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CLICK HERE to go straight to "RECENTLY POSTED ARTICLES" + Requiescat In Pace (RIP) + Better luck next year Cards.... GO RAMS!!! (Click on the above picture to go to the Social Security Calculator website.) Were You Counting on Social Security? Enter your age and gender to calculate what an American worker of your same age and gender can expect to receive from Social Security. And See How You're Missing Out. The Calculator also estimates how much money you could save with a personal retirement account. A Prayer For Our Country's Leaders Heavenly Father, I come to You in the mighty Name of Jesus to ask blessings and mercy on my country and its leaders. Please guide our President and his cabinet, our Congress and courts, and leaders throughout our land in every decision they make. Show them the way of truth and righteousness. In times of stress, Lord, make them steady; in times of hardship, make them strong; in times of success, make them humble. 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Here are several (clickable) links to 9-11 tributes/related material DEBATES: Life Since Sept. 11 | "Can't Cry Hard Enough" | 9-11 Television Archives | America Triumphant | World Trade Center Tribute God Bless America | R.E.M. - "Everybody Hurts" | Tribute To America | WTC Attack Picture Gallery | 9-11 screen savers American Bald Eagle Crying screen saver | "Only Time" | American (War) Bald Eagle screensaver (small version) American (War) Bald Eagle screensaver (large version) | Attack On America | SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 ATTACK ON AMERICA Prayer For The Nation | Free Republic's 9-11 100 Hours of Remembrance | 2001 911 Memorial Accounts From The World Trade Center's South Tower | Heroes Live Forever | Accounts From The World Trade Center's North Tower September 11 News.com The articles that were previously posted at this particular web page continue to be archived: "All Things Political" Archives, 1999-2004 | "All Things Political" Archives, 2004-2005 | "All Things Political" Archives, 2005-Present "Religion/Culture/Morals" Archives, 1999-2004 | "Religion/Culture/Morals" Archives, 2004-Present (Click on the banner to go to the Defend America website.) RECENTLY POSTED ARTICLES If you know of anyone else who might be interested in receiving "All Things Political" and "Religion/Culture/Morals" updates (or if you just want to contact me), click HERE (will open new message in Outlook program) or email me at tmorelli@hotmail.com Grover Weather Forecast, MO (63040) (By the way, here's the most up-to-date weather in Grover, Missouri....) 11-01-09 Sunday 5:30 pm (ET) Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Forty "All Things Political" and twelve "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles have been posted.... "All Things Political" articles 1) GOP 2012: Huckabee 29% Romney 24% Palin 18% - Rasmussen Reports 2) Next Step As Obamacare Goes Nuclear - Connie Hair 3) A Tale Of Two Soundbites - Which One Sounds "Divisive" To You? - Mark Steyn 4) White House Boasts: We 'Control' News Media - Communications Chief Offers Shocking Confession To Foreign Government - Aaron Klein 5) How Rush Limbaugh Gave America Its Sundays Back - Neil Braithwaite 6) Obama's Nominee For EEOC Promotes Polygamy And Homosexuality - Deal W. Hudson 7) Excuses Wearing Thin For Obama, Media Pals - Steve Huntley 8) Enemies List - Rich Galen 9) 10 Horror Movies For Conservatives To Watch This Halloween - John Hawkins 10) Keep Your Eyes Trained On 2010: Obama Races To Pass Everything Before The Election - Rush Limbaugh 11) The Kitty-Cat Who Roared - The Loud Reformer Obama Himself Proves Even Emptier In His Promises Than Bush - Victor Davis Hanson 12) 'Radio Free America': Obama Administration Attempts To 'Jam Signals' That Conflict With Its Agenda - Cal Thomas 13) Welcome To The World Of Newspeak - Janet Levy 14) Dear Newt Gingrich: Meet Ronald Reagan - Michelle Malkin 15) Pay Czar Cuts CEO Salaries 90% And Obama Didn't Know About It? His Unconstitutional Czar Acts Without His Knowledge? - Rush Limbaugh 16) As Obama Approval Plummets, His State-Run Media Targets Us: As Obama Approval Drops, Politico Focuses On Talk Radio - Rush Limbaugh 17) Stupak: If No Pro-Life Amendment, 'About 40 Likeminded Democrats' Will Vote To Kill Health Bill - Terence P. Jeffrey 18) Voters Trust Republicans More On 10 Top Issues - Rasmussen Reports 19) America's Obama Obsession - Anatomy Of A Passing Hysteria - Victor Davis Hanson 20) The Death Of The House Bill - James Capretta 21) Mister Tough Guy: Who Are The Real "Untouchables" Here? - Mark Steyn 22) Obama's Vindictive And Personal War On Unbiased News - Floyd & Mary Beth Brown 23) Polling Polls: Americans Independent And Irate - Salena Zito 24) Obamadrama - James Lewis 25) A President Of Leisure - J.C. Arenas 26) Dismantling America - Thomas Sowell 27) Campaigning For Integrity: An Upstate New York Congressional Candidate Seeks To Right The Republican Ship - Kathryn Jean Lopez 28) A Closer Look At The Uninsured: Why The "46 Million" Figure Is Profoundly Misleading - Duncan Currie 29) Yes, We Can - Doug Hoffman 30) 5 Messages For 'Elite' Republicans - John Hawkins 31) Dingy Harry's Sleight Of Hand: An "Opt-Out" Of The Public Option: This "Opt-Out" Language Is A Duplicitous, Cynical Scam - Rush Limbaugh 32) Health Insurers' (6%) Profits 35th Of 53 (Clorox, 8.7% - KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell 8.5%) - Calvin Woodward 33) How The FCC And Liberal Churches Are Scheming To Shut You Up! - Michelle Malkin 34) Prediction: The Uprising Of 2010: With Dems In Denial, A Revolt Against Statism Looms - Rush Limbaugh 35) After 45 Years, Conservatives Still Have A "Rendezvous with Destiny": Conservatism Is On The Ascendency, And Ronald Reagan's Principles Remain Our Guiding Philosophy - Rush Limbaugh 36) Dismantling America: Part II - Thomas Sowell 37) Swine Flu Panic In Perspective - Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D. 38) Next Tuesday's Lessons For 2010 - C. Edmund Wright 39) Judge Dismisses California Eligibility Challenge - Plaintiffs Promise Appeal Of Ruling Protecting Obama - Bob Unruh 40) Dearborn Shoot-Out Opens A Window Into Homegrown Terror - Robert Knight "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles 1) Darwin's Dilemma: Evolutionary Elite Choose Censorship Over Scientific Debate - Casey Luskin 2) Sharing The Real Mary - David Mills 3) Pope Establishes Structure For Anglicans Uniting With Rome - Cindy Wooden 4) On St. Bernard Of Clairvaux: "Faith Is Above All A Personal, Intimate Encounter With Jesus" - Pope Benedict XVI 5) Nun Volunteering As Abortion Clinic Escort In Illinois - Kathleen Gilbert 6) Meeting Of Hundreds Of Anglican Clergy To Consider Pope Benedict's New Provision - Catholic News Agency 7) From Hinduism To Catholicism: After A Series Of Dreams About Mary, A Local Hindu Couple Has Joined The Church - Katie Bahr 8) The Jewel Of Celibacy - Dr. Jeff Mirus 9) Can Non-Catholics Be Saved? - Mark Shea 10) Saved From Abortion: The Remarkable Stories Behind Four Pro-Life "Saves" - David Bereit 11) On Theology In The 12th Century: "Knowledge Grows Only If It Loves Truth" - Pope Benedict XVI 12) Our Friend, Death - Patti Maguire Armstrong Take care, Tom "All Things Political" articles 1) GOP 2012: Huckabee 29% Romney 24% Palin 18% Rasmussen Reports http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2012/gop_2012_huckabee_29_romney_24_palin_18 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364062/posts 10/16/09 Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Republican voters nationwide say former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is their pick to represent the GOP in the 2012 Presidential campaign. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 24% prefer former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney while 18% would cast their vote for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gets 14% of the vote while Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty gets 4%. Six percent (6%) of GOP voters prefer some other candidate while 7% remain undecided. These numbers reflect an improvement for Huckabee since July when the three candidates were virtually even. Huckabee's gain appears to be Palin's loss as Romney's support has barely changed. The numbers for Huckabee and Romney look even stronger when GOP voters were asked which candidate they would least like to see get the nomination. Pawlenty came on top in that category with 28%. Palin was second at 21% while 20% named Gingrich. Romney and Huckabee were in the single digits with 9% and 8% respectively. Huckabee and Romney are viewed favorably by 78% of Republican voters, Palin by 75%. Gingrich earns favorably reviews from 69% while Pawlenty is less well known and gets a positive assessment from 45% of Republicans. Other data from the survey, including head-to-head match-ups with individual candidates, will be released over the weekend. Republican voters are very confident their nominee could be the next President of the United States. Eighty-one percent (81%) of the GOP faithful say that it's at least somewhat likely the Republican nominee will defeat Barack Obama in 2012. Fifty percent (50%) say it's Very Likely. Romney leads all prospects among voters who attend church once a month or less. Huckabee leads among more frequent churchgoers. Huckabee holds a huge lead among Evangelical Christians with Palin in second and Romney a distant third. Huckabee and Romney are essentially even among other Protestants while Romney has the edge among Catholics. Romney leads among Republicans earning more than $75,000 a year while Huckabee leads among those who earn less. 2) Next Step As Obamacare Goes Nuclear HumanEvents.com http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34004 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2363914/posts 10/16/2009 Connie Hair The House of Representatives yesterday set into motion the nuclear option for H.R. 3200 that would make it possible for the Senate to pass government-run health care with only 51 votes. House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) held the mandatory hearing yesterday to pass the formal notification in the form of a letter to the Budget Committee saying H.R. 3200 -- the main House Obamacare bill which was the subject of all the town hall rage in August -- has met all requirements to pass as a "budget reconciliation" measure. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee, spoke with HUMAN EVENTS yesterday about events at the hearing and maneuvers by House Democrats to give their Senate comrades the opportunity to shut down debate on the bill in the Senate with 51 votes instead of the required 60. "Under the rules, they had to have a hearing in committee in order to be able to position themselves to move through a process called reconciliation," Camp said. "They had to send the bill to the Budget Committee to do that." The notification is in the form of a letter certifying that the Ways & Means Committee has met the requirements set forth in the budget bill. "Attached to the letter would be the bill," Camp said. "So this sends the bill to the Budget Committee to vote it out. They're setting up the nuclear option, not having any Republican votes for this bill. They're setting up that process." "That is an amendable document," Camp continued. "It's an amendable process. There's an opportunity to have amendments and have debate. They shut that completely down." The notification letter passed out of the Ways & Means Committee on a straight party line vote. No debate was allowed, and no amendments. Rangel told Camp that he would not have preferred to do it this way, but leadership -- i.e., Speaker Pelosi -- forced his hand. "We had let them know we were offering amendments and we had heard no problem with that until we got there today," Camp said. "Chairman Rangel said leadership made him do it, but he did it, not the leadership." This was the final opportunity for debate and amendments to the bill on a committee level. The Budget Committee will simply vote to pass the bill out with an up or down vote that would certify that the bill has met the reconciliation requirements. "It's supposed to only be bills that impact the deficit," Camp added. "And what they've done is said this bill will save a billion dollars. That's what we were ordered under the budget resolution to do. They'll fulfill that marker, but they'll use that obviously to spend a lot more." The bill being certified for "reconciliation" is the Ways & Means version of H.R. 3200 that was passed out of committee before the August break, and before it was read aloud at town hall meetings across the country and blasted by voters across the country. It contains all of the horrors previously exposed: federal funding of abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, comparative effectiveness, healthcare rationing, deep cuts to Medicare. Everything the American people overwhelmingly reject. "Since the time we voted on this bill until today, we've had new issues develop, we've had new scores from the Congressional Budget Office which is the non-partisan expert agency that reviews our legislation," Camp said. "We felt it was important to talk about the issues. We've had some new developments, new information." "Let's have 72 hours to read the bill and have the bill available," Camp continued. "That didn't get any certain discussion today. Let's make sure members of Congress are part of any health care bill that passes. That didn't get any debate today. Let's make sure that we do not have non-citizens here illegally getting government funded healthcare. Let's make sure we don't use tax dollars to fund and pay for abortion. We didn't get to vote on that today." Reconciliation is a parliamentary process that was created for use solely on the reduction of spending bills in order to reduce the deficit. Spending bills must originate in the House, and when passing the budget, the full House can include language in the budget bill to a specific committee instructing them to reduce spending by a specific amount in order to reduce the deficit. Having learned from the 1993 Hillarycare debacle when the American people utterly rejected the notion of the government takeover of health care, House Democrats placed reconciliation language into the 2010 budget to facilitate passage of the government takeover of health care with Obamacare through budget reconciliation. In the case of H.R. 3200, the reconciliation instruction was to reduce the cost of the health care bill by $1 billion -- a bill that by some estimates will cost taxpayers a minimum of $1.6 trillion. "This is after August when the American people clearly weighed in and said, 'Hey, hold up. We want to be part of this. We want to have some more openness,'" Camp said. "I think they feel the less people know the better; that they, the majority, are better off because they don't have to explain. People don't know what it is they're really doing. We won't find out until it's actually done." Since it has now cleared the Ways and Means Committee (fulfilling the $1 billion reconciliation requirement), H.R. 3200 will go to the Budget Committee where they will do the same thing that was done today in Ways & Means. They will agree on a straight party line vote that the bill has met the reconciliation requirements. The bill then goes to Pelosi and the Rules Committee where Pelosi will do the same thing Sen. Harry Reid is doing with the two Senate bills right now: Pelosi will merge the three House versions of H.R. 3200 together into whatever she wants it to be, then she will schedule it for a floor vote. H.R. 3200 could see a floor vote in the next two weeks, likely no later than the first week of November if Democrats believe they have the votes for passage. If the bill does pass a full House vote, and that's a big "if" given the deep divides over the issues among Democrats, the bill would then be sent over to the Senate. There are still bumps in the road for passage in the Senate with 51 votes, placing the undue burden for passage of H.R. 3200 through the Senate by reconciliation on rulings from the Senate parliamentarian. Stay tuned. 3) A Tale Of Two Soundbites - Which One Sounds "Divisive" To You? National Review Online http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzIxZDJhNTk2ZWQwNmYzOTI3ZmIwMDcyYzhlNzVjNzc= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364773/posts October 17, 2009 Mark Steyn Here is a tale of two soundbites. First: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." Second: "The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You're going to make choices. . . . But here's the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else's. In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. . . . They had everything on their side. And people said 'How can you win . . . ? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?' And Mao Tse-Tung says, 'You fight your war and I'll fight mine . . . ' You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things. . . . You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path." The first quotation was attributed to Rush Limbaugh. He never said it. There is no tape of him saying it. There is no transcript of him saying it. After all, if he had done so at any point in the last 20 years, someone would surely have mentioned it at the time. Yet CNN, MSNBC, ABC, other networks, and newspapers all around the country cheerfully repeated the pro-slavery quotation and attributed it, falsely, to Rush Limbaugh. And planting a flat-out lie in his mouth wound up getting Rush bounced from a consortium hoping to buy the St. Louis Rams. The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the talkshow host was a "divisive" figure, and famously non-divisive figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed the hope that, with Mister Divisive out of the picture, the NFL could now "unify." The second quotation - hailing Mao - was uttered back in June to an audience of high-school students by Anita Dunn, the White House communications director. I know she uttered it because I watched the words issuing from her mouth on The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News. But don't worry. Nobody else played it. So if I understand correctly: Rush Limbaugh is so "divisive" that to get him fired leftie agitators have to invent racist soundbites to put in his mouth. But the White House communications director is so un-divisive that she can be invited along to recommend Chairman Mao as a role model for America's young. From my unscientific survey, U.S. school students are all but entirely unaware of Mao Tse-Tung, and the few that aren't know him mainly as a T-shirt graphic or "agrarian reformer." What else did he do? Here, from Jonathan Fenby's book Modern China, is the great man in a nutshell: "Mao's responsibility for the extinction of anywhere from 40 to 70 million lives brands him as a mass killer greater than Hitler or Stalin." Hey, that's pretty impressive when they can't get your big final-score death toll nailed down to closer than 30 million. Still, as President Obama's communications director might say, he lived his dream, and so can you, although if your dream involves killing, oh, 50-80 million Chinamen, you may have your work cut out. But let's stick with the Fenby figure: He killed 40-70 million Chinamen. Whoops, can you say "Chinamen" or is that racist? Oh, and sexist. So hard keeping up with the Sensitivity Police in this pansified political culture, isn't it? But you can kill 40-70 million Chinamen and that's fine and dandy: You'll be cited as an inspiration by the White House to an audience of high-school students. You can be anything you want to be! Look at Mao: He wanted to be a mass murderer, and he lived his dream! You can too! The White House now says that Anita Dunn was "joking." Anyone tempted to buy that spin should look at the tape: If this is her Friars Club routine, she needs to work on her delivery. But, for the sake of argument, try a thought experiment: Midway through Bush's second term, press secretary Tony Snow goes along to Chester A. Arthur High School to give a graduation speech. "I know it looks tough right now. You're young, you're full of zip, but the odds seem hopeless. Let me tell you about another young man facing tough choices 80 years ago. It's last orders at the Munich beer garden - gee, your principal won't thank me for mentioning that - and all the natural blonds are saying, 'But Adolf, see reason. The Weimar Republic's here to stay, and besides the international Jewry control everything.' And young Adolf Hitler puts down his foaming stein and stands on the table and sings a medley of 'I Gotta Be Me,' '(Learning to Love Yourself Is) The Greatest Love of All,' and 'The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow.'" And by the end of that night there wasn't a Jewish greengrocer's anywhere in town with glass in its windows. Don't play by the other side's rules; make your own kind of music. And always remember: You've gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?" Anyone think he'd still have a job? Well, so what? All those dead Chinese are no-name peasants a long way away. What's the big deal? If you say, "Chairman Mao? Wasn't he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?", you'll be hounded from public life for saying the word "Chinks." But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it's so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out. Which is odd, don't you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent. Twenty years ago this fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren't we making more of the biggest mass liberation in history? Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the Left's long march through the institutions of the West, most are not willing to do that. There's the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House. Rush Limbaugh's remarks are "divisive"; Anita Dunn's are entirely normal. But don't worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem. 4) White House Boasts: We 'Control' News Media - Communications Chief Offers Shocking Confession To Foreign Government World Net Daily http://www.wnd.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=113347 Free Republic (excerpted) Posting October 17, 2009 Aaron Klein President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference. "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," said Dunn. "One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters," said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama's chief campaign manager. "We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it," Dunn said. Continued Dunn: "Whether it was a David Plouffe video or an Obama speech, a huge part of our press strategy was focused on making the media cover what Obama was actually saying as opposed to why the campaign was saying it, what the tactic was. . Making the press cover what we were saying." Dunn was speaking at a Jan. 12, 2009, event focusing on Obama's media tactics and hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development, which seeks to promote collaboration between the U.S. and the Dominican Republic. The event was held in Santo Domingo and was attended by the country's president. Dunn has been facing some criticism since she led a White House campaign last week against Fox News, slamming the top-rated network as an "arm of the Republican Party" and "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Fox hit back this past Friday, releasing a video of Dunn speaking to high school students last June in which she lists her two "favorite political philosophers," including Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, whose draconian policies are blamed for the deaths of tens of millions of people. 5) How Rush Limbaugh Gave America Its Sundays Back American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/how_rush_limbaugh_gave_america.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364961/posts 10-18-09 Neil Braithwaite Ever since I can remember, from my days as a young boy sitting beside my dad perched in front of the old black and white 25" console, to just last week watching my high-def 42" flat screen television, pro football has been the essence of my fall and winter Sundays. I'm sure this is also true for countless milions of other men across this great land. But for many pro football loving men this past week, that came to a halt faster than the Cowboys' Walt Garrison on the goal line when hit by Washington Redskins' Kenny Houston on October 8, 1973. Go Redskins! So what would persuad thousands of armchair quarterbacks to put down their remotes and walk away from their split-screen NFL Sunday utopias -- cold turkey? Was it because the pro football game has gotten so boring and predictable? Did all their wives finally put their collective feet down? No. Countless men addicted to the NFL are walking away from pro football this week as a direct result of what transpired in the media during Rush Limbaugh's attempt to become a minority NFL owner. Rush Limbaugh has attracted many male listeners over the years because of his staunch conservative views, unabashed humor and unapologetic manly attitude. It all makes for great male bonding. But the one thing that helps form a special bond between the big guy and many of his male listeners is Rush's love for pro football. Rush is known for being a very passionate guy, so when he corroborated the story that he was a minority partner in a group trying to purchase the St. Louis Rams, he must have had some serious "game day" butterflies. Rush's pro football-loving listeners share his passion, so when they found out about his bid to become an NFL owner, they immediately began to root for their competitive friend to win. Go Rush! Most Rush listeners know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would not only be great for the St. Louis Rams' organization and its players, but also ultimately be great for the NFL. They know that Rush is a strong competitor and would bring that "must win" attitude to the NFL. His love and respect for the game, its players and organizations have been on display for all America since his radio talk show became syndicated in August 1988. If Rush had become an NFL owner, many of his loyal listeners would have to enlarge their sentimental NFL team base to include the St. Louis Rams just because of Rush. Go Rush -- go Rams! It was inevitable however, that Rush would get some flack about his stint as a commentator on ESPN and the whole Donovan McNabb story, but no one expected what ultimately transpired in the media because of his minority ownership bid. In retrospect, the vicious and slanderous attacks that poured out on Rush from the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were to be expected. These two guys never miss an opportunity to sling a little racial slander and grab some limelight. But several liberals in the news media decided to get on board the slander train and that's when things started getting out of hand. Then some current and former NFL players along with a select group of the sports media decided to jump into the Rush feeding frenzy and things really began to go overboard. This band of ignorant and slanderous liberals attributed unthinkable racial statements to Rush without any definitive proof. The angry mob's accusations ultimately led to Rush's removal from the group bidding for the St. Louis NFL franchise. But the story doesn't end there. Not one NFL owner or representative came out to denounce the uncivil tone and unfounded slanderous attacks made against Rush, who, as if they were too ignorant to know, happened to be one of the NFL's biggest supporters as well as a prospective owner. It was the ultimate responsibility of the NFL's commissioner, Roger Goodell, to put a stop to this nonsense. But did Goodell step forward? No. In fact, he did just the opposite and climbed on the slander train himself by saying that "divisive comments" would not be welcome in the league. Goodell's statement was reprehensible and became the straw the broke the camel's back for countless thousands of Rush supporters. It was game over -- adios NFL! Unlike the NFL, in the game of life there are not always clearly defined winners and losers. However, in this tragic situation there are a few of each. The biggest losers are the NFL and the St. Louis Rams, who lost an opportunity to have an awesome new competitor and minority owner. The merry host of media slander slingers also lost the last bit of respect anyone may have ever had for them. And America just lost a little of what makes her the greatest country in the world -- civility, respect and fairness. Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, became a big winner in the eyes of his loyal listeners for the responsible and dignified manner in which he handled the whole situation. But the biggest winners of all are the thousands of families throughout America who just got their husbands and fathers back on Sundays. Picnic anyone? 6) Obama's Nominee For EEOC Promotes Polygamy And Homosexuality Inside Catholic http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7076&Itemid=48 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2366979/posts October 20, 2009 Deal W. Hudson President Barack Obama has nominated a Georgetown University law professor, Chai R. Feldblum, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Council. Feldblum, a lesbian activist lawyer, formerly worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, and in the mid-1980s clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade. Feldblum faces Senate confirmation hearings before she can assume her post at the EEOC. The significance of her nomination for Catholics is underscored by the EEOC's recent ruling that Belmont Abbey, a Catholic college, must provide coverage for contraception in its insurance plans for employees. Feldblum's record gives every indication that she would agree with this decision. She argued in a recent paper, "Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion," that "once a religious person or institution enters the stream of commerce by operating an enterprise such as a doctor's office, hospital, bookstore, hotel, treatment center, and so on, I believe the enterprise must adhere to a norm of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." Feldblum has a high public profile. She has gone on the record many times arguing that the state has an obligation to support relationships other than heterosexual marriage. In 2006, Feldblum signed a document titled "Beyond Same Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships." This petition offers a "new vision" for securing governmental and institutional recognition of "diverse kinds of partnerships." By signing this petition, Feldblum also expressed her support for polygamy: Among the stated "partnerships" the petition seeks to protect are "households in which there is more than one conjugal partner." In a paper written for the "Moral Values Project" at the Georgetown Law School, Feldblum describes one kind of polygamous relationship the government should support: NSDPs, or "nonsexual domestic partners." She explains, "The state has an obligation to recognize and support these non-sexual domestic partnerships -- these 'moral units' of society -- as well as sexual relationships that offer care and support." Feldblum's advocacy of the homosexual lifestyle is quite startling, given the fact that she teaches at a Catholic law school. As a matter of fact, she is seen in this video arguing not only that the government has a duty to promote homosexuality but also proclaiming, "Gay sex is morally good." Since President Obama nominated Feldblum on September 15, his outreach to the homosexual community has rapidly accelerated. His keynote speech to the Human Rights Campaign on October 11 contained all the positions advocated by his EEOC nominee: "You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman." Obama's declaration "to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act" reflects Feldblum's commitment to employ the power of government to encourage the growth of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender social units, thus presenting a direct challenge to traditional marriage. Her place on the five-person panel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will give Feldblum a powerful perch from which to pursue her "new strategic vision." No doubt religious businesses and institutions should be put on full alert for scrutiny of both their hiring practices and their benefits packages. If Feldblum's nomination is approved by the Senate, the case of Belmont Abbey may prove to be just the tip of the iceberg. 7) Excuses Wearing Thin For Obama, Media Pals Sun Times http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/1834209,CST-EDT-HUNT20.article http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2366975/posts 10/20/09 Steve Huntley Have you heard the news? President Obama inherited an economic mess from the Bush administration. You say that's hardly news? But it's been the message sounded over and over by the White House. Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on one of the Sunday news shows, "He walked in the door, we had the worst economy since the Great Depression." In San Francisco, Obama talked of being "busy with our mop." White House heavy hitter Rahm Emanuel used the worst-economy-since-the-Depression line on a public TV news show. You'd think it's October 2008, the final month in the Obama presidential candidacy, rather than October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency. Yet the Obama White House is in full campaign mode -- maybe because it needs to mask the shortcomings of the Obama presidency. Take, for example, all the talk of inheriting the worst economy since the 1930s crisis. That came in response to the news that the federal deficit hit $1.4 trillion. Yet just a few months ago, the Obama camp was singing a little different tune. It was under criticism for the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was." They inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be both -- unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma. Obama is still popular, but polls show the public losing faith in his policies. Another indicator was a ''Saturday Night Live'' skit lampooning Obama for the major accomplishments of his administration -- "jack and squat." If the honeymoon is ending with the American voter, it isn't for obsequious elements of the mainstream media. CNN prostrated itself by fact-checking the ''SNL'' comedy skit. But that's harmless compared to the virulent campaign against Obama critics carried out by the denizens of MSNBC. Its Obama acolytes seek to demonize opponents of Obama's policies by focusing on most marginal corners of right-wing politics like, for example, the "birthers" who deny Obama is a natural born citizen. The larger scheme is to imply Obama critics are racists. That's the backdrop to the story of Rush Limbaugh getting booted from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. He was smeared on CNN and MSNBC with false accusations of making two racist comments. He is an abrasive critic of Obama, so he must be racist, or so goes the left-wing story line. I wouldn't defend everything Limbaugh has ever said, but lies were used to blacklist him from professional football for his political views. Recently an MSNBC personality accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of lobbying for policies that amount to being "treasonous to this country." Remember how liberals roared in outrage at any hint of their patriotism being questioned for criticizing the Iraq War? Well, it's the left that doesn't shy from attacking the patriotism of those it dislikes. Recall the repulsive Moveon.org "General Betray-us" ad against Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus. Recent opposition to Chicago's Olympic bid was cast as a sign of a lack of patriotism among Obama critics. The MSNBC blast against the chamber appears to dovetail with what the Politico newspaper reports is a White House and Democratic effort "to marginalize" the business organization. That echoes the administration assault on the Fox News Channel: It says Fox isn't a news organization. The White House trying to dictate who's a news organization. Democrats out to gut a business group. Obama media allies damning Americans as racist, unpatriotic and treasonous. Is this the America Obama promised when he campaigned to end the cynical and divisive politics of the past? 8) Enemies List Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/RichGalen/2009/10/19/enemies_list http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2366585/posts October 19, 2009 Rich Galen You may only know about "Watergate" because every scandal since then has been appended with the word "-gate." A part of the Watergate scandal was the publication of what became known as Richard Nixon's "Enemies List." According to a memo from White House Counsel John Dean, this was a list of people whom were determined to be political opponents of the Nixon Administration and how the White House intended to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Most of the "enemies" were union executives, major fundraisers for Democrats, and cultural "radic-libs" as they were apparently called in the White House, like Paul Newman. But what caught the public's attention was when the list was released and the Nixon White House targeted the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, the chief political columnist for the Washington Star newspaper, and CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr. According to broadcast lore, Schorr, who was covering the Watergate Hearings for CBS, found out he was on the list as he was reading it aloud on the air. The notion of a President wanting to use the full power and force of the Federal government to intimidate people who disagreed with him, was appalling. It might have happened in every Presidency since Washington, but no one had taken the time to codify the process by putting it into an official memorandum. And the concept of attempting to intimidate the press was, for many people, among the most serious of misdeeds by Richard Nixon. So, where is the outrage over the public war the White House is waging against the Fox News Channel? Can't find it. The whole thing started last week when Anita Dunn, WH communications director, said during an interview on CNN: "Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. Let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." The drama continued on the Sunday news shows when Senior Advisor to Obama, David Axlerod said on ABC's "This Week" of Fox, "It's not really news. It's pushing a point of view. The bigger thing is that, other news organizations, like yours, ought not treat them that way." I can remember when CNN was a new concept and ABC, CBS and NBC news divisions didn't treat CNN like it was a serious news organization. The Lad called last night and asked why the White House was doing this. "The need an enemy," I said. The Democratic base is disenchanted with the Obama Presidency - even Saturday Night Live has decided Obama's stature has been sufficiently diminished that they can do a skit about how he hasn't accomplished any of the major goals he ran on. The war in Afghanistan is a huge problem with the Liberal base, and Obama's apparent inability (and/or unwillingness) to hold Congressional Democrats' feet to the political fire over a public option in the health care debate is further causing head-scratching among that group. Add to that, he hasn't paid off on "card-check" which he promised unions, and has limited his support for gay rights to speeches and dinners, and you can see why his polling numbers have settled in at just above 50 percent mark. So, the Administration has decided to start a fight to re-energize the base. It doesn't do any good to fight with someone who is not worthy, if you want to make this strategy work you have to have the fight with someone your base already knows - and already hates. Fox News Channel fits that bill. If Obama can make the point stick, that Fox News is not "news", and gets his base to buy into the theory that Obama is the victim of unfair coverage, it gives the White House a rallying point. I don't think it's having the desired effect. One of the outcomes of the political wars between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich is that the American audience for political news has become very sophisticated. They know what they want, and they know where to find it, whether it's Rachel Maddow on MSNBC or Glenn Beck on Fox. The bigger issue is that few other news outlets - print or broadcast - have chosen to report on how dangerous this tack can be. The most dangerous type of news censorship is self-censorship. That's where an "enemies list" can all too easily lead. 9) 10 Horror Movies For Conservatives To Watch This Halloween Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/10/20/10_horror_movies_for_conservatives_to_watch_this_halloween http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2366490/posts October 20, 2009 John Hawkins Halloween is almost upon us and you're probably thinking, "Gee, wouldn't it be great to kick back on the couch and rent a few conservative horror flicks for the big night?" Here's the problem: horror films aren't family friendly. They're gory, they're violent, and they're vulgar. Even setting that aside, there really aren't very many "conservative" movies overall and there are almost no truly "conservative" horror flicks. Still, as a Right-Wing horror film aficionado, I can at least make a few solid recommendations that might have some extra-added appeal for conservatives. Cloverfield (2007): This is probably the best "giant-monster" film ever made. The monster was well done, the scenes were creepy, and there was a certain realness and fundamental decency to the characters. This is how you'd like to think ordinary people would react in a crisis. Meanwhile, the military was in the thick of the action, bravely fighting against the Cloverfield monster and handling an impossible situation the best way they could. It was ultimately a grim movie, but once things started rolling, the film keeps you on the edge of your seat. The Dead Zone (1983): Christopher Walken is the lead in this Stephen King story about a deranged politician and the man who was willing to sacrifice everything to try to stop him from launching a nuclear war. The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005): This is a cleverly written film that simultaneously treats Christian values respectfully, while leaving non-believers room to doubt. It was also inspiringly creepy enough to convince me to actually read a distressing book on exorcisms called, The Dark Sacrament: True Stories of Modern-Day Demon Possession and Exorcism. The Exorcist (1973): This in one of the most genuinely disturbing movies that you'll ever see and it's not for the faint hearted. But, it does feature self-sacrificing priests who are fighting spiritually against true evil. That's very rare for Hollywood, where members of the clergy are habitually treated as drunkards, hypocrites, perverts, and villains. The Fog (1980): This tale of woe visited upon the Northern California town of Antonio Bay because of the ignoble actions of their ancestors is chilling indeed. The brilliant timing of the movie, the sense of disquieting dread, and the remorseless approach of evil makes it a must watch film. Just a note: Don't confuse this outstanding film with the execrable 2005 remake which was so bad that every existing copy should be buried at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The Mist (2007): A sinister story about a deadly government experiment and how quickly human beings can become primitive again when they're isolated, alone, and in danger. Oh yeah, there are also weird monsters, a menacing mist, and a well-written Stephen King plotline. The ending is, ah -- let's just say, you don't want to know how it ends until you see it. Quarantine (2008): When zombies infected with super-rabies are trying to kill you and the government shows up, count on them to stand outside, picking their noses and trying to figure out what to do, while you struggle for survival. It's a timely and true message: Don't count on your government in a crisis. Also, don't get trapped in a building with zombies. We shouldn't forget that either. Re-Animator (1985): This movie is little funny, a little macabre, and a little gory. Somewhere in there is also a message about the perils of playing God with human life. That's a message that's all too timely given some of the morality free experiments scientists across the world are working on. The Silence of the Lambs (1991): Fundamentally decent FBI agents match wits with one of the great horror villains of all-time, Hannibal Lecter, in an attempt to stop a serial killer. This isn't as pure a horror flick as some of the other films on the list, but it will keep you riveted to the screen. The Tripper (2007): This movie is meant to be a slap at Ronald Reagan and conservatives. In a couple of spots near the end of the movie, it does manage to grate conservative sensibilities. However, that mild annoyance does not to detract from the sweet, sweet joy of watching a guy in a Ronald Reagan mask taking an ax to dirty, drug addled hippies throughout the movie. If a conservative had made this movie, instead of David Arquette, liberals would be calling it a "hate crime." 10) Keep Your Eyes Trained On 2010: Obama Races To Pass Everything Before The Election RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2366953/posts?page=11#11 October 20, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: Neil, Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome, sir. Glad you waited. You're on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hey, Rush, I heard you talking a while ago about never hearing about a pay czar, and I hadn't either until I was talking to my father-in-law, and he told me about a man named Leon Henderson back in FDR's time. An executive order by FDR created what was called the Office of Price Administration. Leon Henderson, my father-in-law's friend, became the head of that division of the OPA and he was dubbed the price czar by the media. And the interesting thing was the OPA was actually used to help control and regulate resources during wartime trying to stave off inflation, but it actually morphed into what government normally does, an overreaching arm. And in 1942, October 2nd, the Office of Economic Stabilization was responsible for, get this, controlling wage levels and regulating food prices and basically generally stabilizing the cost of living. But the problem that stemmed from that was the government outreach, talk about Big Brother, in 1943 alone, 650,000 investigations into private citizens for noncompliance and 618,000 violations in 1943 and '44. So the government chased these people down. RUSH: You know, I didn't know all of that. I'm not surprised, 'cause it didn't work. And we came out of it, and a lot of those policies were repudiated. And it's true that we've had wage and price controls tried a couple of times. I remember Nixon did it. Nixon did it when inflation was 3%, wage and price controls. And they never work. They never work. Look, this guy does fashion himself as a modern-day FDR, there's no question about that, and those are interesting facts that you cited. But I'll tell you something. What Obama is doing with all of these czars, particularly the pay czar, is a little different than wage and price controls. Wage and price controls are slapped all over the country, and they are by definition temporary. They are to control an emergency at the moment, ostensibly. What Obama is doing is buying companies. Obama is nationalizing companies and then telling people in those companies what they can and can't earn, it's a pure definition of fascism. But I agree with you, there are a lot of similarities, which, by the way, offers a lot of reasons for hope because we came out of that, and of course it took a world war to get us out of that kind of stuff, but the country did not fall into dictatorship. The country did not fall into tyrannical control. FDR tried, but it didn't fall to that. I know we're still living with it but we haven't succumbed to it is the point, and we're not going to succumb to this. I've gotten some e-mails, "Rush, you're really depressing me today. I feel like just checking out." Let me tell you something, folks. I happen to be depressed. I happen to be in a foul mood today, and I'm not one of these people that come in here and go, "Hey, hey, everything's wonderful, ah, great." Normally I'm up and ebullient, but today I'm just in a foul mood. All this stuff is getting to me, but I don't think they're going to win. My frustration centers around the lack of organized opposition to it and that's going to have to happen at some point in time. The future of this country will be determined in November of 2010 and we've already learned today, given what they've done to Kinston, North Carolina, they are counting on election fraud big time. They know at the White House that they are in big trouble. They can read the poll numbers. They know what the mood of this country is. That's why there is a sprint to get all of this stuff done before 2010 but it won't be enacted until after 2010 and some of it not until after 2012, after Obama runs for reelection. That's why 2010 is a crucially important time. That's where ultimately this is going to be stopped. But, no, the tea parties weren't for naught. The town hall meetings, they were not for naught, they weren't worthless. Let's play this sound bite number nine. This is Eric Massa. He's on a liberal talk show. And, let's see, there's a fill-in host, I never heard of the fill-in host, so I'm not going to mention the name. "Senator Kent Conrad is still pushing the idea of co-ops. Is that dead in the water? What's the point of talking about it?" MASSA: The Senate bill and the House bill are on different planets. And they're on different planets because as much as I want this administration to succeed they did not present a piece of legislation to the United States Congress. We still don't have a piece of paper that says what his plan is. We're kind of like pilots flying blind. RUSH: Now, this is again Eric Massa who's a Democrat from New York, a member of the House of Representatives. So it indicates there's some frustration out there and I'll tell you what the frustration is. These guys are going to go stand for reelection next November, a year from now, and they're the ones having to put their names and their reputations on these myriad plans. Meanwhile, the great emancipator -- sorry -- The Messiah, Barack Obama, sits up there and gets to play Mr. Perfect all day long and bring in Earth, Wind and Fire, grab Air Force One and take the family up for dinner and for dates and so forth, and be treated like there's never been a human being like him and he gets to escape all the heat for it. So there's no question some Democrats are a little, "Eh, where's his plan? We got five plans, these two plans are on different planets." Meanwhile, we're all on the Hale-Bopp comet while the health care plans are on two different planets and he's saying, "I don't know where we're going to come to any agreement here and we're not going to come to an agreement on these two different plans unless Obama tells us what he wants." And he's not going to do that. Not now with his poll numbers shrinking, it's just not going to happen. So these guys are starting to say, wait a minute, we don't want to sink or swim on this when he's going to get the credit for it and we're going to get the blame? So, look, these guys are playing defense, they're playing defense. None of this was supposed to happen. Obama was supposed to get health care in August, before August. There was supposed to be universal acclamation, "Whatever you want, Barack, it's yours," from everybody in the country. There was not supposed to be this opposition. And now look what they're doing, going after me, going after Fox News, talk radio. Their colors are showing and they are not pretty. 11) The Kitty-Cat Who Roared - The Loud Reformer Obama Himself Proves Even Emptier In His Promises Than Bush National Review Online http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGM2MzM0NTYyOTlmNjBiODdkNjVkYjdmNTAyNTkwYmM= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368524/posts October 22, 2009 Victor Davis Hanson President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion - only later to meow like a little kitty. Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year? The clock ticks - and Guantanamo isn't close to being shut down. It once was easy for candidate Obama to deplore George W. Bush's supposed gulag. Now it proves harder to decide between the bad choice of detaining non-uniformed terrorist combatants and the worse ones of letting them go, giving them civilian trials, or deporting them to unwilling hosts. Going back further to September 2007, candidate Obama postured about Iraq that he wanted "to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now!" That "now!" sure sounded macho. On Iraq, candidate Obama also railed that "the American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We've had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet." Talk about "unmet" deadlines and "spin" - here we are in October 2009, and there are still 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The reason why Obama fudged on his promised deadline is that the surge in 2007 worked. American deaths plummeted. The theater is quiet. Iraqi democracy is still there after six years. Obama cannot quite admit these facts, but on the other hand, he does not want to be responsible for undermining them. This July, our president roared out another impending deadline. He warned Iran that it had to prove its compliance with non-proliferation protocols by September - or face new consequences since the U.S. was not going to "wait indefinitely." Now it's October, and even the French are exasperated that Obama still sounds like the king of the jungle but acts like a purring house kitten. And no wonder that Iran and its patron Russia seem to be calculating that Obama will figure that a nuclear Iran is less troubling for him than the consequences of offending Vladimir Putin, spiking oil prices or using force in the volatile Middle East. The list of differences between what the melodramatic Obama threatens or promises to do and what he actually does is endless. Health care: The president once warned Congress that it had to pass comprehensive reform by the August congressional recess. August came and went, and now we're still waiting, waiting, waiting . . . . Afghanistan: This was once Obama's promised war to win - the one we had to refocus on after supposedly taking our eye off the ball to fight in Iraq. Now, instead, we are suddenly blaming the eight-year-old Karzai government for not being the stable partner we need to finish the job. Ethics reform: During the campaign, Obama vowed to end lobbyists in government, post legislation on the Internet five days before a presidential signing, and air health-care negotiations on C-SPAN. In short, just imagine if Obama were to warn Congress to get health-care done by November 15 - or else; or to give Iran one last chance until the first of the year to stop enriching uranium; or to promise that Guantanamo really, really will close on March 1, 2010. Would anyone take him seriously, much less fret about the consequences of ignoring those vows? Obama ran on the accusation that Bush missed promised targets and deadlines. Yet when the loud reformer Obama himself proves even emptier in his promises than Bush, he suffers from theatrical hypocrisy, too. But there is an even greater problem. Overheated rhetoric got Obama into these jams - and he seems to expect that his dramatic flair can always get him out as well. So we all await more of the empty hope-and-change hocus-pocus - as Obama explains how he never really promised to get out of Iraq "now!" or to "take further steps" against Iran in September 2009. When Jan. 1, 2010, comes and goes, I expect the president to say that, "I can no more shut down Guantanamo than I can . . . ." Well, by now you know the rest of what follows. 12) 'Radio Free America': Obama Administration Attempts To 'Jam Signals' That Conflict With Its Agenda World Magazine http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/16032 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368334/posts October 22, 2009 Cal Thomas During the Cold War, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were among the broadcast entities that effectively penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver truth to the "captive nations" that were being fed a steady dose of propaganda by their communist rulers. Those dictators did everything they could to "jam" the signals so that their people would only hear what their unelected overseers wanted them to hear. Contemporary versions of jamming and other forms of censorship occur today in Venezuela, Cuba, and many other places where dictators believe public ignorance is essential to their unchallenged rule. While the Obama administration is the product of an election, its approach to the Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, and possibly the internet appears similar to dictators who desire control over the flow of information in order to enhance their power. The administration's primary beef appears to be that Fox is doing the job the broadcast networks and big newspapers should be doing were they not still deeply in the tank for this president and his policies. Like those Cold War truth-tellers, Fox is simply delivering information to a rapidly growing audience (partly due to criticism from the White House) that wants to see and hear what the other media are not telling them. Fox-and talk radio-are reporting on the backgrounds and statements of Obama administration officials. Fox didn't create the statements and actions of Van Jones, the now former "energy czar," who signed a petition questioning whether Bush administration officials allowed 9/11 to happen as a possible pretext for going to war. Fox didn't force Jones to advocate for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, or associate himself with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a left-wing radical group with Marxist roots. No Fox News employee wrote the speeches and comments of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who told graduating high school seniors that one of her "favorite philosophers" is the mass murderer Mao Zedong. Neither did they compose her boast during the campaign that the Obama people "controlled" the news media. ACORN might never have been exposed for its possibly illegal activities had not an enterprising young duo gone to their offices with a hidden camera and recorded some ACORN workers who were happy to assist them in breaking the law. As one who appears on Fox as a contributor, I have seen the network grow from its beginning more than a decade ago to its current position of holding accountable those in power. That was once the calling of all journalists until the Kennedy years when reporters started cheerleading and socializing with the people they were empowered to question and cover. This shift in responsibility has greatly enhanced the status and income of too many journalists and commentators. It has also shortchanged the profession and the public it is supposed to serve. It is no mystery why the White House has made Fox News a target. If its reporting and commentating were not effective in exposing things the administration does not want the public to know, Fox would be ignored. But it is increasingly effective because the public is sensing that the administration has a lot to hide about its personnel, ideology, and objectives. Rather than boycott Fox-if the administration were smart-it would flood the network with its spokespeople. The administration apparently believes it needs an enemy to avert scrutiny from its socialist agenda, the undermining of free speech, and the corruption of the U.S. Constitution. Because Republicans have no credible national leader, the administration has settled on Fox News. Political leaders, going back to our founding, have criticized the press. It never works, because after the politicians leave office, the press remains. If the administration is seeking approval for its policies, it should go on the only channel that will confront, examine, and question those policies. If the policies are valid, they will stand; if not, they won't and they shouldn't. But perhaps, like those dictators, the administration would rather jam Fox's "signal" because they don't want the public to know the truth about what they are doing. 13) Welcome To The World Of Newspeak American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/welcome_to_the_world_of_newspe.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368168/posts October 22, 2009 Janet Levy In George Orwell's novel, "1984," Newspeak refers to language designed by a totalitarian regime to control thought and make subversive speech impossible. It destroyed words with prohibited meanings so that heretical thoughts couldn't be expressed. A form of censorship, Newspeak employed euphemisms and words deliberately opposite the reality they described. For example, "joycamp" was the term assigned to forced-labor camps. The "Ministry of Truth" was in actuality an organ of disinformation. Newspeak was created to institute thought control and thereby exert political control through restrictive changes to the language. The term is now commonly used to refer to attempts to obscure the truth, especially in political rhetoric which abounds with instances of it. For example, President Obama's administration has officially replaced "terrorism" with the phrase "man-caused disasters." Terrorist activity, such as suicide bombings perpetuated by Al Qaeda and other Islamic groups, is now benignly called "anti-Islamic acts." In abortion debates, the taking of a human life is reframed as a "woman's right to choose." Newspeak usage also crops up in legislation with titles that are the exact opposite of a bill's intent. With ever-shortening American attention spans and media's increasing focus on entertainment news, Newspeak is not simply a fictional danger but a real threat to the practice of democracy in America. Some recent examples include: "The Respect for Marriage Act," "The Employee Free Choice Act," "Internet Freedom Preservation Act," "American Clean Energy and Security Act" and "America's Healthy Future Act." A quick examination of each reveals Newspeak at work. H.R. 3567 or "The Respect for Marriage Act" Introduced in Congress last month, this measure would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act , which makes it clear that states have the right to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. "The Respect for Marriage Act" would redefine marriage to include the union of any two people in a committed relationship, essentially forcing same-sex "marriage" on all states. This, despite a national Rasmussen poll indicating that 68% of likely voters hold traditional views of the institution of marriage and 67% believe that voters, not activist judges or government bureaucrats, should make decisions defining marriage. A May 2009 Gallup poll found that 48% of Americans felt that allowing legal same-sex marriages would "change our society for the worse." "The Respect for Marriage Act" is anything but. Nothing "respectful" exists about the government repealing existing legal protections of marriage against the wishes of American voters. The "Employee Free Choice Act" (H.R. 800) This measure would replace the existing secret ballot elections for union membership with a system in which workers must publicly sign union cards; in effect, no free choice. Under the bill's provisions, once a majority of company employees sign union cards, all the company's workers will be forced to join the union without necessarily having an opportunity to vote on the decision; in effect, no free choice. Public knowledge of voting results leaves workers vulnerable to harassment and intimidation, thereby eliminating employee ability to choose freely. In addition, the Employee Free Choice Act requires binding arbitration in employment disputes by government officials who have little knowledge of the workings of the business and are unaccountable for the consequences of their rulings. This denies workers the ability to bargain and vote on their employment contracts. In reality, "free choice" is maintained by the current, secret ballot elections that respect worker privacy and limit union coercion. In actuality, card-checking union preferences strips workers of free choice, while mandatory arbitration robs them of the ability to bargain with their employers. The "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" Also referred to as "Net Neutrality," this proposal represents an unprecedented expansion of Internet regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the exact opposite of Internet freedom. It would allow the FCC to regulate the speed and pricing of traffic across public and private broadband networks. It would create a bureaucratic structure to control competition and customer service. It would mandate what data companies can or cannot prioritize. Further, it raises privacy concerns because it will enable the federal government to track users. Consumers have been well-served by an open Internet system in which private sector competition and innovation has nurtured an environment that anyone can use to develop new applications and content. This freedom will be stifled rather than "preserved" with the unbridled expansion of federal government power over the Internet that will be put in place with "Net Neutrality." The "American Clean Energy and Security Act" This bill provides no energy security at all for Americans because it would substantially raise energy prices while subsidizing unproven energy sources and taxing reliable energy sources. It is an attempt by the government to force costlier energy options on the public by lavishing substantial tax breaks on so-called renewables. The contention that this bill will improve the environment is a fallacy. In fact, the American Clean Energy and Security Act will sacrifice economic growth and jobs and actually reduce funding for environmental protectionism. Even believing for a moment that carbon dioxide emissions harm the climate, U.S. consumption changes will pale in comparison to energy use in China, India and other developing countries that will not cut their emissions. Ironically, it is the wealthiest nations that have the cleanest environments. As far as "security" is concerned, a country with a contracted economy with costly or few energy options, is a country less able to defend itself and thereby less secure. "America's Healthy Future Act" This "Obamacare" is in essence government-controlled socialized medicine. It will reduce health care availability and increase wait times for medical services. It will harm the health of Americans, exact heavy costs and restrict freedom of choice. Currently, 74% of U.S. citizens make scheduled doctors appointments within four weeks, compared to only 40% of Canadians with their government-sponsored healthcare. In the United Kingdom's socialized medicine system, breast cancer mortality is 88% higher and prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher than the incidence in the current U.S. system. Rationing of services, which will directly affect the morbidity and mortality of the elderly, is a central feature of America's Healthy Future Act. With a goal of reducing health spending by 30% over the next two decades, the bill, in its "essential benefits" clause, expressly restricts the amount of money a person may spend on health care and, by extension, on certain interventions. In this way, the government takes control over quality of life and end of life decisions. It is not difficult to see how this bill will result in a less "healthy future" for Americans. The titles of the above-cited bills are clearly at odds with their intent. The misleading language serves only to muddle their true objectives and befuddle the public. Thus, America seems to be drifting down the slippery slope that Orwell depicted in his fictional totalitarian society in "1984." Clarity of language is critical for sound decision-making and informed voting that are the pillars of our democracy. Deceptive language like "newspeak" is a grave threat to freedom and a sure route to greater government control. George Orwell may have been prescient when he wrote "1984;" he just had the wrong year. 14) Dear Newt Gingrich: Meet Ronald Reagan Michellemalkin.com http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/20/dear-newt-gingrich-meet-ronald-reagan/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368138/posts 10/21/09 Michelle Malkin So, Newt Gingrich is invoking Reagan to defend his endorsement of radical leftist Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 special congressional election? Triple-gag: "If you seek to be a perfect minority, you'll remain a minority," says Gingrich. "That's not how Reagan built his revolution or how we won back the House in 1994." Let's quote Reagan back to Gingrich, shall we? From his seminal 1975 CPAC address: Let our banner proclaim our belief in a free market as the greatest provider for the people. Let us also call for an end to the nit-picking, the harassment and over-regulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets. Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government's coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine. Our banner must recognize the responsibility of government to protect the law-abiding, holding those who commit misdeeds personally accountable. And we must make it plain to international adventurers that our love of peace stops short of "peace at any price." We will maintain whatever level of strength is necessary to preserve our free way of life. A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way. Perhaps it is time to go your own way, with Al Sharpton and Nancy Pelosi. 15) Pay Czar Cuts CEO Salaries 90% And Obama Didn't Know About It? His Unconstitutional Czar Acts Without His Knowledge? RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368902/posts?page=8#8 October 22, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: Let's move on to this pay czar business. I know a lot of you have mixed emotions about this. I'll explain what I think your mixed emotions are. Here you have a bunch of Wall Street types and they've already got a bad image, I mean these are the fat cats paying themselves gazillion dollar bonuses and salaries and nobody likes that and, meanwhile, they're getting rich, everybody else got poor, the subprime crisis, all the fraud that was there. So these guys, to save themselves, sign up for the TARP bailout and they accept all this bailout money, and they probably all voted for Obama, or the vast majority of them did and now all of a sudden out of the blue here comes a pay czar saying, "Guess what, we're gonna cut your pay by 90%." Some of you are going, "Well, good, about time that happened. These guys ripped us off, they stole, and everything, and now they're taking federal bailout money." Okay, if you get in bed with a snake you gotta expect the snake to be a snake. In this case the government's the snake, you get in bed with the government, you let the government bail you out, you are opening yourself up to letting government tell you how to run your business. That's exactly what's happened, and I know that a lot you probably think that's pretty good. It's just like when you see taxes go up on cigarette smokers, "Yeah, smoking kills, secondhand smoke kills, raise taxes on those filthy people!" Yeah, you say that until it starts to happen to you. When everybody else starts to get the shaft but you don't and you think everybody who's getting the shaft deserves it, then you sign onto it. What happened yesterday with this pay czar, regardless of your emotions on this issue, is simply outrageous. The secret to presidential success, ladies and gentlemen, is deniability. That is one of the major secrets to any president's success. "I didn't know that was going on." Bill Clinton, (doing Clinton impression) "Ha-ha, Waco invasion, why, you better go talk to the attorney general, I had no clue about that." So now it is said that Obama had no idea that his pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, had come up with this figure of 90% cuts in pay. He didn't know. Stands by the decision now but he didn't know about it. If that's true, these czars have even more power, there's even more reason for an investigation to be called. We got people who are not confirmed by the Senate, not accountable to anybody except Obama and he doesn't know what they're doing, his own administration says, running around basically taking over the private sector under the guise of bailing it out and helping it. You can look at General Motors and Chrysler and say, "Hey, that's going well, isn't it?" We learned yesterday that all that bailout money, guess what? The taxpayers will not get it back. Really? Government investments in these things are not going to pay off. Big shock. Whoever thought they were? "It will go down in history as one of Barack Obama's signature decisions on the economy, a dramatic move to slash corporate pay at bailed-out banks and automakers. But on Wednesday night, administration officials said that the president of the United States didn't have all that much to do with a decision that will, in many ways, come to define his relationship with Wall Street. In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg's, and his alone. . Feinberg's decision rocked Wall Street - where many otherwise media friendly executives avoided phone calls and deleted e-mails from reporters Wednesday night. Many issued outright "no comment" statements rather than react to the pay-cut news in the first hours after the news broke. Very few executives thought a pay cut of this magnitude was in the offing." Where to start with this, folks? This is a level 10 BS alert, Barbra Streisand alert. First we are supposed to believe that little old Barry Obama had no idea that his pay czar was out acting like a fascist, and other czars have and do. Barry was clueless that some rogue czar in his administration was out dictating pay for financial firms? It's like Barry had no idea that Anita Dunn idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Ron Bloom idolizes Mao Tse-tung? Barry had no idea that Van Jones was an avowed Marxist and communist? Barry had no idea of any of this? You see the wall of deniability the press is trying to build up? He didn't know about any of this. He's Mr. Perfect. He's Mr. Clean. He's Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected. He's reworking the American economy so what's happening now doesn't ever happen again. The only way that can happen is if what's happening now becomes permanent. Let's go there. Has there ever been a more compelling case, I ask you, for Congress to get rid of every so-called czar there is, has there ever been a bigger bucket of crap poured on Americans and American businesses than this administration and this so-called pay czar who's acting unilaterally without old Barry's knowledge? Is there no one in Congress to stand up and say, "What's going on? We're going to investigate this." You've got people acting without the president's knowledge, interfering in the private sector, capping executive pay. The problem is, the Democrats in Congress are all for this, and Barney Frank, in case you've forgotten, wants Congress to go further than even the pay czar has gone. Barney Frank wants the government to regulate pay of every business in the country whether they've received bailout money or not. So it's no wonder Obama is out there attacking me and Fox News. Who else will report this? That's what's really going on here. The people who are reporting the truth in this country are the targets of this administration. Fox News, talk radio, me in particular. That's what's going on. The American Thinker has a piece today. There was a hearing yesterday. Joe Lieberman, whatever his Senate health committee is, Lieberman had three administration officials up to talk about the shortage of the H1N1 flu vaccine. Have you seen any news stories on that? Did you know it happened other than me telling you? If there were a shortage of flu vaccine in the Bush administration and a Senator had called three members of the administration up to explain it, that's all you'd be hearing about because they'd be trying to create a panic that Bush is incompetent, his administration is so incompetent it's going to lead to people dying. There was one news agency that reported the results, the story at all. It was Fox News. You can go to Google, you can go to AOL, you can go to any search engine you want and try to find any mainstream story of Lieberman and a hearing with three administration officials on the shortage of H1N1 and it's not there. They didn't report it. Only Fox did. And in this way, some people are saying maybe the administration's plan to marginalize Fox is working. Fox reports something, you simply let it stay with Fox, it doesn't go anywhere else, and only the Fox audience will know about it. There is definitely collusion, because there's no difference between Barack Obama and Chris Matthews, Barack Obama or anybody else in the Drive-By Media, they are on the same team, they are doing the same things, just from different locations. I think everything about this story, this pay czar, is blockbuster. It's late-night comedy gold. Everything about the story is a lie. Everything about the story, this is in The Politico, but it's all over the place, it's at FoxNews.com, every detail about this story has to be a lie. I refuse to believe that Obama didn't know what Feinberg was doing. In fact, the truth probably is Feinberg's following orders. Feinberg is following orders, and I guaran-damn-tee you, Obama said you get up there and you rape 'em and you make 'em poor and you make 'em pay and you let 'em know. Just don't tell 'em that I knew anything about it. You go out there and you're on your own and I'll back you up. I don't believe for a moment that Obama had no idea what his pay czar was doing when he announced these kinds of cuts. "One official told Fox News that Feinberg from the start had the independent authority to work with companies and make such a call. Obama was never required to sign off before final decisions were made." Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, WTF, who the hell is going to believe this? Sign me up for the Ten Million Man March, folks. This is so much worse than Clinton hiding behind Janet Reno's skirt after the Waco invasion, it isn't even funny. Obama didn't sign off? What the hell else has he turned over to his czars? I mean it's all a lie. Here's another headline from Fox News: "White House Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg Did Not Seek Obama's Approval." I don't believe it for a minute. I believe that Feinberg could not have acted without Obama's instructions. Make no mistake, Obama is not an innocent bystander, he's not Mr. Perfect, this guy's got a chip on his shoulder and he's going after everybody that he thinks is responsible for this nation's immorality and unjustness and unfairness, and those people happen to be those who achieve. I would really like to ask everybody, because I know there are a lot of people happy about this, this is what's scary, there are a lot of people happy that these guys have been raped this way. That's why I started the subject saying "I know you've got mixed emotions." But I want to ask you a question, I want to ask you how is your life better now that the pay czar is in control? Okay, these Wall Street guys got 90% of their salaries cut. I want to know how that's improved your life. If all you're doing is sitting around saying, "Yeah, man, yeah, man, you screw 'em," is your life any better for that? You want to live on vengeance? Is vengeance your diet? Is vengeance your meal? Show me the calories. Show me the nutritional value of it. Just like when the rich get tax increases, "Yeah, man, yeah, man, soak 'em," does it make your life any better? So Wall Street execs are gonna lose 90% of their compensation. How is that job search coming for you, by the way? So you gonna get a new job now because of this? You gonna get more money? You going to have a better life because Wall Street got screwed? Cut salaries of a hotshot Wall Street guy, no problem, I'm not a Wall Street guy, you go ahead and cut 'em. Go ahead and raise taxes on cigarettes. I'm not one of the cigarette smokers. Ripple effect. It's all coming. It's going to affect all of us. It's right out in the open, we can all see it. By the way, in the Associated Press story on this, is this little paragraph: "Elsewhere, Freddie Mac --" a supposed private sector business, it's a government-run mortgage house "-- Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as five-and-a-half million dollars, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn't have to follow the executive compensation rules because it's being paid outside the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP." So you work for the government and you get paid whatever you want. Five-and-a-half million to the Freddie Mac CEO, Wall Street guys get canned, get raped. And Barry Obama had no clue. Do you believe that? RUSH: John in Houston. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello. CALLER: Hey, Rush! Mega dittos from the great state of Texas. Listened to you for many years, and it's so funny I get through on a day that I disagree with you on this one issue. RUSH: Yeah? CALLER: I'm open... I'm I will open to your ideas and changing me. The only thing I would like that B.O. has done so far is given those Navy SEALs the authorization to shoot the pirates. So I'm not a supporter of his. BUT the pay czar is limiting the compensation of the CEOs who have received my tax dollars. So I understand the overall principle you're saying, that it's a bad thing for the government to get into this business of regulating who can make what. I don't agree with that overall. But in these specifics instances, what's wrong with it? RUSH: Well, there's a practical reality to all of this, and that is: Despite what you think of these people, they are the best and brightest at what they do and they're going to go elsewhere. They're going to elsewhere. They're going to leave the country to find jobs elsewhere. They're not going to sit and put up with this. You know, we can go on and on and on about "my tax dollars bailed them out." You know, 1.4 trillion of our tax dollars don't even exist and they're spending it! Look, I understand the mixed feelings. Central Planning fascists shouldn't have anything to say about private sector compensation. That's a given. But these firms took money from central planners. (I really would like to know how many of them voted for Obama.) But here's the thing. Every business in the country can now see what happens when you make a deal with the devil, when you get in bed with the snake. You end up selling your soul. These companies are now screwed, John! They are screwed, which is the design here. The Obama administration... This is fascism: They're still private owned but they're being run by who? Not even Obama, we're told. The freaking pay czar, who doesn't even have to tell Obama what he's doing! So he doesn't have to stop at the execs. He can limit the pay of the janitors. He can limit the pay of anybody he wants -- and pretty soon, it's going to spread beyond companies that took TARP money. These people who put their companies on the hook are gonna get the hell out, and the second-teamers will step in and run things into the ground in partnership with the government that intends to take over these businesses. The unintended consequences here are things that you need to look at. It's tempting to say, "Those are my tax dollars. They took my tax dollars and they paid themselves big bonuses! It's about time we got the tax dollars back!" You're not going to get the tax dollars, pal. Obama is taking them back, Obama is stealing people's work. Go talk to Ken Lewis who runs Bank of America. They are retracting; they are taking back his entire 2009 salary, the whole thing! Not 90%. All $2.3 million of it. Now, class envy has been practiced so well by the Democrats and a lot of the country is cheering about this. But it's not helping anybody's life. It's not improving anybody's circumstance. I'll tell you who I feel for here, John. There are shareholders of these companies. People like you who have invested in these companies, not with your tax dollars but with your after-tax dollars. Our government has taken advantage of a financial crisis they created. They're destroying firms, they're destroying jobs, destroying wealth, and they don't need to be applauded for it! RUSH: Look, folks, I'm going to have a lot more to say about this as soon as we get back in the monologue segment of the next hour. But would you people please stop and think what you're saying? So you pay taxes and you think you can dictate pay for firms? You pay taxes, and that allows you to support people who want to take over private business? Do you get to tell Walmart how much it pays people simply because you go in there and buy a damn pair of flip-flops every other day? Folks, you gotta wake up here. This is absurd. 16) As Obama Approval Plummets, His State-Run Media Targets Us: As Obama Approval Drops, Politico Focuses On Talk Radio RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2368902/posts?page=5#5 October 22, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: What's happening here, folks, is Obama's numbers are tanking. The Gallup poll. It is devastating what the Gallup survey shows. "Obama quarterly approval average slips nine points to 53%. Now, forget the number of 53%, because I don't think it's that high. I don't think he's got that. I don't think over half the country approves of the job he's doing. "In Gallup daily tracking that spans Obama's third quarter in office, July 20th through October 19th, the president averaged a 53% job approval rating, which is down sharply from his prior quarterly averages which were both above 60%. In fact, the nine-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term dating back to 1953. One president who was not elected in his first term, Harry Truman, had a 13-point drop between his second and third quarters in office in 1945 and 1946. More generally, Obama's nine-point slide between the quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first years in office." So his numbers are tanking. The media is doing everything it can to cover for him and his party. The fact is millions of people have gone from indifference or even support for Obama to outright opposition. It is out there, it is effervescing, it is bubbling up. The media is not covering it but you know and I know it is out there. There used to be indifference. There used to be moderate support. It has given way to outright opposition. All over this country -- in every city, every demographic you want to talk about -- Obama's policies are very unpopular because they require the bankrupting of the country. They undermine the Constitution. And his staff is extremely radical. The staff reflects his own belief system. He is his staff, he is his czars. All this baloney about how far out of the mainstream traditional conservatives are? The fact is we can see all around us that it is Obama and his administration and his party and his supporters in and out of the media who have lost the confidence of the public. The public doesn't trust the media. The public does not trust Obama. The public does not trust the czars. The public does not trust Congress. The public basically does not trust its government anymore. And yet, Politico is out with its second installment today (summarized): "Oh, yeah. It's conservatives causing the problems the Republican Party! The Republican Party is meeting in secret to find out what they can do about Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity and Levin. Oh, no!" The country's falling apart. We have nothing to do with it. We are the ones championing liberty and freedom, free markets. We are the ones trying to save this country and wake the American people up, those who are still asleep at the switch here and alert them as to what is really happening. And of course it's natural that we would be attacked. It's natural that we would be targeted by the aiders and abettors in the media of the Obama presidency. So they're now meeting in secret. They've created an enemies list. They are using tax dollars and the law to destroy certain companies and industries all for the purpose of appointing their cronies to head them -- and Politico is concerned about us. The Drive-By Media is obsessed with us. We are said to be the greatest threat to the future of the Republican Party. At this point, folks, I couldn't care less about the Republican Party, particularly when you look at the candidate they are supporting, Dede Scozzafava up at the 23rd District of New York. Frankly, folks, our focus is not on the Republican Party. Our focus is trying to save the country, save the country as it was founded. And there is a lot of hope in that regard. The Heritage Foundation today talks about the vote in the Senate yesterday: "You have to read all the way to page A-25 in today's New York Times to learn about it, but the Senate took its first floor vote on Obamacare yesterday and the White House lost. Big. The NYT reports: 'Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors...'" They tried to bribe the doctors and people wouldn't go along with it. "Yesterday's vote marks a significant failure of the Left's special interest approach to passing Obamacare. From the beginning, the White House thought that if it bought off all of the business interests involved (the American Medical Association, the drug industry, health insurers, hospitals, etc.) opposition to the plan would wither. "In one sense, the plan worked. USA Today reports PhRMA, Pfizer, America's Health Insurance Plans, and the Federation of American Hospitals have all ponied up millions of dollars for lobbying and television ads in support of Obamacare. But all these special interest television ads failed to rid Americans of their common sense objections to Obamacare's government takeover of health care." Read all about it at the Heritage Foundation. The American people have told Gallup they want to see Congress move in the opposite direction they're currently moving on health care. This was a big failure for the Democrats, a big failure for their strategy, a big failure for their tactics. They'll be back, but it was a huge failure. 17) Stupak: If No Pro-Life Amendment, 'About 40 Likeminded Democrats' Will Vote To Kill Health Bill CNSNews http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56023 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2369627/posts?page=47#47 October 23, 2009 Terence P. Jeffrey Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Mich.) told CNSNews.com yesterday that he has organized a group of "about 40 likeminded Democrats" who will vote to kill the health-care bill if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) does not allow a floor vote on his amendment to prohibit federal funds from going to insurance plans that cover abortion. Under Stupak's plan, the approximately 40 Democrats in his camp would join with all House Republicans in voting to defeat the special House "rule" that would set the terms for debating and amending the health-care bill on the House floor when it is brought up for a final vote. If a majority of the House does not first vote to approve this rule, the health-care bill itself cannot be brought to the floor. "We will try to-we, there's about 40 likeminded Democrats like myself-we'll try to take down the rule," Stupak told CNSNews.com. "If all 40 of us vote in a bloc against the rule-because we think the Republicans will join us-we can defeat the rule. The magic number is 218. If we can have 218 votes against the rule, we win." "If you hold all 40 of your guys, how many votes do you have?" asked CNSNews.com. "About 220," said Stupak. "So, you've got a two-vote margin there?" asked CNSNews.com "Correct," said Stupak. If Stupak's bloc of Democrats holds together against a rule, Stupak said, "They cannot bring the bill to the floor." Stupak's amendment was defeated by a vote of 28 to 30 in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, when that committee was drafting its version of the health-care bill. Stupak's serves on the committee and is chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Stupak said that House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter (D.-N.Y.) has told him there is "no way" her committee will write a rule that allows a floor vote on his amendment. The Democratic majority on the Rules Committee, Stupak said, acts on the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The health care bill approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee creates health insurance "exchanges" in each state. These "exchanges" would sell government-approved health insurance plans. The bill would also provide federal subsidies to people making up to 400 percent of the poverty level to use when buying insurance plans in the exchange. The committee approved an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D.-Calif.) that would require that there be at least one health care plan in each exchange that covers abortions. People would be able to buy these abortion-covering insurance plans with federal subsidies, although they would also be required to pay an extra premium of at least $1 to theoretically pay for the abortion part of their coverage. Stupak and other pro-lifers-including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops--argue that money is fungible and that any federal funds going to an insurance plan that covers abortions is in fact a federal subsidy of abortion. Stupak's amendment--which mirrors the language of the Hyde amendment that is incorporated each year into various appropriations bills including the Health and Human Services appropriation--would prohibit federal funds from paying for any part of a health plan that covers abortions. Stupak told CNSNews.com that although he has about 40 votes now to kill the rule for the health-care bill if Speaker Pelosi does not allow a floor vote on his amendment, he said that situation could change when the rule is brought to the floor and the voting on it actually takes place. When the vote is going on, Stupak said, the Democratic leadership will "twist arms" and try to persuade the 40 would-be defectors to fall back in line with the party. There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The Democrats hold 256 of these seats, the Republicans hold 177, and there are two vacancies--which will be filled in special elections held on Tuesday, Nov. 3. One of those vacancies is in the California district that was represented by Democrat Ellen Tauscher before she was appointed undersecretary of state for arms control and international security by President Obama. The other is in the upstate New York district that was represented by Republican Rep. John McHugh, who was named by President Obama as secretary of the army. CNSNews.com asked Speaker Pelosi on Friday whether she would allow a vote on Stupak's amendment when the health care bill comes up on the floor. "We're just finishing our conferencing on this legislation," said Pelosi. "We haven't even gone through the procedure as to what we'll do on the floor, if there even are any amendments on the floor." "We will have legislation that will be, I think, compatible with the thinking of our members who have this concern," she said. Here is a video of the complete interview with Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Mich): Here is a partial transcript of CNSNews.com interview with Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Mich.): Jeffrey: Assuming that the course we're on now continues and Congresswomen Slaughter does not allow a vote on your amendment [in] the rule-the rule [that must be approved] before the actual health-care bill that Speaker Pelosi presents to the House can be voted on--the House will have to vote on the rule itself setting the terms of debate-- Stupak: Correct. Jeffrey: What are you going to do then? Stupak: We will try to-we, there's about 40 likeminded Democrats like myself-we'll try to take down the rule. If all 40 of us vote in a bloc against the rule-because we think the Republicans will join us-we can defeat the rule. The magic number is 218. If we can have 218 votes against the rule, we win. Jeffrey: If you hold all 40 of your guys how many votes do you have? Stupak: About 220. Jeffrey: So, you've got a two-vote margin there. Stupak: Correct. Jeffrey: So, you hold those 40, the rule comes up, they have a vote on the rule itself, 220 congressman vote against it, and 215 vote for it, then you win, and they cannot move forward to the health care bill. Stupak: They cannot bring the bill to the floor. 18) Voters Trust Republicans More On 10 Top Issues Rasmussen Reports http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369467/posts 10/23/09 For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them. Republicans have nearly doubled their lead over Democrats on economic issues to 49% to 35%, after leading by eight points in September. The GOP also holds a 54% to 31% advantage on national security issues and a 50% to 31% lead on the handling of the war in Iraq. But voters are less sure which party they trust more to handle government ethics and corruption, an issue that passed the economy in voter importance last month. Thirty-three percent (33%) trust Republicans more while 29% have more confidence in Democrats. Another 38% are undecided. Last month, the parties were virtually tied on the issue. A recent Rasmussen Reports video report finds that voters are more disappointed lately with Obama's performance in dealing with corruption in Washington. Among unaffiliated voters who see ethics as the most important issue, 26% trust the GOP more while 23% trust Democrats more. Most (51%) are not sure which party they trust. On the highly contentious issue of health care, voters now give the edge to Republicans 46% to 40%. The parties tied on the issue last month, after Republicans took the lead on it for the first time in August. Separate polling released today shows 49% of voters nationwide say that passing no health care reform bill this year would be better than passing the plan currently working its way through Congress. Most voters (54%) oppose the health care reform plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats, but 42% are in favor of it. On taxes, Republicans are now ahead of Democrats 50% to 35%, nearly doubling their September lead on the issue. Prior to July, the percentage of voters who trusted the GOP more on taxes never reached 50%. It has done so three times since then. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters say cutting the federal budget deficit in half in the next four years should be the Obama administration's top priority, while 23% say health care reform is most important. Republicans are down to a seven-point lead on immigration after enjoying a 13-point advantage last month. Recent polling shows that 56% think the policies of the federal government encourage people to enter the United States illegally. Voters trust Republicans more on Social Security by a 45% to 37% margin, after the GOP trailed Democrats by two points on the issue in the last survey. The president is proposing a one-time $250 payment to seniors who for the first time in years won't be getting a cost of living increase in their Social Security checks because inflation's down. While half of voters support this idea, they are more skeptical when told how much it will cost. Republicans lead on the issue of education 43% to 38%. Last month Democrats had a five-point lead. Voters also trust Republicans more on the handling of abortion 47% to 35%. The GOP advantage over Democrats increased from two points to five in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-two percent (42%) would vote for their district's Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. But 73% of GOP voters nationwide think Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their voting base. 19) America's Obama Obsession - Anatomy Of A Passing Hysteria National Review http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzYzZTY2ZmM1MjFmNGU3MjhmZmIxZjJmOTNiYjU0ZDg= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369401/posts 10-23-09 Victor Davis Hanson For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been. HOW OBAMA WON Barack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn. 1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic - and African-American. He thus offered voters a sense of personal and collective redemption, as well as appealing to the longing for another JFK New Frontier figure. An image, not necessarily reality, trumped all. 2) After the normal weariness with eight years of an incumbent party and the particular unhappiness with Bush, the public was amenable to an antithesis. Bush was to be scapegoat, and Obama the beginning of the catharsis. 3) Obama ran as both a Clintonite centrist and a no-red-state/no-blue-state healer who had transcended bitter partisanship. That assurance allowed voters to believe that his occasional talk of big change was more cosmetic than radical. 4) John McCain ran a weak campaign that neither energized his base nor appealed to crossover independents. McCain turned off conservatives; many failed to give money, and some even stayed home on election day. Meanwhile, the media and centrists who used to idolize McCain's non-conservative, maverick status found Obama the more endearing non-conservative maverick. 5) The September 2008 financial panic turned voters off Wall Street and the wealthy, and allowed them to connect unemployment and their depleted home equity and 401(k) retirement plans with incumbent Republicans. In contrast, they assumed that Obama, as the anti-Bush, would not do more bailouts, more stimuli, and more big borrowing. Take away any one of those factors, and Obama might well have lost. Imagine what might have happened had Obama been a dreary old white guy like John Kerry; or had Bush's approvals been over 50 percent; or had Obama run on the platform he is now governing on; or had McCain crafted a dynamic campaign; or had the panic occurred in January 2009 rather than September 2008. Then the trance would have passed, and Obama, the Chicago community organizer and three-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, would have probably lost his chance at remaking America. OBAMA'S ASSUMPTIONS I note all this at length because Obama seems to act as if this right-center country - one that polls oppositely to his positions on most of the major issues (deficits, spending, nationalized health care, homeland security, Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, etc.) - has given him a mandate for a degree of change not seen in nearly 80 years. Apparently, Team Obama figured that with sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate, Obama would snap his fingers, Congress daily would pass bills redefining America, and Obama would stay in perpetual campaign mode to hope and change the country to accept his agenda. Governing would be like campaigning, as audiences fainted hearing the details of a 1,500-page health-care bill or of ever more sins from America's past. But, after just a few months in office, that proved not to be the case. Just as a number of planets had to line up precisely to allow an inexperienced hard-left ideologue to be elected president, so there would have had to be a similar configuration to allow him to govern successfully. BITTER TRUTHS 1) Obama had to match his unity rhetoric with brotherly action. In fact, he has done the opposite. At one time or another, Obama and his supporters have, rather scurrilously, insulted doctors, insurers, the police, tea-partiers and town-hallers, opponents of his health-care plan, non-compliant members of the media, and a host of other groups as either greedy, dishonest, treasonous, unpatriotic, moblike, racist, or in general worthy of disrespect. Fewer and fewer Americans now believe that Obama - after just nine months of governance - is a uniter. In Obama's world, doctors carve out children's tonsils for profit, racist morons rant at legislators about losing their private health care, and trillions in borrowed money must be paid back by the greedy rich whose capital was unearned in the first place. When his base supporters lambaste him for softness, they are lamenting his inability to become an effective partisan - not a lack of partisanship in general. In surreal fashion, liberals demand that the ideologue Obama become more ideological precisely at the time his ideologically driven agenda is souring millions of non-ideological Americans. 2) His opposition is no longer ossified, but decentralized and grass roots. One of the oddest proofs of that statement is the sudden leftist furor at tea parties, town halls, the media, dissent, and free speech. As long as Obama was opposed by calcified Republicans in Congress, there was no real danger to him. But once the opposition proved populist, panicked liberal elites started demonizing populism - and Obama now finds himself opposed to the popular grievance-mongering that was once the mother's milk of our Chicago organizer's existence. 3) Obama campaigned on the notion that even if voters might not like his policies, they most assuredly would like him. Even that spell is now lifting. The more the American public gets to know Barack Obama, the less they find him appealing. On matters racial, their campaign-season unease with his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his toss-offs like "typical white person," and his stereotyping of rural Pennsylvanians has not been allayed; rather, it has been amplified by Eric Holder's Justice Department, Obama's own statement that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in arresting Professor Gates, and the use of the race card by prominent Democrats from the likes of Rep. Charles Rangel to Gov. David Paterson of New York. Much of the newly stirred public suddenly assumes two things from the Obama administration: that the president himself will periodically say something racially insensitive or unwise; and that his supporters will call opponents of his policies racist. If we have wearied of all that in nine months, think what four years of it will do to the public mood. In just nine months the phrase "Chicago style" has gone from something old-time that evokes Al Capone or Mayor Daley to something very real, contemporary, and scary - as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and others try to strong-arm the opposition, demonize the media, and manipulate government largesse to either penalize or reward recipients on the basis of their degree of support for Obama. Could the most imaginative right-wing political operative have invented the idea of a National Endowment for the Arts official gleefully considering quid pro quo grants, administration officials trying to persuade other media outlets that a network critical of Obama is "not a news organization," or an administration communications director bragging about how her team sandbagged the American media and took them to the cleaners? We can believe there might be one statement like Van Jones's slander of "white people," or Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" boast, or Anita Dunn's lengthy praise of the mass-murdering Mao, but not an entire series of them. At some point, the American public snaps out of it, and sighs, "Wow, these people really are nuts!" 4) "Bush Did it" was the IV drip of the Obama campaign, always there to infuse a fresh life-saving excuse into every Obama fainting spell. But the problem now is that it has been more than nine months since Bush left office, and Obama's "mop up" metaphors are getting stale. Worse still, the reasons the public soured on Bush are precisely the reasons it may well sour more on Obama, inasmuch as he took Bush's problems like deficits, soaring federal spending, bailouts, and unemployment and made them far worse. Yet Obama has given no credit for the good that Bush did, and therefore must remain mum about the other "Bush Did It"s, like quiet in Iraq; the homeland-security protocols, from renditions and tribunals to wiretaps and intercepts; AIDS relief for Africa; friendly governments in Britain, France, Germany, India, and Italy; and domestic safety since 9/11. If Bush is at least partly responsible for all these things as well, were they therefore bad? NOW WHAT? Obama very soon is going to have to make a tough choice, far tougher than his current "present" votes on the option of sending additional troops to Afghanistan. As the midterm elections near, and his popularity bobs up and down around 50 percent, Obama can do one of two things. He could imitate Bill Clinton's 1995 Dick Morris remake. In Obama's case, that would mean, abroad, cutting out the now laughable apologies for his country, ceasing to court thugs like Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Putin, keeping some distance from the U.N., and paying closer attention to our allies like Britain and Israel. At home, he could declare victory on his sidetracked agenda and then start over by holding spending in line, curbing the deficit, stopping the lunatic Van Jones-style czar appointments, courting the opposition, and tabling cap-and-trade. I think there is very little chance of any of the above, whatever voters may have thought during the campaign. Or, instead, Obama could hold the pedal to the floor on the theory that, as a proven ideologue, he must move the country far left before the voters catch on and stop him in his tracks in November 2010. That would mean more of the "gorge the beast" effort to spend and borrow so much that taxes have to soar, and thus redistribution of income will be institutionalized for a generation. He would push liberal proposals no matter how narrow the margin in the Senate. He would keep demonizing Fox News. In Nixonian fashion he might continue to hit the stump, ratcheting up his current "they're lying" message and energizing his left-wing base by catering to the unions, gays, minorities - and liberal Wall Street special interests. If he chooses the former, he might well be a more successful version of Bill Clinton given that his appetites are far more in check. But if, as is likely, he chooses the latter, he will polarize the country in a way not seen since 1968, set back racial relations to the 1960s, do to the reputation of big government what LBJ did from 1964 to 1968, and, in the manner of what Jimmy Carter wrought, turn voters off liberal foreign policy for a generation. 20) The Death Of The House Bill National Review http://healthcare.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWY3NDMwOWY1ZDg3YTE2OWU2Njg0Yjg2MzhmNjdiNTc= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369248/posts 10/23/2009 James Capretta In July, the president and the Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives argued that the time for analysis and debate was over and that the House should pass its version of health-care reform before the August recess. Now, just three months later, House Democrats are saying that the bill they were in such a hurry to pass during the summer is old news and irrelevant. What matters now, they assert, is their "new and improved" version of reform, which they promise will be much better and easier to pass. Of course, they aren't sufficiently confident in its virtues to open it up to public scrutiny just yet. No, they assert the bill will be different even though the legislative plan is clearly going to be just as it was in July. House Democrats are hoping to unveil their updated version of Obamacare as close as possible to a vote, probably in November, so that there is no time for public opposition to stop it. It might work. But then again, that's what they tried to do with version 1.0. The original bill was made available on July 14 with the intention of having a vote in the full House on July 31. That strategy failed miserably because it took just a few days for the public to figure out that what House Democrats were pushing represented far more governmental control of health care than the public was comfortable with. Momentum toward passage dwindled. Now even the original sponsors of the House bill are walking away from it. On Wednesday, Representative Pete Stark (D.-California), the chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, responded to a new and devastating analysis of the original House bill (as passed by the Ways and Means Committee on July 17) by saying that it is beside the point. House leaders are constructing a new version, so the new analysis is "out-of-date relative to what will ultimately be voted on in the House," Representative Stark said. The analysis in question was conducted by the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Given what it says, it's understandable that Representative Stark would now disown the bill he helped write. Here are some of the findings: - Total national health spending would increase by $750 billion over the next decade. (So much for "bending the cost curve.") - The overall cost of the House bill will be $1.2 trillion over the period between 2010 and 2019. By 2019, the annual cost of the entitlement expansions would be $236 billion, rising at a rate of 9 percent annually. After all this spending, there would still be 23 million uninsured residents in 2019. - The president's signature initiatives to slow the pace of rising costs - comparative effectiveness research, prevention and wellness efforts, and payment changes in Medicare - won't work as advertised. The savings are almost non-existent. - The cuts in Medicare Advantage plans would result in "less generous benefit packages" for millions of seniors. The actuaries estimate the House's Medicare Advantage cuts, which are unlikely to change in any new version of the bill, would force about 8.5 million seniors out of the coverage they would prefer and back into the traditional program. (So much for "keeping the coverage you have today.") - Democratic proposals to impose arbitrary, across-the-board payment rate cuts for hospitals, nursing homes, and home health agencies based on presumed "productivity gains" are unlikely to work as planned. The actuaries suggest that some institutions won't be able to hit the targets because health care is more labor intensive than other sectors of the economy. Consequently, the cuts could force some organizations to leave the Medicare program, thus "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries." In recent days, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her "leadership aides" have let it be known to reporters that they have gotten more favorable reviews of their updated bill from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). According to press accounts, the new bill, which is not available to the public, comes in under $900 billion and will cut the federal budget deficit for two decades. From a process standpoint, CBO should never allow members of Congress to characterize the findings of confidential cost estimates without consequences. Undoubtedly, CBO staff is told not to share its analysis with anyone until the bill is unveiled. But if House leaders decide to go public with CBO's apparent bottom line, CBO really should be obligated to go public with the entire analysis to ensure no misunderstanding. Otherwise CBO's findings can be distorted. House Democrats are trying to build momentum again toward passage by creating the impression they have found a painless way to turn their budget-busting bill from July into one that actually cuts the deficit. It's CBO's job to make sure no one gets away with this kind of phony free-lunch argument. If in fact a new version of the House bill reduces the federal budget deficit over two decades, someone is paying. Who? Here's betting that's it's the American middle class. And as soon as that becomes known, the new updated House bill is likely to become just as unpopular as the now dead and buried old one. 21) Mister Tough Guy: Who Are The Real "Untouchables" Here? National Review http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmZhNDExNGE3YWQwZDZmZDg2ZTBhNGFjNTQ5MWRiZjQ= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369982/posts 10/24/2009 Mark Steyn Benjamin Disraeli's most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: "Never complain and never explain." For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln, and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on Orating with the Stars, Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it's time to sign on or else. Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these "racists" and "domestic terrorists" obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can't seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international-awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it's not his fault he "inherited" all these problems. And, if you wonder why his "green jobs" czar is a Communist 9/11 truther and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News. The most recent whine - the anti-Fox campaign - is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House website runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest 'Truth-O-Meter.'" It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week's president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn't doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies. George W. Bush: Remember him? Of course, you do. He's the guy who's to blame for everything, and still will be midway through Obama's second term. It turns out he's in exile abroad. Presumably he jumped bail and snuck across the border on the roof of a box car. But, anyway, he was giving a speech in Saskatoon. That's a town in Saskatchewan. And Saskatchewan's a province in Canada apparently. And in the course of his glittering night playing the Saskatoon circuit, he was asked about media criticism of him, and he told the . . . Saskatoonistanies? Saskatchewannabees? Whatever. He told them the attacks never bothered him although his dad used to get upset: "He'd read the editorial pages, he'd watch the nightly news, and I didn't. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?" That attitude, while raising a bunch of other issues, is psychologically healthier. If you're going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded on Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the "pay czar." Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: "Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots." For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama's boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it's time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi - or else. At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he'd been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don't know why he'd be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the "community organized" precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the communications director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao's China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite "political philosopher." So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel, and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from The Untouchables - "the Chicago way," don't bring a knife to a gun fight - and, given the "pay czar"'s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it's easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the community organizer. The trouble is it isn't tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real "Untouchables" here? In Moscow, it's Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary Clinton) they're still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it's Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use "soft power" and "smart diplomacy" to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama's soft power is so soft it doesn't even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders' very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama's "smart diplomacy" is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention? The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever-cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander-in-chief look like a weenie - like "President Pantywaist," as Britain's Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him. The Chicago way? Don't bring a knife to a gun fight? In Iran, this administration won't bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won't bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won't bring a knife to a machete fight. But, if you're doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy's got your number. 22) Obama's Vindictive And Personal War On Unbiased News Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/FloydandMaryBethBrown/2009/10/23/obamas_vindictive_and_personal_war_on_unbiased_news http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369926/posts October 23, 2009 Floyd & Mary Beth Brown By launching coordinated, fully-blown warfare on Fox News, as is their style, the Obama administration is stopping far beneath the dignity of the office of president. The recent round of attacks became particularly intense as White House communications staff, senior advisors, and even the president himself each took their turns at lobbing potshots at the top cable news station. This conflict began brewing during the presidential campaign with Obama cracking jokes and complaining about Fox News, continued through the early months of his presidency, and then increased their momentum to reach the unprecedented crescendo of the recent bombardments. The first new round of shots was fired when Obama visited five Sunday morning shows in one day, including the big networks, CNN, and Univision, but clearly neglecting to appear on the leading cable news station, Fox. The real battle began on October 12, when Communications Director Anita Dunn defined Fox News as "a wing of the Republican Party" then mocked and belittled it by saying, "But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." She continued her diatribe by calling Fox News "opinion journalism masquerading as news." This statement is most ironic given that CNN dubbed legitimate tea party protesters "tea baggers" and whose own reporter shouted down protesters, lecturing them about how wonderful Obama's policies are for them. In a recent recording, Dunn brags about how the Obama campaign controlled their message and their media coverage. Evidently, Anita Dunn abhors Fox News because they refuse to be lapdogs like the rest of the media. Dunn pridefully declared that no one from the Obama administration will be appearing on Fox for at least the rest of this year. The attacks intensified when White House senior advisers Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel played their roles by hitting the Sunday talk-show circuit with their disdain for Fox News. They repeated the same prepared lines from the White House, stating that Fox was not a news organization. Evidently Emanuel and other team members are upset that Fox covers newsworthy stories, including ACORN and Van Jones, while the mainstream, liberal media barely mention them. Fox represents a voice they don't control. Consequently, Team Obama is engaging in the tactics of Obama's extremely radical, left-wing mentor, Saul Alinsky, to isolate and discredit them. The assaults sunk to new lows this week when President Obama personally entered the scene. Illustrating just how thin-skinned our commander-in-chief is, he pronounced that Fox News is "operating basically as talk radio," meaning, talk radio allows people to criticize Obama. It is particularly telling when a president stoops to the level of criticizing a news organization, because it reveals how desperate, frightened and threatened he truly feels. The lapdog media have responded as expected to this unprecedented assault on free speech and a news organization. Only Jake Tapper of ABC and Helen Thomas, dean of the press corps, have stood up and argued that the White House is using outlandish, reprehensible tactics. Outside of these two, the lapdog media remain passive and mum. In a column for Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg is even calling for a media boycott of Fox News, claiming that the organization is "Un-American." The hypocrisy and double standard displayed by these media types is truly unbelievable. If Bush or a Republican candidate for office had ever criticized MSNBC and declared it to be a wing of the Democratic Party, the criticism would never end. The worst hypocrite of all is Keith Olbermann. In 2008, White House Counsel Ed Gillespie sent a letter to the president of NBC accusing the network of selectively editing Bush's answers to distort the president's position. Olbermann later blasted Gillespie in his "Worst Person in the World" segment, accusing Gillespie of "whining like a high school sophomore." What is Olbermann doing now? He is out front cheerleading the Obama administration's attacks on Fox and attended a meeting with Obama this week in a summit for fellow liberal influencers including Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson and Maureen Dowd. Lapdog Olbermann the Doberman is an outspoken bigot, evidenced by his own words: "Mr. Bush, shut the hell up!" "You're a fascist! Get them to print a T-shirt with the word 'fascist' on it!" "George W. Bush is 'psychotic' with 'blood on his hands,'" and calls the GOP the greatest terrorist threat in America. The liberal double standard is out in full force. Thankfully, Americans are ignoring President Obama's pettiness and attacks by tuning into Fox for the unbiased story in record numbers. The American people know bias when they see it, and they want to know the truth. 23) Polling Polls: Americans Independent And Irate Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/SalenaZito/2009/10/25/polling_polls_americans_independent_and_irate http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2370434/posts October 25, 2009 Salena Zito A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are undergoing rapidly changing attitudes. RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress is doing. Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan. The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from Democrat policies. "Independents have flipped negative," warns Bevan, who mans the polls for a living. "That's not a good thing for any party." You need to look no further than the data coming out of the first gubernatorial races since the Democrats took control of Washington to identify voter angst and ire. Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia appear to be heading in different directions but are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. In Virginia, a state that swung first in 2006 to Democrat Jim Webb in his Senate race then further to Obama in 2008, Republican Bob McDonnell is leading Democrat Creigh Deeds by wider margins with each new poll. In New Jersey -- a state that has been Democratic for years (the last time the state went for the GOP presidential candidate was in 1988) - the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon Corzine, continues to average about 40 percent of the vote, while his Republican challenger Chris Christie has fallen more than six points in the past two weeks. The beneficiary of Christie's descent has been Chris Daggett, an independent who is winning support in the double digits. "What do these phenomena have in common?" says Villanova political science professor Lara Brown. "In two words: disillusionment and disgust." Americans, particularly registered and likely voters are disillusioned and disgusted with both political parties and their candidates, who seem to be over-promising, under-delivering, asking for too much, and taking advantage of their positions, explains Brown. Americans are simply worn out by inflated rhetoric and the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" existence of the Washington insiders who just a few months ago said they were outsiders. Voters are left wondering what happened to the candidates they voted for? The voters thought their candidates were avengers -- people who were going to clean-up Washington's corrupt culture, stop partisan bickering and remove those bad Wall Street titans who retained their fat bonuses only because taxpayers bailed out their companies. Recent polls show Americans are simply fed up: - A CNN poll last week suggests that most people no longer agree with Obama "on the issues that matter most to them." - Rasmussen's numbers show that 31 percent "think Congress has a poor understanding of the health care proposal," down four points from August (which, if you recall the summer town hall meetings, was not a high point for congressional approval). Worse, according the poll, only 18 percent "think the (health care) plan will be a bipartisan effort." - Another Rasmussen poll shows only 49 percent "think that the economy will be stronger in five years than it is today." - Most Americans are "very concerned" about the economy and 60 percent "think the economic conditions are getting worse," a new Gallup poll shows. Adding to these fears is Iran and its apparent move toward developing nuclear arms (or at least, according to CNN, "9 in 10 Americans" think they are) and we don't seem able to either stop or even (as was promised) talk to them. Add to that Afghanistan, which people think is spiraling out of control. And few Americans seem to understand the President's unwillingness to sit down, focus on the issue and make a decision. It is as though they are wondering, "Why is he in motion all the time, and does he ever actually sit at the Oval Office desk to work - like the rest of us?" Add to this, the embarrassing scandals and all-too "typical" allegations of corruption and partisan politics: Tax problems for Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY; questionable loans for Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn; and adulterous liaisons for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, and Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Further, only 39 percent of GOPers have a favorable impression of their party chair, Michael Steele, with other polls suggesting that Americans feel like the Republicans are merely "obstructionists." The White House simply added insult to injury with is fight with Fox News. What happened to the days when presidential administrations stayed above the media fray? Most people are wondering how the White House can even bother to think about this "issue" when it has so many other important matters at hand. "When you look at all of these things, it is no great surprise that the thousands of Tea Party activists haven't embraced any one political party and that Glenn Beck's anti-administration, small-government, pro-individual freedom tirade continues to draw some of the highest ratings of all three cable news networks," observes Brown. What does all of this portend? Very possibly, a Ross Perot-moment, or the emergence of someone who is going to come forward with serious charts and serious language that angry Americans will see as authentic, rather than the glitz and glamour of the sales pitch of "hope and change." 24) Obamadrama American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/the_slander_network.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2370386/posts October 25, 2009 James Lewis Don't be deceived by the honeyed baritone voice and big smile. Bluffs, bully plays, and head fakes are the means by which President Obama tries to get his way. He learned the technique from Saul Alinsky. The best answer is to use Alinsky against them. We know their rule book, and we can use their rules just as well as they can. The aggressor sets the rules. Obama constantly uses Alinsky's principle of head-faking: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." For Obama, "the enemy" is us, the American people. We have to understand -- that's the way they use the language. Read Alinsky's Rules for Radicals if you don't believe it. We are the enemy. Obama is head-faking us all the time. He is a big bully. He will use Styrofoam Greek columns, speeches in Berlin, ridiculous Nobel PC Prizes, whatever piece of political opera he thinks he can get away with. You have to remember that Obama always starts out acting a part. Any relationship he has to reality is purely coincidental. But when he runs into real resistance, as with Putin, Ahmadinejad, or Israel, he backs off. He's running constant bully plays. He's like a third-rate basketball player who is just trying to fake out the other to cover up his lack of athletic talent. Conservatives are firmly based in reality. Liberals start out from fantasy. This president has learned to play out a bully fantasy to sucker his liberal voters in Chicago -- but then he runs into a brick wall and gets a bloody nose. Like a professional actor he can also drop the act. He'll be very hurt and insulted if we believe him for what he is, but that for the next sucker play. We have to make him drop all the head fakes. The only way is to do that is to firmly resist his head-fake, and to head-fake him back. Obama is constantly pretending to have power that he doesn't have. It's obvious: Cut salaries 90%. Does Obama have that power? No. It's a head-fake. The executives who are getting the supposed 90% salary cut should not resign. That's what Obama wants. So if the threatened executives resign they are just giving in to a head-fake. The Gang from Chicago is like any thugocracy: They do most of their work by fear and intimidation. That way they don't have to take any risks themselves. So the executives and their firms should just sue the Feds immediately, and appeal any illegal demand they receive, oral or written, to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. They should run commercials. They should go on the Glenn Beck Show. Conservative radio is there, eager to hear from them. And just go to the highest court in the land that will hear the case, and put all the thug behavior on the public record. If the liberal media don't cover it, the conservative media will. It'll get out there, and Obama will retreat as fast as he can run. Take another example of the latest outrageous PR bluff. According to several Obama Faces, everybody has to stop watching Fox News and listening to Rush. Can Obama enforce that? Not a chance in hell. He isn't even fool enough to think he can. He's just putting the bluff out there to see who is going to get intimidated. The Soviets did exactly the same thing in the world power game. So does Putin today. So does Ahmadinejad. It's what bullies do. Obama's Alinsky Rules are Bully Rules. A last example: Obama is pretending he can control all the medical care in this country. Does he have that power? Not if we resist it. Sixty percent of the voters hate the whole idea of Mob-o-Care. Eighty or ninety percent of us are happy with our medical care. The whole thing is a fraud, a head-fake, a scam, a bully play. Every sane person who is expecting to get old someday is going to hate Mob-o-Care. Every sick person will hate it, because they will no longer be able to trust their doctor to take decisions that are in their best medical interest. Death Panels are for real, even if they are called the NICE Committee, as the British National Health Service calls its rationing committee. In typical Orwellian fashion, the NICE committee is the extreme opposite of nice. They tell you how long the State will pay for you to live. Just read the daily horror stories about denial of medical treatment in the British press. As soon as Obama's taxes start to bite, as soon as the voters get scared and feel ignored by those maniacs in DC, the voters will have their revenge. That's what happened after Jimmy Carter's Leftward Lurch. It happened to Walter Mondale before he even got stated. It happened to Bill Clinton with the Gingrich Congress in 1994. It will happen to Obama, which is why is in such a big panic right now to drive the scam through now, now, now. Well, the answer is to call their bluff on it, now, now, now. The Democrats in Congress are running scared, and we should use Alinsky's head-fake against them. We can legally tell them: They are out of a job. Now. We want them out. We will mobilize the vote against them in 2010, a midterm election when normal people tend to vote a lot more and Leftie victim groups vote a lot less. Let's throw out Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, Arlen Spector, and plenty of other Democrats in the House and Senate. We will give them a another real Gingrich Congress with a vengeance. (A peaceful, legal, political vengeance, but a very painful one for the politicians who get crushed in the process. No more fat jobs for them. We can fire them, and discredit them. Elections are opportunities to rebel against the abuse of power, and that's what we are now seeing every day. Tell them this is going to hurt them just as much as it hurts us.) And we will fire the Leftie media in the process. Turn off all those alphabet channels. You don't need them. Turn on Fox News, and Rush and Beck. Put your money where your vote is. Stop using Google and start using Scroogle. (Really.) And we will pass State laws to stop tenured radicals from politically indoctrinating innocent kids into Marxism. If they indoctrinate their tenure gets stopped. Get all politics out of the classroom. And that includes LGBT propaganda. Tell them we are going to elect Sarah Palin President -- because she scares the pants off those people. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's that big moose gun she has. Maybe it's her cheerleader personality. Maybe it's her good looks. Maybe it's her Reaganite sense of moral conviction. She just scares them silly. So tell them their worst nightmare is going to come true, and then make it so. Use the Alinsky headfake on the enemy. (They started with that word "enemy," and that's what they have made themselves. We are only echoing them. The aggressor sets the rules.) So our first rule is that our power is not only what we have, but what "the enemy" thinks we have. Use what "the enemy" thinks we have. It's safe, legal, fun, and educational. It's the best lesson in civics your kids are ever going to get. There's no rule in American politics that says voters have to be nice. That we can't get tough on the Democrats. It's been done. It will be done again. All it takes is guts and conviction and street smarts. You've got it. Use it. Alinsky's answer: Laugh at the SOBs! Point out how silly they look. How nuts do you have to be to appoint a con artist like Van Jones to your White House? Or that guy Kevin Jennings? Or Sotomayor? Never, never let the Left tell you that you cannot laugh at them. They are fools, and deep down they know it. These people are way, way out of the mainstream of sane America. You know it, I know it, and believe me, they know it, too. That's why they are so desperate to seize all the power they can get right now, before the American people rise up against them in the next election. What they are doing is a gigantic head trip, a gigantic bluff, but they don't hold the aces. They're a bunch of zeroes, and deep down they know that, too. They are the Wizard of Oz -- which was originally written as a political satire, too. They will crumble to pressure, and pressure is what Americans can bring to bear under the United States Constitution. Yes, peaceful, verbal pressure, demonstrations, Tea Parties, logic, reason, and real evidence. You can do it. Convince the world that these scammers don't have the superhuman powers they claim to have. Laugh at the Nobel BS Prize. Laugh at the hula-hoops at the White House. Laugh at the absurdities of their cocksure pretensions. It will drive them nuts. And laugh at the media while you're at it. They have been running a gigantic scam, too, and deep down, they know it. The Obamanoids look scary, but the way an Inuit shaman looks scary --- by going around deliberately spooking the rest of the clan. Shamans used to dress the part, and act it, too. If you can imagine the superstitious and credulous victims who were being spooked -- just like ignorant people today -- all you have to do is call their bluff. These people will yield to firmness, as authoritarians always do. They will dodge and scream to scare us, but then they will yield. If they don't, that's why we have a Supreme Court, and that's why we already have the Democrats running scared about next year's elections. You tell your Democrats exactly how you're going to vote, and the newspapers, and the TV stations, and anybody else. It's Tea Party Time for the Whole US of A. So the Obamanoids are out to intimidate the American people, and they figure the way to do that is to claim superhuman and supra-Constitutional powers, that the Supremes will just have to slap down as soon as possible. That's what happened when FDR tried to do the same thing in the Depression. There has been pushback when liberals overreach. (That includes Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman in some ways, LBJ and Jimmy). Every liberal zig has been followed by a vigorous conservative zag. Plan for the zag to come. The old trial lawyer rule was: If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you don't have the law on your side, pound the table. Obama is just pounding the table. It's like a gorilla threat display, where the big guy just roars and tears off leaves and branches. If the threat works nobody has to fight, so it's an easy win. Gorillas are lazy. But we can pound the table, too. Americans can be tough. Now go and show it. Pick up that phone, send that email, walk down to your Congress critter's office. Be polite but firm. Let them know you care. A lot. 25) A President Of Leisure American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/a_president_of_leisure.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371559/posts October 26, 2009 J.C. Arenas If there has been any question as to how seriously Barack Obama takes his presidency, the mounting evidence is providing an answer. Last week, we discussed the president's permanent campaign and the fact that in nine months in office, he's attended 22 fundraisers -- Bush only participated in six in his first year in office. While Obama has been raising money for Democratic campaigns, he has left a "gone fishing" sign for the leaderless Democrats in Congress. Today, Politico ran a story that discloses that Obama has already played golf as many times in nine months as Bush did in almost three years, but golf isn't his only game of choice. Various media sources have recently covered the president's basketball games at the White House. We already knew that Obama was a sports fan, but the Baller-in-Chief seems to be more concerned with victory on the greens and hardwood than on the battlefield. We've read about the president and first lady's weekend in Chicago - taken while an urgent stimulus package sat on his desk unsigned. We've also looked from the outside in at their nights out in Paris, New York City and failed trip to Copenhagen. But have we read anything about a successful stimulus, recovery in the job market, the passing of any key legislation, or a decision about the war in Afghanistan? Have we been entertained with any stories about how the president's apologizing to the world for our "sins" has helped advance American interests? Anything about how the president's call for nuclear disarmament has changed the minds of rogue nations? No, you won't find any of those stories on the front page. Instead we get fundraising, golf, and basketball. Who would complain if we were talking about Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake in between movies or albums? No one, why? Because neither is the President of the United States. Barack Obama is. Obama is not some celebrity performing artist who can fly around the world in between projects and sip chi-chi's on the beach while he collects royalty checks. Obama is the leader of a nation that is currently engaged in two wars and handicapped by a faltering economy, increasing unemployment, a weakening dollar, and unsustainable debt. Has Obama presented any viable solutions to change the course of any of those problems? No, so you'll have to excuse me for not celebrating another "Yes We Can!" chant at a $30,000/plate fundraiser, his declining handicap, or his improving jump shot. Liberals were incensed over the number of "getaway trips" former President George W. Bush made to his ranch in Crawford. But do you think they will join us in criticizing President Obama's leisure activities? Apparently we need to find something for the president to do, because he has too much time on his hands. Fore! 26) Dismantling America Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/10/27/dismantling_america http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371658/posts October 27, 2009 Thomas Sowell Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones? Does any of this sound like America? How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough. How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries. We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American. How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country. Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people. Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children. Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House? Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world. Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list. Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation. 27) Campaigning For Integrity: An Upstate New York Congressional Candidate Seeks To Right The Republican Ship National Review http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGJhNjcxOTNmMGFlMzQxNjllMmIxMTM4MmI2YTNlNTE= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371042/posts 10/26/2009 Kathryn Jean Lopez I do not live in New York's 23rd congressional district, and I've never hiked the Adirondacks, which run through it. I've never met Doug Hoffman, who is running for Congress there, and hadn't heard his name until fairly recently. But he's my guy this November. Since I'm not a constituent, my support for a candidate is about integrity, as it is in a few other races I'm following closely. Doug Hoffman is the Conservative-party candidate running for the seat vacated by John McHugh, a Republican who's now secretary of the Army in the Obama administration. Hoffman, a CPA and newbie to electoral politics, worries about runaway spending and the bailout culture in Washington, both of which the Republican party has been a willing party to. His message: "Washington is stifling businesses and individuals with taxes. It is the 'tea party' people and the 9/12 people that are standing up and saying, 'We're fed up, and it's time to do something about this.' We need to take this country back from career politicians." Hoffman is challenging not only Democrat Bill Owens, but also Dede Scozzafava, the Republican in the race. She is an advocate for legal abortion. She is a supporter of redefining marriage to include homosexuals. She approved of the president's stimulus plan. Her boosters, as well as her causes, are suspect. She is supported by the way-left Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. She is supported by Big Labor and Big Education, as some of us are prone to call the lefty union politicos. Anyone used to siding with the Republicans is supposed to be encouraged by her spokesman's assurance that she will "vote for John Boehner to be speaker of the House of Representatives in 2010. That's a whole year in office with no reason for a conservative to have voted for her. Apparently the GOP thinks that, since the Right may be numb after too much disappointment from the Republican party on the stump and in office, we have gone dumb, too. Think again - and this is a message for the likes of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which endorsed the moderate, ineffectual Florida governor Charlie Crist for U.S. Senate next year instead of letting the primary play out and giving an actual, exciting conservative candidate, Marco Rubio, a chance. With the GOP putting forth candidates like these, don't count on a House speaker with an "R" after his name anytime in the near future. That the push for Hoffman on talk radio and in conservative publications is about integrity eludes some, because Newt Gingrich and other prominent GOP voices have made a different call. The former Republican speaker of the House supports Scozzafava, arguing, "If you seek to be a perfect minority, you'll remain a minority." But those who oppose Scozzafava aren't demanding perfection; they're merely asking for a Republican candidate who represents their values. What is currently going on with the Right is something older than the tea-party movement, older than Dick Armey's political career. It's what Ronald Reagan was talking about in his famous "Time for Choosing" speech, in which he supported Barry Goldwater as the Republican presidential candidate in the 1964 race. Reagan said, "This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves." "But, Kathryn, Barry Goldwater lost!" you may be yelling at your paper or screen. (Though I suspect you're not shouting: "You want to lose a vote for Boehner, you fool!?") Is Newt right? Is a vote for Hoffman a throwaway vote? Not necessarily. As I write, public polls show Scozzafava "fading." Democrat Owens is in the lead, but not by much. Internal campaign polls show odds even better for Hoffman. Hoffman could lose. But there's also a substantial chance that he could win. And what a game-changer that would be. And if conservatism doesn't move you, how about another c-word: competence. A Weekly Standard reporter asked Scozzafava some questions at a campaign event recently. And Scozzafava's staff called the cops. As my colleague Mark Steyn put it: "At this stage in the nation's affairs, Washington doesn't need another incoherent buffoon insulated by a phalanx of thin-skinned twerps already guarding her like a 30-year incumbent for whom routine questions are an outrageous form of lèse-majesté. By any reasonable measure, this candidate is unworthy of a seat in the national legislature." Now that's an ideology-free assessment we can all agree with. A lot of these tea-party gatherings, and a lot of the sudden popularity of the likes of Glenn Beck - who is more of a frustrated populist than an articulator of conservative principles - has to do with incompetence fatigue. Hoffman has earned the right to prove that he is capable of righting a sinking ship. And I wish him well. 28) A Closer Look At The Uninsured: Why The "46 Million" Figure Is Profoundly Misleading National Review http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTQxNjQ0YzJjMThlMmJmNzFiZmY4MDI2Yjc2MzNkOWQ= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371037/posts 10/26/2009 Duncan Currie The American health-care debate is a blizzard of numbers, but few get tossed around as frequently as "46 million." According to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), that's roughly how many people (the more precise figure was 45.7 million) lacked health insurance at a given moment in 2007 - nearly one-sixth of the entire U.S. population. The latest CPS data show that 46.3 million were uninsured at a given moment in 2008. Yet while it carries superficial appeal as a political talking point, the "46 million" statistic tells us nothing about the demographics of America's uninsured. Economist Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council under Pres. George W. Bush, has examined the 2007 data and sliced the 45.7 million uninsured into several distinct clusters, basing his estimates on an earlier government analysis, conducted in 2005. Hennessey reckons that 6.4 million were enrolled in Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program - now known just as the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) - but misreported their status (a phenomenon known as the "Medicaid undercount"); 4.3 million were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled; 9.3 million were noncitizens; 10.1 million belonged to families earning more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL); and 5 million were childless adults aged 18 to 34. If we eliminate those individuals from the original 45.7 million, we are left with about 10.6 million. After adjusting for the Medicaid undercount, Urban Institute researchers John Holahan, Allison Cook, and Lisa Dubay determined that in 2004, fully one-quarter of the nonelderly uninsured were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, and another 19 percent belonged to families earning 300 percent or more of the FPL. Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of uninsured children were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP (as were 28 percent of uninsured parents), and another 15 percent had family incomes equal to 300 percent or more of the FPL. This means that only 11 percent of uninsured children were both ineligible for government coverage and living in families with incomes below 300 percent of the FPL. These children - the 11 percent - were disproportionately Hispanic (42 percent), and the vast majority (77 percent) belonged to families earning between 200 and 299 percent of the FPL. To be sure, estimates of how many Americans are "voluntarily" or "involuntarily" uninsured will fluctuate depending on methods and assumptions. The Urban Institute study - conducted for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) - designated 300 percent of the FPL as the affordability threshold for insurance coverage. Economists June and Dave O'Neill of Baruch College believe a more appropriate threshold is 250 percent. The O'Neills calculate that in 2006, roughly 43 percent of all uninsured individuals between the ages of 18 and 64 had family incomes greater than this level - and thus were "voluntarily uninsured," because they appeared to have "enough disposable income to purchase health insurance." Whether we use 250 percent or 300 percent as the affordability line, those uninsured by necessity, rather than by choice, constitute a significantly smaller group than 46 million. Their numbers shrink even more when we remove noncitizens. A KCMU/Urban Institute analysis notes that in 2008, 20 percent of the nonelderly uninsured were not American citizens, and nearly half (46 percent) of all nonelderly noncitizens lacked health insurance. Obama seems aware that noncitizens represent a hefty chunk of the uninsured: In his September 9 speech to Congress, the president declared, "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage" (emphasis added). According to White House budget chief Peter Orszag, Obama's estimate excluded those uninsured citizens who are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled. As these data confirm, the uninsured are hardly a monolithic bloc. For that matter, they are a highly fluid population: A 2003 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report observed that "between half and two-thirds of the people who experienced a period of time without insurance in 1998 had coverage for other portions of the year." We must also distinguish between having health insurance and having access to health care itself. Based on data from the 2005 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, the O'Neills reckon that when it comes to selected medical services received by Americans aged 18 to 64 - including routine checkups, blood-pressure checks, flu shots, Pap smears, PSA tests, and mammograms - "the uninsured receive about 50 to 60 percent of the amount of services received by those who are insured." Which brings us to the much-ballyhooed "free rider" dilemma. There is no question that uncompensated health care received by the uninsured has contributed to escalating costs throughout the system; but the magnitude of that contribution remains unclear. A recent KCMU study conducted by Urban Institute researchers Jack Hadley, John Holahan, Teresa Coughlin, and Dawn Miller estimated that in 2008, uncompensated care represented nearly two-thirds of the dollar amount of all uninsured care. But the same study also found that uncompensated care accounted for only 2.2 percent of America's total health-care spending. "Between 1986 and 2005," it noted, "the share of [hospital] expenses going to uncompensated care remained remarkably steady, with a mean of 6 percent and a range from 6.4 percent in 1986 to 5.4 percent in 2002." The biggest problem in America's health-care system is not the aggregate number of uninsured - which is a murky, misleading figure - but rather skyrocketing costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that premiums for employer-provided health insurance soared by 119 percent between 1999 and 2008, while wage earnings increased by only 34 percent, and overall inflation was 29 percent. Many small businesses simply cannot afford to pay for health coverage for their workers: In 2008, 99 percent of large firms (those with more than 200 workers) offered health benefits, compared with only 62 percent of small firms (those with three to 199 workers), according to a Kaiser/Health Research & Educational Trust survey. Some 68 percent of higher-wage firms provided health benefits, compared with only 40 percent of lower-wage firms. There is a broad consensus that the federal tax subsidy for employer-provided health insurance (now amounting to well over $200 billion annually) has distorted the health-care market, driven up costs, and suppressed workers' wages. Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein has proposed replacing the employer tax exclusion with vouchers that would enable each American family to purchase a private insurance policy covering "all allowable health costs in excess of 15 percent of the family's income." To further soften the blow of out-of-pocket health-care spending and also address doctors' concerns over payment of bills, Feldstein recommends combining the insurance voucher with a health-care "credit card" that would permit families to charge medical expenses that fell within the 15 percent deductible. The Feldstein plan would be a truly sweeping overhaul of how the federal tax code treats health insurance. A less dramatic reform would be to establish tax credits or tax deductions for individuals who purchase their own health insurance. In his 2007 State of the Union address, President Bush suggested a standard deduction of $7,500 for individuals and $15,000 for families. The 2009 Patients' Choice Act - sponsored in the Senate by Republicans Tom Coburn and Richard Burr, and in the House by Republicans Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes - would introduce a tax credit worth $2,290 for individuals and $5,710 for families. This credit would be advanceable and refundable - meaning it would be paid up front and in full regardless of the recipient's tax liability. Jeffrey Anderson, a former speechwriter at the Department of Health and Human Services, urges several other simple reforms, such as extending the length of time a person is eligible for COBRA, curbing medical-malpractice lawsuits, boosting federal funding of state-run insurance pools, and creating a national marketplace for health insurance by allowing consumers to purchase policies across state lines. A 2008 University of Minnesota study calculated that such a national marketplace would lead to roughly 2.9 million newly insured at a minimum, with the possibility of nearly 17 million newly insured. The cost to taxpayers, meanwhile, would be zero. Letting Americans buy their health-insurance policies from out-of-state insurers would allow them to escape onerous state mandates that force people to pay for insurance benefits they neither need nor want. In its latest nationwide survey, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI) identifies a total of 2,133 state mandates, for benefits ranging from "hair prostheses" (wigs) to heart transplants, and for providers including athletic trainers and naturopaths. These mandates inflate the cost of basic health-insurance coverage by anywhere "from a little less than 20 percent to perhaps 50 percent, depending on the number of mandates, the benefit design, and the cost of the initial premium," according to the CAHI. Even if health-insurance costs fell significantly, private coverage might remain prohibitively expensive for many Medicaid recipients. However, because of Medicaid's low physician-payment rates, doctors often refuse to accept new patients enrolled in the program. In a 2008 survey by the Center for Studying Health System Change, 86.6 percent of physicians reported accepting all (57.3 percent) or most (29.3 percent) new privately insured patients, but only 52.6 percent reported accepting all (40.2 percent) or most (12.4 percent) new Medicaid patients. More than one-quarter (28.2 percent) of doctors said they were not accepting any new Medicaid patients. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as chief economic adviser to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, has proposed letting eligible individuals use their share of Medicaid dollars to buy private health insurance. As for people with preexisting conditions, one way to help them in the short run would be, as Anderson advocates, to increase federal subsidies to the high-risk insurance pools currently operating in 34 states. Over the long run, the best solution would be to create a dynamic, competitive market for individual insurance. Economist John Cochrane of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business believes this would fuel the rise of "health-status insurance" policies, which would allow people to purchase insurance against developing an illness or chronic condition sometime in the future. In a robustly competitive market, argues Cochrane, private insurers would "compete for the business of every customer, even the sickest." The emergence of such a market would not guarantee universal health-insurance coverage - but neither would the Baucus bill, according to the CBO. Health-care reforms that reduced costs, increased value, enhanced insurance portability, improved transparency, and promoted competition would also substantially boost coverage. Lawmakers must remember that an expansion of insurance coverage could either mitigate or exacerbate America's underlying health-care problems, depending on how it is achieved. Implementing price controls and costly mandates would only make those problems worse. 29) Yes, We Can National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/finalcountdown/post/?q=YjRkYWNhZjVlOWJkMDhiZjQwN2FhYzQ0NDA2Y2RhNGM= http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371946/posts 10/27/2009 Doug Hoffman How quickly things can change. Two weeks ago, political observers noticed a poll from New York's 23rd congressional district that showed the liberal candidate fading fast and the conservative candidate gaining faster. This is the resurgence Republicans have been hoping for! Unfortunately, the Republican party had nominated the liberal candidate. The conservative candidate is running against both the Republican party and the Democratic party. Isn't that a good metaphor for the state in which conservatives find themselves? I am that conservative candidate for Congress in New York's 23rd District, and I believe conservatives can win our fight. Since those polls two weeks ago, my campaign has attracted astonishing support from across the country. What could be responsible for our break-out success? It's simple, and it's much larger than just my candidacy: Americans are taking a stand. With two candidates - two parties - each representing Left-liberalism, our mission was to offer a clear alternative and make sure people knew about it. Everything since then - the remarkable outpouring of attention, support, donations, and activism - grew out of the simple act of standing for something. Most importantly, it hasn't just been about the fact that I stand for our core conservative values. NY-23 is important because it is all of us - conservatives around the country - who are emerging to take a stand against liberalism from both parties. That sort of emergence is natural to the American worldview. We believe that great things are built on simple virtues. We understand that real prosperity is created by free people living by clear rules. We trust people whose actions arise naturally from principles. We admire leadership, but are skeptical of command. Conservatives won't be prodded to support something we don't believe in, not for clever "strategic" reasons or because of party labels. We see that the danger to our nation posed by unrestrained government has become fiercely urgent, and we have stopped accepting excuses from those who won't stand strong to stop it. We have declared independence from party politics because too many people in both parties either have been complicit in creating the danger, or have shrunk from challenging it. Republicans and Democrats alike seem content to keep playing this game, but people who work hard to build a living - as we must in upstate New York - are appalled to see our politicians playing games while our debt mushrooms, unemployment looms, and our nation's security is neglected. We want our children to inherit a better country, not a flood of debt; we want them to be confident in their nation, not afraid of its shadow. We can't bear the sight of politicians making deals with unions, banks, and other special interests, giving them the tools to bludgeon their competition and cut a bigger slice of a shrinking economy. That is why, even though I had never desired to be a politician, I had to run for office. I felt we had to challenge the tacit agreement between the GOP and the Democrats to make this election about trivialities. I saw that a confident conservatism could win here. I didn't foresee the part that a nationwide groundswell of support would play in it, but I knew we could prevail. Now the establishment Republicans are beginning to panic. Establishment Republicans think that principled conservatives' taking a stand in this contest will weaken conservatism and the Republican party. The Wall Street Journal recently suggested that "Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy." They're wrong. As William Kristol has said, the truth is exactly the opposite. It is the "GOP establishment" that stands in the way of a conservative comeback. Our goal should not be a Republican majority. It should be a conservative majority. If the Republican party will not be conservative, then we are going to run against them . . . and we're going to win. - Doug Hoffman is the Conservative-party candidate in New York's 23rd congressional district. 30) 5 Messages For 'Elite' Republicans Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/10/27/5_messages_for_elite_republicans http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371787/posts October 27, 2009 John Hawkins Conservatives are sick and tired of being taken for granted, misrepresented, and talked down to by the same "elite" Republicans in Washington who hopelessly screwed everything up during the Bush years. Everybody knows exactly whom we're talking about here. The same snobby, elitist, stuffed shirt, squishy, poll-obsessed Country Club Republicans who went to D.C., forgot who put them there, wasted the incredible opportunity they had to change this country for the better, and are now pointing the finger at everyone except themselves for their mistakes. Here are five messages for those people: We're not going back to the Bush years: Conservatives are sick and tired of hearing Republicans talk about conservatism to get our support and then watching them immediately move to the center once they get elected. Stop making promises to us that you don't intend to keep. Don't tell us how fiscally conservative you are and then vote for the TARP Program. Don't talk about limited government and then support big government programs. Don't tell us you care about the rule of law and then support amnesty. We expect you to govern the way you campaign when you need our support. If you don't do it, we're going to make sure you catch hell for it. This country can't survive if you're as childish as the Democrats: For the last few decades, we've had an "adult" party that deals in the real world and a "children's party" that promises everyone everything for nothing. Unfortunately, the "adult party" has been acting a little too much like a 40 year old going through a mid-life crisis for the last few years. Newsflash: This country cannot remain a super power or even a great nation if the Republican Party doesn't start acting like an adult party again. Yes, the Democrats' "something for nothing" election promises may seem appealing at times, but the country can't thrive with two parties like that -- and what good does it do anyone to be elected king of the crap pile? We don't expect the Republican Party to be ideologically perfect or to please conservatives in every way on every issue. That's not the real world. But, if the Republican Party isn't willing to draw a line in the sand over the things that have made this a great country, then the party just isn't worth a flat damn. There have to be SOME lines that can't be crossed without paying a terrible price. Stop sabotaging our candidates: It is absolutely infuriating that Republican Party organizations talk incessantly about conservative principles, rely on conservatives for the overwhelming majority of their funding, and then turn around and sabotage conservative candidates like Doug Hoffman and Marco Rubio. Who the hell do you think you are? We're not telling the Republican Party to endorse conservative candidates over moderate candidates or demanding that middle-of-the-road candidates be tossed from the party. What we are saying is, "Don't take our money, use it against us, and then take a haughty 'we know best' attitude." If you do, we're going to take you to the woodshed and show you why it's a bad idea. "There will be no elite in a bankrupt America." -- Jonathan Hunter: If fiscal conservatism doesn't work any more, then America doesn't work any more because we can't live like this long term. If even the Republicans look at government as just another way to distribute as much borrowed money as they can get by with to their supporters, then this country is going to look like Argentina after the crash in twenty years. This is do or die for the future of this country and Republicans, including Republican members of Congress from blue states, need to understand that. You're not as smart as you think you are: It must be grand to be a Congressman or senator. Your fellow citizens elect you to office. Then you go to D.C. where your staff spends all day fretting over you and telling you how wonderful you are. Everywhere you go, all you hear from consultants, your fellow members of Congress, and all the people who want things from you is that you can do no wrong. If only people understood how SMART you really are. It's like being five years old all over again except everyone shares your mother's opinion of what a brilliant genius her little man is going to turn out to be. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Republicans just spent two straight elections getting splattered like bugs on a windshield. That happened despite the fact that their constituents were screaming at the top of their lungs about the oncoming danger. Yes, that's right; the political novices in NoWhereville, South Dakota were more accurately predicting the problems ahead than the Republican politicians and political consultants in D.C. How in the world we got to a place where so many politicians have such a shallow understanding of politics, I don't know, but Republicans in D.C. need to wake up and smell the coffee. YOU GUYS blew it in 2006 and 2008, not us. 31) Dingy Harry's Sleight Of Hand: An "Opt-Out" Of The Public Option: This "Opt-Out" Language Is A Duplicitous, Cynical Scam RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2372410/posts?page=5#5 October 27, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: All right, here is Dingy Harry yesterday afternoon at a press conference in Washington. REID: The best way to move forward is to include a public option with the opt-out provision to states. Under this concept, states will be able to determine whether the public option works well for them and will have the ability to opt out if they so choose. Believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system, will protect consumers, keep insurers honest and ensure competition and that's why we intend to include it in the bill we submitted and will be submitted to the Senate. RUSH: All right, now, he's provided nothing specific. This is typical. He's come up with a theory on this public option state opt-out, and he sent it over to the CBO to have it scored. I don't trust the CBO, for one thing, but that's not the point about this. I want to reiterate again that there will no way be any possibility you can opt out of a public option and there's no way your governor or your state legislature or assembly will be able to opt out of it, either, and I'm going to explain why. As a side illustration, do you recall when Jimmy Carter declared a national speed limit of 55 miles an hour and states could opt -- you don't remember that? Okay, I'll tell you. That's when the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit got started, Jimmy Carter declared it, and there was a state opt-out. Now, the catch-22 was that if states opted out, they lost all federal highway funds, they lost any participation, but that's a side point. This is much more than that. Here's the truth. The citizens of this country, regardless of what state they live in, will have to pay for, that is, subsidize through taxes and higher private insurance policy costs that the public option the government will set up. No citizen will be able to opt out of that whether you are an employer or an employee or on your own. It's an illusion. You're gonna pay for it no matter what. Furthermore, the government's imposition of bankrupting regulations on private insurance companies are gonna put 'em out of business. We now know that contrary to what Obama and his people are running around saying, that the insurance companies are making obscene profits, the usual attacks on the business of the day, we now learn that the profits of private health insurers, two to three percent. Even the AP reported that. They are not flush with money. They are not among the most profitable business in the nation. They're nowhere near it. What's going to happen, what everybody seems to forget, you know, Pelosi's out there saying, (paraphrasing) "Public option, that's a bad word, we need to change the term. We need to call it competitive option." That's even worse. Because the objective of the public option is to drive private health care insurance out of business. There are a number of ways that will happen and Dingy Harry's latest sleight of hand is one of them. Here's how it's going to work. These regulations that will bankrupt insurance companies, that will be imposed on them, will consist of compelling private companies to take all comers. Private insurance companies will have to insure everybody, including those who are going to have a heart attack tomorrow and die. They're going to have to take 'em when they have not purchased insurance earlier, only when they need a major operation or an expensive drug. Now, by compelling these companies to do that, they are going to destroy the ability of any private entity to protect its other customers who have acted responsibly and purchased insurance when they were not sick. So the people who again play by the rules, follow what they're supposed to do, are going to be paying for the insurance policies of people who sign up at the first sign they got a big operation or need an expensive drug or what have you, the government will set benefit requirements for the insurance agency, they will set price limits. All of this is in the legislation. There are five bills, and all of this is in the five bills that are being discussed. The government's going to set benefit requirements, price limits, meaning they're going to tell the insurance companies how much they cannot charge for this, basically do whatever it wants to with private insurers. The purpose is to destroy them. Obama, Chuck-U Schumer have all but said so with their support for single payer and government-run plans. Obama has said it over the years. We've had it on tape. We've aired it a number of times. Public option, single payer, that's his objective, that's what he tells his buddies. It may take five, ten years to get there, but that's what his objective is. Schumer said the same thing. Barney Frank's out there saying, "We want a bigger role for government in virtually everything." We have this sound bite coming up. If any of you think that you're going to have to an option to get out of the public option, forget it, there's going to be nowhere to go. Private insurance is going to be put out of business. It is going to be regulated out of business. The profit margin is two to three percent and these new regulations that are going to be imposed on them, it's all designed to run 'em out of business and force everybody over to the public option, meaning the government. So the plan, the plan is to force citizens of states who do not participate in the government option to subsidize those who do, making it nearly impossible for any governor to say, "I will not allow my citizens to participate in the federal insurance program," and to eliminate private insurers in a few years' time which makes the government option the only option available in the end. This is a single, sinister, duplicitous scam and it's happening not because of the Republicans, it's happening because the Democrats are losing their far left-wing base by saying there isn't going to be a public option. So now they're trying to make it sound like, "Okay, we'll put a public option in but you can opt out." You can't opt out. You're going to be paying for it one way or the other, and eventually there is gonna only be the public option, meaning the government. That's why they're doing it. Folks, common sense. The only reason they're reforming health care is to put the government in charge of it ultimately. You have to ignore all of this talk about opting out of the public option. You have to ignore the sales technique, "Well, the public option, Mr. Limbaugh, it's just there to add to competition." It is to eliminate competition. You cannot, you will not be able to opt out of paying higher premiums and taxes to subsidize the government plan. You can only opt out of making the government plan available to your state citizens. And by wiping out private insurance, who's going to opt out in the end? Look, even conservative governors will have no choice. They'll have to relent because of the elimination of private alternatives in their states by the federal government. So any so-called moderate Democrat who votes for this is voting for a single-payer government run health care system while cynically pretending to their constituents that they are not, and I say again to you Blue Dog Democrats, you better pay attention to what's happening here because you can't vote for this, any form of it, and go back to your districts next November and say, "I'm fiscally conservative, I voted to opt out of the public option." You vote for this, you are voting for single payer national health care and a further bankrupted country. Meanwhile, predictably, the dunces in the liberal media are reporting this as a grand compromise offered by the great compromiser himself, Dingy Harry. So they continue to carry the left's water on this. So much for that. By the way, Newsweek, in a blog today say Reid's public option not exactly a shoo-in. There will be no opting out. These people are just, I don't know. Sometimes it does get to me. You know, one of the things that is the most frustrating to me is stupidity, ignorance, among intelligent people, the lack of critical thinking, lapdog sycophants, brownnosers, apple polishers. Now, Betsy McCaughey who did yeoman work in destroying HillaryCare, has been paying a lot of attention to this, and she has a piece today in the New York Post: "'Treating Seniors as "Clunkers."' -- Everyone knows that if you don't pay to maintain and repair your car, you limit its life. The same is true as human beings age. We need medical care to avoid becoming clunkers -- disabled, worn out, parked in wheelchairs or nursing homes. For nearly a half century, Medicare has enabled seniors to get that care. But ObamaCare is about to change that, by limiting what doctors can provide their aging patients." Are you sitting down? "The Senate Finance Committee health bill," the Baucus bill, "released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate." Can you say death panels? It's right there, "Section 3003(b) (p. 683) punishes doctors who land in the 90th percentile or above on what they provide for seniors on Medicare by withholding 5 percent of their compensation." So the government is going to determine how much care older patients can get. If a doctor exceeds that, he gets his compensation cut 5% and I assume it won't end there. "This withhold provision forces doctors to choose between treating their patients and avoiding government penalties. HMOs used the same cost-cutting device in the early '90s until it was deemed dangerous to patients and outlawed. Now, lawmakers want to use it against the most vulnerable patients, the elderly." Now, as I read this, I'm just speculating here, it sounds like the government's very sensitive here to this death panel stuff so the Finance Committee is going to make the doctors the death panel, even though the government is actually inspiring this kind of behavior. I gotta take a quick break here, folks. RUSH: Jeff in Austin, Texas. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hey, Rush. It's an honor. It's actually Jeff from Wimberley, Texas, just working in the liberal mecca here on the weekdays. In your first hour you were talking about the states opt out and what a farce that is. This is a dangerous farce because if the governors elect to opt out of this, what does it do to the unemployment in their state and the business in their state, where my business operates in this state and produces in this state, if Texas, which I hope they do opt out of this if it gets that far, my business is going to move to a state that does not opt out because when they can abscond from their responsibilities to their employees either pay for their benefits -- RUSH: No, but, well, wait. Again, conservative governors won't be able to opt out of this -- CALLER: Right. RUSH: -- because there's going to be no place to opt out to. CALLER: Yes, sir. RUSH: This is the thing that I must continue to hammer home with the anvil that is my tongue, and that is there isn't going to be a place, and even if for a while -- you know, this stuff's not going to happen overnight -- even if there is a temporary place to opt out, the taxes of the people in that state and whatever else, charges they're going to face going private to subsidize the people who have not bought insurance, it's going to cost everybody. It's all a smoke screen. There is no opting out if this thing goes through. All this is is Dingy Harry and the Democrats realizing they're in trouble. When Pelosi says, (paraphrasing) "We need a competitive option, we need to call it a competitive option, it's not a public option," they know they're in trouble on this. There is a big poll today in the public option, well, that's a smoke screen, too. That's going to be the second fraudulent poll with no doubt a rigged sample that the public wants a public option. I'd like to know what public, who they are, where they're asking them, and in what state of sobriety they're in when they are contacted. And whether they have health insurance or not because I guarantee you, to a lot of people, public option means free. Public option's associated with government, and people think what they get from the government is free, the kind of people we're talking about. Oh, yeah, your food stamps come in, you didn't pay for them, yeah, government gave them to me, Obama's stash, the poor people in Detroit. "Uh, Obama giving me the money. Obama from reserve funds or from his stash." You can find people like that, you say, "You support the public option." "Is it free?" "Yeah." "Fine. Count me in." And then some reputable polling organization puts the news out there. RUSH: Here's Pelosi. This is back to health care, by the way. We got two sound bites. This is yesterday in Sunrise, Florida, Nancy Pelosi. PELOSI: I do think that when people think of it as their option, their consumer option, because public is being misrepresented as being something that is paid for by taxpayer dollars. Which it is not. RUSH: See, Snerdley, you pooh-poohed me. I didn't even know she had said this. You tell me there was some stupid poll out there that the majority of people support the public option and, yeah, you run around and tell people it's free, of course they're going to support it. You can find the right bunch of people that will believe that. By the way, Lieberman just said he'll join the filibuster unless Dingy Harry pulls his public option out. Olympia Snowe is sayonara, she's outta there. Blanche Lincoln in trouble on this. Ben Nelson, Nebraska, in trouble on this. If they don't get this, folks, if they don't get this, this is going to be a bigger monument to failure than even Bill Clinton when he failed health care because at least he could blame it on his wife. Obama cannot blame it on anybody. He can't blame it on the Republicans, although they'll try. Now, this afternoon on the Live Desk, Trace Gallagher was talking to Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and Trace Gallagher said, "Speaker Pelosi says the public option is just a competitive option, not government-run health care, but it would be government-run option because it would be funded by the government. Where would the money come from?" SCHULTZ: No, it wouldn't be funded by the government, Trace -- GALLAGHER: The government right. SCHULTZ: -- which would be fully paid back and -- GALLAGHER: We hope it would be fully paid back, but right now the numbers don't square like that. I mean what you're saying -- SCHULTZ: Well, they sure do. GALLAGHER: Okay. Go ahead. SCHULTZ: No, with all do respect they do square, that's why CBO has scored our bill at less than the $900 billion threshold that President Obama has called for that we are going to make sure that it doesn't add to the deficit one dime. And we make sure that by using a competitive option, we provide for more competition and choice with the other private choices because otherwise you'll continue to have the private insurers basically give substandard policies -- RUSH: Yeah, they're showing a profit of two to three percent. Do you know that Hershey's candy makes a bigger profit than the insurance business? It won't be funded by the government. The public option, competitive option won't be funded by the government. It's going to be free. It's not going to use taxpayer dollars, it's all going to be paid for, it won't add a dime to the deficit. People are loony. I know the House plan is still over a trillion dollars, they're hiding money, hat's why they came in with this revised figure of 800 and some odd, 63 billion. It's all smoke and mirrors. This is going to cost $2 trillion. How this movement can have any sane people still involved in it is beyond me. 32) Health Insurers' (6%) Profits 35th Of 53 (Clorox, 8.7% - KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell 8.5%) Miami Herald http://www.miamiherald.com/business/breaking-news/story/1300634.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371689/posts 10/26/09 Calvin Woodward THE NUMBERS: Health insurers posted a 2.2 percent profit margin last year, placing them 35th of 53 industries on the Fortune 500 list. As is typical, other health sectors did much better - drugs and medical products and services were both in the top 10. The railroads brought in a 12.6 percent profit margin. Leading the list: network and other communications equipment, at 20.4 percent. HealthSpring, the best performer in the health insurance industry, posted 5.4 percent. That's a less profitable margin than was achieved by the makers of Tupperware, Clorox bleach and Molson and Coors beers. The star among the health insurance companies did, however, nose out Jack in the Box restaurants, which only achieved a 4 percent margin. UnitedHealth Group, reporting third quarter results last week, saw fortunes improve. It managed a 5 percent profit margin on an 8 percent growth in revenue. Van Hollen is right that premiums have more than doubled in a decade, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study that found a 131 percent increase. But were the Bush years golden ones for health insurers? Not judging by profit margins, profit growth or returns to shareholders. The industry's overall profits grew only 8.8 percent from 2003 to 2008, and its margins year to year, from 2005 forward, never cracked 8 percent. The latest annual profit margins of a selection of products, services and industries: Tupperware Brands, 7.5 percent; Yahoo, 5.9 percent; Hershey, 6.1 percent; Clorox, 8.7 percent; Molson Coors Brewing, 8.1 percent; construction and farm machinery, 5 percent; Yum Brands (think KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), 8.5 percent. 33) How The FCC And Liberal Churches Are Scheming To Shut You Up! Townhall.com http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=17a477e3-4b2b-4dd5-9602-13b8bbbcd033&t=c http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2372868/posts October 28, 2009 Michelle Malkin The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on "hate speech" over cable TV and right-leaning talk-radio airwaves. President Obama's speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige. Over the last week, an outfit called "So We Might See" has conducted a nationwide fast to protest "media violence" -- specifically, "anti-immigrant hate speech, which employs flawed arguments to appeal to fears rather than facts." Their ire is currently aimed at Fox News and conservative talk-show giants. But how long before they target ordinary citizens who call in to complain about the government's systemic refusal to enforce federal sanctions against illegal alien employers or the bloody consequences of lax deportation policies? The "interfaith coalition for media justice" is led by the United Church of Christ. Yes, that's the same church of Obama's race-baiting, Jew-bashing ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright. Other members include the Presbyterian News Service, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the National Council of Churches. These religious liberals have partnered with the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which filed a petition in January demanding that the FCC collect data, seek public comment and "explore options" for combating "hate speech" from staunch critics of illegal immigration. Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize and demonize those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration enforcement -- and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy on illegal alien amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign, the National Council of La Raza launched a "We Can Stop the Hate" project to redefine tough policy criticism from the right as "hate." La Raza President Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, "even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights," according to Broadcasting and Cable News. Now the gag-wielders have a friend in the White House -- and they won't let him forget it. Their FCC petition calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration critics cites Obama's own words in a fall 2008 speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Obama told his amnesty-supporting audience that he knew they were "counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves." Unsurprisingly, far-left billionaire George Soros' money is backing the So We Might See/National Hispanic Media Coalition effort. And remember that the Soros-funded Center for American Progress has provided the Obama White House with its Fairness Doctrine-embracing "diversity czar," Mark Lloyd. Last week, United Church of Christ officials met privately with FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps in advance of the So We Might See campaign. Copps then delivered a lecture at the UCC's Riverside Church in New York City, expressing solidarity with the liberal church leaders' goals and egging the congregants to take action on "media reform: "We are taking huge risks with our democracy. We need to change that, and we need to do it now. We need to get a grip on what's happening, and we need to fix it." Jeffrey Lord, who happens to belong to the United Church of Christ, reported in The American Spectator that not long after that speech, the UCC sent out a mass e-mail to its millions of members urging them to join the nationwide fast and regulatory drive. The church-state alliance missive directed its followers: "As a participant, you will be asked to sign a petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking that it open a notice of inquiry into hate speech in the media." No word on when they'll be launching an inquiry into the fear-based, fact-free "hate speech" from the mouth of Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who accused Republicans of wanting sick patients to "die quickly," likened health care problems to the "Holocaust" and attacked an adviser to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as a "K Street whore." Or when they'll be going after MSNBC and Air America radio hate-mongers who have openly wished on their airwaves for the deaths of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. But I digress. In the age of Obama, the targets of left-wing hate speech don't have a prayer. 34) Prediction: The Uprising Of 2010: With Dems In Denial, A Revolt Against Statism Looms RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373185/posts?page=9#9 October 28, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: Grand Rapids, Michigan, first. Jack, thank you for calling. Great to have you on the EIB Network. CALLER: Hey, Rush, what an honor it is to talk to you. I know you hear that a lot, but I gotta tell you, I've listened to you for so many years, and I value you and listening to you and value your opinion. RUSH: Thank you. CALLER: You know, as I'm listening and have been listening to you, Rush, about, you know, the state of our country and everything else, my first question is what do you think is going to happen in the 2010 election? I mean, are the American people really going to get it and finally start voting for the people, a Republican hopefully that not only says what they believe, but actually get to Washington and do what they say they believe? RUSH: Well, now, wait. Those are -- (laughing) -- you're asking me two different things. You're asking me, will the American people vote a certain way in 2010, and then will people they elect go to Washington and do the right thing. CALLER: Well, I'm so tired of them saying they're going to do these things, Rush. I'm of the opinion that I want to see all the incumbents just voted out. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: Start over. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: Including Hatch and all these other long stalwarts of the Republican Party. Rush, one thing. I don't mean to interrupt, but when I listened to Hatch speak at Kennedy's funeral and talk about he and Kennedy bantering back and forth and then Kennedy came up and say, "How did I do?" you know, "Awe, you did good," it's like the good old boys club of Washington and it just turns my stomach when I listen to a Republican speak like that. We're psyching out the American people, aren't we? Good job. RUSH: Well, I think, "How did I do?" I think that's just, you know, sometimes even I, who always know how I do will ask people, "So how was that, was that okay?" Not did I fool 'em, but was I good enough? But that's a different thing. The collegiality of the Senate is what you're commenting on here. And it was no secret that Hatch and Kennedy were friends. I mean, they just were. Now, I understand your larger point is that people get elected campaigning for various specific things to go to Washington and somehow get corrupted and it's all too common. So here's my answer to your first question. What do I think is going to happen in 2010? I think there's going to be an uprising. I think the American people are going to show up in droves. If I didn't think this, folks, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. If I thought all this was a lost cause, I wouldn't care so much about it. I was out in Las Vegas on Saturday, I made the mistake of turning on the television, saw something, I don't even remember what it was, and I thought, "My God, we've lost the country," and it depressed me for two hours until I was able to buck myself back up, and I know it's hard for everybody else because you don't have the outlet I have. You don't have a microphone to shout to 20 million people to vent and influence them. You're sitting there, "Oh, gosh, what can I do, I'm just one vote, doesn't count," I know exactly how you feel. But I do think there's going to be an uprising in 2010. I even think it's going to happen if we have nothing to vote for. Normally I wouldn't say that. I think there's going to be an uprising of people voting against the Democrat Party like they can't believe. They do not understand what's happening to them now. Now, this will help make my point. This is Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, daily briefing today. And reporter asked him, "What do you think this election means to the party and the president?" This is the Virginia governor's race. GIBBS: The pollsters at the Washington Post poll identified the fact that roughly 70% of the states said their vote had nothing to do with the president of the United States, that the remaining 30 was roughly divide evenly among those who wanted to use the vote to say something about the president which led the pollsters to deduce that it had very little to do with the Obama presidency. I would say the same thing, I think the same poll showed that among -- RUSH: That's enough. I don't want to hear this guy. At any rate, they're in denial. They're in denial. And I think that it's going to be revolt and an uprising against the Democrat Party in general. You can say it's going to be against Obama but it's going to be against Democrats and especially if they end up passing a health care bill with as much as is now known about it, it's going to be a bloodbath politically in 2010, regardless whether we have a national Republican agenda or not. Remember, House races are not national races, and these midterms in 2010 are House races. One of the dirty little secrets about the Republican takeover as it was called of the House in 1994 is that those House races were successfully nationalized. Newt and the boys came up with a national agenda for Republicans running for office, the House of Representatives. Contract with America was part of it. But rather than going to a campaign district and campaign against the local incumbent as having been weak on bringing home a nursing home center or a water treatment plant, the campaign said focus on this guy and his weakness on national defense, focus on his tax raising, focus on how he is creating cultural rot with his votes. Make him a national figure. That was huge in securing victory in the House races in 1994. Right now I don't see anybody putting anything like that together in the Republican Party. I think the revolt is going to be so stunning, it won't even need that. It would be better if there were some national Republican Party agenda that was rooted and founded in unabashed, unapologetic conservatism, that individual House members could run on and say, yep, this is me. And who knows, it may happen between now and then. But that's what I think's going to happen. Now, what's going to happen if I'm right and the winners get to Washington, I know exactly what's going to happen, the press is going to start attacking them, the press going to beat 'em up, the Democrats are going to beat 'em up, and it's going to come down to whether they've got the backbone to withstand it. Few do. RUSH: Now, I'm reminded here that -- I think this is mostly correct -- the Contract with America didn't happen until six weeks before the 1994 elections, but it was still six weeks before. It was still something people could rally around. We were coming off a lot of scandals. The House bank and the House post office and general Democrat arrogance, plus Clinton's failed health care bill and an attempt to totally take over one-sixth of the US economy back then, so there were a lot of things. But there still was a national agenda, there was a national strategy for all of these local House races that took place back in 1994. 35) After 45 Years, Conservatives Still Have A "Rendezvous with Destiny": Conservatism Is On The Ascendency, And Ronald Reagan's Principles Remain Our Guiding Philosophy RushLimbaugh.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373185/posts?page=15#15 October 28, 2009 Rush Limbaugh RUSH: This is the 45th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's Barry Goldwater speech. Today is the 45th anniversary of the speech that launched Reagan's national career, the "we have a rendezvous with destiny" speech forty-five years ago. Now, many in the Republican Party and many in the so-called conservative media say the era of Reagan is over. And of course this is folly, it is silly, it is stupid. This being the 45th anniversary, this speech took place during the Goldwater-Johnson-Kennedy 1964. I remember watching it and I remember saying, "Get this guy on the ticket!" I'm 13 years old and I'm watching with my dad. We have sound bites of this speech. (interruption) Of course I remember this. I have never forgotten this speech. I've wanted to lift the phrase "you and I have a rendezvous with destiny," but I can't because everybody knows it's Reagan's. Now, this dovetails very nicely, and we're going to start very soon on some of these sound bites from this speech. You've got to hear them. People say, "Rush, we need to uplifted, we need to inspired, we need to be motivated." Well, you're gonna get that today before we start attacking Obama's health care plan, the latest folly with Harry Reid and so forth. There's a great piece in the UK Telegraph today -- you get real journalism over there -- this is by Nile Gardiner. "Barack Obama Has Failed to Defeat Conservatism in America." He plays off that Gallup poll, 40% of the people in this country say they are conservative, 20% say they are liberal, 36% say they are independent. Now, Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator, and he appears frequently on television, both here and in Great Britain. The point of this is that not only are we not defeated, we are rising from the ashes, we're fighting in the shade out there but we are fighting. After you listen to some of Ronald Reagan's Goldwater speech from October 27, 1964, I'll share with you some of the details here from Nile Gardiner. Here's cut one, Ronald Reagan. REAGAN: I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers. Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are," and the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story: If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to, this is the last stand on earth. RUSH: 1964. You will marvel as you hear this. Same battle taking place in NY-23, and that will take place in elections over the next year. REAGAN: This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election, whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down. Man's old age dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. RUSH: Ronald Reagan, 45 years ago. The point of this is that the left never changes. The left is always on the march. The left is always who they are. Totalitarianism is always what it is. American exceptionalism is the notion that we have avoided that because of our founding. We have avoided the role that human history has dictated for most people who have ever lived on this planet. The vast majority of people who have ever lived on this planet have lived in tyranny or some sort of relationship to it, dictatorship or what have you. The concept of American exceptionalism is that we are, and have been since our founding, the lone outpost and beacon for freedom. If we lose it here there's no place else in the world to go to have it. If we fall, then the rest of the world falls with us. That's why it is so dangerous what is happening now. Here's another from President Reagan, October 27, 1964. REAGAN: Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government. Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as the masses. This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that the full power of centralized government, this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people and they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy. RUSH: When you listen to this you get chills up your spine. Ronald Reagan, the father of modern conservatism, and this is why I just get livid when I hear the so-called elites in our media and on our side of the aisle in politics say that Reagan and his era are over, that Reagan's time has come and gone, we cannot continue to make ourselves a movement in the image of Ronald Reagan. Remember the left had to do everything they could to try to destroy Reagan. He was an amiable dunce, he was an idiot, just like George Bush was a dumb idiot, things do not change, Ronald Reagan was hated as much as George W. Bush. The reason you don't know that is because Reagan was likable on television. He was able to overcome the effort to make people despise him. It takes a unique personality to be able to do that. Now, consider this next as Obama goes around the world apologizing for America and dithers on deciding whether we should try to win the war in Afghanistan or hand the country and the people who live there back to the Taliban. REAGAN: We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immortality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom, because to save our own skins we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one." Now, let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war. But there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second. Surrender. RUSH: This speech was 45 minutes, we're just culling bits of it. But consider, want peace? Fine, you can have it right now, you surrender. You won't have any war, but you'll also be a prisoner. And consider that remark as Obama is plotting whatever course he's plotting in Afghanistan. Speaking of that, there is a story in the New York Times today claiming that the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is on the CIA payroll and is involved in the poppy trade in the southern city of Kandahar, a place I have been. Folks, this is reminiscent of what JFK did in Vietnam, allowing a coup against the leadership in South Vietnam, the only one that was willing to stand up to Ho Chi Minh. It's amazing. The Karzai brothers have responded, saying this is all lies; this is nothing more than an attempt by some in the media and the New York Times to affect the outcome of this runoff election and have my brother, the president, defeated. It's all lies. The Karzai brothers never said it. We're not part of the CIA; the CIA is not paying us. Now, for the New York Times to get this story has to come from somewhere -- and we know full well -- well, I don't know full well but I wouldn't doubt for a minute that this is the Obama administration trying to get rid of this guy. I know that is exactly what is happening here so that they can then set the stage for whatever surrender policy they want in Afghanistan. Here's some classic Reagan lines on government. REAGAN: No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth. RUSH: And this. REAGAN: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. RUSH: Ronald Reagan, 45 years ago, televised campaign address, Barry Goldwater, 1964. RUSH: Nile Gardiner, the UK Telegraph: "This week's striking Gallup poll on political ideology is further confirmation that the United States is in essence a conservative nation, which has ironically become even more conservative under Barack Obama. According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36 percent as moderate and 20 percent as liberal. This is the first time conservatives have outnumbered moderates in America since 2004. These are staggering figures when you consider that the Left currently dominates the Executive Branch of the US Government, both Houses of the United States Congress, the federal bureaucracy, huge swathes of local government in many big cities, academia, the public school system, and most of the establishment broadcast and print media in America. The figures show there is a huge disconnect between the American public and those who wield much of the political power in the country. Most significantly, Gallup's 16 surveys of 5,000 adults conducted across 2009 have definitively shown that conservatism is on the rise despite the election in 2008 of the most liberal president in American history. The biggest factor pushing up conservative support has been a shift among independent voters, 35 percent of whom now describe themselves as conservative, compared to 29 percent in 2008." Now, note that these independents, 35% who now describe themselves as conservative, do not describe themselves as moderates, do not describe themselves as middle-of-the-roaders. Independents are moving conservative. "The Gallup survey also reveals a distinctly rightward shift in public attitudes since the Obama administration took office, with a growing backlash against the US government's support for big government solutions to the country's economic woes, as well as a marked rise in public support for socially conservative views. Here are several clear-cut examples of rising support for traditionally conservative positions on some of the biggest policy issues of the day, as outlined by Gallup." And all of this could come from my show on any given day. "Perceptions that there is too much government regulation of business and industry jumped from 38% in September 2008 to 45% in September 2009. The percentage of Americans saying they would like to see labor unions have less influence in the country rose from 32% in August 2008 to a record-high 42% in August 2009." That's a record high, by the way, that 42%. "Public support for keeping the laws governing the sale of firearms the same or making them less strict rose from 49% in October 2008 to 55% in October 2009, also a record high. The percentage of Americans favoring a decrease in immigration rose from 39% in June/July 2008 to 50% in July 2009. The propensity to want the government to 'promote traditional values' -- as opposed to 'not favor any particular set of values' -- rose from 48% in 2008 to 53% in 2009. The percentage of Americans who consider themselves 'pro-life' on abortion rose from 44% in May 2008 to 51% in May 2009. Americans' belief that the global warming problem is 'exaggerated' in the news rose from 35% in March 2008 to 41% in March 2009," and it's even higher now. RUSH: There is indeed a conservative ascendancy, and I'm going to be replaying these Ronald Reagan sound bites throughout the program. I just got an e-mail from somebody 49 years old who said he never heard them before, had never heard it. I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Reagan is so much a part of who I am that I just make the mistaken assumption that every conservative also knows who Reagan is, or at least remembers enough of what Reagan said, but it never hurts to remind people who do know, and enlighten those who do not, and it will especially help blunt this silly notion that the era of Reagan is over. Now, it frosts me when people on our side say this. To say that the era of Reagan is over is to say that the era of our founding is over. These are pure inside the Beltway people who get caught up in the liberal dominated political and social culture of Washington, DC. They all want to be accepted and liked and thought of as special elite creatures and that means they have to agree with one another on certain things at all times. RUSH: Back to the conclusion here of the UK Telegraph story by Nile Gardiner: "Last November, liberal commentators wrote off conservatism in America as dead and buried. As the latest Gallup poll shows they were spectacularly wrong. It is no coincidence that the most watched news network, the top selling national newspaper, and the most listened to radio shows in the United States are now all conservative. The success of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, is a powerful symbol of a vigorous challenge to current liberal dominance of Washington. ... The spirit of Ronald Reagan is alive and well in America, exemplified by strong public backing for the principles of limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility and a strong defense. The White House should sit up and take note: it is liberalism, and not conservatism, that is in decline in the United States." This whole piece was based on in-depth Gallup poll numbers. This is not Mr. Gardiner's opinion piece; it's an analysis piece of the Gallup poll numbers. From PoliticsDaily.com, headline: "For First Time Under Obama, Majority Says U.S. Is on Wrong Track." So very slowly Americans are coming out of the spell of Obama. "While the stock market has picked up and the country appears to be pulling out of the recession, a majority of Americans - for the first time in the Obama presidency - says the U.S. is headed down the wrong track, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted Oct. 22-25. Fifty-two percent say the country is on the wrong track. ... President Obama's job approval rating stands at 51 percent, the same number it had been during the previous two months." And I think, folks, if the truth be known, they are doing everything they can in these polls to keep that number at 50% or above. 'Cause I, frankly, don't think he's anywhere near 50% in real job approval in the minds of most Americans. You're always going to have 25, 30% of the population with their heads in the sand who are clueless and just simply buy what they see in the mainstream State-Controlled Media. "The approval ratio for his handling of the economy has dipped from 51 in September to 47 percent in October. Forty-nine percent are very dissatisfied with the state of the economy and another 31 percent are somewhat dissatisfied. Seventeen percent are somewhat satisfied and only 2 percent are very satisfied." That would be George Soros. "Sixty-four percent don't see the improvement in the stock market as real evidence the economy is improving. ... Sixty-five percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing compared to 24 percent who approve with 11 percent undecided. On Afghanistan, Americans support a troop increase by 47 percent to 43 percent with 10 percent undecided. Last month, they opposed it by 51 percent to 44 percent with 5 percent undecided." But when you ask them specifically about increasing the number of troops, Americans oppose by 49 to 48 doing so. Regardless, there is a shift. In Virginia, Republican Robert McDonnell has now opened a 13-point lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds, whose tie is never straight, his hair is not combed properly, according to Obama himself, with less than a week to go now in the race for Virginia governor. This is a Rasmussen Report taken last night just after Obama made a campaign appearance for Deeds in the state of Virginia. RUSH: Phillip in Atlanta, I'm glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. CALLER: Hi. Dittos from an unemployed real estate developer with no health insurance. RUSH: By the way, I'm glad you mentioned that because I have a story here from Business Week that says being laid off can make you better. CALLER: Ah. I haven't experienced that yet. RUSH: This is part and parcel of the State-Controlled Media trying to say, "Hey, the Obama economy sucks? No, it's good for you to be laid off!" CALLER: It's good for weight loss. RUSH: (laughing) Not necessarily. But I understand -- (laughing) CALLER: Well, I was joking with someone today, I have a broken tooth, I can't go get it fixed, I said, "Hey, it's a great weight loss program." So, you know, I guess Business Week was right. RUSH: Right. CALLER: But I'll get to my point for you, and very glad to get through to you, you've taken me through some dark times, all this unemployment, it's good to be encouraged by you. A couple weeks ago I was quoting Ronald Reagan to my oldest son and it made me very sad, my 12-year-old was listening and said, "Who's Ronald Reagan?" And, you know, I didn't know whether to cry or to beat her. I just shook my head. After explaining it to her, I wanted to tell you that by preface, I'm a huge Reagan fan. But is there an inherent danger as we hold him up as the standard-bearer all the time, and I do as well, when it comes election time I always hear McCain is no Reagan, Rudy is no Reagan, Romney was no Reagan, Bush was no Reagan, and everyone pales in comparison. Is there an inherent danger of always holding them up as the standard-bearer? I get depressed when I do the comparison myself. RUSH: Well, I think you may have a point if we really narrow your area here of focus. If we are going to demand candidates that are Ronald Reagan, yeah, I mean nobody's gonna measure up because there's only one Ronald Reagan. The only person that would come close to it would be me, and I don't want the pay cut. CALLER: No. RUSH: I'm just kidding about that, folks. (laughing) But in holding up Reagan we're not holding up a man, we're not holding up a cult personality figure. We're holding up principles. We are reminding peopling of ideals. We are reminding me of what the founding of this country was. Ronald Reagan simply is the best Republican to ever articulate them in our lifetimes and right now conservatives in this country are beat down. They need inspiration. There is no political leadership that they can invest in right now, elected political leadership. There are a couple, three or four, but they're members of the House, some of them are in the Senate, but nobody is seeking national office that comes close. Maybe Palin would be the closest to it and you saw the reaction that she got during the primaries, but it's important to understand that holding up Reagan, and we're not holding him up as a standard-bearer saying, "You be like Reagan," we are holding Reagan up to teach the American people what this country is, because they're not being taught what this country is. For the longest time they have been taught that this country is immoral and unjust and deserves to pay for the crimes it has committed around the world. So in holding up Ronald Reagan, we simply remind the Republican Party how it was that they marched to landslide victory, and we remind the American people what country they live in and why it's the greatest on earth. RUSH: I'm checking the e-mail during the break, and I got a bunch of people, they may be seminar e-mailers but I don't think all of them are, and there's a general theme among some of the e-mails, "Rush, this Reagan stuff, the era of Reagan is over. I listened to those clips you played of Reagan, and Reagan, he's talking about the Soviet Union, he's talking about tyranny and communism around the world and the Soviet Union's gone, Rush, and the one thing that Reagan was focused on, why, it's old, we have to have a new set of policies and principles." Okay, I'm glad you sent me those notes, giving me an opportunity to explain to you why you're wrong. Let's go back and listen to audio sound bite number four, Ronaldus Magnus, October 27th, 1964, a televised campaign address for Barry Goldwater. REAGAN: We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immortality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom, because to save our own skins we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one." Now, let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war. But there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second. Surrender. RUSH: Now, this is the sound bite that the people were reacting to in the email. "Reagan, that's 45 years old, Rush, can't talk about that." Let me present my view of this. Let's go back not to 1964, but let's go back to 1960. That election featured Richard Nixon, the incumbent vice president against John Kennedy. Do you remember how close that election was? Razor thin. It came down to the dead vote in Chicago and with some chicanery in West Virginia. And Nixon could have contested it but he decided for the good of the country he would concede the next day. Why was that election so close? Back in 1960, both candidates agreed on fundamental issues. Both candidates agreed that national security and keeping this country safe from foreign enemies was paramount. Both candidates agreed. When it came to domestic policy, don't forget, John Kennedy predated Reagan in tax cuts. Hubert Humphrey, who was also a presidential contender in that era -- and we've played the sound bites of this a long time ago on this radio show -- Hubert Humphrey, talking about a civil rights bill said, "If it's got quotas in it, I ain't signing it." He was considered a liberal Democrat in those days. John Kennedy was considered a liberal Democrat in those days. And we all remember his inauguration speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." The reason that election was so close was because there wasn't much disagreement on the big things between the two candidates. Now, it is 49 years later and we have no more Soviet Union threat. We've got Russia rebuilding itself in the image of the KGB. We still have Castro and whatever he's doing, Hugo Chavez on the march, the ChiComs still communist but opening the free market. They have all the money in the world. But more important, these two parties today do not even agree on national security. One of our political parties today advocates for the defeat of this country. We have now elected a president, we may not have a Soviet threat, but we have a communist threat. It was all about keeping communism out of this country. 1960, Reagan, Nixon, Kennedy, it was all about keeping communism out of this country. JFK didn't want a communist country. Now, we have an administration with members saying their favorite philosopher is Mao Tse-tung. Next we're going to learn that somebody else in this administration admires Joseph Stalin. We have avowed Marxists, self-proclaimed communists in this administration. The left in this country have gone so far left from where it was in 1960. Reagan was exactly right. If you think that the era of Reagan is over simply because the external threat of communism in the Soviet Union was beat down, you have missed the whole point. Reagan was talking about tyranny, liberty, freedom. It's always threatened. It always has to be fought for. It has to be earned. What's happened now is we're not fighting the Soviet Union. We're fighting the Democrat Party. We're fighting the American left. We are now fighting to save our own country from itself. We are fighting within our own country to preserve our freedom. Reagan was exactly right. This is why the era of Reagan will never be over because it is the era of our founding. It is the era of individual freedom, American exceptionalism. These are crucial times, and we are in an ascendancy here in winning this battle at least in the hearts and minds of the American people which I've always believed is where it starts. So not only is the era of Reagan not over and not only is Reagan passe, Reagan is as relevant as ever, and it is more important than ever that people heed the warnings. And, by the way, I grew up hearing that same stuff from my father. You know, people that lived through the Great Depression, that fought in World War II, Korea, and all that, they remember Khrushchev coming over to the UN and banging his shoe on the desk, claiming that we'll bury you, your grandchildren will be ours and so forth. They took it seriously, both parties. Now, something happened after the assassination of JFK. That is where I think the modern left really started gaining it's ascendancy which is amazing because it was a leftist communist who assassinated JFK. But that gave birth to Lyndon Johnson, a massive leftist. It was always bubbling under the surface, you always had Hollywood leftists and communists, and we used to have a House Un-American Activities Committee. Do you know that? In the House of Representatives, we had a House Un-American Activities Committee. Academia was left, but it really started marching full speed ahead in the sixties after the assassination of JFK, and it has not stopped. And the things that Ronald Reagan warned us about have happened. Well, they're in the process of happening. In 2008 in our presidential election we had a Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist five-minute career Senator of 150 days. That senator was running as a Democrat and had actively sought the defeat of the US military in Iraq and actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers, not Bush soldiers, and not Obama soldiers, American soldiers are dying at record numbers. The threat that people of this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. RUSH: The era of Reagan is the era of our founding. It is never over. Ronald Reagan is not being held up as somebody whom every candidate must be like. That's not possible. People like me who love and appreciate Ronald Reagan have no cultlike appreciation for Reagan. This is not an attachment to a personality. It's an attachment to leadership and ideals and principles, ideals and principles which will never die because freedom will never die. Therefore, the era of Reagan will never be over. 36) Dismantling America: Part II Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/10/29/dismantling_america_part_ii http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374097/posts October 29, 2009 Thomas Sowell Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent. I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other. My suggestion was that we get more concrete information before having a vote. The director of that program rose immediately and responded indignantly and sarcastically to what I had just said-- and the faculty gave him a standing ovation. After the faculty meeting was over, I told a colleague that I was stunned and baffled by the faculty's fierce response to my simply saying that we needed more information before voting. "Tom, you don't understand," he said. "Those people need to believe in that man. They have invested so much hope and trust in him that they cannot let you stir up any doubts." Years later, and hundreds of miles away, I learned that my worst misgivings about that program did not begin to approach the reality, which included organized criminal activity. The memory of that long-ago episode has come back more than once while observing both the actions of the Obama administration and the fierce reactions of its supporters to any questioning or criticism. Almost never do these reactions include factual or logical arguments against the administration's critics. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of bad faith and even charges of racism. Here too, it seems as if so many people have invested so much hope and trust in Barack Obama that it is intolerable that anyone should come along and stir up any doubts that could threaten their house of cards. Among the most pathetic letters and e-mails I receive are those from people who ask why I don't write more "positively" about Obama or "give him the benefit of the doubt." No one-- not even the President of the United States-- has an entitlement to a "positive" response to his actions. The entitlement mentality has eroded the once common belief that you earned things, including respect, instead of being given them. As for the benefit of the doubt, no one-- especially not the President of the United States-- is entitled to that, when his actions can jeopardize the rights of 300 million Americans domestically and the security of the nation in an international jungle, where nuclear weapons may soon be in the hands of people with suicidal fanaticism. Will it take a mushroom cloud over an American city to make that clear? Was 9/11 not enough? When a President of the United States has begun the process of dismantling America from within, and exposing us to dangerous enemies outside, the time is long past for being concerned about his public image. He has his own press agents for that. Internationally, Barack Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II-- and come dangerously close to winning it. At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The Obama administration has already done that by reneging on this country's commitment to put a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and by its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well. Countries around the world that have to look out for their own national survival, above all, are not going to ignore how much Obama has downgraded the reliability of America's commitments. Iraq, for example, knows that Iran is going to be next door forever while Americans may be gone in a few years. South Korea likewise knows that North Korea is permanently next door but who knows when the Obama administration will get a bright idea to pull out? Countries in South America know that Hugo Chavez is allying Venezuela with Iran. Dare they ally themselves with an unreliable U.S.A.? Or should they join our enemies to work against us? This issue is too serious for squeamish silence. 37) Swine Flu Panic In Perspective American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/swine_flu_panic_in_perspective.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373483/posts October 29, 2009 Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D. I usually see about twenty patients in my office, and at least a few patients in the hospital, daily. Over the past several months, my patient load has increased by one third. Almost all of the increase is due to fears about H1N1 influenza. Patients are coming to the office fearful of "Swine Flu," with symptoms ranging from a slight sniffle to overt pneumonia. After seeing hundreds of cases of "flu" over the past several months and testing all of those who fit the clinical picture of influenza, I have confirmed only three genuine cases of H1N1. Two of these cases were in physicians and one was in a nurse. All of the other cases turned out to be allergies, typical viral or bacterial infections, or the seasonal flu. Additionally, all three had mild illness and recovered with symptomatic treatment. It is necessary to keep this "pandemic" in perspective. We have an administration that will try to divert attention away from other issues and a public health system that is more than willing to help them. In May of this year I wrote an article entitled "Swine Flu in Perspective." In it I noted the following: Finally, 36,000 people die from Influenza every year in this country. That's 100 people a day on average! Sadly, a baby from Mexico died in Texas from the Swine Flu. There will likely be more deaths here, but not in the numbers some would have you believe. However, about 100 people in the US die from the typical flu every day. Swine flu is a flu! Of course, every life is precious. But more Americans die from car accidents than the flu. Do we need to be vigilant? Of course. Should we foment panic? Absolutely not. I cautioned that more people would likely die but held strongly to the belief that the panic was more dangerous than the disease. Now, five months later, after reviewing the evidence, I have not changed my mind. So let's review the data. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) report on the leading causes of death for 2006, the last year for which complete statistics are available, can be found here. Note that there were 56,326 deaths caused by "influenza and pneumonia." Why are these combined? Simply because while we have a pretty good idea of the number of people who died of pneumonia, we have to estimate the number of deaths for which influenza was a contributing factor. The way in which the CDC does this can be found here. A relatively small number of people are tested for seasonal influenza relative to the number who present with respiratory infections. Furthermore, only about 38% of hospitalized patients with flu-like syndrome are tested for seasonal influenza and, surprisingly, only 5% who die from such illnesses are tested. Out of a total of 273 cities with populations of over 100,000, and hundreds more with populations over 10,000, the CDC monitors seasonal influenza mortality statistics from just 122 cities. Don't get me wrong; the CDC does a good job, but by its very nature and magnitude it is an incomplete job. Though seasonal influenza may cause a higher proportion of deaths than reported, it is estimated that it causes around 36,000 deaths annually. What is happening with H1N1? For starters, as mentioned above, people are seeking medical intervention much more quickly and often for symptoms they would have ignored or treated at home with chicken soup and Tylenol in years past. Additionally, proportionately larger numbers of people were initially getting tested, even when they had only the remotest possibility of having the disease. The fact that more people were tested meant that more would be diagnosed. Additionally, and even more disturbing, many cases are assumed to be H1N1 without testing. Yes, the CDC advised the states to stop testing for and tracking cases of H1N1. Their rationale? There is no need to waste resources when the government has already confirmed there is an epidemic. In other words, just trust us. The debate is over. I had no idea Al Gore and the IPCC were working for the CDC. As I originally contended, the number of cases of H1N1 has been overestimated, and even CBS News reported this. I have had twenty-two patients call me or come in to the office claiming to have had contact with patients who were diagnosed with the "Swine Flu." In each and every case I took the time to investigate the contact case to determine whether the patient had actually been tested. In every case so far, the contact case either was not tested or tested negative but was given the diagnosis just the same. On a personal note, my daughter developed a viral illness but continued running cross country while sick. She fainted due to dehydration and was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of H1N1. She was discharged after three days and is doing well. Her roommates were temporarily moved out of her dorm room to prevent exposure. I checked on the test several days later, and despite the diagnosis, it was negative. Yet even news organizations overseas are reporting on "Swine Flu" mania in the U.S. and our valiant president's decisive actions to protect us. Of course, the BBC has not discussed his delay on a decision for troop escalation in Afghanistan. Over 1,000 deaths from "Swine Flu" thus far in 2009 have been reported in the U.S., and Mr. Obama has declared a "Swine Flu emergency." Of course, statistics reveal that around 30,000 people have died from the seasonal flu this year and he has declared no "seasonal flu emergency." With over 1,384 Coalition deaths in less than one month, I for one would like to see him declare an "Afghanistan Emergency" and prescribe more troops to protect the brave souls in mortal danger there. Generally, the reaction to this pandemic borders on the Orwellian. Many employers are forcing employees to be vaccinated under threat of loss of their jobs. Hospitals are doing the same, and many are requiring caregivers to wear masks at all times, even if there have been no reported cases. Some schools are considering requiring immunization under threat of suspension. Evidence is mounting that, as I opined previously, "Swine Flu" is less of a threat medically and epidemiologically than was feared, but is a great mechanism for the promotion of political pork. Our founding fathers taught that it is healthy to regard government intentions with skepticism. We have failed to heed their wise advice, and we are now learning that the military tactic of deception is alive and well in the Obama Administration. While we are being threatened by H1N1, they are using the distraction to infect us with a much more deadly disease that will affect not only us, but our children and grandchildren: the disease of subjugation. 38) Next Tuesday's Lessons For 2010 American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/tuesdays_lessons_for_2010.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373472/posts October 29, 2009 C. Edmund Wright OMG. From the backwater town of Wasilla, the naïve hockey-mom moose-huntress simply "Facebooked" a few thoughts into her device of choice, and damned if those words didn't bounce off a satellite and land squarely in the middle of New York state politics. Key among those words was the phrase "endorse Doug Hoffman." Perhaps they landed in the middle of the run up to the 2010 mid term elections as well. And from the glass towers of Manhattan to the stately low-rise buildings of Washington, self-important media pundits and Republican Party hacks are once again slow to realize that they have been outmaneuvered, out-finessed, and outsmarted by their favorite target of derision, Sarah Palin. I wonder if David Brooks has quit staring at the crease in Obama's pants long enough to notice. By her endorsement of Conservative Party candidate Hoffman in the now famous 23rd Congressional district of New York, Palin has demonstrated guts, leadership, political instincts, and a connection with real America that continue to dwarf those traits in almost everyone inside the beltway. Oh, and BTW -- she is a major reason that the now-famous special election of NY 23 is now famous. All of which makes NY 23 one of three elections next week that will contain significant lessons to be learned for the 2010 midterms. Significant as the lessons are, however, they are somewhat nuanced -- and if the conservative base and the GOP leadership do not reach the same conclusions from the results, the huge opportunity of 2010 will be impaired, if not wasted. Along with NY 23, next week brings us governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey. As it stands now, Republican Bob McDonnell should win by a huge margin in Virginia and Republican Chris Christie will run very close to -- and may beat -- Jon Corzine in New Jersey. Hoffman has a real chance to win NY 23. I submit that if McDonnell wins and Christie even comes close, the lessons for 2010 hold. The Virginia lesson here is simple. This normally red state turned blue for Obama, but now they are trending back red -- as in red-faced embarrassment for buying into "hope and change," and angry red over Obama's "fundamentally changing" the country. McDonnell is up on Creigh Deeds by 10 to 18 points. Deeds and the White House have come just short of conceding already. To lose, McDonnell would have to be caught on tape lighting a cigarette while handing out bonuses to AIG executives and using racial/gender slurs as he orders a scotch and favors from a 13-year-old ACORN sex slave. Short of that, all Virginians will see on tape are ads showing Obama praising Obama, paid for by the "Deeds for Governor" committee. The lesson is this: red states like Virginia that turned blue in 2008 are moving back. The Obama-nation is not selling in these parts, and all you have to do in these areas is be a conservative and run like one. Period. That was not much tried in 2008, by the way. The lessons from Jersey are not that difficult either. First, run as a conservative and you might make history even in this bluest of blue states. Incumbent Jon Corzine, a mega-wealthy Wall Street Democrat, has 25 million more dollars to spend than Christie, and there are 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey. Not only that, but there is a third party candidate in the race siphoning voters from Christie as well. Even against this array of disadvantages, Christie has a 50-50 chance. How? By being a conservative and running against an unabashed liberal. In fact, were it not for the third-party candidate, Christie would be cake-walking to victory. This is a key message for third-party advocates. Go third party and you will end up with more Democrats. Period. The third party in Jersey may end up electing their least favorite choice of Corzine. That is Corzine's only hope. This is a key lesson. And that brings us to NY 23...where no, this is not a race that disproves the Third Party assumption just made about New Jersey. The race between Doug Hoffman, ultra-liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, and Democrat Bill Owens is extraordinary for a number of reasons. It's an off-year election in a single district where the "third-party" candidate is actually a Republican who should have been the GOP candidate in the first place. Doug Hoffman wanted the GOP nomination and likely would have won it in a primary since he clearly is the base's choice. However, the local party tapped Scozzafava instead under somewhat murky circumstances. She is considered liberal even for a Democrat, way left of RINO status. All of which makes NY 23 a deliciously interesting laboratory opportunity for canny conservative Republicans...you know, like Hoffman and Sarah Palin. But here is the payoff lesson: there are a lot of third-party advocates who are backing Hoffman and who have started to back Palin for President in 2012. Many of these folks are calling NY 23 a war cry in favor of a third party. Perhaps they should heed the words of Hoffman himself when he told Fox News a couple of days ago: I think this is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and for the values and ideals that we -- we say we stand for...basically, it comes down to two liberals in the race. And I'm the common-sense conservative Reagan Republican in the race. I think, if the Republican Party ever wants to get back into the majority and they want to get strong again, they have to stick to their ideals. In other words, the third-party candidate Hoffman is referring to Republicans as "we" and calling himself the only true Republican in the race. In his mind, his candidacy is a road map for the Republican Party's success even though he is running outside of it. That is not to disparage third parties per se, but only to point out that Hoffman is not making a third-party statement here. And the same can be said of his superstar endorser, Sarah Palin. In her endorsement announcement, she said: Republicans and conservatives around the country are sending an important message to the Republican establishment in their outstanding grassroots support for Doug Hoffman: no more politics as usual. Palin went on to quote Ronald Reagan, who said that "blurring the lines" is not the way to rebuild the Republican Party. She too is attempting to rebuild the party by endorsing its defeat in this specific election. And the same can be said for Dick Armey, Fred Thompson, the Club for Growth, Concerned Women for America, and others who have publicly supported Hoffman. (I would add that Tim Pawlenty showed his leadership mettle as greatly lacking compared to Palin's by coming late to the Hoffman endorsement party.) So as sexy as a third-party win would be in NY 23, the candidate and his chief supporters refuse to call NY 23 a third-party movement. To them, this is what Reagan called a "revitalized second party" and an invitation for liberal Republicans to "go their own way." The use of Reagan's name by both Hoffman and Palin is not a coincidence here. And really, this is the lesson of all three races regardless of their outcomes. If Hoffman comes close, or wins against huge odds, as a third party -- and if Christie comes close or wins in far-left Jersey -- and if McDonnell wins big in a state Obama carried a year ago -- the lessons are the same. Republicans will do very well to send their liberal cohorts "their own way" and revitalize the party Reagan-style. Another lesson is that one of the very first to fully invest in this theory was that hick ex-governor from Alaska. She rolled the dice. She swung for the fence. She thought outside the box, and she took a chance based on her instincts. And guess what? Just like when she resigned her governorship, her decision is coming up aces. Again. The conservative base is not surprised. Again. But the DC-Manhattan-corridor pundits and party hacks, who are still miffed by her resignation, have no idea what is going on with her endorsement of Hoffman and how it is playing in flyover country. And they will likely misread the tea leaves of all three election results. Again. The lessons drawn from November 3rd will have a critical influence on the development of the 2010 and 2012 elections. We cannot afford another polite RINO disaster or another Perot Party disaster. Obama and his big government statists are moving way too fast. 39) Judge Dismisses California Eligibility Challenge - Plaintiffs Promise Appeal Of Ruling Protecting Obama World Net Daily http://www.wnd.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=114411 Free Republic (excerpted) Posting 10/29/09 Bob Unruh A California judge has dismissed a complaint challenging President Obama's eligibility to be president citing the "birth certificate from the state of Hawaii" that apparently refers to an Internet image of a "Certification of Live Birth" released during Obama's campaign. The ruling came this morning from Judge David Carter who as WND reported last night apparently recently hired a law clerk out of the law firm that has been paid nearly $1.7 million to defend Obama from eligibility challenges. A Wikipedia page has been cited by dozens of bloggers after it listed Siddarth Velamoor as one of the newest law clerks for Carter - who today released his ruling dismissing the complaint in the Barnett v. Obama case in the Central District, Southern Division Court in Santa Ana, Calif. Velamoor is also listed in the Martindale lawyer database as an associate of international law firm Perkins Coie, the same law firm of Robert Bauer - top lawyer for Obama, Obama's presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and Obama's Organizing for America - and the same Washington, D.C., lawyer who defended President Obama in lawsuits challenging his eligibility to be president. As WND has reported, Federal Election Commission records for "Obama for America" show that the lobby organization has paid Perkins Coie $1,666,397.01 since the 2008 election. Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation confirmed immediately that his clients - two of about four dozen in the case - would be filing an appeal. California attorney Orly Taitz, representing the rest of the clients, also promised not only an appeal of the decision but of future cases that will be filed. "This [opinion] looks like it was written by the defense," she told WND. She described the fight against Obama as "very tough." "He has more power than anybody, unlimited financial resources, and a lot to hide," she said. "Plaintiffs argue that despite the fact that President Obama has produced a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, there is evidence to show that the president was actually born in Kenya, thus making him ineligible to be president," Carter wrote. However, Obama's long-form original birth certificate has remained under seal. The image posted by his campaign on the Internet is a different document, a "Certification of Live Birth," that apparently is computer generated and has been challenged by a number of critics over its authenticity. In fact, the authenticity of the "Certification of Live Birth" has been a focal point of numerous court challenges to Obama's eligibility, and Taitz earlier submitted to Carter a copy of what purported to be a Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, asking for permission to verify its authenticity. 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. Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago. Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment - at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million - of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation. While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state. The ultimate questions remain unaddressed to date: Is Obama a natural born citizen, and, if so, why hasn't documentation been provided? And, of course, if he is not, what does it mean to the 2008 election or the U.S. Constitution if it is revealed that there has been a violation? WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records. 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 more than 475,000 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. Carter's dismissal revolved around his determination that the plaintiffs lacked "standing" to bring the complaint, including those plaintiffs who were third-party candidates in the 2008 presidential election. "The court is troubled by the idea that a third party candidate would not have standing to challenge a major party candidate's qualifications, while the opposing major party candidate may be able to establish standing because he or she has a better chance of winning the election," he said. He warned, "Defendants' argument encourages the marginalization of the voice of a third party in what is a dominantly two-party political system and would require the court to pass judgment that plaintiffs are such unlikely candidates that who they are running against would not make a difference. "This argument also ignores the tremendous effect that a third-party candidate can have on the presidential election. In 2000, many political commentators opined that should Green Party candidate Ralph Nader not have run for presidential office and received less than three percent of the popular vote, Al Gore would have won the election instead of President George W. Bush. Even when third-party candidates themselves may not have a chance of winning, which candidates they compete against can certainly have an effect on the election results," he said. But he also said once Obama was sworn into office on Jan. 20, the question no longer was over a potentially ineligible candidate but of the removal of a sitting president. Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, hours before the complaint was filed. However, Obama also took the oath of office the next day, on Jan. 21, after the complaint was filed, because he stumbled over the words during the Jan. 20 event. "In order to cure plaintiffs' perceived injury, the court would need to wade deep into the waters of the president's official duties - in fact, it would have to declare that the president could no longer perform any official duties. The separation of powers concerns implicated by this request are grave," Carter wrote. He also cited the separation of powers doctrine and the Constitution's assignment of the power of impeaching a sitting president to Congress. Carter cited Kreep's arguments that Obama never met the constitutional requirements to run for president. "There may very well be a legitimate role for the judiciary to interpret whether the natural born citizen requirement has been satisfied in the case of a presidential candidate who has not already won the election and taken office. However, on the day that President Obama took the presidential oath and was sworn in, he became president of the United States. Any removal of him from the presidency must be accomplished through the Constitution's mechanisms for the removal of a president, either through impeachment or the succession process set forth in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment." 40) Dearborn Shoot-Out Opens A Window Into Homegrown Terror Townhall.com http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertKnight/2009/10/30/dearborn_shoot-out_opens_a_window_into_homegrown_ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2375633/posts October 30, 2009 Robert Knight Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was the Imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, died in a shoot-out on Wednesday after firing on FBI agents during a raid in Dearborn, Michigan. Another seven Muslims were apprehended and various weapons seized. "We're not any fake terrorists, we're the real terrorists," Abdullah (aka Christopher Thomas) once bragged to an undercover informant, according to an FBI affidavit. Abdullah, 53, was a disciple of none other than H. Rap Brown. If you ever wondered what had become of the'60s Black Panther leader, well, he converted to Islam while in prison in the 1970s. And he apparently has not changed his mind about what he'd like to do to America. Famous for saying, "Violence is necessary. It's as American as cherry pie," he goes by the moniker Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, and runs a Sunni group called Ummah ("community"). The Black Muslim organization's goal is to establish an Islamic regime with Sharia Law within the United States. Brown is doing this from his prison cell at the ADX Florence supermax federal prison in Colorado, where he's serving a state-imposed sentence for shooting two black police officers in Fulton County, Georgia in 2000. In Wednesday's raid, the agents targeted a Dearborn warehouse and two Detroit homes after a two-year investigation of the Ummah offshoot. A total of 11 Muslims (three were still at large) were charged with various conspiracy felonies involving stolen goods and firearms. Speaking of conspiracies, Abdullah is on tape saying that the FBI was behind Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The 43-page criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and which contains eyewitness accounts, says that boys as young as 7 were beaten "severely" (p. 24) and that Abdullah encouraged his followers to "pick up guns and do something." (p. 3) He also said, "If they are coming to get me, I'll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody." (p. 10) He also said while watching a TV show featuring a nuclear bomb that he would like to acquire a "little bomb" and target Washington, D.C. (page 18). Well, that kind of talk, except for the fact that Washington is about 60 percent African-American, should make a proud man out of Al-Brown, who once said, "We must wage guerrilla warfare on the honky white man" and, "If America doesn't come around, then black people are going to burn it down." The latter threat was made in Cambridge, Maryland, where fiery riots erupted shortly thereafter in July, 1967, fulfilling his prophecy. A color photo of Abdullah, was made available to the press by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the most prominent Muslim public relations group in America. CAIR has denounced terrorism but has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a prominent terrorist funding case. On the same day as the Michigan raids, CAIR put out an unrelated editorial "Islamophobia Machine Targets American Muslims," which denounces Frank Gaffney, Geert Wilders and other prominent critics of radical Islam. CAIR also assisted in the effort to have Christian convert Rifqa Bary, 17, sent Tuesday from Florida back to Ohio, where her Muslim parents are trying to regain custody. Rifqa fears an "honor killing" because she is an apostate, and although a deal was cut keeping her in foster care until she turns 18, her parents have since fired the attorney and are seeking to break the deal and bring her home. A custody hearing is slated on Nov. 16 in Franklin County Juvenile Court. Back in Michigan, Dawud Walid, who heads the Michigan Council on American-Islamic Relations, said of Abdullah, "I know him as a respected man in the Muslim community," according to the Detroit Free Press. The group's Website on Thursday made no mention of the raids, and its top press release was about the Roseville Community Schools apologizing for sending out a permission slip for pupils to attend an off-campus Bible study. No parents had complained to the schools, but CAIR had adopted the ACLU's bullying tactic of accusing school officials of violating the First Amendment. Wednesday's raids came on the heels of the Oct. 19 indictment of a Colorado Imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, for allegedly lying to federal agents about an alleged terror plot to bomb targets in New York City. Najibullah Zazi, of Aurora, Col., and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, were arrested in September in Denver in connection with the alleged plot. The Dearborn shoot-out is especially jarring because 30 percent of the city's population of 98,000 is Muslim and where many billboards, street signs and storefront signs are in Arabic. At a local high school where 80 percent of the students are Muslim, the principal allegedly punched a boy who had converted to Christianity and "disgraced his family." Coral Ridge Ministries recently sent cameras into Dearborn, capturing footage that's part of the video Radical Islam on the March. Faisal Malick, an ex-Muslim featured in the documentary, says that militancy is increasing among Muslims who "believe the whole world should submit to Islam. When they come into the United States of America, they want to see Sharia law implemented, they want to dominate every place of influence-in education and technology and law, in government, in finances." Referring to Christians and Jews, Abdullah said in a taped conversation, "we have to cut the ties to them . you cannot please them until you follow their religion. Obama is a Kafir [dog]. McCain, all the rest of them . you cannot make a good Kafir, bad Kafir.The promise of Allah and Islam said, '. the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir.'" Since "Kafirs" are still in power, that means that Abdullah's followers need not worry about legalities. Or, as H. Rap Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Brown once said, "We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws.” Yes, you are. It’s why you’re behind bars right now. "Religion/Culture/Morals" articles 1) Darwin's Dilemma: Evolutionary Elite Choose Censorship Over Scientific Debate CNS News http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/55482 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2364119/posts October 14, 2009 Casey Luskin When a conservative group, the American Freedom Alliance (AFA), recently contracted to premiere a new documentary titled "Darwin's Dilemma" at the Smithsonian-affiliated California Science Center, they couldn't imagine the brouhaha that would ensue. As soon as word of the screening went public, the Darwinian thought police started complaining about a government-supported science center renting its facilities to a group showing a film that challenges Darwinian evolution. Why the outrage? Isn't there academic freedom to express scientific viewpoints that dissent from the evolutionary "consensus"? To give some background on the controversy, the fossil record shows that about 530 million years ago, nearly all major animal groups (called "phyla") abruptly appeared on earth. Dubbed the "Cambrian explosion," this dramatic burst of biodiversity without clear evolutionary precursors has created headaches for evolutionists ever since Darwin's time. There are two ways that modern evolutionists approach the Cambrian explosion, or what has been called "Darwin's dilemma": A. Some freely acknowledge that the Cambrian fossil evidence essentially shows the opposite of what was expected under neo-Darwinian evolution. B. Others deal with the Cambrian explosion by sweeping its problems under the rug and trying to change the subject. Succumbing to pressure from Darwinian elites, the California Science Center chose option B. The AFA had contracted with the Science Center, a department of the California state government, to show "Darwin's Dilemma" on Sept. 25th at the center's IMAX Theatre. The film explores the eponymous problem of how the Cambrian explosion challenges Darwinian theory and features scientists arguing that the best explanation is intelligent design (ID). Apparently this was too much for the California Science Center, which abruptly cancelled the AFA's contract just a couple weeks before the screening. The center claims it cancelled the event "because of issues related to the contract" but refuses to identify the issues. Contract "issues" always make a nice pretext for censorship, but a little digging into history uncovers what likely took place. The California Science Center is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, which has a long history of opposing academic freedom for ID. In 2004, a pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific article authored by Stephen Meyer was published in a Smithsonian-affiliated biology journal. Once the Biological Society of Washington (BSW) realized it had published a pro-ID paper, it repudiated Meyer's article, alleging the paper "does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings." Of course the BSW cited no factual errors in the paper; they just didn't like Meyer's conclusions. Then in 2005, a critical New York Times story inspired anti-ID censors to pressure the Smithsonian to cancel the screening of a pro-ID film, "The Privileged Planet." To its credit, the Smithsonian honored its contract to show the film but publicly disclaimed the event, stating "the content of the film is not consistent with the mission of the Smithsonian Institution." Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer said the institution objected to the documentary's "philosophical conclusion." (Of course, when the Smithsonian featured Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" documentary in 1997, it volunteered no objections to the film's bold opening statement that "The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.") The story picks up in 2006, when a congressional staff investigation found that "Smithsonian's top officials permit[ted] the demotion and harassment of [a] scientist skeptical of Darwinian evolution." The persecuted scientist was Smithsonian research biologist Richard Sternberg, who experienced retaliation for overseeing the publication of Meyer's paper. The Smithsonian Institution seems willing to go to great lengths to oppose ID and send the message that scientists who sympathize with ID will face consequences, but how does this relate to the current debacle with the California Science Center? For one, Drs. Sternberg and Meyer are featured in the "Darwin's Dilemma" documentary advocating ID. And second, Smithsonian spokesman Randal Kremer has reappeared, stating that he "spoke" with the California Science Center after becoming "concerned by the inference . there was a showing of the film at a Smithsonian branch." Though Kremer officially denies it, all appearances indicate pressure was applied from on high at the Smithsonian, and the California Science Center caved in and cancelled the event. Once we move past the customary pretexts, this is an open and shut case of censorship and the banning of free speech that dissents from evolution. Darwin's dilemma isn't just about a lack of transitional fossils in ancient rocks. It's about how the guards of evolutionary orthodoxy will treat contrary scientific viewpoints. Will they silence minority views, or will they grant dissenting scientists freedom of speech and scientific inquiry to make their case? That is the real question posed by Darwin's dilemma. Let's hope the California Science Center reverses its decision to cancel the contracted screening of "Darwin's Dilemma" and chooses freedom of speech over evolutionary dogmatism. 2) Sharing The Real Mary Inside Catholic http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7057&Itemid=48 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2363915/posts October 16, 2009 David Mills Many of our Protestant friends appreciate Mary in a way their ancestors didn't. This is a good thing. Some of them even like her a lot, and in a way that their ancestors would denounce. This is an even better thing. But there are limits, which too many Catholics just can't see. By "Protestant" I'm thinking particularly of our Evangelical friends who are, in doctrinal seriousness and many other ways, close to us. For centuries they simply ignored Mary, even at Christmas. The only time they thought of her in any substantial way was when they were denouncing Catholic teaching, which they thought idolatrous, unbiblical, superstitious, and a rejection of the Lord Himself in favor of His mother. She was for them, as an Evangelical pastor once said to me, just "the delivery system" needed to bring Jesus into the world. The Incarnation required a human mother; God picked Mary; she agreed, and in nine months Jesus was born. Since He had to have a mother, who it was didn't really matter. Having this child didn't change her in any way. Once Jesus was old enough to take of Himself, her small part in our salvation was over. An Episcopal minister told me that Mary was well down the list of "great Christians." Asked for an example, he said she was well behind a 19th-century British missionary to Canada named Hudson Taylor. If you wanted an example of faithfulness, he said, look to Taylor before you look to Mary. After all, he said, she didn't really do anything. She just had a baby. But things are changing. One can guess at the reasons: The culture so promotes women that a heavily masculine tradition will prudently look to its sources for famous women to feature. Mary is the obvious first choice, though some Evangelicals have wanted "stronger" women as their examples of biblical women to follow, because they think of Mary as passive and her calling too typically feminine. (After all, she didn't really do anything. She just had a baby.) But this new and growing affection for Jesus' mother is also the result of their piety finally free to play itself out, now that many of the prejudices and commitments of the past have lost some of their power. They love their Lord and begin feeling a natural affection for His mother, and often begin to look more closely at who she is in the Gospels. They begin to reflect on what her assent to the angel's news means, and on what the prayer we call the Magnificat says about her; some even begin to look at the Old Testament for ways she may have been anticipated there. The Southern Baptist theologian Timothy George, a leader in that world, has admitted, "We have been afraid to praise and esteem Mary for her full worth." This he wants to change, and offers several substantial suggestions for doing so, stressing aspects of Mary and her work that Evangelicals have not talked about much but that follow from their theological commitments. Writing in the major Evangelical magazine Christianity Today a couple of years ago, he said that an "Evangelical retrieval of a proper biblical theology of Mary will give attention to five explicit aspects of her calling and ministry: Mary as the daughter of Israel, as the virgin mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, as the handmaiden of the Word, and as the mother of the Church." So far, so good. Or maybe I should say, only so far, so good. Because the Protestant attitude shifts quickly from such talk of Mary to considering her as the Catholic knows her. They feel themselves drawn to Jesus' mother until they meet her in all her glory, as the Mother of the Church and the Queen of Heaven, immaculately conceived, perpetually virgin, assumed into Heaven. Then, as the saying goes, not so much. Even the irenic George, at the end of his article, can only go so far as to commend this prayer: "And now we give you thanks, Heavenly Father, because in choosing the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of your Son, you exalted the little ones and the lowly. Your angel greeted her as highly favored; and with all generations we call her blessed and with her we rejoice and we magnify your holy name." A good prayer, but not a Marian prayer. He would refuse on pain of death to say the "Hail Mary." This difference matters, and matters a lot more than we might want to think. In my experience, Catholics who love their Protestant friends often exaggerate their points of agreement. They hear polite statements of interest or a curiosity about Catholic teaching and read into them a change in conviction that really isn't there. They take an article like George's as evidence that our Evangelical friends almost accept the Catholic teaching, missing how little, if anything at all, they've actually conceded. In a recent Catholic News Service story, for example, a mariologist was quoted as saying, with all the good will in the world, that "some Catholic doctrines about Mary, such as the Immaculate Conception -- the belief that she was conceived without sin -- remain controversial among Protestants." He seems to think that some believe it and others don't, but that as a group they're moving our way. But the belief is not controversial among them at all: Those who understand the matter almost unanimously reject it out of hand. You would have to search long and hard to find any Protestant who believes it. (Outside, that is, of a few high-church Lutherans and Episcopalians, but they're far from the mainstream of their traditions.) Just try talking about Mary's sinlessness to an Evangelical friend. He may simply say politely that he doesn't believe in it, but he may react as if you'd casually urged him to sacrifice his children to Baal. He will tell you that you've denied the Lord, replaced Him with Mary, rejected the biblical teaching, and the like. He thinks the Catholic belief a serious heresy. A fact that is crucial to our friendship with Mary is, to most of our Evangelical friends, an abomination. The desire to find our friends closer to us than before is an admirable impulse, but it prevents the clarity needed for a truly effective exchange. We must be careful not to take a sign of Evangelical openness to Catholic teaching as a conversion -- to treat a friendly wave in our direction as a proposal of marriage. Marian doctrine and devotion is not a matter, like some others, where the Catholic teaching is an extension or expansion of something believing Protestants hold already. The Communion of Saints, and by extension prayer to the saints for their help, is one of these, at least at the basic level. The Protestant believes in asking others for their prayers, and he knows mutual prayer to be a sign of the Church at work. The Catholic teaching only expands the number of fellow believers whose prayers he can request, by claiming that God has given us access to them. He probably still rejects it -- and quite firmly -- but it fits what he already believes about the relation of one Christian to his brothers. Marian doctrine and piety are not like this. They rest on several beliefs radically different from those our Evangelical friends hold, not least the ability of the Church to discern through her Tradition truths that Scripture does not teach explicitly in the way the Evangelical requires. Nothing in Protestant piety could lead them to belief in Mary as the Queen of Heaven, and much tells them that she can't possibly be anything of the sort. That kind of belief requires a conversion, in the sense of turning around and walking in the opposite direction, in a way the acceptance of many other Catholic teachings and practices doesn't. But this is something that many Catholics just don't get. Priests and laity ask me about this, as a convert who's written a book on Mary. They confidently give me what they think are winning arguments that are, in fact, hopelessly in-house, deeply Catholic arguments that would leave the inquiring Protestant cold, and in some cases quite offended. The Marian realities are so clear to them that they just can't see how others can't see them as clearly as they do. This keeps them from speaking effectively about Mary. The person called to share the Catholic Faith has to know exactly what the other believes and -- just as important, if not more importantly -- how he feels about this belief. Think of a doctor trying to persuade a patient to try a new therapy, one that sounds worse than the disease it's supposed to cure. If he speaks to the patient clinically, as one doctor to another, he won't be able to convince the patient to try it, and may instead make him dig in his heels. For the patient's own good, the doctor has to know how he thinks and feels. He must understand that the patient will first, and above all else, see the horrors of the treatment and has to be brought to see that the cost in pain and trouble is worth paying. We want our Protestant friends to pay the cost, because the knowledge of the Blessed Mother can only change their lives for the better. But too optimistic a view of what they believe now will blind us to the severe challenge of sharing what we know about her with our Evangelical brethren, who are so close to us in so many ways, but so far from us in this. 3) Pope Establishes Structure For Anglicans Uniting With Rome Catholic News Service http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0904673.htm http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2366595/posts October 20, 2009 Cindy Wooden Pope Benedict XVI has established a special structure for Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage, said U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada. The cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said a new apostolic constitution would establish "personal ordinariates" -- similar to dioceses -- to oversee the pastoral care of those who want to bring elements of their Anglican identity into the Catholic Church with them. Anglican priests who are married will be ordained Catholic priests, although married Anglican bishops will not be able to function as Catholic bishops in keeping with the longstanding Catholic and Orthodox tradition of ordaining only unmarried clergy as bishops, Cardinal Levada said. The cardinal announced the new arrangement during a press conference Oct. 20 at the Vatican. He said the pope's apostolic constitution and norms for implementing were undergoing final revisions and would be published in a couple of weeks. In establishing the new jurisdictions, Pope Benedict is responding to "many requests" submitted by individual Anglicans and Anglican groups -- including "20 to 30 bishops" -- asking to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, the cardinal said. At the same time, Cardinal Levada explained, the new provision does not weaken the commitment of the Vatican to promoting Christian unity, but is a recognition that many Anglicans share the Catholic faith and that Anglicans have a spiritual and liturgical life worth preserving. "It has always been the principal aim -- the principal aim -- to achieve the full, visible unity" of the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion, the cardinal said. But given recent changes within many Anglican provinces with the ordination of women priests and bishops and the acceptance of homosexuality in some areas, the prospect of full unity "seemed to recede," he said. The church recognizes and welcomes those Anglicans who fully share the Catholic faith, agree with the Catholic view that only men can be ordained priests and recognize the role of the bishop of Rome -- the pope -- as the sign and guarantor of church unity, he said. 4) On St. Bernard Of Clairvaux: "Faith Is Above All A Personal, Intimate Encounter With Jesus" Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-27293?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2368104/posts October 21, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address today during the general audience in St. Peter's Square. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, Today I would like to speak about St. Bernard of Clairvaux, called "the last father" of the Church, because in the 12th century he renewed once again and rendered present the great theology of the Fathers. We do not know details about the years of his boyhood. We know, nevertheless, that he was born in 1090 in Fontaines, France, in a numerous, moderately comfortable family. As a youth, he spent himself in the study of the so-called liberal arts -- especially grammar, rhetoric and dialectics -- at the school of the canons of the church of St. Vorles, in Chatillon-sur-Seine, and he slowly matured his decision to enter the religious life. When he was about 20, he entered Citeaux, a new monastic foundation, more flexible than the old and venerable monasteries of the time and, at the same time, more rigorous in the practice of the evangelical counsels. A few years later, in 1115, Bernard was invited by St. Stephen Harding, third abbot of Citeaux, to found the monastery of Clairvaux. Here the young abbot -- who was only 25 years old -- was able to refine his concept of monastic life, and to be determined to put it into practice. Looking at the discipline of other monasteries, Bernard decidedly reclaimed the need for a sober and measured life, at table as well as in dress and in the monastic buildings, recommending the support and care of the poor. In the meantime, the community of Clairvaux became ever more numerous and multiplied its foundations. In those same years, before 1130, Bernard maintained a vast correspondence with many persons, whether of important or modest social conditions. To the many letters of this period must be added numerous sermons, as well as sentences and treatises. Striking at this time was Bernard's friendship with William, abbot of St. Thierry, and with William of Champeaux, among the most important figures of the 12th century. From 1130 onward, he began to be concerned with not a few grave questions of the Holy See and of the Church. For this reason, he had to go out of his monastery ever more often, and sometimes outside of France. He also founded some women's convents, and was protagonist of a lively correspondence with Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, about whom I spoke last Wednesday. He addressed his controversial writings above all against Abelard, a great thinker who began a new way of making theology, introducing above all the dialectic-philosophical method in the construction of theological thought. Another front against which Bernard fought was the heresy of the Cathars, who held matter and the human body in contempt, consequently scorning the Creator. As well, he felt it his duty to take on the defense of the Jews, condemning the ever more diffuse resurgence of anti-Semitism. For this last aspect of his apostolic action, some 10 years later, Ephraim, rabbi of Bonn, addressed a vibrant tribute to Bernard. In that same period the holy abbot wrote his most famous works, such as the well-known Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles. In the last years of his life -- his death occurred in 1153 -- Bernard had to limit his journeys, without however interrupting them altogether. He took advantage to review definitively the whole of the letters, sermons and treatises. Worthy of being mentioned is a book that is quite singular, that he finished precisely in this period, in 1145, when one of his pupils, Bernard Pignatelli, was elected Pope, taking the name Eugene III. In this circumstance, Bernard, in the capacity of spiritual father, wrote to this spiritual son of his the text "De Consideratione," which contains teachings on how to be a good pope. In this book, which remains an appropriate book for popes of all times, Bernard does not only indicate what it is to be a good pope, but also expresses a profound vision of the mystery of the Church and of the mystery of Christ, which is resolved, in the end, in the contemplation of the mystery of the Triune and One God: "He must again continue the search of this God, who is not yet sufficiently sought," writes the holy abbot "but perhaps He can be sought better and found more easily with prayer than with discussion. We put an end here to the book, but not to the search" (XIV, 32: PL 182, 808), to being on the way to God. I would now like to reflect on two key aspects of Bernard's rich doctrine: they regard Jesus Christ and Mary Most Holy, his Mother. His solicitude for the intimate and vital participation of the Christian in the love of God in Jesus Christ does not offer new guidelines in the scientific status of theology. But, in a more than decisive way, the abbot of Clairvaux configures the theologian to the contemplative and the mystic. Only Jesus -- insists Bernard in face of the complex dialectical reasoning of his time -- only Jesus is "honey to the mouth, song to the ear, joy to the heart (mel in ore, in aure melos, in corde iubilum)." From here stems, in fact, the title attributed to him by tradition of Doctor Mellifluus: his praise of Jesus Christ, in fact, "runs like honey." In the extenuating battles between nominalists and realists -- two philosophical currents of the age -- the abbot of Clairvaux does not tire of repeating that only one name counts, that of Jesus the Nazarene. "Arid is all food of the soul," he confesses, "if it is not sprinkled with this oil; insipid, if it is not seasoned with this salt. What is written has no flavor for me, if I have not read Jesus." And he concludes: "When you discuss or speak, nothing has flavor for me, if I have not heard resound the name of Jesus" (Sermones in Cantica Canticorum XV, 6: PL 183,847). For Bernard, in fact, true knowledge of God consists in a personal, profound experience of Jesus Christ and of his love. And this, dear brothers and sisters, is true for every Christian: Faith is above all a personal, intimate encounter with Jesus, and to experience his closeness, his friendship, his love; only in this way does one learn to know him ever more, and to love and follow him ever more. May this happen to each one of us." In another famous sermon on the Sunday Between the Octave of the Assumption, the holy abbot describes in impassioned terms the intimate participation of Mary in the redeeming sacrifice of the Son. "O holy Mother," he exclaims, "truly a sword has pierced your soul! ... To such a point the violence of pain has pierced your soul, that with reason we can call you more than martyr, because your participation in the Passion of the Son greatly exceeded in intensity the physical sufferings of martyrdom" (14: PL 183, 437-438). Bernard has no doubts: "per Mariam ad Iesum," through Mary we are led to Jesus. He attests clearly to Mary's subordination to Jesus, according to the principles of traditional Mariology. But the body of the sermon also documents the privileged place of the Virgin in the economy of salvation, in reference to the very singular participation of the Mother (compassio) in the sacrifice of the Son. It is no accident that, a century and a half after Bernard's death, Dante Alighieri, in the last canto of the Divine Comedy, puts on the lips of the "Mellifluous Doctor" the sublime prayer to Mary: "Virgin Mary, daughter of your Son,/ humble and higher than a creature,/ fixed end of eternal counsel, ..." (Paradiso 33, vv. 1ss.). These reflections, characteristic of one in love with Jesus and Mary as St. Bernard was, rightly inflame again today not only theologians but all believers. At times an attempt is made to resolve the fundamental questions on God, on man and on the world with the sole force of reason. Instead, St. Bernard, solidly based on the Bible and on the Fathers of the Church, reminds us that without a profound faith in God, nourished by prayer and contemplation, by a profound relationship with the Lord, our reflections on the divine mysteries risk becoming a futile intellectual exercise, and lose their credibility. Theology takes us back to the "science of the saints," to their intuitions of the mysteries of the living God, to their wisdom, gift of the Holy Spirit, which become the point of reference for theological thought. Together with Bernard of Clairvaux, we too must recognize that man seeks God better and finds him more easily "with prayer than with discussion." In the end, the truest figure of the theologian and of every evangelizer is that of the Apostle John, who leaned his head on the heart of the Master. I would like to conclude these reflections on St. Bernard with the invocations to Mary that we read in one of his beautiful homilies. "In danger, in anguish, in uncertainty," he says, "think of Mary, call on Mary. May she never be far from your lips, from your heart; and thus you will be able to obtain the help of her prayer, never forget the example of her life. If you follow her, you cannot go astray; if you pray to her, you cannot despair; if you think of her, you cannot be mistaken. If she sustains you, you cannot fall; if she protects you, you have nothing to fear; if she guides you, do not tire; if she is propitious to you, you will reach the goal ..." (Hom. II super "Missus est," 17: PL 183, 70-71). [The Pope then greeted pilgrims in several languages. In English, he said:] Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our continuing catechesis on the theologians of the Middle Ages, we now turn to one of the most outstanding, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard combined the austerity of the Cistercian monastic renewal with intense activity in the service of the Church in his time. Because of his great learning and deep spirituality he is venerated as a Doctor of the Church, and is often called "the last of the Fathers." Together with his theological writings and homilies, including the celebrated Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard maintained a vast correspondence, developed warm friendships with his contemporaries, defended sound doctrine, and combated heresy and outbreaks of antisemitism. His spirituality was profoundly Christ-centred and contemplative, and his celebration of the sweetness of Christ's name won him the title of Doctor mellifluus. Bernard is also known for his fervent devotion to our Lady and his insight into her intimate sharing in the sacrifice of her Son. May Bernard's example of faith nourished by prayer, study and contemplation, lead us closer "to Jesus through Mary" and grant us that wisdom which finds joyful fulfillment in the knowledge of the saints in heaven. I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking pilgrims present at today's Audience, especially from the Diocese of Lismore and Saginaw accompanied by their Bishops, as well as from Holy Cross and Saint Margaret Mary parish in Edinburgh. I also greet the visitors from the Netherlands, Nigeria, Tanzania, England, Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Upon all of you I invoke God's blessings of peace, joy and hope! [In Italian, he said:] I greet, finally, young people, the sick and newlyweds. Dear friends, the month of October invites us to renew our active cooperation with the mission of the Church. With the fresh energies of youth, with the strength of prayer and of sacrifice and with the capacity of conjugal life, may you be missionaries of the Gospel, offering your concrete support to all those who labor, dedicating their whole existence to the evangelization of peoples. 5) Nun Volunteering As Abortion Clinic Escort In Illinois Life Site http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09102302.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2369475/posts October 23, 2009 Kathleen Gilbert A Dominican nun has been seen frequenting an abortion facility in Illinois recently - but not, as one might expect, to pray for an end to abortion or to counsel women seeking abortions, but to volunteer as a clinic escort. Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article. "I've called her sister several times, and she never responded," local pro-lifer John Bray told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN). "But it's her." Amy Keane, a pro-life witness for 11 years, says Quinn has acted as escort for "six years, at least." Keane described one incident in which Quinn began shouting at the pro-lifers as they spoke to a woman about to enter the abortion facility. "[Quinn] was so angry, and burst out very loudly so everyone could hear: 'Look at these men, telling these women what to do with their bodies!'" said Keane. "She was so angry, that it really took all of us aback." Keane says that the group was peaceful, and that the men present were not among those engaging the woman. "For those of us who are Catholic, to have a member of a religious order so blatantly - it is so disheartening. It really is," said Keane. "She's participating actively in abortion. That is what is so disturbing for us." Sr. Donna Quinn, OP, is renowned in the Chicago area as an advocate for legalized abortion and other liberal issues. In 1974 she co-founded the organization Chicago Catholic Women, which lobbied the USCCB on a feminist platform before it dissolved in 2000. She is now a coordinator of the radically liberal National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), which stands in opposition against the Catholic Church's position on abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the male priesthood. While LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) was unable to reach Sr. Quinn for comment, NCAN's Sr. Beth Rindler confirmed to LSN that Quinn is still a member of their group, which favors unrestricted legalized abortion and disagrees with the teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil. "We respect women, and believe that they make moral decision, and so we respect their decisions," Rindler explained. In a 2002 address to the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, Sr. Quinn described how she came to view the teachings of her Church as "immoral": "I used to say: 'This is my Church, and I will work to change it, because I love it,'" she said. "Then later I said, 'This church is immoral, and if I am to identify with it I'd better work to change it.' More recently, I am saying, 'All organized religions are immoral in their gender discriminations.'" Quinn called gender discrimination "the root cause of evil in the Church, and thus in the world," and said she remained in the Dominican community simply for "the sisterhood." Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there." Though Sr. Mulcahey claimed that her sisters "support the teachings of the Catholic Church," she declined to comment on Quinn's public protest of Catholic Church teaching. Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League says Quinn came in contact with his own office in 1982, when she and a group of other pro-aborts picketed his building on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. "She figures it's part of her religion to take these women in and protect them, and get them abortions," said Scheidler of Quinn's recent activity. "Something dreadful has happened to make a Catholic nun become an escort at an abortion clinic - that's the lowest form you can reach, where you escort a woman with a living child in her into a place to have the child killed, and to ruin that woman's soul." "If I didn't even believe in the humanity of the child - which of course would be crazy - even if I didn't, I would fight abortion for the sake of the women," Scheidler added. "They miss that baby, and they can't get it back. They never can." 6) Meeting Of Hundreds Of Anglican Clergy To Consider Pope Benedict's New Provision Catholic News Agency http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=17471 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2369424/posts October 23, 2009 Hundreds of traditionalist Anglican clergy will meet this weekend in London to discuss whether to enter the Catholic Church in light of Pope Benedict XVI's creation of an Anglican "ordinariate." About 500 members of members of the group Forward in Faith will attend the meeting, the Times Online reports. Many of them are waiting for the Vatican's publication of a Code of Practice, which will provide more detail about the proposed new church structure organized under an Apostolic Constitution. The chairman of Forward in Faith, Bishop of Fulham, England John Broadhurst, issued a statement on Tuesday responding to the Vatican announcement that a structure will be created to assist Anglicans who want to enter into communion with Rome. Bishop Broadhurst said that Anglican Catholics have had "frequently expressed hope and fervent desire" to be enabled to enter into full communion with Rome while retaining "every aspect of their Anglican inheritance which is not at variance with the teaching of the Catholic Church." "We rejoice that the Holy Father intends now to set up structures within the Church which respond to this heartfelt longing. Forward in Faith has always been committed to seeking unity in truth and so warmly welcomes these initiatives as a decisive moment in the history of the Catholic Movement in the Church of England." He closed his message with the Latin phrase "Ut unum sint," Jesus' words in the Gospel of John meaning "may they be one." The phrase is also the title of Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical on ecumenism. Jack Leo Iker, Episcopal Bishop of Ft. Worth, Texas, also responded to the proposed church structure in a Tuesday message. "Many Anglo-Catholics will welcome this development as a very generous and welcoming offer that enhances the Pastoral Provision that has been in place for several years for those seeking reunion with Rome," he commented. "Other Anglicans who desire full communion with the See of Peter would prefer some sort of recognition of the validity of Anglican orders and the provision for inter-communion between Roman Catholics and Anglicans." He said the virtues of the proposal include the maintenance of "certain aspects" of Anglican worship and spirituality, but he added that not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain Catholic teachings and do not believe they must first "convert to Rome" to be truly catholic Christians. The proposal comes at a "difficult time," Bishop Iker continued, noting the lawsuits against his diocese by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S. His diocese voted to leave the Episcopal Church in November 2008, choosing to join the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. "This diocese stands for orthodox Christianity, and we are increasingly at odds with the revisionist practices and teachings of the official leadership of The Episcopal Church," he had said at the time of the vote. The bishop closed his Tuesday statement by eschewing "hasty decisions" and by pledging to continue to work and pray for Christian unity. Bishop Iker's predecessor, Clarence C. Pope, Jr., converted to Catholicism in 2007. More than 440 clergy left the Church of England after the Anglican Church's General Synod voted in 1992 to ordain women priests, the London Times says. Some subsequently returned. Pope Benedict's proposal has reportedly made their conversion easier by allowing Anglicans to retain crucial aspects of their identity and by allowing them to set up seminaries. However, some may face financial difficulties. The London Times reports that Catholic priests in Britain earn slightly over one-third the salary of Anglican clergymen. While Anglican clergy who left the Church of England after its 1992 synod received a compensation package, the Archbishop of Canterbury has indicated there will be no similar package this time. Bishops Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton, the two prelates appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to minister to Anglicans opposed to women priests, advised against "sudden decisions." They said Anglicans will want to stay within the Anglican Communion, while others will want to make "individual arrangements." "A further group of Anglicans, we think, will begin to form a caravan, rather like the People of Israel crossing the desert in search of the Promised Land," they commented. The two bishops suggested Feb. 22, the Feast of the Chair of Peter, as an appropriate day for priests and laity to make an "initial decision" about whether to "explore further" Pope Benedict's proposal. 7) From Hinduism To Catholicism: After A Series Of Dreams About Mary, A Local Hindu Couple Has Joined The Church Catholic Herald http://www.catholicherald.com/local_news/detail.html?sub_id=11317 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2369874/posts October 23, 2009 Katie Bahr It was three years ago when Uma Krishnan says she first dreamed of the Virgin Mary. It was January 2006 and she was living in Singapore with her husband, Kumar, and her son, Karthi. In her dream she saw a "very humble lady" surrounded by candles. She and Kumar were devout Hindus and they knew the lady in Uma's dreams was not a Hindu god. They knew little of Christianity, but they thought this lady might be the Blessed Mother. Still, because they came from a long tradition of Hinduism in India, they didn't give the dream much thought. Later that year Kumar got a job that took him to San Diego. A few months later, he found a new job in McLean. Uma and Karthi joined him that December. This past April, Uma began to have more dreams of Mary. One night she dreamed she was walking into a church she'd never seen before. Once inside, she turned right and found a little room where there were red candles and a statue of Mary. The second night, she was in the same room, but this time she saw a big cross made of palm leaves. Another night, she dreamed she was in a boat. On her right was a black woman with dark hair and on her left, a lady wearing a blue scarf and holding a Bible. The woman in blue showed Uma some verses to read to make her worries disappear. In her dream, Uma read the Bible verses and both women disappeared. Uma and Kumar talked about the dreams and, by the fourth night, they decided to visit a church to see what was happening. Kumar typed "St. Mary Church Fairfax" into Google and entered the address from the first result into his GPS device. The address was for St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax. When they got to the church, Uma was shocked. On the outside, it looked just like the church she had dreamed about the first night. When they went inside and turned right, there was a small chapel with red votive candles, a statue of Mary and a cross. It was just like her dreams. Uma started to cry. "The moment was so touching," Kumar said. "We were not even Christians and we were not even worshipping when we got such a thing. We were Hindus and we didn't exactly know how to pray, but we just sat there and said, 'Thank you. Thank you for all these visions and thank you for bringing us here. We don't know what to do, you tell us, you guide us, show us what has to be done.'" After the first visit to the church, a few days passed and Uma and Kumar didn't return. Instead, they went to their Hindu temple. Uma had another dream. She saw the statue of Mary on the outside wall of the church. Mary's arms were out and there was a bright light coming from behind. In Uma's mind, the statue seemed to be saying, "Come back to me." When Uma told Kumar, they decided to go to St. Mary of Sorrows that day. It was a Wednesday, and this time, they went into the main meeting room, where the Charismatic Prayer Group gathered. They shared their story and prayed with them. After that, Uma and Kumar began to attend Mass and the Charismatic Prayer Group every week. Uma's dreams continued, but the couple also started experiencing strange "spiritual disturbances." Uma would have nightmares, and during the day, alone at home, she would hear strange laughing, heavy breathing or footsteps. Sometimes she would feel a pressure on her neck and would have trouble breathing. The disturbances were so bad that Uma was afraid to be alone. Kumar would drop her off at St. Mary of Sorrows when he went to work in the morning and she would stay at the church all day. Frightened, Uma and Kumar talked to Father Stefan Starzynski, St. Mary of Sorrows parochial vicar. Starzynski told them the disturbances might be coming because they were moving away from Hinduism. He told them not to worry and that they'd be okay if they just went toward the one, true God. "Even as Hindus they were coming to the prayer groups and the healing Masses and praying the rosary every day, so I think something was trying to stop them from entering the Faith fully," Father Starzynski said. Kumar and Uma decided to get rid of all of their Hindu belongings and devote themselves entirely to Catholicism. Because of their circumstances, the parish had a team of four parishioners teach the couple a condensed version of the traditional yearlong Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program. Uma and Kumar went to the program every Saturday to learn about the sacraments and to discuss the Bible. "It sounded like Mary was calling them to us and I felt like we had a responsibility to them," said Father Starzynski. "They told me they wanted to become Catholic and they were so excited and eager that I thought this was an opportunity to be flexible." By the end of August, the group decided the family was ready to become Catholic. Sept. 12, Uma, Kumar and Karthi were baptized and the couple received the sacraments of confirmation, Communion and marriage. In the days leading up to the ceremonies, Uma and Kumar feel they received lots of help from Mary. Though they had a very limited budget and hardly any time to plan, Uma and Kumar wanted to have a nice wedding ceremony. They only had $400 to spend on a wedding dress for Uma, but their son found a perfect dress for $399. Then, after deciding wedding photographers would be too expensive, a photographer from the parish offered his services for free. Before the baptism and wedding day, Uma had another dream. This time Mary was standing outside the historic St. Mary of Sorrows Church, with a big smile on her face. She was holding two wedding rings and three rosaries - red, orange and yellow. The couple decided to use those colors in Uma's bouquet and on the wedding cake, all donated by fellow churchgoers. On the actual day, the whole parish was invited to see Uma and Kumar receive the sacraments. A reception was held in the hall of the historic church, decorated with red, orange and yellow flowers. "Even though we hadn't planned things, God had planned for us," Kumar said. "He planned everything so perfectly and he took care of everything, right down to the photographs. It was like he has predicted this marriage for us. We are so glad and so thankful and so lucky to be here." Father Starzynski said Uma and Kumar's conversion story shows that God works in mysterious ways. He felt honored that he could be there to help the family. "I think it speaks to how beautifully God can work and does work," he said. "It makes you think, are we flexible enough to understand the ways God may work that are outside the box that we have constructed?" Since they received the sacraments, Kumar and Uma say the disturbances and nightmares have stopped. Uma feels stronger and is able to stay home by herself with no fear. "We feel like the Holy Spirit in her has just given her this total protection," Kumar said. The couple says they are constantly impressed with the parish community. "I feel like I've been wandering all over the place and that I've come home," Kumar said. "I never heard of such good people, such good Catholic people." And through it all, Uma's dreams of Mary continue. "Whether it's good or bad, we want to share them with everybody so everybody knows about it," Kumar said. "Some may take it badly, but we want to share it. We are very fortunate. I feel lucky, I feel honored and I feel blessed." 8) The Jewel Of Celibacy CatholicCulture.org http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=351 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2370734/posts Octoboer 23, 2009 Dr. Jeff Mirus Phil Lawler is undoubtedly correct that the rule of celibacy will not be relaxed for Catholics of the Roman Rite when married Anglican priests begin to appear under a new Catholic ordinariate. He may also be correct that Eastern Rite churches will gradually permit more of their married clergy to serve in the West as we become accustomed to married clergy through a growing familiarity with our Anglo-Catholic brethren. But the official policies of the Roman Rite and the Eastern Rite churches do not exhaust the issues raised by an increase in the number of married priests. The first issue is whether those who want the Church to change the law of celibacy will use the occasion to increase their pressure. This must be answered in the affirmative by any sane observer of the dissident Catholic scene. The second issue is whether the Church's "celibacy morale", so painstakingly rebuilt over the past twenty years, will be lowered once again. Will the faithful become even more confused about celibacy? Will some Roman Rite priests think it "hard" that no special provision is made for them to marry? Will some potential future priests begin to hope once again for a relaxation of the celibacy requirement? Surely all of this is likely. After all, it is hard to justify the imposition of celibacy by law purely on the basis of "how we do things here" while maintaining the position that it is perfectly acceptable to do things another way "there", especially when here and there are in the same culture. This is nothing new, of course, but insofar as the proposed Anglican ordinariate utilizes married priests who become familiar to other Catholics, questions and even doubts will invariably arise. Celibacy is Always Preferred For this reason, it is important to state the plain truth that celibacy is the preferred state for a priest of any rite. This is eloquently attested even in the Eastern Catholic churches by the fact that a priest cannot marry after he has been ordained, and that bishops cannot be married at all. The Eastern Churches will often ordain a man who is already married, but they will not permit an unmarried priest to marry later, or a married priest to remarry after the death of his spouse. Further, the fullness of the priesthood-the episcopate-can be exercised only by unmarried men. On this last point, it will be interesting to see how the Vatican handles the problem of married Anglican bishops. We find a full-fledged commitment to married clergy only in Anglicanism, which developed largely in direct rebellion against the Catholic Church and under the influence of both the Protestant Revolt and the English monarchy. The Eastern Churches did not develop so much in rebellion against Rome, although rebellion certainly existed on the political level, as on a separate path in which a common Tradition informed the changeable provisions of ecclesiastical discipline in slightly different ways. Some in the Eastern Catholic Churches (though not many, I think) might contest my statement that celibacy is the preferred state for a priest of any rite. But many would contest my own pragmatic reading of the current situation, which leads me to suspect strongly that only a monumental historical accident-consisting chiefly of the need to heal the grave wounds of schism-has prevented celibacy from being the rule for all Catholics of whatever rite. But since all ecclesiastical discipline is human, and no ecclesiastical discipline infallibly produces what it aims at, this is a debatable proposition. One can argue about which disciplines are inspired by the Holy Spirit and which are permitted by men "because of the hardness of their hearts". Indeed, one can be appalled by Eastern Rite seminarians who delay ordination until they have had a chance to find wives; but one can also look askance at the attraction of Western homosexual seminarians to a celibate priesthood. While my historical perspective is eminently debatable, however, the proposition that celibacy is to be preferred even when it is not legislated was clearly and authoritatively taught in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (The Celibacy of the Priest), issued on June 24, 1967. The encyclical was promulgated not just to the Roman Rite bishops but to "the bishops, priests and faithful of the whole Catholic world". In his encyclical, the Pope points both to the Eastern practice of requiring celibacy for bishops and the strong witness of the Eastern Fathers of the Church as evidence that a preference for celibacy is enshrined everywhere throughout the whole Church. The Reasons for Ecclesiastical Law The question, then, is not whether celibacy is to be preferred but whether it should be prescribed by ecclesiastical law. While recognizing the respect due to the alternative approach taken by the Eastern Churches, and to those among their priests who happen to be married, Pope Paul stresses the immense value and intrinsic superiority of celibacy for priests. This superiority consists in a greater conformity to Christ, who was celibate; a greater sign of the supernatural Kingdom in which we will neither marry nor be given in marriage; a greater sign of total service to the Church and to the nurture of souls; a greater self-possession and self-discipline; and a greater charity which, properly developed, will bear more abundant fruit in ministry. It is this superiority, both as a sign and as an incomparable means of being configured to Christ, that led Pope Paul VI, in direct response to the near-overwhelming agitation for the elimination of celibacy in the 1960's-and after carefully reviewing the major objections to it in the first part of his encyclical-to reaffirm that celibacy is as valid and important to the Church now as it has been at any time in history. He therefore established that it was wholly right and good to continue to give this singular Catholic tradition the force of law in the West. All Catholics, of both East and West, were intended to benefit from a deeper exploration of his reasons. A. Conformity to Christ The Pope's points in favor of celibacy are divided into two parts. The first centers on conformity to the priesthood of Christ. "The Christian priesthood," Paul writes, "being of a new order, can be understood only in the light of the newness of Christ, the Supreme Pontiff and eternal priest, who instituted the priesthood of the ministry as a real participation in His own unique priesthood". The human priest looks to Christ directly as his model, Christ who brought forth a new creation through his total consecration to the will of the Father. While matrimony "continues the work of the first creation", Christ is the mediator of "a superior covenant". As such, He has "also opened a new way, in which the human creature adheres wholly and directly to the Lord, and is concerned only with Him and with His affairs; thus, he manifests in a clearer and more complete way the profoundly transforming reality of the New Testament". The Pope's namesake, St. Paul, gives advice to all Christians along these same lines: "The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided" (1 Cor 7:32-34). As Paul VI points out, it was "wholly in accord" with his mission that Christ remained celibate throughout His whole life, "which signified His total dedication to the service of God and men." This deep connection between celibacy and the priesthood of Christ is reflected "in those whose fortune it is to share in the dignity and mission of the Mediator and eternal Priest": To them this is the mystery of the newness of Christ, of all that He is and stands for; it is the sum of the highest ideals of the Gospel and of the kingdom; it is a particular manifestation of grace, which springs from the Paschal mystery of the Savior. This is what makes the choice of celibacy desirable and worthwhile to those called by our Lord Jesus. Thus they intend not only to participate in His priestly office, but also to share with Him His very condition of living. B. Supernal Charity The second part of the Pope's argument centers on charity. "The free choice of sacred celibacy," Pope Paul states, "has always been considered by the Church 'as a symbol of, and stimulus to, charity': It signifies a love without reservations; it stimulates to a charity which is open to all". Just as the priest is more perfectly conformed to Christ through celibacy, so too does he partake more fully in "the charity and sacrifice proper to Christ our Savior". Thus the bond between the priesthood and celibacy should be seen "as the mark of a heroic soul and the imperative call to unique and total love for Christ and His Church". Here it is important to recall the mystery of the marriage relationship which St. Paul ascribes to Christ and the Church (see Ephesians 5, concluding with verse 32). Paul VI explains that through consecrated celibacy, priests manifest the "virginal and supernatural fecundity of this marriage, by which the children of God are born, 'not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh'". Owing to his own life of marriage to the Church, the priest is called to meditate daily on the prayer of the Church, to be nourished by the Word, to united himself totally with the Eucharistic sacrifice, and so to permit his life to acquire "a greater richness of meaning and sanctifying power". "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone," says the Pope, quoting the Eternal Priest, "but if it dies, it bears much fruit". He goes on to explain also that the celibate priest is a richer sign of the heavenly kingdom, in which marriage between men and women passes away (e.g., Mt. 22:30). He also points briefly to all the practical considerations that make it both easier and more appropriate for an unmarried man to give himself totally to the service of his people. A Brilliant Jewel In the remainder of the encyclical, the Pope takes up and answers various questions regarding the potential negative impact of celibacy on those who are unsuited to it, or on human nature generally (as was often urged in the years following the sexual revolution), and he considers the importance of proper discernment and formation. These considerations need not detain us. What is most important in today's context is that, by urging the value and importance of celibacy and by maintaining it in law, Pope Paul VI hoped celibacy would again become a sign and stimulus of a greater reliance on Divine grace, first on the part of the Church's ministers, and consequently for the entire body of the faithful. Consider the following inspiring passage: Supported by the power of faith, We express the Church's conviction on this matter. Of this she is certain: if she is prompter and more persevering in her response to grace, if she relies more openly and more fully on its secret but invincible power, if, in short, she bears more exemplary witness to the mystery of Christ, then she will never fall short in the performance of her salvific mission to the world-no matter how much opposition she faces from human ways of thinking or misrepresentations. We must all realize that we can do all things in Him who alone gives strength to souls and increase to His Church. In the context of the differences among Rites and ordinariates, which are likely to bring the question of celibacy to the fore again in ways that are not entirely welcome, it is vital that we try to capture the essence of the Pope's argument in Sacerdotalis Caelibatus. Its essence is this: Celibacy in the Roman Rite is not to be tolerated as a dull burden but, in Paul VI's own words, to be "guarded as a brilliant jewel". 9) Can Non-Catholics Be Saved? Inside Catholic http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=48 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2370449/posts October 24, 2009 Mark Shea Unam Sanctam is the sort of document that gives our Protestant brothers and sisters a real jolt, primarily because it looks at first blush as though it teaches that Catholics cannot have Protestant brothers and sisters. Written by Pope Boniface VIII in 1302, this papal bull concludes with a shocking dogmatic definition: We declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. The average modern reader concludes that these words mean: "We know exactly where the Church both is and is not. It's in the visible Catholic communion and only members of the visible Catholic Church go to heaven." After this basic assumption has been made, most people go on to assume it is simply a matter of deciding what you think about that proposition. Generally, people fall into one of the following groups: 1. Those nice people who say hopefully, "That statement was not dogma, but just Boniface's opinion." 2. Those progressive dissenting Catholics who say, "That statement used to be narrow-minded Catholic dogma, but Vatican II thankfully contradicts all that. How the Church has grown!" 3. Those anti-Catholics who say derisively, "That statement used to be unbiblical Catholic dogma but Vatican II reversed all that. Now the supposedly infallible Church has flatly contradicted the Bible and itself!" 4. Those reactionary dissenting Catholics who say, "That statement used to be glorious Catholic dogma, but Vatican II betrayed all that. How the Second Vatican Council has corrupted the One True Faith!" 5. Those orthodox Catholics who say, "Unam Sanctam's definition is still dogma, and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council does not contradict it or the Bible. Rather, the council develops the Faith of the Church infallibly taught since the apostles, a faith that has never demanded we believe that the Church is found solely in the visible Catholic communion, nor that only members of the visible Catholic Church can go to heaven." Let's look at these five views of Unam Sanctam. First things first: I must disappoint group one by making clear that the Faith does not allow us the easy out of denying the dogmatic nature of Unam Sanctam any more than it allowed Arius to fudge the difficult and seemingly contradictory proposition that God is One, yet Three. As John Hardon, S.J., points out in his Catholic Catechism, the passage cited above was "solemnly defined and represents traditional Catholic dogma on the Church's necessity for salvation." When a pope declares, says, pronounces, and defines, he is using the formula to make crystal-clear that he is delivering not his personal opinion but the dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. The fact is, then, Boniface VIII committed the Church to this proposition for the rest of her history. We cannot dodge this with a convenient "that was then, this is now." If it was dogma once, it still is. However, neither can we dodge another fact of Catholic history: the Second Vatican Council. At that council, 660 years after Unam Sanctam, the Church formulated Lumen Gentium, in which she declared, "The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter." To groups two, three, and four, this sounds like a flat contradiction. For all these folk make the fatal error of placing one or another of the Church's teachings in opposition to (and superiority over) the other. Thus, progressive dissenting Catholics, anti-Catholics, and reactionary dissenting Catholics all assume that Unam Sanctam was simply vetoed by a newly coined doctrine in Lumen Gentium that essentially declares that our relationship to the successor of Peter doesn't matter one iota. If we agree about this, all that remains for us to do is to decide whether to cheer along with progressive dissenters (for the Church's "deepened maturity"), to gloat along with anti-Catholics (over the alleged collapse of the Church's infallibility), or to grumble along with reactionary dissenters (about those damned modernists who hijacked the Church at Vatican II). But there is one simple problem with this assumption: It's not true. First, the Church, centuries before Vatican II, regarded Orthodox sacraments as valid, which is awfully hard to do if you don't think Christ can be found anywhere but in the Catholic Church. Similarly, it has always regarded the baptism of non-Catholics as valid -- and a valid baptism means you are, in some sense, in union with Christ. Still more recently and most plainly (but still well before the council), Rev. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved. So this simplistic "We're in, you're out" reading of Unam Sanctam (and the corollary that Lumen Gentium "cancelled" it) doesn't fly. So is there a more balanced picture that reverences both Unam Sanctam and Lumen Gentium as authentic magisterial teaching? Yes. To find it, let's begin with an imperfect analogy. An Unknowing Disciple There is a priest I know (call him Father Smith) whom I have come to regard as a second father. I came to do so because, as an Evangelical, I first loved Christ and the things of Christ and did for years before I met this man. As I sought to draw closer to Christ, I then happened to meet Father Smith and to discover that he loved and understood far more deeply than I the things that I myself sought, for he was a disciple of our Lord, too. When I recognized this, I realized our Lord had put into my life a man who could disciple me and to whom my life was inextricably linked in Christ and by Christ. In short, I had been a disciple of Father Smith for years before I met him -- because I was first a disciple of Jesus. Thus, in spirit, Father Smith became my father and I am, so to speak, subject to him in Christ precisely because I desire what he desires -- union with Christ. If this seems difficult to grasp, it should be noted that it's a concept as old as the New Testament. When we look there, we discover Jesus saying exactly the same thing: John said to him, "Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us." But Jesus said, "Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us" (Mk 9:38-40, emphasis added). Jesus' point is that, in following Him, both the man casting out demons and the apostles -- whether the man or the apostles realized it or not -- were brought into some kind of union with one another through Him. It didn't matter whether the apostles or the man were conscious of it. Their mutual obedience to Him put them in relationship to each other, just as the right alignment of spokes to a hub necessarily put the spokes in right alignment to one another. The fact is, it is His Spirit, not we, who is the principle of unity holding His Body together and drawing its members into ever more perfect union with each other. But that does not mean (as I had long believed as an Evangelical) that unity with the Body of Christ doesn't matter so long as one is "spiritual." For to be brought into union with the Body of Christ at all is to be brought into the order that Christ has established for that Body, since His gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:11-13). Or, to put it into the simplest form, if A=B, then B=A. That is, if one is a Christian at all, one is, as Lumen Gentium says, in some kind of union with the Church, the Body of Christ. This is why the Church teaches and has always taught that "outside the Church, there is no salvation." For the Church is the company of the saved. To talk about salvation "outside the Church" is like talking about swimming outside the water. It is the logical consequence of Jesus' statement, "He who is not with me is against me" (Mt 12:30). It therefore follows that to be subject to the gospel to any degree is to be in union, to that degree, with the office of Peter, since the office of Peter was created by Christ for one purpose only: to help bring people into subjection to Christ. It is therefore impossible to accept Christ without accepting the authority of Peter's office to some degree or other. If you say to Jesus, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," you are submitting to the judgment of Peter, who said it first (Mt 16:16). If you declare that salvation is by grace through Christ, you are again subjecting yourself to Peter, who was the first to say that by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:11). If you teach that Jesus is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, you are simply agreeing with what the Church in council and in union with the office of Peter has always taught. If you acknowledge the canonicity of the New Testament books, you are likewise submitting to the judgment of the Petrine office, which made that call in the fourth century and ratified it in the 16th. In short, it is not possible to be a Christian at all without already submitting (whether you realize it or not and whether you like it or not) to Peter in precisely the sense that Unam Sanctam speaks of. One With Peter? Naturally, it will be noted that such union with the Roman pontiff is, for Protestants and Orthodox, imperfect. Just so. But the point nonetheless holds that such union is real. And the reason it is real is precisely because the pope is not the principle of unity, but merely the sign of unity. The principle of unity is the Spirit of Christ Himself. It is He who binds together the apostolic Church with those who appear (like the exorcist in Mark) to be "outside" the Church yet who are, in a real but imperfect way, in communion with her. That's because it is simply not possible for there to be more than one body. This is true, not because the power-hungry Roman pontiff must have absolute control over all Christians, but because Christ cannot ultimately be divided. What Paul said in Ephesians remains just as true today: There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all (Eph 4:4-6). So it is simply impossible for there to be, in any ultimate sense, more than one body. And since that body is, by Christ's solemn word, founded on Peter the Rock, it is not possible to belong to it without, in some way, being subject to the office of the one who was given the charge to "feed my sheep" (Jn 21:15). I say the office, mind you, not the person of the pope. As a person, a pope can be a perfect jerk, and some have been. In the same way, the office of the Davidic monarch (also founded by God) was often filled by extremely sub-optimal men. But the office never went away or lost its God-ordained authority. Dante, a contemporary of the man who wrote Unam Sanctam, makes precisely this point in his famous Divine Comedy. In an age of Da Vinci Code illiteracy and ignorance of the Catholic Faith, it comes as a surprise to many modern readers to discover that so far from running a police state, the medieval Church was, in fact, full of critics who had lots of tart things to say about, among other things, the pope and other clergy of the time. Dante was chief among these critics in his day and, in particular, was chief among the critics of Boniface VIII. Dante, in fact, places Boniface in his Inferno, damned forever. But note this: Dante does not damn him for the teaching of Unam Sanctam, which he takes for granted. He damns him for his moral corruption yet, like a typical Catholic, honors his office. That's why Boniface is buried upside down in hell: As pope he is oriented toward heaven even when, as a sinner, he is worthy of hell, for the way out of Dante's hell is not up but down, through the center of the earth, then up Mount Purgatory, and into paradise. So is this partial and imperfect unity enough? Depends on what you mean by "enough." If you mean "enough to be saved," then I submit that this is Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking. No lover asks, "What's the absolute bare minimum amount of contact with my beloved I can get away with?" Similarly, if, as the Church claims, the fullness of revelation subsists in the Catholic communion, then "How little contact with the fullness of revelation can I get away with?" is the exact wrong question for somebody who is serious about discipleship to Christ. Our goal, according to Scripture, is not to achieve bare minimums of love, fellowship, and discipleship with Christ and His Bride, but to "attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. . . . We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love" (Eph 4:13-16). When people tell us "I'll be there in spirit!" we know they mean "I won't be there." Similarly, a merely partial spiritual unity, while a good start, is a bad finish. That is why we must all continue to work toward full unity in Christ, neither denying our commonalities nor papering over our differences. So... Who Is Saved? At this point, members of groups three and four (who tend to take heaven more seriously as something that is there and not simply -- as members of group two are wont to say -- a "concept" or a "beautiful myth") are likely to ask, "So does all this boil down to saying the Church thinks Catholics are going to heaven and non-Catholics aren't? Or does it really mean the Church is now saying that everybody is saved?" Again, both of these are the wrong questions, which is to say they are nonsense questions. The Church makes no comments on infernal population statistics. Rather, the Church teaches that because validly baptized non-Catholics are real members of the Body of Christ, they share in the life of the Blessed Trinity and therefore share with Catholics the hope of salvation. That said, mark that it is hope, not certainty, they share with Catholics. For it is important to remember that Catholics don't assume that even Catholics are automatically going to heaven. The whole point, as Paul says, is that hope means we have not, in this life, attained what we hope for yet. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom 8:24-25). Catholics don't believe in "once saved, always saved" any more than in salvation by demographics. So the mere fact that somebody says he is a Christian, whether non-Catholic or Catholic, doesn't mean we assume he is going to heaven. Till we die, we retain the radical freedom to reject the grace of God and end up among the damned. Catholics leave God to judge all that. But by the same token, Catholics also don't assume that anybody (even a non-Christian and indeed even an atheist) is going to hell. The Church has always believed that those who do not know Christ by name may yet respond to the promptings of His Spirit and so ultimately be saved by Him. She believes this because it was taught by Jesus Christ in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which describes the judgment of people who had no idea they were serving (or rejecting) Jesus as they answered (or refused) the demands of conscience with respect to "the least of these." That is why both the saved and the damned in the parable reply with astonishment to the King, "Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?" (Mt 25:37-39). Some of the saved, says our Lord, are going to be astonished at their salvation. They just thought they were doing the right thing and had no idea they were, in fact, answering the prompting of the Holy Spirit to obey the will of Christ. As Paul says, "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus" (Rom 2:14-16). In short, what matters incomparably more than calling Jesus "Lord, Lord" is obeying Him. Or as St. John of the Cross put it mere sweetly, "At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love." But again, that doesn't mean, "It doesn't matter if you are Catholic or not." We live in a fallen world and are fallen creatures who need every bit of help we can get from the grace of God to become the glorious, love-filled creatures God calls us to be. And even with that help, history demonstrates our genius for being schleps and sinners. We are like patients in a hospital requiring intensive care, but with the hope and promise that the full panoply of modern medicine could give us back our life if we cooperate with the Divine Physician and let Him use all the treatments He has tucked away in His little black bag. That little black bag is called "the fullness of Christ's revelation in the Catholic communion." It includes the common life, common worship, and common teaching of the Church; as well as the seven sacraments, the accumulated wisdom of the Tradition both in Scripture and in the life of the Church, the Magisterium (including the papacy), and the "riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints" (Eph 1:18). Other churches and ecclesial bodies like to use various items out of that black bag (say, the Bible, or baptism, or the doctrine of the Trinity; or some particular moral teaching like the indissolubility of marriage, or predestination, or free will) in various combinations and to varying degrees, and believers do well to avail themselves of as much of God's treasury in the Church's Tradition as they can lay hold of. But if you are mortally ill (and the whole human race is mortally ill with sin), it's crazy to say, "I find that I'm most comfortable when the doctor prescribes aspirin, and I do like his penicillin now and then, but I don't want his other prescriptions and treatments and I won't allow him to send other hospital staff to treat me." If we were mortally ill, we'd want whatever the doctor has available to heal us. All May Be One Likewise, though the Catholic Church rejoices that real elements of the saving gospel are present and working in other churches and ecclesial bodies, and though she even rejoices that the semina verbi, or "seeds of the Word," can be found in the various non-Christian religious and philosophical traditions of the world, she nonetheless points out that the best thing of all is to lay hold of the fullness of His gifts. So the Church, of course, encourages anyone who can do so to become Catholic. It doesn't presume to judge those who do not, for we mortals cannot know the reasons why others make the choices they do. People may refuse the Church out of ignorance, or woundedness, or some other cause that renders them inculpable for rejecting her. However, it is only sensible to point out that, everything else being equal, if we say we want God, but refuse the fullness of His gifts, then it is worth asking ourselves if we really want God after all or are, in fact, seeking something else. As an Evangelical who discovered how much truth was in the Catholic Faith and how much I agreed with it, I came to the realization that it was not enough for me to say "I share the same goals as Peter, so I am 'spiritually subject' to him already and do not need to be sacramentally and ecclesially subject as well." I realized that the very essence of what Peter proclaims is that the Word became Flesh. Moreover, I came to realize that there was, in fact, nothing in the Church's deposit of Faith that was either opposed to reason or anti-biblical. So I eventually concluded that it was therefore my duty, in obedience to Christ's prayer for unity in John 17, to enflesh my faith by becoming really, tangibly, physically, sacramentally joined to the visible Church our Lord commended to Peter's care and feeding. I could no longer say "I'll be with you in spirit" to the pope if I were not also willing to really be with him in body as well. Catholics do not say, and never have said, that they are the sole possessors of revelation. Indeed, the Church does not "possess" revelation at all. Revelation possesses her; and that revelation, who is Christ, has, she teaches, committed Himself fully to her. "God," said the great Protestant writer George MacDonald, "is easy to please, but hard to satisfy." On the one hand, God is delighted when the most miserable sinner takes the smallest serious step toward the love of God and neighbor. On the other hand, He will not be completely happy until every last person He came to save is completely perfected in the image of Christ and overflowing with perfect love for God and neighbor. This same pattern is supremely evident in the Catholic Church's understanding of her relationship with her members, whether in full or very imperfect communion. For the Church is happy to recognize even the smallest commonalities she may share, not only with other Christians, but even with non-Christian religious traditions and the great philosophical traditions of paganism. The Church can even find things to affirm in virtuous atheists. But at the same time, the Church is acutely aware that there is a real difference between imperfect and perfect unity and so she, too -- easy to please, but hard to satisfy -- labors toward that day when all the members of the Body of Christ will be perfected in faith, hope, and love. Till that day, we know where the Church is; we do not know where she is not. 10) Saved From Abortion: The Remarkable Stories Behind Four Pro-Life "Saves" Life Site News http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09102604.html http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2371436/posts 10/26/09 David Bereit The words a sidewalk counselor spoke to a woman entering the abortion center in Dallas, Texas summed things up so accurately. "I know the baby is not the problem," the counselor said, "but it's the situation you are in." The woman took information from the counselor but continued into the clinic -- while 40 Days for Life vigil participants prayed for her and her child. An hour later, the woman came out of the clinic in tears. She was married, she said, but thinking about abortion -- though she doesn't know why it got to that point. But when she saw people praying, she knew abortion was not the answer, and that indeed, it was her situation that was the problem, not the baby. There are two other stories from Dallas with a similar theme -- and the same outcome. A woman entered the clinic -- and left 30 minutes later, telling people on the sidewalk she was scared, and that the conditions in the clinic were troublesome. She was invited to go instead to the very clean clinic across the street -- the pro-life pregnancy resource center. She found that help was indeed available, and chose life for her child. A short time later, a couple walked into the clinic but left about 40 minutes later. The woman held her head down and appeared quite troubled. She, too, told the people at the vigil she was scared. But as she kept watching the people praying on the sidewalk, she found the courage to reject abortion as a "solution" to her problems. Choosing life -- a blessing that God has provided...411 times during this fall's 40 Days for Life campaign thus far! Here's the story behind another of those blessings: A mom in Atlanta, Georgia went to pray at the 40 Days for Life vigil with her 7- and 10-year-old daughters. At the time, they were the only ones at the clinic. But after Paige explained to her girls why they were there, they all began to pray and sing. When a woman got out of her car and walked towards the clinic, one of the girls said, "Let's sing 'Jesus Loves Me.'" "They sounded so sweet," Paige said. "I know the lady could hear them." A bit later, a man pulled up and got out of his car to talk. "He was very noticeably angry," said Paige, and he wound up making a threatening remark before driving off. "I told the girls what Jesus said, 'Blessed are you when they persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you, because of me.' But it was hard staying there." It's a good thing they stayed! The woman that the girls had sung for earlier in the hour walked out of the clinic and towards the parking lot -- all the time, looking at a sign with the number of a pro-life pregnancy counseling hotline. She picked up her cell phone and made a call. As she pulled out of the parking lot, the woman made a point of looking right at them, giving thumbs-up and shaking her head in an emphatic "yes." She was smiling at them, though it looked like she had been crying. "The girls were thrilled," said Paige. "We really have no idea of the good that may come of people standing outside of clinics." (To find out more about 40 Days for Life, click here) 11) On Theology In The 12th Century: "Knowledge Grows Only If It Loves Truth" Zenit News Agency http://www.zenit.org/article-27369?l=english http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2373422/posts October 28, 2009 Pope Benedict XVI Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address today during the general audience in St. Peter's Square. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, Today I pause to reflect on an interesting page of history, regarding the flowering of Latin theology in the 12th century, which came about by a providential series of coincidences. In the countries of Western Europe there reigned then a relative peace, which assured society of economic development and the consolidation of political structures, and fostered a lively cultural activity thanks also to contacts with the East. Perceived within the Church were the benefits of the vast action known as the "Gregorian reform," which, vigorously promoted in the preceding century, brought greater evangelical purity to the life of the ecclesial community, above all of the clergy, and restored to the Church and the papacy genuine liberty of action. Moreover, a vast spiritual renewal was spreading, sustained by the exuberant development of consecrated life: New religious orders were being born and spreading, while those already existing experienced a promising renewal. Theology was also flourishing, acquiring greater awareness of its own nature: It refined its method, addressed new problems, advanced in the contemplation of the mysteries of God, produced fundamental works, inspired important initiatives of culture -- from art to literature -- and prepared the masterpieces of the next century, the century of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. There were two realms in which this fervid theological activity developed: the monasteries and the town schools, the scholae, some of which very soon gave life to the universities, which constituted one of the typical "inventions" of the Christian Middle Ages. In fact from these two realms, the monasteries and the scholae, one can speak of two different models of theology: "monastic theology" and "scholastic theology." The representatives of monastic theology were monks, in general, abbots, gifted with wisdom and evangelical fervor, dedicated essentially to arousing and nourishing a loving desire for God. The representatives of scholastic theology were cultured men, passionate about research; magistri wishing to show the reasonableness and soundness of the mysteries of God and of man, believed in with faith, of course, but understood also by reason. The contrasting objectives explain the differences in their method and their way of doing theology. In the monasteries of the 12th century the theological method was linked primarily to the explanation of sacred Scripture, of the sacra pagina, to express ourselves as the authors of that period did. Biblical theololy was particularly widespread. The monks, in fact, were all devoted listeners and readers of sacred Scripture, and one of their main occupations consisted in lectio divina, namely, prayerful reading of the Bible. For them the simple reading of the sacred text was not enough to perceive the profound meaning, the interior unity and the transcendent message. Therefore, they had to practice a "spiritual reading," leading in docility to the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the school of the Fathers, the Bible was interpreted allegorically, to discover in every page, of the Old as well as the New Testament, what is said about Christ and his work of salvation. Last year's synod of bishops on the "Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church" recalled the importance of the spiritual approach to sacred Scripture. To this end, it is useful to treasure monastic theology, an uninterrupted biblical exegesis, as also the works composed by its representatives, precious ascetic commentaries on the books of the Bible. Therefore, to literary preparation, monastic theology joined spiritual preparation. It was, in fact, aware that a purely theoretic or profane reading was not enough: To enter the heart of sacred Scripture, it must be read in the spirit in which it was written and created. Literary preparation was necessary to know the exact meaning of the words and to facilitate the understanding of the text, refining the grammatical and philological sensibility. Jean Leclercq, the Benedictine scholar of the last century titled the essay with which he presented the characteristics of monastic theology thus : "L'amour des lettres et le desir de Dieu" (The love of words and the desire for God). In fact, the desire to know and to love God, which comes to us through his Word received, meditated and practiced, leads to seeking to go deeper into the biblical texts in all their dimensions. There is then another attitude on which those who practice monastic theology insist, that is, a profound attitude of prayer, which must precede, support and complement the study of sacred Scripture. Because, in the last analysis, monastic theology is listening to the Word of God, one cannot but purify the heart to receive it and, above all, one cannot but kindle it with fervor to encounter the Lord. Therefore, theology becomes meditation, prayer, song of praise and drives one to a sincere conversion. Not a few representatives of monastic theology reached, along this way, the highest goal of mystical experience, and they constitute an invitation also for us to nourish our existence with the Word of God, for example, through more attentive listening to the readings and the Gospel, especially in Sunday Mass. Moreover, it is important to reserve a certain time every day for meditation of the Bible, so that the Word of God is the lamp that illumines our daily path on earth. Scholastic theology, instead, -- as I was saying -- was practiced in the scholae, arising next to the great cathedrals of the age, for the preparation of the clergy, or around a teacher of theology and his disciples, to form professionals of culture, at a time in which learning was increasingly appreciated. Central to the method of the scholastics was the quaestio, namely the problem posed to the reader in addressing the words of Scripture and Tradition. In face of the problem that these authoritative texts pose, questions arose and debate was born between the teacher and the students. In such a debate appeared, on one hand, the arguments of authority, and, on the other, those of reason, and the debate developed in the sense of finding, in the end, a synthesis between authority and reason to attain a more profound understanding of the word of God. In this regard, St. Bonaventure says that theology is "per additionem" (cf. Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum, I, proem., q. 1, concl.), that is, theology adds the dimension of reason to the word of God and thus creates a more profound, more personal faith, and therefore also more concrete in the life of man. In this connection, different solutions were found and conclusions were formed that began to construct a system of theology. The organization of the quaestiones led to the compilation of increasingly extensive syntheses, that is, the different quaestiones were composed with the answers that ensued, thus creating a synthesis, the so-called summae, which were, in reality, ample theological-dogmatic treatises born from the confrontation of human reason with the word of God. Scholastic theology sought to present the unity and harmony of Christian Revelation with a method, called specifically "Scholastic," of the school, which gives confidence to human reason: grammar and philology are at the service of theological learning, but so increasingly is logic, namely that discipline that studies the "functioning" of human reasoning, so that the truth of a proposition seems evident. Also today, reading the scholastic summae, one is struck by the order, clarity, logical concatenation of the arguments, and of the depth of some of the intuitions. Attributed to every word, with technical language, is a precise meaning and, between believing and understanding, there is established a reciprocal movement of clarification. Dear brothers and sisters, echoing the invitation of the First Letter of Peter, scholastic theology stimulates us to be always ready to answer anyone asking for the reason for the hope that is in us (cf. 3:15). To take the questions as directed to us and thus be capable also of giving an answer. It reminds us that there is between faith and reason a natural friendship, founded on the order of creation itself. The Servant of God John Paul II, in the beginning of the encyclical "Fides et Ratio," wrote: "Faith and reason are like the two wings, with which the human spirit soars towards contemplation of the truth." Faith is open to the effort of understanding on the part of reason; reason, in turn, recognizes that faith does not mortify it, rather it drives it toward wider and loftier horizons. Inserted here is the perennial lesson of monastic theology. Faith and reason, in reciprocal dialogue, vibrate with joy when both are animated by the search for profound union with God. When love vivifies the prayerful dimension of theology, knowledge, acquired by reason, is broadened. Truth is sought with humility, received with wonder and gratitude: In a word, knowledge grows only if it loves truth. Love becomes intelligence and theology the authentic wisdom of the heart, which orients and sustains the faith and life of believers. Let us pray, therefore, that the path of knowledge and of deepening in the mysteries of God is always illumined by divine love. [The Holy Father then greeted pilgrims in several languages. In English, he said:] Dear Brothers and Sisters, In our catechesis on the Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, we now turn to the renewal of theology in the wake of the Gregorian Reform. The twelfth century was a time of a spiritual, cultural and political rebirth in the West. Theology, for its part, became more conscious of its own nature and method, faced new problems and paved the way for the great theological masterpieces of the thirteenth century, the age of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. Two basic "models" of theology emerged, associated respectively with the monasteries and the schools which were the forerunners of the medieval universities. Monastic theology grew out of the prayerful contemplation of the Scriptures and the texts of the Church Fathers, stressing their interior unity and spiritual meaning, centred on the mystery of Christ. Scholastic theology sought to clarify the understanding of the faith by study of the sources and the use of logic, and led to the great works of synthesis known as the Summae. Even today this confidence in the harmony of faith and reason inspires us to account for the hope within us (cf. 1 Peter 3:15) and to show that faith liberates reason, enabling the human spirit to rise to the loving contemplation of that fullness of truth which is God himself. I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking visitors present at today's Audience, especially those from England, Ireland, Sweden, Nigeria, India and the United States. My particular greeting goes to the priests attending a course at the Pontifical North American College and to the seminarians of the Pontifical Scots College. Upon all of you I invoke God's blessings of joy and peace! [In Italian, he said:] I greet, finally, young people, the sick and newlyweds. Today the liturgy remembers the Holy Apostles Simon and Jude Thaddaeus. May their evangelical testimony sustain you, dear young people, in the commitment of daily faithfulness to Christ; may it encourage you, dear sick people, to always follow Jesus on the path of trial and suffering; may it help you, dear newlyweds, to make of your family the place of constant encounter with the love of God and neighbor. 12) Our Friend, Death Catholic Exchange http://catholicexchange.com/2009/10/30/121501/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2374679/posts October 30, 2009 Patti Maguire Armstrong As the saying goes: "Nothing is certain but death and taxes." But taxes you can avoid and evade; death - not so. Therefore, the only logical response to death is to embrace it.or at least accept it. After all, it's not like we have a choice. While traveling back from dropping off a son for college in Oregon last week, we attended Mass in Missoula, MT at St. Francis Xavier church. During the prayers of intercession, one prayer caught my attention: "For all who have died, for all who are going to die and for all who are afraid to die." That last one - all who are afraid to die - stood out for me. "Isn't that just about everyone?" I thought. Yet, many years ago, I realized there was only one thing to do about death - to make a friend of it and think of it often. Life through Death At first glance, thinking of death seems morbid. Death hardly seems like a cheerful thought the day. But I contend that it is just that - or at least it can be a holy way to get through the day. And with holiness comes peace and ultimately joy. The opposite would be to try to deny death. That would be a depressing and hopelessly futile endeavor. Death is coming for us all so the sooner we make peace with it the sooner we can get on with living. In the book Amazing Grace for Surivors (Ascension Press) there is a story titled "The Gift of Cancer." In it, Richard J. Cusack, Sr. says that God gave him the greatest possible gift. "It was cancer and the fear of dying," said Cusack. "Through that gift He woke me up and showed me what life is all about and how wonderful it can be when you begin your journey closer to Him." Cusack recovered, but during the time he believed he was at death's doorstep, he prioritized his life very differently than it had been previously and he also began a ministry. "One Friday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. he was sitting in a perpetual adoration chapel, thanking God for all the extra time he had been given. 'Before I arrive at my final judgment, is there something I can do for you here on earth?' he asked God. 'What would be pleasing to you? He suddenly had an inspiration about making a beautiful holy card with a monstrance on the front and the words, 'Do you really love me? Then come to me. Visit me before the Blessed Sacrament.'" His first printing of 100 cards quickly ran out and requests for more poured in. Since that time, Cusek has distributed tens of thousands of these cards. It was death that was the inspiration for such living. Several years ago, I was speaking with Elizabeth (Beth) Matthews, a favorite author of mine who contributed stories to the "Amazing Grace" book series. She was in the middle of yet another move, dealing with all the usual hassles and then some. Beth related to me a phone conversation she had with a relative. "In another hundred years we'll all be dead and none of this will matter," she had said. Her relative was taken aback and said, "Oh Beth, don't say that." But Beth responded: "Why not? It's true." I understand that such a thought is actually not depressing, but freeing. Death puts everything in perspective. Instead of fretting over some irritation, it reminds us that indeed, soon our life on earth and life's inconveniences will be nothing to us. It reminded me of something my mother used to say to me when I was a girl, whenever I was upset over some trivial thing: "Will it matter in a hundred years from now?" What if Death Was on Your "To-Do" List Today? v I once read of a monk that was working in the garden when he was asked what he would do if he had one hour left to live. The monk calmly stated that he would not do anything differently, he would continue working in the garden. Many are surprised at such a response since most of us would immediately drop to our knees and pray. But for this monk, he strove to live every moment for God. Thus, he was always ready. We all know people who spend inordinate amounts of time at work and have many possessions, but don't go to Mass. If they knew they would come face to face with the Almighty that afternoon, would they change their schedule for the day? Or parents who run their kids all over town for activities, but don't bother to take them to church on Sunday. If they suddenly learned their child was going to die very soon, would the priorities change? I actually had the experience of thinking one of my sons had died. When my husband Mark and I came upon our 14-year-old son, he was blue and not breathing. It turned out that he had a seizure and his breathing had been cut off. We were at a lake at a family reunion and it was the middle of the night. Our older son heard him struggling to breathe before he lost consciousness. Mark ran next door for help where his brother, a doctor, was staying. During those tense moments, Mark and I prayed separately. My oldest son and I prayed together and another son did CPR, which he had learned at boy scouts. Mark and I later learned that we prayed with the same thought in mind - that perhaps our son was already gone and it was too late. While we pleaded with God for to save our beloved son, we also acknowledged our acceptance of God's will. Or course it was an emotional situation. My body shook with shock as I thought with horror that I had not even gotten to say good-bye. Our son recovered within minutes and never again had another seizure. But our family was left with the experience of death. I told the kids we had been blessed for two reasons. One, our son and brother was still with us and two, we experienced first-hand what it is like to have death come without warning. I am not in any way trying to lessen the shock and grief one feels over the death of a loved one. I know it is not a one-time feeling, but something that is grieved over and over again. But for Mark and me, the fact that we are in touch with eternity and try to live or it, our first reaction to any death is acceptance - even along with the shock and grief. It is what keeps us grounded and helps us to share the same priorities: God first, everything else second and nothing in the way. The Divine Jeweler A few years ago, I heard on the news that former Beatle, George Harrison, had died. For some reason, on this particular occasion, I was immediately struck by the thought that now he was no different than a cleaning woman. His soul lay bare while his fame and fortune remained in this world. The only things he could take with him were the same things we all take with us - the love and service to God and others. On earth, true value is often clouded by the glitz of the world, but death, like a divine jeweler, appraises life's true valuables. I need the help of death to do this for me. For instance, I could be dropped into any department store onto any aisle (save the tool section) and find things I want to buy. Linens and towels? Suddenly mine seem so faded and thin. Furniture? Everywhere I look is something I like. One thing that helps to douse my materialistic inclinations it so remind myself that life is passing and nothing that I want to buy is of lasting value. Someone much wiser than I once likened earthly life to a ship: It is the vessel, not the destination. The only reason we fear death is because we try to make the ship into the destination. That would be like driving across country in a car and then not wanting to get out once we arrived at our desired location. Don't think that I am above fearing death or that I'm looking forward to losing my loved ones. I simply have come to terms with the fact that God has promised us eternal life and that it will be better than anything we experience on earth. There's only one way to get there - through death. And we all have to go sometime. A favorite prayer of mine which keeps me grounded in this reality is "A Workman's Prayer to St. Joseph". Appealing to St. Joseph for a right disposition in our work, it asks for help: "..having always death before my eyes and the account which I must render of time lost, of talents wasted, of good omitted." When the inspiration struck for this article, I envisioned that the topic would incite some to imagine me at my computer dressed in black with a humorless expression on my face. Some might wonder what sort of mother I must be to keep death on my thoughts. But instead, it is life that we strive for in our home. The idea is just not to confine ourselves to life on earth but to live in harmony with eternity. Only then do we live life to the fullest. To get to the Free Republic website (where I get nearly ALL of the articles I post here), simply click on the (above) Free Republic banner - OR just click on "Forums (browse all)" - where the actual articles that I use are found. (NOTE: For those of you who DO register at Free Republic....I use the screen name "ConservativeStLouisGuy".) Saint Alberic Crescitelli | Favorite President George W. Bush Pictures | Website Home Page/Index | Fr. 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