Make sure to pass this along...Here is a link to purchase tickets to this event on March 27th...
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
WASHINGTON TIMES KUHNER: Obama’s pseudo-religion President’s secular mores out of step with Judeo-Christian culture
In 2008, the media peddled the false narrative that then-Sen. Barack Obama was a post-partisan pragmatist. In 2012, he is being sold as a compassionate Christian who champions social justice, economic fairness and civil rights - a combination of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is neither. The liberal media desperately want you to believe the myth so Mr. Obama wins re-election.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorumtook a kick at those dual myths, re-igniting the debate on who Mr. Obama really is and what he believes. In recent comments to the Ohio Christian Alliance, the former Pennsylvania senator said the president believed in “some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.” This triggered a media firestorm. For example, CBShost Bob Schieffer was indignant. On “Face the Nation,” he demanded to know whether Mr. Santorum was challenging Mr. Obama’s professed Christian faith. Mr. Santorum backpedaled, saying, “I accept the fact the president is a Christian.” He added: “I’m not questioning the president’s beliefs in Christianity.”
Mr. Santorum’s larger point is that Mr. Obama and his liberal allies have embraced radical environmentalism - a form of neo-paganism. The green movement - exemplified by the hoax of man-made global warming - has degenerated into a pseudo-religion. Environmentalists worship Gaia, Mother Earth, turning it into a secular goddess. Hence, they believe industrial civilization must be subordinated to a green socialist agenda. This is why Mr. Obama has dramatically strengthened theEnvironmental Protection Agency, favors cap-and-trade legislation, prevents most oil drilling along the Gulf Coast and in Alaska, and nixed the Keystone XL pipeline project. Mr. Santorum rightly argues that Mr. Obama’s green “theology” trumps the economic interests of Americans; the president is behaving like a quasi-religious zealot. True.
Yet Mr. Santorum should have done more than just attack Mr. Obama’s extreme environmentalism. Instead, when confronted by liberal hostility, the Republican social conservative retreated. The record is clear and obvious: The president is more a radical secular progressive than a real Christian. He has more in common with Vladimir Lenin than Jesus Christ.
Mr. Obama does not attend a regular church. For more than 20 years, he attended the church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Obama has said that Mr. Wright had been his pastor, baptized his children and presided over his marriage. Mr. Wright, however, champions black liberation theology. It is not a recognized Christian denomination; rather, it is a political ideology masquerading as religious faith. It combines black nationalism, anti-Western imperialism and state socialism. Mr. Wright’s theology replaces Christ with Karl Marx on the cross - it is a fusion of militant racialism with watered-down Marxism. It can be distilled to one seminal idea: hatred of America. Mr. Wright believes the United States is dominated by white supremacy and is responsible for oppression and mass poverty in the Third World, especially the Muslim Middle East.
Liberals insist that, if he calls himself a Christian, Mr. Obama must be a Christian. This reflects their moral relativism: Truth is defined not by objective reality, but an individual’s subjective claims. This is false. If someone claims to be courageous, virtuous or honorable, it does not mean they are. Since the 1960s, the modern left has sought to destroy moral and intellectual standards, promoting a shallow secular humanism. At its core, Christianity believes in the divinity of Christ - that He is the son of God and was crucified in order to save humanity from its sins. Jesus embodies suffering goodness in a wicked world. Mr. Wright - like all supporters of black liberation theology - denies the divine nature of Christ. No amount of media spin or lies can change this.
Mr. Obama is a radical leftist. Like all such extremists, he has nothing but contempt for traditional Christianity and the family. During the 2008 campaign, he decried Americans who “cling to guns or religion.” He supported partial-birth abortion - infanticide. As a state senator, he voted for legislation allowing doctors to kill viable babies born during botched abortions. He has embedded federal funding of abortion in Obamacare. In other words, devout Christians - as well as Orthodox Jews and Muslims - must subsidize with their taxpayer dollars a practice they find morally abhorrent. He refuses to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act. He has enabled homosexuals to openly serve in the military - significantly advancing the “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” agenda. He is now mandating that health insurers for nearly all religious organizations provide their employees with free contraception and sterilization procedures - including the morning-after pill. This is a direct assault upon the Catholic Church, conscience rights and religious freedom.
Mr. Obama has declared war on our Judeo-Christian culture. He understands the economic transformation of America cannot take place without a government-imposed social revolution: Smash religion and the family - the key institutions of civil society - and the restraints upon the federal leviathan are removed. The path is laid for a soft authoritarian nanny state. The president acts as if he is hell-bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Chart of the Week: Nearly Half of All Americans Don’t Pay Income Taxes
This year’s Index of Dependence on Government presented startling findings about the sharp increase of Americans who rely on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. (See last week’s chart.)
Another eye-popping number was the percentage of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, which now accounts for nearly half of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, most of that population receives generous federal benefits.
“One of the most worrying trends in the Index is the coinciding growth in the non-taxpaying public,” wrote Heritage authors Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell. “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.”
That means 151.7 million Americans paid nothing in 2009. By comparison, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes in 1984.
The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming for the fate of the American form of government, Beach and Tyrrell warned. Coupled with higher spending on government programs, it is already proving to be a major fiscal challenge.
“This trend should concern everyone who supports America’s republican form of government,” Beach and Tyrrell wrote. “If the citizens’ representatives are elected by an increasing percentage of voters who pay no income tax, how long will it be before these representatives respond more to demands for yet more entitlements and subsidies from non-payers than to the pleas of taxpayers to exercise greater spending prudence?”
FIRST-EVER MUSIC VIDEO ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST IS A ‘CALL TO ARMS’
Last November, The Blaze reported on the production of the first-ever music video about the Holocaust. The song, entitled “Rainbow in the Night,” debuted January 27th to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Rainbow in the Night” offers a powerful message in short form, specifically intended for a young post-millennial audience, as a reminder of the unspeakable cruelty inflicted on innocent men, women and children during the Holocaust. The video incorporates stunning cinematography, a heartrending score, and emotionally-wrought lyrics to produce a snapshot of the darkest time in the history of the Jewish people as seen through the eyes of a survivor.
The production, set against a backdrop of despair and hopelessness, reveals the emotional journey of an innocent child forced to leave his home for an extermination camp. After enduring the atrocities leveled against him by his captors, finally liberated, the child (now an adult in the video), recalls his journey. He also conveys the inspiration he felt upon reflecting on better days he hoped would come – all of which strengthened and sustained his resolve to survive.
Triumphantly culminating in the hope for a brighter future, ”Rainbow in the Night,” according to its producers, serves as a “euphoric tribute to the indomitable human spirit that enabled the Jewish people to survive against all odds,” as well as a “call to arms, to rekindle the spark of Jewish pride and unity among Jews worldwide as [they] continue to rebuild the generations that were destroyed by the Nazis.”
Monday, February 20, 2012
WASHINGTON TIMES KUHNER: Greek ruins, American-style...Obama’s overspending ensures Euro-debt will devastate U.S.
President Obama’s budget puts America on the path toward Greece. It is a reckless document, a stunning betrayal of U.S. economic interests. By its own numbers, Obamanomics leads to national bankruptcy. Unless there is a dramatic course correction, we will share the bleak fate of the Greeks: riots, chaos and internationally imposed austerity measures. We, too, are committing fiscal suicide.Mr. Obama’s 2013 federal budget is a political document. It is a blueprint for Democratic governance, as well as a liberal template for Mr. Obama’s re-election. The budget embodies the entitlement state on steroids. It lavishes spending on every special-interest group - environmentalists, public school teachers, unions, government workers, the unemployed, minorities, college students and the elderly. It is full of accounting gimmicks to obscure the true extent of Washington’s deficit crisis. For example, its future projections of high economic growth rates, soaring tax revenues and supposed government “savings” are fictional and provide the illusion of fiscal competence. Yet, what matters is the budget’s real numbers regarding the administration’s record on spending during its first term.
Mr. Obama has buried America under a mountain of debt. For fiscal 2012, the budget estimates that spending will rise by $193 billion to $3.8 trillion. Think about this: The U.S. budget now stands at nearly $4 trillion - the highest level in our history. The deficit for 2012 will be $1.3 trillion, an increase from 2011. This means that for four consecutive years, Mr. Obama has racked up deficits of more than $1.2 trillion. In one term, Mr. Obama has accumulated $5 trillion in debt. Mr. Obama has achieved a historic record. He has created the most indebted nation in history. If one includes the nearly $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities to entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the United States is on the verge of insolvency. Never mind the massive costs of Obamacare, which is another multitrillion-dollar entitlement.
Still, the president refuses to tackle entitlement reform or curb government spending - outside of savage defense cuts. Even Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner recently admitted that Mr. Obama’s budget is fiscally “unsustainable.” The president’s men know he is pushing the country off a financial cliff.
European-style socialism leads to European-style taxation. Mr. Obama’s big deficits inevitably will result in huge tax increases - and not just for “the rich.” Everyone will get soaked. His plan raises taxes for anyone making more than $200,000 a year for individuals and $250,000 for families. These rates also apply to business owners. He wants to increase investment taxes on the wealthy. His plan also calls for massive tax hikes on capital gains and dividends on all Americans. Moreover, the administration is calling for a “global minimum tax,” hoping to punish companies that relocate overseas. Yet, businesses and investment capital are fleeing to escape America’s burdensome tax and regulatory policies. A minimum tax will only compound the problem, not fix it.
Mr. Obama’s redistributionist, class-warfare liberalism is shackling the private sector, punishing job creators and investors. President Calvin Coolidge said “the business of America is business.” Under Mr. Obama, the business of America is to destroy business.
The result is anemic growth, economic stagnation and permanently high deficits. By Mr. Obama’s own estimates, the budget deficit for fiscal 2013 will be $901 billion and never will fall below $575 billion in any year for the next decade. Trillions more will be added to the debt. This is a guaranteed prescription for national default.
Yet, as Mr. Obama unveiled his budget, another major fiscal event was taking place.
The Greek parliament voted to pass severe austerity measures. Desperate to receive another government bailout from the European Union - or else default on its debt obligations - Athens agreed to slash pension benefits, substantially shrink public spending, scale back the minimum wage and fire more than 150,000 government workers by 2015. Tens of thousands of angry protesters, including senior citizens, took to the streets. Riots erupted. Shops and businesses were torched. Government buildings were defaced and damaged. Downtown Athens was reduced to a hollowed-out wasteland. Greece - the cradle of Western democracy - is being torn apart, slowly descending into social anarchy.
This is America’s future.
For years, the Greeks indulged in generous entitlements and high social spending, ignoring their country’s runaway deficits and ballooning debt. Government interventionism suppressed the private economy. Tax revenue dried up. Corruption spread. Cronyism became a feature of life. Greece was transformed into a sclerotic, bloated welfare state. The bill has now come due, and present and future generations must pay for money that was borrowed - and squandered - yesterday.
This is why big-government liberalism is unsustainable and immoral. It robs our children and grandchildren to finance our reckless lifestyle.
Greeks feel cheated and betrayed. Their political leaders lied to them, selling them the false promise of economic self-indulgence and cradle-to-grave social security. The sad reality is that Greece is broke. It has become a Balkan basket case - essentially a ward of the international community. The Greeks have lost their national sovereignty, prosperity and - above all - their dignity.
Mr. Obama is applying the Greek model to America. In three to four years, if current trends continue, Americans will find themselves in the exact same position as the Greeks - bankrupt, betrayed and bewildered. Global creditors will demand that severe and swift austerity measures be imposed upon us. Riots and civil upheaval will ensue. Mr. Obama’s real legacy is to ensure that America’s fate will be just like that of Greece: Two budgets, two disastrous courses leading to national upheaval.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner -The Washington Times End of the Constitution Obamacare birth-control mandate would defeat the First Amendment
Is America sliding toward autocratic rule? This is the essential question of Barack Obama’s presidency. Mr. Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform” theUnited States. Despite his incompetence and economic failure, the president is making good on his central promise: the destruction of our constitutional republic. He is trying - piece by painful piece - to reverse the legacy of the Founding Fathers. Conservatives have underestimated him at their peril. For Mr. Obama is not simply an inept, liberal president in the mold of Jimmy Carter. He is an ideological revolutionary who seeks to sweep away traditional America.
The American war of independence did not just overthrow British imperial domination. The Founders forged something almost unique in history: a nation devoted to individual liberty, Christian civilization and federalism. The rule of men was replaced bythe rule of law. The linchpin was constitutional government based on the separation of powers and checks and balances. The American system is entirely predicated on the Constitution. Once the Constitution becomes meaningless or just an inconvenient piece of paper, the American experiment is over. The republic is dead.
This is what’s at stake. Mr. Obama is acting like an arbitrary tyrant. He is running roughshod over the Constitution, egregiously, repeatedly and deliberately violating its restraints and clear limits on federal power. He has publicly admitted that he finds Congress a nuisance, an “obstacle” to his secular socialist project. He has said that he often thinks about “going it alone.” In fact, this is what he has done - so far, largely with impunity.
He waged an illegal war in Libya. The last time Congress officially declared war was in December 1941. Yet Mr. Obama went one step further, something his predecessors - Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush - never did: He refused even to ask Congressfor authorization. Mr. Obama ignored the War Powers Act, flagrantly circumventing congressional authority.
Moreover, late last year, the massive National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was signed into law, which potentially allows for the military - not domestic courts - to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of ties to terrorism. The vaguely worded NDAA undermines the rule of law and due process, enabling the government to abrogate the fundamental right to trial. It lends itself to abuse of state power - the very thing our Founders warned against. In the wrong hands, the NDAA could be used as a weapon to persecute - and imprison - political opponents under the guise of fighting terrorism. This is the same administration that has lumped anti-abortion and anti-illegal-immigration activists with radical Islamists as possible “threats” to national security.
Yet it is not just national security. Mr. Obama has created countless policy czars possessing Cabinet-like powers without the approval or consent of the Senate. Recently, he appointed Richard Cordray to be the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - despite the fact that he lacked needed support in the Senate. Mr. Obama’s response: Take a hike. He parachuted in Mr. Cordray as a recess appointment even though Congress was not in recess. The president has usurped congressional oversight - a clear and dangerous violation of the Constitution.
His greatest assault, however, is on religious freedom. Fortunately, his latest effort sparked a rebellion. Mr. Obama had declared war not just on the Catholic Church, but on the First Amendment. The administration ordered almost all religious organizations to provide health insurance coverage that includes free birth control and sterilization procedures - even the morning-after pill, which can induce abortions. Otherwise, under Obamacare, Catholic hospitals, charities and universities would face major fines totaling millions of dollars. The choice was clear: Catholic institutions must either abandon their fundamental tenets or go bankrupt. The contraceptive mandate denied the conscience rights of the church. It was state-sanctioned coercion of private entities to act against their explicit religious beliefs. This is why it triggered such furor among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. If such basic liberties could be trampled on, then nothing - and no one - is safe from big government’s crushing grip. Fortunately, a three-week outcry forced him to back off.
Like many on the radical left, Mr. Obama is an anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot. His goal is to purge Christianity from civil society, to marginalize religion from the public square. He essentially told thechurch that Washington, not the Vatican, will dictate how it must run its affairs and administer its social services. He demanded that Catholics sacrifice their beliefs on the altar of secular liberalism. The state - with him at its helm - is the new pagan church. Women’s “reproductive health care” trumps Catholic positions on birth control and abortion. The fact that most health insurers already cover contraception and that it is widely available and accessible to women - just go to your local Walgreens - means nothing to feminists or the powerful abortion lobby. The real aim is to smash theCatholic Church as a bulwark against the sexual revolution, reducing it to a quisling of the liberal regime.
Catholic leaders rightly stood up. The Church understood it was under siege. That may not be over.Mr. Obama could win a second term. Hence, Obamacare - along with its contraceptive mandate - might not be repealed and my even expand. Is so, he will have succeeded in giving birth to his Frankenstein monster: a post-constitutional, post-American soft tyranny.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
The Department of Homeland Security and police forces label anyone who they disagree with – or who disagrees with government policies – as “terrorists
From www.zerohedge.com
I noted in 2009:
The Department of Homeland Security and police forces label anyone who they disagree with – or who disagrees with government policies – as “terrorists”.
Don’t believe me?
Well, according to a law school professor, pursuant to the Military Commissions Act, “Anyone who … speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.”
And according to an FBI memo, peace protesters are being labeled as “terrorists”.
***
Anyone who disagrees with the “acceptable” way of looking at things is a terrorist.
How is this different from Stalin or Mao’s use of labels such as “enemy of the state”?
This may have seemed over-the-top to some, but events have proven it true.
For example, the following is considered terrorism or suspected terrorism in modern America:
- Questioning war (even though war reduces our national security; and see this)
- Criticizing the government’s targeting of innocent civilians with drones (although killing innocent civilians with drones is one of the main things which increases terrorism. And see this)
In fact – since 9/11 – virtually all dissent has been equated with terrorism.
As Paul Joseph Watson notes:
Of course, the vast majority of people who visit Internet Cafes use cash to pay their bill. Who uses a credit card to buy a $2 dollar cup of coffee? A lot of smaller establishments don’t even accept credit cards for amounts less than $10 dollars.
Other examples of suspicious behavior include using a “residential based Internet provider” such as AOL or Comcast, the use of “anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address” (these are routinely used by mobile web users to bypass public Internet filters), “Suspicious communications using VOIP,” and “Preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attack” (this would apply to the vast majority of people who work in the news or political blogging industry).
Searching for information about “police” or “government” is also listed as a potential indication of terrorism, as is using a computer to “obtain photos, maps or diagrams of transportation, sporting venues, or populated locations,” which would apply to virtually anyone who uses Google Maps or Google Earth.
People who may wish to keep private the contents of a personal email or an online credit card purchase by attempting to”shield the screen from view of others” are also characterized as potential terrorists.
Business owners who spot patrons engaging in these types of activities are encouraged to call the FBI’s Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), after first gathering information on license plates, names, ethnicity, and languages spoken.
In total, there are 25 different CAT flyers aimed at businesses from across the spectrum – everything from hobby shops to tattoo parlors.
As we have documented on numerous occasions, the federal government routinely characterizes mundane behavior as extremist activity or a potential indicator of terrorist intent. As part of its ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign, the Department of Homeland Security educates the public that generic activities performed by millions of people every day, including using a video camera, talking to police officers, wearing hoodies, driving vans, writing on a piece of paper, and using a cell phone recording application,” are potential signs of terrorist activity.
The CAT program again underscores how federal authorities are empowering poorly trained citizens to become terrorist hunters, stoking fears that America is sinking deeper into a Stasi-style informant society.
In modern America, curling up in a ball to avoid police violence may also be considered “active resistance” … justifying the use of more force, including baton strikes.
And even pointing out tyrannical trends may be grounds for harassment.
Note: Some also claim that copyright infringers are terrorists, and swat teams have been deployed against them. See this, this, this and this. I’m not condoning copyright infringement, but merely citing to the all-pervasiveness of the “terror” label. And given that even grandmas and children might innocently and unwittingly download copyrighted content, any tendency to use the terror label is troubling.
(20 votes)
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)