that they cannot afford to alienate the elderly of America by cutting Medicare and rationing medical care."
The Zogby International interactive poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.
Charlie Cook: Dem situation has 'slipped completely out of control'
http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0809/Charlie_Cook_Dem_situation_has_slipped_completely_out_of_control.html
Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.
Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.
"These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low," he wrote.
"Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats."
Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.
"We believe it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact that this mood will have on Members of Congress of both parties when they return to Washington in September, if it persists through the end of the Congressional recess."
"The e-mail Bag"
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Even if you are on the right track, You'll get run over if you just sit there.
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly and for the same reason.
Friday, August 21, 2009
ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20090821
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
Knowing what's right is absolutely critical to business ethics, but it's just half the battle. You see, ethics "happens" only when good beliefs lead to good behaviors. - Eric Harvey
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"We know these things because God has revealed them to us by His Spirit ...." (1 Corinthians 2:10)
Many years ago, I was a counselor at one of Billy Graham's Los Angeles crusades held in the Hollywood Bowl. At the end of the meeting, another counselor brought a man to me who was an engineer. The engineer stated that if I could answer his questions, he would become a Christian. I asked him if he wanted to know Christ. He said he did. I suggested that he pray and receive Christ and then we would discuss his questions. He agreed. After we prayed, I asked to hear his questions. He looked at me with a smile and said, "I don't have any questions. They are all answered."
I have never led anyone to Christ, and I never will. It is the Holy Spirit who is responsible for producing fruit. We simply take the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leave the results to God.
There is a great misconception about evangelism: People believe it has something to do with winning an argument. We often worry about how we can persuade a nonbeliever to be saved from his sin. But no one is ever debated into the kingdom of God. It is our role to gently deliver the message. It is the Holy Spirit who does the persuading. He works in the hearts and minds of the people to convict them of the truth.
We simply need to take God at His Word that the Spirit will accomplish His work in the hearts and minds of those to whom we witness.
"The Patriot Post"
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall
INSIGHT
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'" -- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
"There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
SHORT CUTS
"No Member of Congress in his or her right mind is going to walk into a [town hall] meeting knowing that opponents of Obama Care are armed with cell phone video cameras and instructions on how to upload to YouTube. The Pelosi plan to sell the health care plan will have lasted even less time than the Cash-for-Clunkers program." -- political analyst Rich Galen
"The president's dwindling blind faithful may still cling to the belief that he can work miracles. But no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it." -- columnist Michelle Malkin
VILLAGE IDIOTS
Get ready for tax hikes: "If we want an economy that's going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it's going to be difficult, hard for us to do. ... We're not at the point yet where we're going to make a judgment about what it's going to take." -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Tax Cheatin' Geithner when asked if taxes could be raised on the middle class
Tax hikes II: "[I]t is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what." -- White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers on tax increases for the middle class
THE DEMO-GOGUES
The Big Lie: "First of all, nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I'm tired of hearing that. I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I've proposed, if you like your doctor you keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody, you know?" -- Barack Obama And we're tired of you and your lies.
What he said then: "My commitment is to make sure that we have universal healthcare for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. ... I would hope that we could set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process." -- Barack Obama in 2007
Pointing fingers: "It's almost immoral what [private insurers] are doing. Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure. ... They are the villains in this." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
We're all just pawns of the insurance companies: "I hope my colleagues won't fall for a sucker punch like this. These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town meetings for visual impact on television. They want to show thousands of people screaming socialism and try to overcome the public sentiment, which now favors health care reform. .... There are health insurance companies that are ... very profitable and they don't want to see this reform so they are helping to organize these rallies." -- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Somehow, this is not reassuring: "Let me assure you: There will be a health care reform bill passed and it will make a big difference in the lives of the American people." -- Nancy Pelosi
Cat's out of the bag: "I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single payer and that's the best way to reach single payer. ... I think the best way we're gonna get single payer, the only way, is to have a public option and demonstrate its strength and its power." -- Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
As if that's a good thing: "One expert from a conservative think tank called this Congress 'as active and productive as any I can remember. Its true -- we have passed more serious, substantive laws than any Congress since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
"Find Law"
Convicted Lockerbie Bomber Released: The Original Guilty Verdict
HER MAJESTY'S ADVOCATE VS. AL-MEGRAHI
(Scotland, Aug. 20, 2009) - The sole defendant convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Lockerbie bombing terrorist attack was released by Scotland's Secretary of Justice and sent home to Libya today, a free man. You can read his guilty verdict in the Lockerbie bombing trial here: Read more... http://blogs.findlaw.com/courtside/2009/08/convicted-lockerbie-bomber-released-the-original-guilty-verdict.html
Ex-Giant Plaxico Burress Pleads Guilty in N.Y.C. Gun Case
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK V. PLAXICO BURRESS
(N.Y. Supreme Court, N.Y. Cty., Aug. 20, 2009) - Former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress pleaded guilty today to the attempted criminal possession of a weapon in a plea agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and agreed to serve two years in state prison. Read his original indictment here. Read more... http://blogs.findlaw.com/courtside/2009/08/ex-giant-plaxico-burress-pleads-guilty-in-nyc-gun-case.html
"Simple Truths"
Even Eagles Need A Push
http://www.eaglesneedapush.com/
"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light."
"The Web"
Sean Hannity with Michelle Malkin
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=8390354&referralPlaylistId=playlist
Remembering Robert Novak
Written by Richard Viguerie
http://conservativehq.com/blog_post/show/346
I first met Robert Novak in 1960 when I was the Houston campaign manager for John Tower, who was running in Texas against Lyndon Johnson for the U.S. Senate. Novak was working for the Wall Street Journal out of Dallas and called one September afternoon and asked me to arrange a meeting with Tower.
After arranging the meeting, I went to pick up Novak at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, and then drove him 50 miles to Galveston where Tower was campaigning.
Tower lost that November, but won the special election in 1961 to fill Johnson's vacant Senate seat and served 24 years in the U.S. Senate. Novak went on to co-edit with Rowland Evans the Evans-Novak Political Report, a newspaper column that spanned more than four decades. In the very beginning when Novak began his column in the early 60s, it was to the left-of-center. Yet over the years, Novak gradually moved to the right and became a reliable conservative journalist.
Novak's skill, work ethic, ability and integrity are traits few other journalists possess today. He belonged to a rare breed of journalists seldom seen in the 21st Century, which is why his death will be a great loss to newsrooms, political institutions and America.
American political journalism has lost a giant, and freedom has lost an important ally.
Rest in peace, my friend.
Which 'National Network of Community-Based Organizations' Will Health-Care Bill Fund to Monitor Your Diet and Weight?
Unfortunately, for taxpayers of America, you can bet with President Obama being involved, somehow, somewhere, you will find an ACORN association. President Obama was one of the original organizers, and served as "legal counsel". His legislation in the Illinois legislature and his legislation in the US Senate has funneled taxpayers monies to ACORN. His Presidential campaign funneled money to ACORN. - oyh
By Edwin Mora
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=52623
President Barack Obama purchases a piece of fruit after a town hall meeting on health care reform, Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at a Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Va. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
(CNSNews.com) – The health care reform bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) would provide federal grants to state and local governments and a “national network of community-based organizations” to "promote healthy living and reduce disparities" and to monitor people's weight, eating, exercise habits and other individual behaviors that affect health at the community level.
The language instituting the program, entitled "Community Transformation Grants," is on pages 382-387 of the bill as posted on the committee's Web site.
The bill states that only three types of entities will be eligible to receive grants under the program: "a--(A) State government agency; (B) local government agency; or (C) national network of community-based organizations."
Neither the White House nor the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee responded to inquiries from CNSNews.com about exactly what organzations would be eligible for the grants as a "national network of community-based organzations" and exactly how these community-based organizations would operate.
The HELP Committee is the only Senate committee to have voted so far on a health care reform bill. The minority office of the HELP Committee, under Ranking Member Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), referred questions to the office of the committee chairman, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Kennedy’s office did not respond to CNSNews.com inquires about the provision.
The language of the bill says that the secretary of health and human services, acting through the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can award the grants “for the implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of proven evidence-based community preventive health activities in order to reduce chronic disease rates, address health disparities, and develop a stronger evidence-base of effective prevention programming.”
The community-based organizations that get the federal grants must submit a plan to HHS that “includes the policy, environmental, programmatic, and infrastructure changes needed to promote healthy living and reduce disparities.”
These plans can include “activities” to create “healthier school environments, including increasing healthy food options, physical activity opportunities, promotion of healthy lifestyle and prevention curricula, and activities to prevent chronic diseases.”
The language of the bill says, "Activities within the plan shall focus on (but not be limited to) ... (iv) assessing and implementing worksite wellness programming and incentives; (v) working to highlight healthy options at restaurants and other food venues; (vi) prioritizing strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, including social determinants of health..."
In a section entitled, “Community-Based Prevention Health Activities," the bill calls on grant recipients to measure weight loss, physical activity, smoking and other activities of people in the neighborhood.
"In carrying out subparagraph (A), the eligible entity shall, with respect to residents in the community, measure--
"(i) decreases in weight;
"(ii) increases in proper nutrition;
"(iii) increases in physical activity;
"(iv) decreases in tobacco use prevalence;
"(v) other factors using community-specific data from the Behavioral Risk Surveillance Survey; and
"(vi) other factors as determined by the Secretary [at HHS].”
The proposed law further says that the CDC director “shall provide appropriate feedback and technical assistance to grantees to establish community makeover plans.”
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) (AP Photo)
The proposed law does not say, however, exactly how or with what authority a grant recipient would go around measuring weight loss of community residents, or their use of “proper nutrition” or whether they had increased their physical activity, among other mandates in the bill.
Further, the Kennedy health care bill does not say which “national network of community-based organizations” is eligible to participate. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that it is possible that the controversial group ACORN could qualify for the available grants.
“I don’t believe so, but they could be,” Dodd told CNSNews.com, in an earlier interview. “I just don’t want to say categorically it’s the case.”
“I’m not saying yes or no, I just don’t know. I don’t think it’s a blanket thing that anyone applies necessarily,” he said. “There would have to be criteria by which an organization qualifies to receive those grants.”
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a national network of community-based organizations. It has been scrutinized in recent years over allegations of voter registration fraud. In Nevada, criminal charges were filed against the group in May that said ACORN illegally paid for the registration of voters before the 2008 election.
ACORN has denied the allegations.
ACORN has also been criticized because of its partnership agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau to help in the 2010 Census count.
Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), in an e-mail to CNSNews.com, speculated that grants for “Creating Healthier Communities” could be misused by organizations that do not promote healthy living.
“I'm only speculating, because the bill does not make it clear,” Herrick said. “You will have to ask the Senate HELP Committee staff for a definitive answer. [But] my concern is the grants would be misused to reward political organizations whose mission has never been to promote healthier lifestyles.”
Herrick said he doubts that efforts by community-based organizations will result in healthier neighborhoods, adding that he expects entities such as schools and non-profits to use the grants if the Senate provision is included in the final bill.
“I'm not convinced community-based initiatives will result in healthier communities,” he said.
“But if provisions for healthy community grants ultimately pass, I would like to think the funds would be used by schools [to create new after-school programs] and by non-profits, such as YMCA, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etcetera,” Herrick said, “and for actual programs that encourage physical activity and teach healthy living.”
The NCPA’s senior fellow’s comments were in response to CNSNews.com’s inquiry to provide an interpretation of the “community transformation grants provision” and whether organizations like ACORN would benefit. He was also asked to provide examples of which organizations would qualify.
“My hope is that the funds would go to organizations who have been promoting healthy lifestyles all along,” Herrick told CNSNews.com.
Michael W. Chapman contributed to this report.
Guess who screened White House appointments!
Think tank developed by prez links socialist party to presidential picks
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107418
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Van Jones
JERUSALEM – Was a far-left think tank partnered with the community activist group ACORN and founded with input from President Obama instrumental in securing the appointment of controversial White House "environmental
czar" Van Jones?
A key member of the think tank reportedly was also a founder of a socialist party that, evidence indicates, included Obama among its members.
In March, Jones was named the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
His appointment drew criticism after a WND report exposing that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. The Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck hammered away at Jones' communist ties.
Get Jerome Corsi's classic No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "The Obama Nation," autographed by the author only in the WND Superstore.
Months before Obama took office, however, Jones was recommended for the environmental pick in a report by business scholar Chuck Collins, an associate of philanthropist George Soros and a longtime leftist activist linked to some socialist causes.
Collins is director of the Tax Program for Shared Prosperity at Demos, a far-left think tank that has partnered with ACORN and its ally, Project Vote, on several projects. Demos personalities were among ACORN's top defenders when the organization was accused of rampant voter fraud in 2008.
According to Demos' own website, while Obama was a state senator in 1999, he served on the working group that founded Demos.
Collins penned a piece that listed his top picks for the Obama administration, including Jones, at the radical Institute for Policy Studies.
Through a socialist party, Obama may be more closely linked to Collins, who recommended Jones.
Researcher Trevor Loudon of the New Zeal blog dug up official newspapers of the socialist-oriented New Party that list Collins as among the party's founding builders in its fall 1994 edition. Collins is listed with approximately 100 other activists in an article entitled, "Who's Building the New Party?"
Obama belonged to socialist party
In a controversy never fully addressed by Obama, WND previously reported evidence showing Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
Excerpt from New Party publication (Courtesy New Zeal blog)
While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year's presidential campaign.
The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists of America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.
Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.
Obama's campaign last year denied the then-presidential candidate was ever an actual member of the New Party.
But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the party's official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party leaders, listing him as a New Party member and printing quotes from him as a member.
Barack Obama pictured in New Party publication (Courtesy New Zeal blog)
The party's spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary). The paper quoted Obama saying "these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work."
The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.
New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged NPers (New Party members) to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration."
Becoming a New Party member requires some effort by the politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's political committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they will have a "visible and active relationship" with the party.
The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral "fusion," which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.
Following the initial reports of Obama's purported membership in the New Party, Obama associate and former Chicago New Party activist Carl Davidson posted a statement on several blogs claiming his former party was not socialist, but he admitted it worked with ACORN.
"[The New Party] was a pragmatic party of 'small d democracy' mainly promoting economic reforms like the living wage and testing the fusion tactic, common in many countries but only operational in New York in the U.S. The main trend within it was ACORN, an Alinskyist outfit, which is hardly Marxist," wrote Davidson.
But the socialist goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.
Among the New Party's stated objectives were "full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal 'social wage' to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity."
The New Party stated it also sought "the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions."
Many of the New Party's founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA. Obama attended several DSA events and meetings, including a DSA-sponsored town hall meeting Feb. 25, 1996, entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America." He sought and received an endorsement from the DSA.
According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide voter fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the presidential candidate's ties to the group.
In 1995, the DSA's New Ground newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.
"Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics – until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party."
The "Preventive Care" Myth
by Charles Krauthammer
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/08/14/the_preventive_care_myth?page=full&comments=true
WASHINGTON -- In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee's reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade. Then the CBO reported that the other Senate bill, being written by the Finance Committee, would add $1.6 trillion. The central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: From his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy -- yet the Democrats' plans would make the problem worse.
Accordingly, Democrats have trotted out various tax proposals to close the gap. Obama's idea of limits on charitable and mortgage-interest deductions went nowhere. As did the House's income tax surcharge on millionaires. And Obama dare not tax employer-provided health insurance because of his campaign pledge of no middle-class tax hikes.
Desperation time. What do you do? Sprinkle fairy dust on every health care plan, and present your deus ex machina: prevention.
Free mammograms and diabetes tests and checkups for all, promise Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, writing in USA Today. Prevention, they assure us, will not just make us healthier, it also "will save money."
Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: "It saves lives. It also saves money."
Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.
This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness."
How can that be? If you prevent somebody from getting a heart attack, aren't you necessarily saving money? The fallacy here is confusing the individual with society. For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition. But, explains Elmendorf, we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case, "it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway." And this costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise.
Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.
That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality in the United States today? A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense.
Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That's the whole premise of medicine: Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.
However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health care costs.
You will hear some variation of that claim a hundred times in the coming health care debate. Whenever you do, remember: It's nonsense -- empirically demonstrable and CBO-certified.
Media Corruption and the Two Party System
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/media-corruption-and-the-two-party-system/
This kind of advertised access to Obama’s “inner circle” helps explain why the truth about Davis and Ayers was concealed from the readers of his book.
What drives President Barack Obama to want to seize control of the health care and energy sectors of the U.S. economy? Obama was trained as a Marxist from his days as a young boy in Hawaii when his grandfather picked Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis as his mentor. In college, as Obama tells the story, he picked his "friends" carefully, in order to avoid being perceived as a sell-out, and those friends included the "Marxist professors." Later, in Chicago, he would become a political associate of another Marxist Professor, Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois. Does anybody see a pattern here?
Based on what we have seen at some of the town hall meetings, there are some Americans who don't want to see the U.S. go down the Marxist road. This is the time for the media to tell the truth about Obama and his agenda.
Unfortunately, we have now been treated to a new dishonest Obama book, Renegade, by Richard Wolffe, supposedly about "The Making of a President." Far from being a "renegade," the evidence shows that this President is probably the most far-left ideologically of any major political party nominee in history. Even as new questions emerge, however, it is still a challenge to get the media to report on the truthful but damaging information that is already a matter of public record.
Wolffe, who worked for the Financial Times and Newsweek, would seem to be in a position to shed light on "the making" of this President. Even though he is described as a "political analyst for MSNBC television, appearing frequently on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball with Chris Matthews," he claims to have obtained "exclusive interviews with Barack Obama" for his book. These were opportunities to examine aspects of Obama's still mysterious background.
But it's apparent that Wolffe didn't ask the important questions. Only two pages of the Wolffe book are devoted to Frank Marshall Davis, a father figure in Obama's early life, and nothing is said about the evidence-in the form of 600 pages of his FBI file-about his communist views or membership in the CPUSA.
The Wolffe book describes Davis as a "leading black activist" and "strong advocate for racial justice" whose "political writings" on "civil rights and labor issues" made him "the target of a McCarthyite denunciation" by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Notice the use of the term "McCarthyite" being associated with a House committee. McCarthy, of course, was a senator. Wolffe uses the term "McCarthyite" to make the point, which is false, that Davis was not in any sense a communist or fellow-traveler. Wolffe understands that many people have been conditioned by academia to recoil at the thought of anything associated with McCarthyism.
The false information provided by Wolffe is similar to what the Obama campaign said about Davis when it was discovered last year that the mysterious "Frank" from Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, was in fact Frank Marshall Davis. If Davis were such an innocent figure, why didn't Obama give us his full name and tell us whether he accepted or rejected Davis's communist views? It was later revealed that Davis, a notorious drinker, was a pornographer and a sex pervert, adding to the concern about the nature of the Obama-Davis relationship. Sex sells, except when it involves the President's childhood mentor.
This was one of the major cover-ups of the political campaign, and the cover-up continues.
Nothing is said by Wolffe about the fact that the 600-page FBI file on Frank Marshall Davis covers the years 1944-1963, meaning that he was under investigation or surveillance for at least 19 years. One document refers to Frank Marshall Davis having CPUSA affiliations dating back to 1931. The evidence also shows that Davis was involved in communist activities in the 1970s, during the time he mentored Obama in Hawaii. Davis was on the FBI's security index, meaning that Davis could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI material documents Davis's anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.
Wolffe's book also describes communist terrorist Bill Ayers as just "the former 1960s radical" who was just an "acquaintance" of Obama's. This is so superficial as to be laughable. But it's not a laughing matter to be associating with someone who bombed police stations. That is why Obama and his campaign repeatedly tried to play down the relationship, and why Ayers went into virtual hiding during the campaign.
Nevertheless, Wolffe has been hired at a "public affairs" firm called Public Strategies, whose CEO and president is former Bush White House official Dan Bartlett, "one of President Bush's most trusted advisors," his bio says. The hiring of Wolffe shows that Bartlett and his cronies do not put ideology or philosophy ahead of making bucks in the Obama era.
According to Wolffe's bio at Public Strategies, "As Senior White House Correspondent for Newsweek, Wolffe covered President Obama and his inner circle from the launch of his presidential campaign through the president's first few months in office." In addition to his work on MSNBC, the bio says that he has appeared on Fox News, "as well as international media, including the BBC."
It is apparent that British-born "Senior Strategist" Wolffe brings access to Obama's inner circle and perhaps the President himself for the corporate and other clients of the Public Strategies lobbying group, which even has a Mexico affiliate.
This kind of advertised access to Obama's "inner circle" helps explain why the truth about Davis and Ayers was concealed from the readers of his book. Wolffe obviously wants to protect his "sources," who could be helpful to the Public Strategies group.
"As recently as July 20, Wolffe was spotted visiting the White House for a meeting with senior adviser David Axelrod," reported the Politico. That same day, Politico reported, Wolffe wrote a column for the Daily Beast website quoting "a senior White House official" saying Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's job was safe. "Such information could have been very useful to the Financial Services Forum, a Public Strategies client comprised of the chief executive officers of 17 of the top U.S. financial institutions," the paper said.
Ironically, however, the Politico is a "Media Partner" of Public Strategies and they co-sponsored a recent poll on Obama's job performance. So the conflicts of interest are expanding. What's more, Politico published a plug for the Wolffe book on June 2.
Politico has now published an August 18 follow-up flattering story about Bartlett and other former Bush officials emerging as effective public relations practitioners.
This is how Washington's "inner circle" works. The truth matters less than how it is perceived and shaped by the insiders from both major political parties. These people are all about making money and deals, not seeking truth.
Health care of some kind will be needed to deal with the growing numbers of Americans who are sick of it.
God Lives Under the Bed
http://mypenfortruth.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-lives-under-bed.html
This is such a profound story... If you take it to heart, it will change your life! Read on...
I envy Kevin. My brother, Kevin, thinks God lives under his bed... At least that's what I heard him say one night.
He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen, 'Are you there, God?' he said. 'Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed....'
I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin's unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.
He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he's 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.
He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.
I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?
Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed.
The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.
He does not seem dissatisfied.
He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.
He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day's laundry chores..
And Saturdays - oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That's the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. 'That one's goin' to Chi-car-go! ' Kevin shouts as he claps his hands.
His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights. And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips. He doesn't know what it means to be discontent. His life is simple. He will never know the entanglements of wealth of power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats.. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.
His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it. He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax. He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure. He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue.
Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God.
Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God - to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an 'educated' person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.
In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith.
It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions. It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am. My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances - they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God's care.
Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.
And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I'll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.
Kevin won't be surprised at all!
~Author Unknown
"The e-mail Bag"
A travel agent looked up from his desk and saw an older lady and an older gentleman...
... peering into the shop window, where there were posters of glamorous destinations around the world. The agent had had a good week, and the dejected couple looking in the window gave him a rare feeling of generosity. He called them into his shop.
"I know that on your pension you could never hope to have a holiday, so I am sending you to a fabulous resort at my expense, and I won't take no for an answer."
He took them inside and asked his secretary to write two flight tickets and book a room in a five-star hotel. The older lady and gentleman, as could be expected, gladly accepted and were off!
About a month later, the little lady came in to the travel agency.
"And how did you like your holiday?" the agent asked eagerly.
"The flight was exciting, and the room was lovely," she said. "I've come to thank you. But, one thing puzzled me. Who was that old guy I had to share the room with?"
A Little Fellow Follows Me
By: Author Unknown
A careful man I ought to be,
A little fellow follows me.
I dare not go astray,
For fear he'll go the self-same way.
I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whatever he see me do, he tries.
Like me, he says, he's going to be,
The little chap who follows me.
He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine.
The base in me he must not see,
That little fellow who follows me.
I must remember as I go,
Thru summers' sun and winters' snow.
I am building for the years to be,
In the little chap who follows me.
Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!
"Daily Motivations"
Knowing what's right is absolutely critical to business ethics, but it's just half the battle. You see, ethics "happens" only when good beliefs lead to good behaviors. - Eric Harvey
"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)
"We know these things because God has revealed them to us by His Spirit ...." (1 Corinthians 2:10)
Many years ago, I was a counselor at one of Billy Graham's Los Angeles crusades held in the Hollywood Bowl. At the end of the meeting, another counselor brought a man to me who was an engineer. The engineer stated that if I could answer his questions, he would become a Christian. I asked him if he wanted to know Christ. He said he did. I suggested that he pray and receive Christ and then we would discuss his questions. He agreed. After we prayed, I asked to hear his questions. He looked at me with a smile and said, "I don't have any questions. They are all answered."
I have never led anyone to Christ, and I never will. It is the Holy Spirit who is responsible for producing fruit. We simply take the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leave the results to God.
There is a great misconception about evangelism: People believe it has something to do with winning an argument. We often worry about how we can persuade a nonbeliever to be saved from his sin. But no one is ever debated into the kingdom of God. It is our role to gently deliver the message. It is the Holy Spirit who does the persuading. He works in the hearts and minds of the people to convict them of the truth.
We simply need to take God at His Word that the Spirit will accomplish His work in the hearts and minds of those to whom we witness.
"The Patriot Post"
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." -- John Marshall
INSIGHT
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -- President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'present' or 'not guilty.'" -- President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
"There is good news from Washington today. The Congress is deadlocked and can't act." -- American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
SHORT CUTS
"No Member of Congress in his or her right mind is going to walk into a [town hall] meeting knowing that opponents of Obama Care are armed with cell phone video cameras and instructions on how to upload to YouTube. The Pelosi plan to sell the health care plan will have lasted even less time than the Cash-for-Clunkers program." -- political analyst Rich Galen
"The president's dwindling blind faithful may still cling to the belief that he can work miracles. But no one, not even Barack Obama, can drain a swamp by flooding it." -- columnist Michelle Malkin
VILLAGE IDIOTS
Get ready for tax hikes: "If we want an economy that's going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it's going to be difficult, hard for us to do. ... We're not at the point yet where we're going to make a judgment about what it's going to take." -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Tax Cheatin' Geithner when asked if taxes could be raised on the middle class
Tax hikes II: "[I]t is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what." -- White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers on tax increases for the middle class
THE DEMO-GOGUES
The Big Lie: "First of all, nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I'm tired of hearing that. I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I've proposed, if you like your doctor you keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody, you know?" -- Barack Obama And we're tired of you and your lies.
What he said then: "My commitment is to make sure that we have universal healthcare for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. ... I would hope that we could set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process." -- Barack Obama in 2007
Pointing fingers: "It's almost immoral what [private insurers] are doing. Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure. ... They are the villains in this." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
We're all just pawns of the insurance companies: "I hope my colleagues won't fall for a sucker punch like this. These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town meetings for visual impact on television. They want to show thousands of people screaming socialism and try to overcome the public sentiment, which now favors health care reform. .... There are health insurance companies that are ... very profitable and they don't want to see this reform so they are helping to organize these rallies." -- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Somehow, this is not reassuring: "Let me assure you: There will be a health care reform bill passed and it will make a big difference in the lives of the American people." -- Nancy Pelosi
Cat's out of the bag: "I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single payer and that's the best way to reach single payer. ... I think the best way we're gonna get single payer, the only way, is to have a public option and demonstrate its strength and its power." -- Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
As if that's a good thing: "One expert from a conservative think tank called this Congress 'as active and productive as any I can remember. Its true -- we have passed more serious, substantive laws than any Congress since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
"Find Law"
Convicted Lockerbie Bomber Released: The Original Guilty Verdict
HER MAJESTY'S ADVOCATE VS. AL-MEGRAHI
(Scotland, Aug. 20, 2009) - The sole defendant convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Lockerbie bombing terrorist attack was released by Scotland's Secretary of Justice and sent home to Libya today, a free man. You can read his guilty verdict in the Lockerbie bombing trial here: Read more... http://blogs.findlaw.com/courtside/2009/08/convicted-lockerbie-bomber-released-the-original-guilty-verdict.html
Ex-Giant Plaxico Burress Pleads Guilty in N.Y.C. Gun Case
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK V. PLAXICO BURRESS
(N.Y. Supreme Court, N.Y. Cty., Aug. 20, 2009) - Former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress pleaded guilty today to the attempted criminal possession of a weapon in a plea agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and agreed to serve two years in state prison. Read his original indictment here. Read more... http://blogs.findlaw.com/courtside/2009/08/ex-giant-plaxico-burress-pleads-guilty-in-nyc-gun-case.html
"Simple Truths"
Even Eagles Need A Push
http://www.eaglesneedapush.com/
"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light."
"The Web"
Sean Hannity with Michelle Malkin
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=011008&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=8390354&referralPlaylistId=playlist
Remembering Robert Novak
Written by Richard Viguerie
http://conservativehq.com/blog_post/show/346
I first met Robert Novak in 1960 when I was the Houston campaign manager for John Tower, who was running in Texas against Lyndon Johnson for the U.S. Senate. Novak was working for the Wall Street Journal out of Dallas and called one September afternoon and asked me to arrange a meeting with Tower.
After arranging the meeting, I went to pick up Novak at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, and then drove him 50 miles to Galveston where Tower was campaigning.
Tower lost that November, but won the special election in 1961 to fill Johnson's vacant Senate seat and served 24 years in the U.S. Senate. Novak went on to co-edit with Rowland Evans the Evans-Novak Political Report, a newspaper column that spanned more than four decades. In the very beginning when Novak began his column in the early 60s, it was to the left-of-center. Yet over the years, Novak gradually moved to the right and became a reliable conservative journalist.
Novak's skill, work ethic, ability and integrity are traits few other journalists possess today. He belonged to a rare breed of journalists seldom seen in the 21st Century, which is why his death will be a great loss to newsrooms, political institutions and America.
American political journalism has lost a giant, and freedom has lost an important ally.
Rest in peace, my friend.
Which 'National Network of Community-Based Organizations' Will Health-Care Bill Fund to Monitor Your Diet and Weight?
Unfortunately, for taxpayers of America, you can bet with President Obama being involved, somehow, somewhere, you will find an ACORN association. President Obama was one of the original organizers, and served as "legal counsel". His legislation in the Illinois legislature and his legislation in the US Senate has funneled taxpayers monies to ACORN. His Presidential campaign funneled money to ACORN. - oyh
By Edwin Mora
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=52623
President Barack Obama purchases a piece of fruit after a town hall meeting on health care reform, Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at a Kroger Supermarket in Bristol, Va. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
(CNSNews.com) – The health care reform bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) would provide federal grants to state and local governments and a “national network of community-based organizations” to "promote healthy living and reduce disparities" and to monitor people's weight, eating, exercise habits and other individual behaviors that affect health at the community level.
The language instituting the program, entitled "Community Transformation Grants," is on pages 382-387 of the bill as posted on the committee's Web site.
The bill states that only three types of entities will be eligible to receive grants under the program: "a--(A) State government agency; (B) local government agency; or (C) national network of community-based organizations."
Neither the White House nor the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee responded to inquiries from CNSNews.com about exactly what organzations would be eligible for the grants as a "national network of community-based organzations" and exactly how these community-based organizations would operate.
The HELP Committee is the only Senate committee to have voted so far on a health care reform bill. The minority office of the HELP Committee, under Ranking Member Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), referred questions to the office of the committee chairman, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Kennedy’s office did not respond to CNSNews.com inquires about the provision.
The language of the bill says that the secretary of health and human services, acting through the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can award the grants “for the implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of proven evidence-based community preventive health activities in order to reduce chronic disease rates, address health disparities, and develop a stronger evidence-base of effective prevention programming.”
The community-based organizations that get the federal grants must submit a plan to HHS that “includes the policy, environmental, programmatic, and infrastructure changes needed to promote healthy living and reduce disparities.”
These plans can include “activities” to create “healthier school environments, including increasing healthy food options, physical activity opportunities, promotion of healthy lifestyle and prevention curricula, and activities to prevent chronic diseases.”
The language of the bill says, "Activities within the plan shall focus on (but not be limited to) ... (iv) assessing and implementing worksite wellness programming and incentives; (v) working to highlight healthy options at restaurants and other food venues; (vi) prioritizing strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, including social determinants of health..."
In a section entitled, “Community-Based Prevention Health Activities," the bill calls on grant recipients to measure weight loss, physical activity, smoking and other activities of people in the neighborhood.
"In carrying out subparagraph (A), the eligible entity shall, with respect to residents in the community, measure--
"(i) decreases in weight;
"(ii) increases in proper nutrition;
"(iii) increases in physical activity;
"(iv) decreases in tobacco use prevalence;
"(v) other factors using community-specific data from the Behavioral Risk Surveillance Survey; and
"(vi) other factors as determined by the Secretary [at HHS].”
The proposed law further says that the CDC director “shall provide appropriate feedback and technical assistance to grantees to establish community makeover plans.”
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) (AP Photo)
The proposed law does not say, however, exactly how or with what authority a grant recipient would go around measuring weight loss of community residents, or their use of “proper nutrition” or whether they had increased their physical activity, among other mandates in the bill.
Further, the Kennedy health care bill does not say which “national network of community-based organizations” is eligible to participate. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that it is possible that the controversial group ACORN could qualify for the available grants.
“I don’t believe so, but they could be,” Dodd told CNSNews.com, in an earlier interview. “I just don’t want to say categorically it’s the case.”
“I’m not saying yes or no, I just don’t know. I don’t think it’s a blanket thing that anyone applies necessarily,” he said. “There would have to be criteria by which an organization qualifies to receive those grants.”
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a national network of community-based organizations. It has been scrutinized in recent years over allegations of voter registration fraud. In Nevada, criminal charges were filed against the group in May that said ACORN illegally paid for the registration of voters before the 2008 election.
ACORN has denied the allegations.
ACORN has also been criticized because of its partnership agreement with the U.S. Census Bureau to help in the 2010 Census count.
Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), in an e-mail to CNSNews.com, speculated that grants for “Creating Healthier Communities” could be misused by organizations that do not promote healthy living.
“I'm only speculating, because the bill does not make it clear,” Herrick said. “You will have to ask the Senate HELP Committee staff for a definitive answer. [But] my concern is the grants would be misused to reward political organizations whose mission has never been to promote healthier lifestyles.”
Herrick said he doubts that efforts by community-based organizations will result in healthier neighborhoods, adding that he expects entities such as schools and non-profits to use the grants if the Senate provision is included in the final bill.
“I'm not convinced community-based initiatives will result in healthier communities,” he said.
“But if provisions for healthy community grants ultimately pass, I would like to think the funds would be used by schools [to create new after-school programs] and by non-profits, such as YMCA, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etcetera,” Herrick said, “and for actual programs that encourage physical activity and teach healthy living.”
The NCPA’s senior fellow’s comments were in response to CNSNews.com’s inquiry to provide an interpretation of the “community transformation grants provision” and whether organizations like ACORN would benefit. He was also asked to provide examples of which organizations would qualify.
“My hope is that the funds would go to organizations who have been promoting healthy lifestyles all along,” Herrick told CNSNews.com.
Michael W. Chapman contributed to this report.
Guess who screened White House appointments!
Think tank developed by prez links socialist party to presidential picks
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107418
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Van Jones
JERUSALEM – Was a far-left think tank partnered with the community activist group ACORN and founded with input from President Obama instrumental in securing the appointment of controversial White House "environmental
czar" Van Jones?
A key member of the think tank reportedly was also a founder of a socialist party that, evidence indicates, included Obama among its members.
In March, Jones was named the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
His appointment drew criticism after a WND report exposing that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. The Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck hammered away at Jones' communist ties.
Get Jerome Corsi's classic No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "The Obama Nation," autographed by the author only in the WND Superstore.
Months before Obama took office, however, Jones was recommended for the environmental pick in a report by business scholar Chuck Collins, an associate of philanthropist George Soros and a longtime leftist activist linked to some socialist causes.
Collins is director of the Tax Program for Shared Prosperity at Demos, a far-left think tank that has partnered with ACORN and its ally, Project Vote, on several projects. Demos personalities were among ACORN's top defenders when the organization was accused of rampant voter fraud in 2008.
According to Demos' own website, while Obama was a state senator in 1999, he served on the working group that founded Demos.
Collins penned a piece that listed his top picks for the Obama administration, including Jones, at the radical Institute for Policy Studies.
Through a socialist party, Obama may be more closely linked to Collins, who recommended Jones.
Researcher Trevor Loudon of the New Zeal blog dug up official newspapers of the socialist-oriented New Party that list Collins as among the party's founding builders in its fall 1994 edition. Collins is listed with approximately 100 other activists in an article entitled, "Who's Building the New Party?"
Obama belonged to socialist party
In a controversy never fully addressed by Obama, WND previously reported evidence showing Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.
Excerpt from New Party publication (Courtesy New Zeal blog)
While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year's presidential campaign.
The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists of America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.
Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.
Obama's campaign last year denied the then-presidential candidate was ever an actual member of the New Party.
But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the party's official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party leaders, listing him as a New Party member and printing quotes from him as a member.
Barack Obama pictured in New Party publication (Courtesy New Zeal blog)
The party's spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary). The paper quoted Obama saying "these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work."
The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.
New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged NPers (New Party members) to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration."
Becoming a New Party member requires some effort by the politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's political committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they will have a "visible and active relationship" with the party.
The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral "fusion," which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.
Following the initial reports of Obama's purported membership in the New Party, Obama associate and former Chicago New Party activist Carl Davidson posted a statement on several blogs claiming his former party was not socialist, but he admitted it worked with ACORN.
"[The New Party] was a pragmatic party of 'small d democracy' mainly promoting economic reforms like the living wage and testing the fusion tactic, common in many countries but only operational in New York in the U.S. The main trend within it was ACORN, an Alinskyist outfit, which is hardly Marxist," wrote Davidson.
But the socialist goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.
Among the New Party's stated objectives were "full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal 'social wage' to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity."
The New Party stated it also sought "the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions."
Many of the New Party's founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA. Obama attended several DSA events and meetings, including a DSA-sponsored town hall meeting Feb. 25, 1996, entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America." He sought and received an endorsement from the DSA.
According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide voter fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the presidential candidate's ties to the group.
In 1995, the DSA's New Ground newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.
"Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics – until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party."
The "Preventive Care" Myth
by Charles Krauthammer
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/08/14/the_preventive_care_myth?page=full&comments=true
WASHINGTON -- In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee's reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade. Then the CBO reported that the other Senate bill, being written by the Finance Committee, would add $1.6 trillion. The central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: From his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy -- yet the Democrats' plans would make the problem worse.
Accordingly, Democrats have trotted out various tax proposals to close the gap. Obama's idea of limits on charitable and mortgage-interest deductions went nowhere. As did the House's income tax surcharge on millionaires. And Obama dare not tax employer-provided health insurance because of his campaign pledge of no middle-class tax hikes.
Desperation time. What do you do? Sprinkle fairy dust on every health care plan, and present your deus ex machina: prevention.
Free mammograms and diabetes tests and checkups for all, promise Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, writing in USA Today. Prevention, they assure us, will not just make us healthier, it also "will save money."
Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: "It saves lives. It also saves money."
Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.
This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness."
How can that be? If you prevent somebody from getting a heart attack, aren't you necessarily saving money? The fallacy here is confusing the individual with society. For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition. But, explains Elmendorf, we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case, "it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway." And this costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise.
Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.
That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality in the United States today? A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense.
Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That's the whole premise of medicine: Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.
However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health care costs.
You will hear some variation of that claim a hundred times in the coming health care debate. Whenever you do, remember: It's nonsense -- empirically demonstrable and CBO-certified.
Media Corruption and the Two Party System
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/media-corruption-and-the-two-party-system/
This kind of advertised access to Obama’s “inner circle” helps explain why the truth about Davis and Ayers was concealed from the readers of his book.
What drives President Barack Obama to want to seize control of the health care and energy sectors of the U.S. economy? Obama was trained as a Marxist from his days as a young boy in Hawaii when his grandfather picked Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis as his mentor. In college, as Obama tells the story, he picked his "friends" carefully, in order to avoid being perceived as a sell-out, and those friends included the "Marxist professors." Later, in Chicago, he would become a political associate of another Marxist Professor, Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois. Does anybody see a pattern here?
Based on what we have seen at some of the town hall meetings, there are some Americans who don't want to see the U.S. go down the Marxist road. This is the time for the media to tell the truth about Obama and his agenda.
Unfortunately, we have now been treated to a new dishonest Obama book, Renegade, by Richard Wolffe, supposedly about "The Making of a President." Far from being a "renegade," the evidence shows that this President is probably the most far-left ideologically of any major political party nominee in history. Even as new questions emerge, however, it is still a challenge to get the media to report on the truthful but damaging information that is already a matter of public record.
Wolffe, who worked for the Financial Times and Newsweek, would seem to be in a position to shed light on "the making" of this President. Even though he is described as a "political analyst for MSNBC television, appearing frequently on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Hardball with Chris Matthews," he claims to have obtained "exclusive interviews with Barack Obama" for his book. These were opportunities to examine aspects of Obama's still mysterious background.
But it's apparent that Wolffe didn't ask the important questions. Only two pages of the Wolffe book are devoted to Frank Marshall Davis, a father figure in Obama's early life, and nothing is said about the evidence-in the form of 600 pages of his FBI file-about his communist views or membership in the CPUSA.
The Wolffe book describes Davis as a "leading black activist" and "strong advocate for racial justice" whose "political writings" on "civil rights and labor issues" made him "the target of a McCarthyite denunciation" by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Notice the use of the term "McCarthyite" being associated with a House committee. McCarthy, of course, was a senator. Wolffe uses the term "McCarthyite" to make the point, which is false, that Davis was not in any sense a communist or fellow-traveler. Wolffe understands that many people have been conditioned by academia to recoil at the thought of anything associated with McCarthyism.
The false information provided by Wolffe is similar to what the Obama campaign said about Davis when it was discovered last year that the mysterious "Frank" from Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, was in fact Frank Marshall Davis. If Davis were such an innocent figure, why didn't Obama give us his full name and tell us whether he accepted or rejected Davis's communist views? It was later revealed that Davis, a notorious drinker, was a pornographer and a sex pervert, adding to the concern about the nature of the Obama-Davis relationship. Sex sells, except when it involves the President's childhood mentor.
This was one of the major cover-ups of the political campaign, and the cover-up continues.
Nothing is said by Wolffe about the fact that the 600-page FBI file on Frank Marshall Davis covers the years 1944-1963, meaning that he was under investigation or surveillance for at least 19 years. One document refers to Frank Marshall Davis having CPUSA affiliations dating back to 1931. The evidence also shows that Davis was involved in communist activities in the 1970s, during the time he mentored Obama in Hawaii. Davis was on the FBI's security index, meaning that Davis could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI material documents Davis's anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.
Wolffe's book also describes communist terrorist Bill Ayers as just "the former 1960s radical" who was just an "acquaintance" of Obama's. This is so superficial as to be laughable. But it's not a laughing matter to be associating with someone who bombed police stations. That is why Obama and his campaign repeatedly tried to play down the relationship, and why Ayers went into virtual hiding during the campaign.
Nevertheless, Wolffe has been hired at a "public affairs" firm called Public Strategies, whose CEO and president is former Bush White House official Dan Bartlett, "one of President Bush's most trusted advisors," his bio says. The hiring of Wolffe shows that Bartlett and his cronies do not put ideology or philosophy ahead of making bucks in the Obama era.
According to Wolffe's bio at Public Strategies, "As Senior White House Correspondent for Newsweek, Wolffe covered President Obama and his inner circle from the launch of his presidential campaign through the president's first few months in office." In addition to his work on MSNBC, the bio says that he has appeared on Fox News, "as well as international media, including the BBC."
It is apparent that British-born "Senior Strategist" Wolffe brings access to Obama's inner circle and perhaps the President himself for the corporate and other clients of the Public Strategies lobbying group, which even has a Mexico affiliate.
This kind of advertised access to Obama's "inner circle" helps explain why the truth about Davis and Ayers was concealed from the readers of his book. Wolffe obviously wants to protect his "sources," who could be helpful to the Public Strategies group.
"As recently as July 20, Wolffe was spotted visiting the White House for a meeting with senior adviser David Axelrod," reported the Politico. That same day, Politico reported, Wolffe wrote a column for the Daily Beast website quoting "a senior White House official" saying Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's job was safe. "Such information could have been very useful to the Financial Services Forum, a Public Strategies client comprised of the chief executive officers of 17 of the top U.S. financial institutions," the paper said.
Ironically, however, the Politico is a "Media Partner" of Public Strategies and they co-sponsored a recent poll on Obama's job performance. So the conflicts of interest are expanding. What's more, Politico published a plug for the Wolffe book on June 2.
Politico has now published an August 18 follow-up flattering story about Bartlett and other former Bush officials emerging as effective public relations practitioners.
This is how Washington's "inner circle" works. The truth matters less than how it is perceived and shaped by the insiders from both major political parties. These people are all about making money and deals, not seeking truth.
Health care of some kind will be needed to deal with the growing numbers of Americans who are sick of it.
God Lives Under the Bed
http://mypenfortruth.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-lives-under-bed.html
This is such a profound story... If you take it to heart, it will change your life! Read on...
I envy Kevin. My brother, Kevin, thinks God lives under his bed... At least that's what I heard him say one night.
He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen, 'Are you there, God?' he said. 'Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed....'
I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin's unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.
He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he's 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.
He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.
I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?
Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed.
The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.
He does not seem dissatisfied.
He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.
He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day's laundry chores..
And Saturdays - oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That's the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. 'That one's goin' to Chi-car-go! ' Kevin shouts as he claps his hands.
His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights. And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips. He doesn't know what it means to be discontent. His life is simple. He will never know the entanglements of wealth of power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats.. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.
His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it. He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax. He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure. He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue.
Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God.
Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God - to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an 'educated' person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.
In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith.
It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions. It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am. My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances - they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God's care.
Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.
And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I'll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.
Kevin won't be surprised at all!
~Author Unknown
"The e-mail Bag"
A travel agent looked up from his desk and saw an older lady and an older gentleman...
... peering into the shop window, where there were posters of glamorous destinations around the world. The agent had had a good week, and the dejected couple looking in the window gave him a rare feeling of generosity. He called them into his shop.
"I know that on your pension you could never hope to have a holiday, so I am sending you to a fabulous resort at my expense, and I won't take no for an answer."
He took them inside and asked his secretary to write two flight tickets and book a room in a five-star hotel. The older lady and gentleman, as could be expected, gladly accepted and were off!
About a month later, the little lady came in to the travel agency.
"And how did you like your holiday?" the agent asked eagerly.
"The flight was exciting, and the room was lovely," she said. "I've come to thank you. But, one thing puzzled me. Who was that old guy I had to share the room with?"
A Little Fellow Follows Me
By: Author Unknown
A careful man I ought to be,
A little fellow follows me.
I dare not go astray,
For fear he'll go the self-same way.
I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whatever he see me do, he tries.
Like me, he says, he's going to be,
The little chap who follows me.
He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine.
The base in me he must not see,
That little fellow who follows me.
I must remember as I go,
Thru summers' sun and winters' snow.
I am building for the years to be,
In the little chap who follows me.
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