Author: kingsjester

64 year old Christian Conservative husband, father, and grandfather who has been writing since April 2010.

Senator Ted Cruz: Telling It Like It Is

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

tedcruzTexas’ newest Senator, Republican Ted Cruz, is getting noticed, by both sides of the aisle. He’s not afraid to tell it like it is, and the “smartest people in the room” are getting nervous.

Earlier this week, Jane Mayer, writing for The New Yorker, reported

Two and a half years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there. Cruz attended Harvard Law School from 1992 until 1995. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to discuss the speech.

Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.” (I was covering the conference and kept the notes.)

He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

“We are puzzled by the Senator’s assertions, as we are unaware of any basis for them,” Robb London, a spokesman for Harvard Law School, told me. London noted that Cruz had contributed “warm reminiscences“ of the school by video for a reunion of Latino alumni. “We applaud the fact that he has pursued public service, as so many of our graduates have done. We are also proud of our longstanding tradition of freedom of speech and the robust range of views and debates on our campus.”

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989, and who subsequently taught Cruz at the law school, suggests that his former student has his facts wrong. “I can right offhand count four “out” Republicans (including myself) and I don’t know how many closeted Republicans when Ted, who was my student and the editor on the Harvard Law Review who helped me with my Supreme Court foreword, was a student here.”

Fried went on to say that unlike Cruz, or McCarthy, who infamously kept tallies of alleged subversives, he had never tried to count Communists. “I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government,’” he said. Under the Smith Act, it is a crime to actively engage in any organization pursuing the overthrow of the U.S. government.

Fried acknowledged that “there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.” He pointed out that by the nineteen-nineties, Communist states were widely regarded as tyrannical. From Fried’s perspective, the radicals on the faculty were “a pain in the neck.” But he says that Cruz’s assertion that they were Communists “misunderstands what they were about.”

It may be that Cruz was referring to a group of left-leaning law professors who supported what they called Critical Legal Studies, a method of critiquing the political impact of the American legal system. Professor Duncan Kennedy, for instance, a leader of the faction, who declined to comment on Cruz’s accusation, counts himself as influenced by the writings of Karl Marx. But he regards himself as a social democrat, not a Communist, and has never advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government by Communists. Rather, he advocated widening admissions at the law school to under-served populations, hiring more minorities and women on the faculty, and paying all law professors equally.

The Liberals literally lost their minds over Crux using the “C” word, and they weren’t very happy about the grilling he gave Obama’s token “Republican” buddy, Chuck Hagel, during his nomination hearings, either.

Fox News reports

MSNBC host and Democrat Chris Matthews went as far as to compare Cruz’s suggestion that Hagel has been too cozy with Iran and North Korea to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy accusing politicians and other public figures of being Communist sympathizers.

“My view is simple: Washington is a rough-and-tumble place,” Cruz said last week. “If folks want to attack me personally, they’re welcome to it. Texans elected a senator to go to Washington and speak the truth.”

This weekend, Cruz, a Harvard Law School graduate and former clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, doubled down on past remarks about Marxist professors at his former law school, revisited in a recent story in The New Yorker.

“The New Yorker is shocked — shocked — to discover that there are Marxists on the Harvard faculty,” said Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. “It’s curious that the New Yorker would dredge up a 3-year-old speech and call it ‘news.’ “Regardless, Senator Cruz’s substantive point was absolutely correct: In the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of ‘critical legal studies’ — a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism.”

Still, Cruz allows the Hagel grilling might have resulted in negative consequences.

“The flurry of attacks on me has had their intended effect, which was to shift the conversation away from Chuck Hagel,” he said. “Away from his record, away from his refusal to provide financial disclosures, and toward the direct, nasty, personal attacks leveled at me.”

I really like what I have seen out of Senator Cruz so far. He has been a breath of fresh air, as opposed to all the hot air that has been the normal atmosphere on Capitol Hill for way too long.

The Liberals will tell you whom they fear.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Tim Tebow, Barack Obama, and Me

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

American ChristianityTim Tebow, back-up Quarterback for the New Yorlk Jets, has caught a lot of flack in his professional football career for his stance as an Evangelical Christian. However, this last week, Tebow uncharacteristically backed out of a commitment to speak at First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Senior Minister, Robert Jeffress, is no stranger to public controversy. His sound bites are often incendiary, but his convictions, including the exclusivity of the gospel and the belief that homosexual behaviors are sinful,are well within the mainstream beliefs of American Evangelical Christians.

Perhaps, it was because the public outcry, from those who seem to be always concerned, was deafening.

Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports warned, “Tim Tebow is about to make the biggest mistake of his life” by speaking at “a hateful Baptist preacher’s church.” Doyel described Jeffress as “an evangelical cretin” guilty of serial hate speech. Of course, Doyel engaged in hateful and slanderous speech of his own by associating Jeffress with the truly hateful Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. Jeffress “isn’t as bad as Westboro,” Doyel admitted, “But he comes close. Too close.”

Other sportswriters piled on. Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post offered his own warning to Tebow: “After a season on the sidelines, the ball’s in your hands, Timmy. Better not fumble this one.”

The controversy threatened to dominate Tebow’s life, so the 25-year-old athlete withdrew, attempting to escape his predicament. Stating that he has wished to “share a message of hope and Christ’s unconditional love” with the historic congregation, Tebow said that “due to new information that was brought to my attention” he has decided to cancel the event. He then pledged to use “the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope, and Love to all those needing a brighter day.”

If Tebow meant to mollify his critics, it is not likely to work for long. Tebow has identified himself as a vocal evangelical believer. His church roots go deep, and it is safe to say that he has never had a pastor who, though speaking in a different tone, would have disagreed with Jeffress on the exclusivity of Christ and the sinfulness of homosexuality. He has given no indication that he has moved from those convictions, and his closest friends assure that he has not.

Writing at The Huffington Post, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush made it clear the controversy wasn’t just a matter of Jeffress’s tone, conceding, “while Dr. Jeffress has a tendency not to sugarcoat his feelings,” he is nonetheless voicing what evangelical Christians “have been saying for a long time.” The central scandal here is the belief that Jesus is the only Savior and that homosexual behavior is sin. In terms of the larger public debate, it is the issue of homosexuality that has predominated the larger public debate… at least for now.

The Tebow controversy comes just weeks after evangelical pastor Louie Giglio withdrew from delivering a prayer at President Barack Obama’s second inaugural ceremony. Giglio had been “outed” as having preached a message almost 20 years ago that affirmed the sinfulness of homosexuality and stressed that the “only way out of a homosexual lifestyle… is through the healing power of Jesus.”

NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, is a good friend and huge supporter of President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm). Perhaps, Tebow was acting on orders from the Office of the Commissioner…and protecting his job.

In a related story, foxnews.com reports,

The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to strike down the federal law defining marriage as a union between only a man and a woman.

The request regarding the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act was made Friday in a brief by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli that argues the law is unconstitutional because it violates “the fundamental guarantee of equal protection.”

The high court is set to hear two cases next month on the issue: the constitutional challenge on Proposition 8, the 2008 California that allowed same-sex marriages in the state that two years later was overturned, and United States v. Windsor, which challenges DOMA.

Edith Windsor, a California resident, was married to her female partner in Canada in 2007 but was required to pay roughly $360,000 in federal estate taxes because the marriage is not recognized under DOMA.

The law “denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples,” Verrilli’s brief in part states.

House Republicans also purportedly filed a brief Friday, arguing for the right to defend DOMA.

Obama’s move comes as no surprise, considering he said during his first term that he personally is in favor of gay marriage. And he ended the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, opening the way for gays to serve openly.

More recently, during Obama’s second inaugural address, he hinted at further action.

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal,” he said.

The court is taking up the California case March 26 and has several options. Among them are upholding the state ban on gay marriage and saying residents of a state have the right to make that call.

The nine justices also could endorse an appeals court ruling that would make same-sex marriage legal in California, but it would apply only to that state.

Twenty-nine other states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, while nine states and Washington, D.C., recognize same-sex marriage.

Public opinion has shifted in support of gay marriage in recent years. In May 2008, Gallup found that 56 percent of Americans felt same-sex marriages should not be recognized by the law as valid. By November 2012, some 53 percent felt they should be legally recognized.

As I was laying in bed this morning, I thought about what I believe, as a Christian American Conservative. In my 54 years, I have gone to school with, worked with, and had family members that were/are homosexual.

As a Christian man, I have prayed for them, befriended them, prayed for them,  and in the case of my family members, loved them, with all of my heart.

That being said, as a Christian American Conservative, I believe that God has decreed that marriage is a sacred bond between one man and one woman.

If America begins this ill-fated descent down this slippery slope of societal ruin, we may eventually find out the reason why our nation is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

Well, a man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home

And, they shall travel on to where the two should be as one.

As it was in the beginning is now until the end

Woman draws a life from man and gives it back again.

And there is Love. There is Love.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

 

Obama’s Gun Control Initiative: “You Say You Want a Revolution…”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

I have been writing a lot about the Quixotic quest of the Obama Administration and all of its minions on the Left of the Political Sguncontrolpectrum, to restrict the right of law-abiding American citizens to own guns.

If you have not noticed, the Obama Politboro has been arming itself in unprecedented numbers, under the guise of collecting taxes for the upcoming advent of Obamacare.

Under this wonderful capitalist system that we live under (at least, for now), some arms manufacturers are taking a stand, and exercising their right to refuse service.

CNSNews.com has the story:

A growing number of firearm and firearm-related companies have stated they will no longer sell items to states, counties, cities and municipalities that restrict their citizens’ rights to own them.

According to The Police Loophole, 34 companies have joined in publicly stating that governments who seek to restrict 2nd Amendment rights will themselves be restricted from purchasing the items they seek to limit or ban.

Extreme Firepower Inc., located in Inwood, WV has had a longstanding policy that states:

“The Federal Government and several states have enacted gun control laws that restrict the public from owning and possessing certain types of firearms…If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction.”

York Arms, located in Buxton, ME released a statement following new legislation in New York:

“Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York. We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York.”

Quality Arms, located in Rigby, ID writes on their website, “elected officials have their own agenda to circumnavigate the truth and destroy the constitution of the United States.”

The site states: “Quality Arms Idaho will not supply and firearm or product, manufactured by us, or any other company nor will we warranty, repair, alter, or modify and firearm owned by any State, County or Municipality who infringes on the right of its citizens to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment.”

Bravo Company USA states:

“The people at Bravo Company USA and BCM support responsible private individuals having access to the same tools of civilian Law Enforcement to affect the same ends…As such Bravo Company’s policy is that law enforcement officials and departments will be restricted to the same type of products available to responsible private individuals of that same city or state.”

Here’s a list of other firearms merchants who restrict sales to government agencies:

Cheaper Than Dirt, MidwayUSA, Old Grouch’s Military Surplus, Predator Intelligence, LaRue Tactical, Templar Custom, Bullwater Enterprises LLC, West Fork Armory, Smith Enterprise, Inc, Alex Arms, OFA Tactical, Spike’s Tactical, Doublestar Corp, American Spirit Arms, Tactical Solutions, Head Down Products, LLC, Exile Machine, J&G Sales, Ltd, ACE LTD., Barrett, Kiss Tactical, NEMO Arms, Inc, Top Gun Supply, Red Jacket Firearms, Badger Peak, Controlled Chaos Arms, Big Horn Armory,One Source Tactical, CMMG, SRT Arms, Norton Firearms

Now, I am not one prone to conspiracy theories, but I question the timing of the whole thing. I believe that all of this “Gun Control Campaign” was already prepared, and Obama and his sycophants were just waiting for the appropriate trigger mechanism to begin their push for gun confiscation. Unfortunately, the horrible tragedy in Newtown provided them the excuse that they were waiting for.

I mean, just look at the fact that the IRS has armed itself, under the excuse of getting ready to enforce the outrageous mandates under Obamacare.

Even as I write this, there are Executive Orders, sitting on the president’s desk, waiting to be signed, that we don’t even know about. He has stated, numerous times, that if Congress will not give him what he wants, he will go around them.

Yes, our Founding Fathers put in a System of Checks and Balances. However, that system relies on the willingness of politicians to enforce them.

Unfortunately, in 2013, we have a bunch of professional politicians, who are too afraid of being thrown off of the Gravy Train, to tell the Conductor he’s on the wrong track.When the Speaker of the House isn’t playing golf with the Manchurian President, he’s playing footsie with him.

What are the four “hot” issues right now?

1. Gun Control

2. Amnesty for illegal immigrants

3. Homosexual “Marriage”

4. Sequestration

Now, everybody sing: “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong…”

Have you guessed? Yep. Sequestration is a direct result of the fiscal irresponsibility of our professional politicians, up on Capitol Hill, being poor stewards of OUR money.

The vicious coiled snake, known as Tax and Spend, has finally eaten its own tail.  The revenue needed to fuel Obama’s Big Government no longer exists, because of his own ignorant economic policies. When Americans are prosperous and thriving,   government reaps the benefits. Not vice-versa.

Which brings me back to my original question: Why are these government agencies arming themselves so heavily. And, why the push to confiscate normal Americans’ guns?

If this “Gun Control Campaign” was about stopping violent crime, don’t you think that the government would be going after criminals like the gang-banging, murderous thugs in Obama’s hometown of Chicago, first?

Or, are they expecting Americans to take to the streets, because of Obama’s penchant to rule by diktat?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Shame and Sequestration

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

rush3Yesterday, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, while speaking on the subject of sequestration, said,

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country. To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it’s being insulted? It just makes me ashamed. Seriously, man. Here we get worked up over $44 billion. That’s the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year. In truth, we’re gonna spend more this year than we spent last year.

We’re just not gonna spend as much as was projected. It’s all baseline budgeting. There is no real cut below a baseline of zero. There just isn’t. Yet here they come, sucking us in, roping us in. Panic here, fear there: Crisis, destruction, no meat inspection, no cops, no teachers, no firefighters, no air traffic control. I’m sorry, my days of getting roped into all this are over. We have the media playing along with all this. The ruling class of both parties play along with all this. It’s insulting. I don’t know how else to describe it.

I’m into my 25th year.

I can’t tell you the number of times this has happened. This hit me yesterday. I’ve said the same things over and over for 25 years. Whether the Clinton presidency or the Obama presidency, whether it’s a Pelosi speakership or Tom Foley (who was speaker when I started), it’s the same stuff. It’s the same threats. It’s the same arguments over and over. Nothing ever changes! We just keep spending more money. We create more dependency, we get more and more irresponsible from one crisis to the next, all of them manufactured.

Except for the real crisis, which nobody ever addresses, and that is: We can’t afford any of this.

What’s happening here, folks, is we are being played for fools and being suckered — suckered into supporting the never-ending expansion of government, the wholesale destruction of the private economy. Everybody who joins in this debate under the premise that Obama puts forth, as well as debating the politics of this nonsense, is just being used to cover up what’s actually going on. Now, what’s going on is no great conspiracy. It’s no mystery. We’re spending much more money than we have.

The government is getting inexorably larger.

It’s less and less efficient at accomplishing anything. We’re creating more and more dependents. We’re robbing people of their dignity and humanity and of their opportunity to realize their dreams as they turn their lives over to the government. It’s like a never-ending cycle. The government makes the private sector smaller. There are fewer job opportunities. There’s less money in the private sector, less opportunity to accrue wealth. Income taxes and others threaten to go higher; they do go higher.

It all adds up to the government growing, the private sector shrinking, freedom being lost ever so slowly, and nobody ever talks about stopping this. Everybody gets sucked into debating the crisis of the moment according to the terms of the moment, without any context and relationship to the past and a knowable future and a relevant perusal of the present. These little debates take place within their own little universe, as though they’re unaffected by things that have happened in the past.

So if  sequestration actually happens, will the world as we know it come to an end? Hardly.

Back in September of 2012, fcw.com posted the following information:

The Obama administration has released its mandated report on how sequestration may be implemented, outlining in a nearly 400-page document detailed plans for cutting federal spending by $1.2 trillion.

The Office of Management and Budget released the report Sept. 14, a week later than the deadline set by the Sequestration Transparency Act. It includes line-by-line detail on more than 1,200 budget accounts, breaking down what is exempt from sequestration and what’s not.

Per the report, sequestration is estimated to result in a 9.4 percent cut in non-exempt defense discretionary funding, and 8.2 percent in non-defense, non-exempt discretionary funding. It would also cut 2 percent to Medicare, 7.6 percent to other non-exempt non-defense mandatory programs, and 10 percent to non-exempt, mandatory defense programs.

In the report and in a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials underscored their opposition to sequestration, which comes from the Budget Control Act of 2011. A “supercommittee” was chosen to hammer out agreed-on cuts, and when it failed to do so near the end of 2011, sequestration became the next step.

The last time America experienced a government shutdown was in 1995, when

…A wily Clinton politically outmaneuvered then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to turn the 20-day shutdown into a bruising PR defeat for the year-old Republican majority.

While Clinton had to eventually sacrifice on substance and put forward a budget that reflected much of what Gingrich and the Republicans wanted, he had set the narrative for his reelection campaign the next year: Clinton the moderate versus the radical Republicans in Congress.

That media narrative, combined with independent Ross Perot siphoning away mostly Republican votes in swing states, helped Clinton capture an 8-point victory in November of 1996.

Just who is responsible for Sequestration?

“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”

— President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The president seems to have a selective memory. Per The Washington Post:

The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package. Woodward’s book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place — and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.

Here is a short summary of how it went down:

The White House proposed the idea of a compulsory trigger, with Sperling calling it an “automatic sequester,” though initially it was to include tax revenue, not just spending cuts. Boehner was “nervous” about using it as a budget tool.

Once tax increases were off the table, the White House staff came up with a sequestration plan that only had spending cuts and sold Harry Reid on the idea.

This is the third reference to the White House putting together the plan for sequester. Granted, they are using language from a congressional law from a quarter-century earlier, but that seems a thin reed on which to say this came from Congress. In fact, Lew had been a policy advisor to then House Speaker Tip O’Neill from 1979 to 1987, and so was familiar with the law.

Republicans agreed to the White House proposal for a sequester.

Republicans had to work through the night to understand the White House proposal.

Of course, the Republicans eventually caved and agreed to raise the debt ceiling…and, so here we are.

Obama is trying to pull a Clinton. The problem is…he’s not Slick Willie.

He does not have the people skills, or the ruthlessness of a Hillary to back him up.

Additionally, the New Media was not as prevalent back then. 

Knowing the Republican Establishment, they will probably cave at the last minute, once again, on their quest to become Democrat-Lite.

Which would be a pretty stupid move, considering they did not come up with the idea in the first place.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

Governor Chris Christie Wildly Popular…in New Jersey

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

chris christieNew Jersey’s larger-than-life Governor has a larger-than-life popularity rating in the Garden State.

It’s the highest job approval Governor Chris Christie has ever had. At 74 percent, it’s the highest of any New Jersey Governor in the 17 years that Quinnipiac has been polling the state, and the highest of any Governor in the seven states that Quinnipiac polls now.

Seventy-one percent say Governor Christie deserves re-election.

“Barbara Buono, the State Senator who is the probable Democratic opponent for him [in the 2014 gubernatorial race] — he beats her 62 percent to 25 percent,” says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Christie also performs strongly among those surveyed in a hypothetical matchup for the White House in 2016.

“If the Democrat was Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Clinton, Clinton beats him 49 percent to 45 percent — within the margin of error — and Cuomo trails him 54 percent to 36 percent in New Jersey,” Carroll explains.

Carroll says Christie’s response to Hurricane Sandy helped to boost his popularity.

Perhaps in “Joisey”, Mr. Carroll, but Governor Zeppelin’s (as New Jersey Conservatives have named him) “bromance” with President Barack Hussein Obama did absolutely nothing to endear himself to Conservatives in the rest of the country.

On November 19, 2012, the New York Times reported on Americans’ Post-Romney-loss reaction to Christie’s “bromance”:

A few days after Hurricane Sandy shattered the shores of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie picked up the phone to take on a different kind of recovery work: taming the Republican Party fury over his effusive embrace of President Obama.

On Nov. 3, Mr. Christie called Rupert Murdoch, the influential News Corporation chief and would-be kingmaker, who had warned in a biting post on Twitter that the governor might be responsible for Mr. Obama’s re-election.

Mr. Christie told Mr. Murdoch that amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends, no matter their political party, according to people briefed on the discussion. But Mr. Murdoch was blunt: Mr. Christie risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly affirmed his support for Mitt Romney, something the governor did the next day.

Mr. Christie has been explaining himself to Republicans ever since. His lavish praise for Mr. Obama’s response to the storm, delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign’s final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the party holds that it influenced the outcome.

But behind the scenes, the intensity of the reaction from those in Mr. Christie’s party caught him by surprise, interviews show, requiring a rising Republican star to try to contain a tempest that left him feeling deeply misunderstood and wounded.

The governor, who had spent days delivering bear hugs and words of sympathy to shellshocked residents, resented the pressure to choose between the state he loves with fervent, Springsteen-fueled ferocity and his future as a leader in the Republican Party.

In New Jersey, Mr. Christie’s politics-be-damned approach to the storm seemed to represent a moment of high-minded crisis management for a governor frequently defined by his public diatribes and tantrums. Mr. Christie locked arms with Mr. Obama, flew with him on Marine One, talked with him daily and went out of his way to praise him publicly as “outstanding,” “incredibly supportive” and worthy of “great credit.”

But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama’s helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.

It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.

The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.

“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort.

His willingness to work closely with the president has cast a shadow over Mr. Christie’s prospects as a national candidate, prompting a number of Republicans to wonder aloud whether he is a reliable party leader.

“It hurt him a lot,” said Douglas E. Gross, a longtime Republican operative in Iowa who has overseen several presidential campaigns in the state. “The presumption is that Republicans can’t count on him.”

Republican voters in Iowa, the first state to select presidential candidates, “don’t forget things like this,” Mr. Gross said.

With Mr. Romney’s loss still an open sore, Mr. Christie’s conduct remains a topic of widespread discussion in the party.

And, it remains a topic of discussion to this day.

Gov. Zeppelin, in his own way, has become a loathsome symbol of the Vichy Republican Establishment, who have sold all their Conservative Principles and any integrity that they may have once had, in an ill-fated attempt to appeal to the squishy middle of the American voting public, while ignoring the date who brought them to the dance, the Conservative Base.

Unfortunately for the Grand Old Geniuses, their fictional “Moderate Base” exists predominately up in the Northeast.

Average Americans living in the Heartland are still Conservative by nature, with actual morals and ethics, which aren’t situational.

You’ve heard the old saying,

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything?

Well, evidently Gov. Christie and the rest of the Republican Moderate Elite never have.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Gun Control: Dems in Colorado State Legislature “Rocky Mountain High”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

gun rightsJust when we all thought that Colorado was becoming a Red State, the Democrats in the State Legislature lose their collective minds.

Fox News reports that

Limits on the size of ammunition magazines and universal background checks passed the Colorado House on Monday, during a second day of emotional debates that has drawn attention from the White House as lawmakers try to address recent mass shootings.

The bills were among four that the Democratic-controlled House passed amid strong resistance from Republicans, who were joined by a few Democrats to make some of the votes close.

The proposed ammunition restrictions limit magazines to 15 rounds for firearms, and eight for shotguns. Three Democrats joined all Republicans voting no on the bill, but the proposal passed 34-31.

“Enough is enough. I’m sick and tired of bloodshed,” said Democratic Rep. Rhonda Fields, a sponsor of the bill and representative of the district where the shootings at an Aurora theater happened last summer. Fields’ son was also fatally shot in 2005.

Republicans argued that the proposals restrict Second Amendment rights and won’t prevent mass shootings like the ones in Aurora and a Connecticut elementary school.

“This bill will never keep evil people from doing evil things,” said Republican Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg.

The House also approved a bill requiring background checks on all gun purchases, including those between private sellers and firearms bought online.

Other proposals would ban concealed firearms at colleges and stadiums, and another requires that gun purchasers pay for their own background checks. Democrats eked out the closest vote on the background check measure, which passed on a 33-32 vote.

Democratic Rep. Ed Vigil, who represents rural southern Colorado, voted against the four bills, saying his decision was rooted in the state’s rugged history.

“This is part of our heritage. This is part of what it took to settle this land. I cannot turn my back on that,” he said.

But even though a few Democrats joined Republicans in voting no for the bills, the Democrats’ 37-28 advantage in the House gave them enough leeway.

The Senate still needs to consider the proposals. Democrats will need to be more unified in their support there because their advantage is only 20-15. That means Republicans need only three Democrats to join them to defeat the bills.

House lawmakers began debating the bills Friday.

This took place one day after  a Democratic State Representative put his foot in it…Big Time:

TheBlaze.com tells us that

While trying to explain why women in college don’t need firearms for self-defense on campus, Colorado state Rep. Joe Salazar said even if women feel like they might be raped, their suspected attacker might not actually have intent to rape. So please, put the guns away ladies.

“It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at,” he said during a legislative hearing. “And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble and when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop — pop a round at somebody.”

Yesterday, after a blowback that made Hurricane Katrina seem like a battery-operated personal fan, the idiot apologized.

However, on the subject of Rep. Salazar’s ignorant comment, yesterday, on Twitter, I had a fascinating conversation with a quite Liberal young lady.

I had posted the following Tweet under the hashtag: #LiberalTips2AvoidRape

Move on down to Dixie, where everyone, Southern Belles or Southern Gentlemen, open or concealed carries.

The young lady replied to my Tweet:

therefore, according to your “logic”, there are no rapes down in ‘ole Dixie?

I, then replied:

I did not say that. However, statistics do prove that a well-placed bullet does prevent an attempted rape 10 out of 10 times.

Here is the rest of the discussion:

Her: If you want to use a statistic then give me a site to back it up.

Me: Ummm…how would a perpetrator rape someone if he was incompacitated?  Duuuh. Courtesy of the Kingsjester Institute of the Obvious.

Her: Suppose the rapist doesn’t want to wait ’til you draw your gun, aim and shoot?Or he comes from behind w/a knife to your neck?

Me: Shoot him in the foot.

Her: ok, but I think you’d have to walk around with your hand on your gun for that to work. Rapists are the worst kind of predators.

Me: You can shoot through a purse or a holster. So, are you saying that you want to comply with what the Dem in CO wants you to do?

Her: I was trying to point out that a gun won’t stop a rapist unless you walk around w/your hand on the trigger at all times.

Me: You have no reflexes? Are you unaware of your surroundings? Are you a victim?Are you a fatalist? Would you not fight back?
It was then that she left the conversation. Perhaps, she was one of those State Legislators in Colorado, I don’t know.
A couple of things in closing:
Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate. – Ted Nugent
And, why are they trying to take away the guns from law-abiding citizens, when it is the criminals who use their guns to kill, rape, and rob?
You know, it is almost as if those in power want the American Citizenry to be defenseless.
Until He Comes,
KJ

The Coming of Obamacare: Like the Titanic Headed for the Iceberg

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

obamadoctorAs America creeps closer and closer to the full launch of Obamacare, Americans are finding out why Congress did not want to read the bill before they passed it into law.

On February 10th, Reason.com told us that Obamacare will not lower Americans’ medical costs. Au contraire…

“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,” said Nancy Pelosi during the debate over Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act passed, and Americans are now finding out. It’s not a pretty picture.

Take employment. “Medical device makers in Massachusetts and elsewhere are warning of potential job losses,” reports The Boston Globe, because of a 2.3-percent tax on medical devices imposed by law. Even liberal-heartthrob-turned-Massachusetts-Senator Elizabeth Warren, a supporter of the law, says repealing that tax is “essential.” (To paraphrase a cliché, if it saves one job – hers – it’s worth it.)

But the ACA’s effect on jobs goes well beyond medical device makers. Reporting on January’s employment numbers, Investor’s Business Daily notes an “apparent shift to part-time work ahead of a key Obamacare deadline.” Although more people are working in the retail sector, they are working fewer hours per person – now just a hair above 30 hours a week. “A similar trend,” IBD notes, “showed up in leisure and hospitality.”

Why? No great mystery: Under the ACA, companies with 50 full-time employees or more must provide health insurance or pay a fine. As Paul Christiansen writes in The Wall Street Journal, “thousands of small businesses across the U.S. are desperately looking for a way to escape their own fiscal cliff” through layoffs or shifting to more part-time employees. (He advises a third route: “going protean,” an approach in which a small cadre of managers sets strategy and outsources everything else – from accounting and IT to product development and manufacturing – to contractors.)

This employment shift may frustrate one of the aims of the Affordable Care Act: increasing the percentage of Americans who have employer-based health insurance. Won’t the downsized be able to buy subsidized health insurance through the new state exchanges, though? Sure. In fact, they will be forced to, or pay a fine. But that only highlights another area where the law is falling short: cost control. Back in 2010 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the average subsidy at $3,970 per individual. It’s now up to $5,510 – bringing the overall cost between now and 2022 to more than $1 trillion.

This is the trajectory of a law President Obama insisted was necessary to “bend the cost curve downward.” Indeed, three years ago Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained the “urgency” of health-care reform this way: “Working families have been saddled with huge rate increase in their health insurance premiums” – 39 percent in California, 56 percent in Michigan, and so on.

Yet as Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute notes, a recent survey of insurance companies finds that “if the law’s insurance rules were in force [now], the premium for a relatively bare-bones policy for a 27-year-old male nonsmoker on the individual market would be nearly 190 percent higher.”

Okay, so maybe the conservative group that conducted the survey cherry-picked that case. What about other sorts of policies, and other people? The news isn’t much better: Wisconsin predicts “an average premium increase of 41 percent.” Ohio’s Department of Insurance says “the individual health insurance market premiums are estimated to increase by 55 percent to 85 percent above current market average rates.”

But, hey, at least the “least among us” as Obama likes to call lower income Americans, will be taken care of. Especially, if they have pre-existing conditions, right?

Err…not so much.

The Washington Post reports that

Tens of thousands of Americans who cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical problems will be blocked from a program designed to help them because funding is running low.

Obama administration officials said Friday that the state-based “high-risk pools” set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on the state.

But they stressed that coverage for about 100,000 people who are now enrolled in the high-risk pools will not be affected.

“We’re being very careful stewards of the money that has been appropriated to us and we wanted to balance our desire to maximize the number of people who can gain from this program while making sure people who are in the program have coverage,” said Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. “This was the most prudent step for us to take at this point in time.”

The program, which was launched in summer 2010, was always intended as a temporary bridge for the uninsured. But it was supposed to last until 2014. At that point, the health-care law will bar insurers from rejecting or otherwise discriminating against people who are already sick, enabling such people to buy plans through the private market.

From the start, analysts questioned whether the $5 billion that Congress appropriated for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan — as the program is called — was sufficient.

Initial fears that as many as 375,000 sick people would swamp the pools and bankrupt them by 2012 did not pan out. This is largely because, even though the pools must charge premiums comparable to those for healthy people, the plans sold through them are often expensive.

But it was also because the pools are open only to people who have gone without insurance for at least six months. The result is that, while only about 135,000 people have gotten coverage at some point, they are proving far more costly to insure than predicted.

Many people who are uninsured go untreated, exacerbating their medical problems. When they finally do get coverage through a high-risk pool, they are in immediate need of expensive care.

“What we’ve learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health-care system to be run,” Cohen said.

Of the original $5 billion, about $2.36 billion remains available for the last three quarters of 2013 — enough only to continue coverage for those already in the pools, according to administration estimates.

The law gave states the option of either administering their pools directly or allowing federal authorities to operate them. In 27 states that have chosen direct management, applications for new enrollment can be accepted only through March 2. In 23 states and the District, where the pools are operated by the federal government, only applications received through Friday will be considered.

Obama administration officials said they did not have estimates for how many more people would have sought coverage through the pools beyond then. But Cohen said that new enrollment has averaged about 4,000 people per month in the past several months, suggesting that the figure could number in the tens of thousands.

Asked why the administration has not requested additional money from Congress to keep the program open — admittedly a tough sell in the current political and budgetary environment — Cohen said, “My responsibility is to work with the appropriation we have.”

About 129 million people nationwide have a medical condition or prior illness that would make it hard for them to buy their own insurance plan.

Large numbers of them can and still do obtain full coverage through employer-sponsored plans, which generally do not treat sick people differently.

An additional 215,000 people are insured through separate high-risk pools that 35 states fund through their own budgets — although the policies often do not pay for treatment of the person’s preexisting illness, only covering new illnesses the person may develop.

Between 9 million and 25 million people with preexisting conditions are uninsured, depending on the estimate.

And, just think…Obamacare is not even fully implemented, yet.

Oh, and if someone offers you “Soylent Green”, don’t eat it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama to Propose His Own Illegal Immigration Plan

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamaillegalimmigrationWhile the First Couple is vacationing on opposite ends of the country, on our dime, news of a proposed plan by the Prevaricator-in Chief, to deal with Illegal Immigration, has been leaked to a Liberal National Newspaper.

A draft of a White House immigration proposal obtained by USA TODAY would allow illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents within eight years.

The plan also would provide for more security funding and require business owners to check the immigration status of new hires within four years. In addition, the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants could apply for a newly created “Lawful Prospective Immigrant” visa, under the draft bill being written by the White House.

If approved, they could then apply for the same provisional legal status for their spouse or children living outside the country, according to the draft.

The bill is being developed as members in both chambers of Congress are drafting their own immigration bills.

…The bill mirrors many provisions of the bipartisan 2007 bill that was spearheaded by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and ultimately failed.

In his first term, Obama often deferred to Congress on drafting and advancing major legislation, including the Affordable Care Act. He has openly supported the efforts in Congress to take the lead on immigration legislation, and just this week met with Democratic senators to discuss their proposals.

But two weeks ago in Las Vegas, while outlining his immigration plans, Obama made clear that he would not wait too long for Congress to get moving.

“If Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away,” he said.

According to the White House draft, people would need to pass a criminal background check, submit biometric information and pay fees to qualify for the new visa. If approved, they would be allowed to legally reside in the U.S. for four years, work and leave the country for short periods of time. After the four years, they could then reapply for an extension.

Illegal immigrants would be disqualified from the program if they were convicted of a crime that led to a prison term of at least one year, three or more different crimes that resulted in a total of 90 days in jail, or if they committed any offense abroad that “if committed in the United States would render the alien inadmissible or removable from the United States.”

People currently in federal custody or facing deportation proceedings also could be allowed to apply for the Lawful Prospective Immigrant visa. Application forms and instructions would be provided in “the most common languages spoken by persons in the United States,” but the application and all supporting evidence submitted to the federal government would have to be in English.

They would also be given a new identification card to show as proof of their legal status in the country.

The immigrants could then apply for legal permanent residence, commonly known as a green card, within eight years if they learn English and “the history and government of the United States” and pay back taxes. That would then clear the path for them to apply for U.S. citizenship.

To combat fraud, the draft proposes a new Social Security card be developed that is “fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant and wear-resistant.” The Social Security Administration would be required to issue the new cards within two years.

A major requirement for many Republicans is enhanced border security. The bill calls for an unspecified increase in the Border Patrol, allows the Department of Homeland Security to expand technological improvements along the border and adds 140 new immigration judges to process the heavy flow of people who violate immigration laws.

It also orders U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to study whether a land-border crossing fee should be implemented to help offset border security costs. The draft also proposes raising many inspection fees that border-crossers already pay.

The draft bill proposes a new plan to allow Homeland Security to “accept donations” from citizens, businesses and local and state governments to improve ports of entry and security features along the border. And it would require CBP to begin collecting statistics on deaths along the border and report them quarterly.

The draft also expands the E-Verify program that checks the immigration status of people seeking new jobs. Businesses with more than 1,000 employees must begin using the system within two years, businesses with more than 250 employees within three years and all businesses within four years.

Homeland Security, working with the U.S. departments of Labor and Agriculture, the attorney general and other agencies, would engage in a $40 million-a-year program to educate business owners and workers about the program.

Homeland Security also would be required to submit a report within 18 months showing how the worker verification system is working, and specifically explain how it is affecting the nation’s agriculture industry, which relies heavily on illegal immigrant workers.

The draft obtained by USA TODAY does not include sections that would alter the nation’s legal immigration system to adjust the future flow of legal immigrants, which is expected to be a critical component of any immigration overhaul.

If the president believes that everyone will accept his brilliant (**cough**) plan with open arms, he has another thing coming.

Politico.com reports that

Sen. Marco Rubio said Saturday that President Barack Obama’s immigration plan will be “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill if it looks like the proposal reported by USA Today.

“If actually proposed, the president’s bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come,” said Rubio, who’s seen as a key figure in pushing a bipartisan immigration bill through the Senate.

A White House spokesman told POLITICO earlier Saturday that the administration continues to support a bipartisan plan from the Hill and has not produced a final bill to send to Congress.

Rubio’s statement is combative, faulting the administration for releasing a proposal without getting Republican input. “It’s a mistake for the White House to draft immigration legislation without seeking input from Republican members of Congress,” Rubio said. “President Obama’s leaked immigration proposal is disappointing to those of us working on a serious solution.”

“The president’s bill repeats the failures of past legislation,” he continued. “It fails to follow through on previously broken promises to secure our borders, creates a special pathway that puts those who broke our immigration laws at an advantage over those who chose to do things the right way and come here legally and does nothing to address guest workers or future flow, which serious immigration experts agree is critical to preventing future influxes of illegal immigrants.”

“Much like the president’s self-described stopgap deferred action measure last year, this legislation is half-baked and seriously flawed,” Rubio added. “It would actually make our immigration problems worse and would further undermine the American people’s confidence in Washington’s ability to enforce our immigration laws and reform our broken immigration system.

Perhaps, that is exactly what the president has in mind, Senator.

By proposing and passing his plan by Executive Order, if need be, ol’ Baracky Claus is seeking to create a boatload of grateful, new Democratic voters.

Obama: “Secured Borders? We don’t need no stinkin’ secured borders.”

If this plan becomes law,Obama will create a new working class, or, Proletariat, who will look to Uncle Sugar, or the Politboro, for their very existence.

Then, the greatest country on the face of the Earth will become just another Democratic Socialist nation, fulfilling the dreams of The Manchurian President and all of his minions.

Lenin would be sooo proud.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Why I am Still a “Christian American Conservative”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

Christian America Fish LogoLately, I’ve had fellow internet posters ask me, why I am so old-fashioned. Why I don’t just “live and let live”. Why I rail against the recently re-elected Administration of Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

As I write this post there is a former cop, turned psychopath, lying in a drawer in a California morgue, extra crispy, a reflection of his status in the after-life, and yet, during his murder spree, he was worshiped as a cult hero.

The before-mentioned President and First Lady (an exaggeration in terms) are taking separate vacations, on opposite corners of our country on our dime.

We’ve got young people who can’t read, but they’ve got avatars in every violent video game you have ever heard of.

What in the name of all that’s holy, is going on in this country?

We’ve got babies having babies…when they don’t yank them from their wombs and kill them.e’ve got Gays serving openly in our Armed Forces, and appearing in uniform, in order to make a political point in a parade.

We’ve got black-on-black homocide climbing at an alarming rate in Detroit and Memphis, but no one seems to want to talk about it. That would be RAAACIIIST.

We’ve got gangs recruiting in our schools…but, again,  no one seems to want to talk about it. It might upset little Jimmy.

We’ve got a president who says that we don’t have the intestinal fortitude or the intelligence to achieve success on our own.

We’ve got a First Lady who, while watching police and firefighters fold Old Glory at a ceremony honoring and remembering our fallen on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, said, “all this just for a flag”, while her husband nodded in agreement.

Now, more than ever, we need to return to the values that made this country the greatest on the face of the Earth.

I’ve been asked what the phrase “Christian American Conservative” means.  Please allow me to explain.

First word:  Christian – A follower of Jesus Christ.

I was raised as a Christian by my parents and accepted Christ as my personal Savior many years ago.

Here are some interesting things about Christianity to consider, written by Dr. Ray Pritchard and posted on christianity.com:

1) The name “Christian” was not invented by early Christians. It was a name given to them by others.
2) Christians called themselves by different names—disciples, believers, brethren, saints, the elect, etc.
3) The term apparently had a negative meaning in the beginning: “those belonging to the Christ party.”
4) It was a term of contempt or derision.
5) We can get a flavor for it if we take the word “Christ” and keep that pronunciation. You “Christ-ians.”
6) It literally means “Christ-followers.”
7) Over time a derogatory term became a positive designation.
8) Occasionally you will hear someone spit the term out in the same way it was used in the beginning. “You Christians think you’re the only ones going to heaven.”
9) There was a sense of suffering and reproach attached to the word in the New Testament.

In working my way toward an answer to “What is a Christian?” I decided to check out the dictionary. I found these two definitions:

1. One who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus. 2. One who lives according to the teachings of Jesus.”

That’s actually quite helpful because it gives some content to the word. To be a Christian means that you . . .

Believe Something
Follow Something
Live Something
A Fully Devoted Follower To borrow a contemporary phrase, we could simply say that a Christian is a “fully devoted follower of Jesus.” As I think about that, two insights come to mind.

1) It doesn’t happen by accident. You are not “born” a Christian nor are you a Christian because of your family heritage. Being a Christian is not like being Irish. You aren’t a Christian simply because you were born into a Christian family.
2) It requires conversion of the heart. By using the term “conversion,” I simply mean what Jesus meant when he said that to be his disciple meant to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him (Luke 9:23). The heart itself must be changed so that you become a follower of the Lord.

Second word: American – A citizen of the United States of America.

Stephen M. Warchawsky, wrote the following in an article foramericanthinker.org:

So what, then, does it mean to be an American? I suspect that most of us believe, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in describing pornography, that we “know it when we see it.” For example, John Wayne, Amelia Earhart, and Bill Cosby definitely are Americans. The day laborers standing on the street corner probably are not. But how do we put this inner understanding into words? It’s not easy. Unlike most other nations on Earth, the American nation is not strictly defined in terms of race or ethnicity or ancestry or religion. George Washington may be the Father of Our Country (in my opinion, the greatest American who ever lived), but there have been in the past, and are today, many millions of patriotic, hardworking, upstanding Americans who are not Caucasian, or Christian, or of Western European ancestry. Yet they are undeniably as American as you or I (by the way, I am Jewish of predominantly Eastern European ancestry). Any definition of “American” that excludes such folks — let alone one that excludes me! — cannot be right.

Consequently, it is just not good enough to say, as some immigration restrictionists do, that this is a “white-majority, Western country.” Yes, it is. But so are, for example, Ireland and Sweden and Portugal. Clearly, this level of abstraction does not take us very far towards understanding what it means to be “an American.” Nor is it all that helpful to say that this is an English-speaking, predominately Christian country. While I think these features get us closer to the answer, there are millions of English-speaking (and non-English-speaking) Christians in the world who are not Americans, and millions of non-Christians who are. Certainly, these fundamental historical characteristics are important elements in determining who we are as a nation. Like other restrictionists, I am opposed to public policies that seek, by design or by default, to significantly alter the nation’s “demographic profile.” Still, it must be recognized that demography alone does not, and cannot, explain what it means to be an American.

So where does that leave us? I think the answer to our question, ultimately, must be found in the realms of ideology and culture. What distinguishes the United States from other nations, and what unites the disparate peoples who make up our country, are our unique political, economic, and social values, beliefs, and institutions. Not race, or religion, or ancestry.

Third word: Conservative -A person who holds to traditional values and attitudes.

J. Matt Barber wrote in the Washington Times that

Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds true conservatism. The legs are represented by a strong defense, strong free-market economic policies and strong social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

A Republican, for instance, who is conservative on social and national defense issues but liberal on fiscal issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative socialist.

A Republican who is conservative on fiscal and social issues but liberal on national defense issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative dove.

By the same token, a Republican who is conservative on fiscal and national defense issues but liberal on social issues – such as abortion, so-called gay rights or the Second Amendment – is not a Reagan conservative. He is a socio-liberal libertarian.

Put another way: A Republican who is one part William F. Buckley Jr., one part Oliver North and one part Rachel Maddow is no true conservative. He is – well, I’m not exactly sure what he is, but it ain’t pretty.

Even the Brits understand what American Conservatism is.

Per blogs.telegraph.co.uk:

Conservatism is thriving in America today because liberty, freedom and individual responsibility are at the heart of its ideology, one that rejects the foolish notion that government knows best. And its strength owes a great debt to the conviction and ideals of Ronald Reagan, who always believed that America’s best days are ahead of her, and for whom the notion of decline was unacceptable. As the Gipper famously put it, in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1988:

Those who underestimate the conservative movement are the same people who always underestimate the American people.

In conclusion, I, a Christian American Conservative, am a follower of Jesus Christ and a citizen of the United States of America (by the Grace of God), who holds to traditional values and attitudes.

I pray that you, the reader, are able to glean that from my blogs.  Because, as Matthew 6:21 tells us:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

My hope is that, during these troubled times, your heart is held by Him.

May God bless you and yours,

KJ

America 2013: How Did We Get Here…and How Do We Get Back?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics4 Comments

conservative1In my post on Thursday, I promised to devote some time this week to explore America’s cultural and societal decline.

Well…there’s no time like the present.

As I mentioned in my 1000th Blog a couple of months ago, I have been told that I am out of touch with America’s present societal and cultural norms…that I am an anachronism…a throwback to an earlier era.

That got me to thinking: How did we get to where we are?

I started First Grade in 1963. Also in 1963, a very important case was brought before the Supreme Court by a bitter, old atheist named Madalyn Murray O’Hair:

School prayer was the focus of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a militant left wing atheist with close ties to the American Communist Party, when she filed a lawsuit against the school board of Baltimore. The local court judge, J. Gilbert Pendergast, dismissed the petition stating, “It is abundantly clear that petitioners’ real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of the public school system.” The case went to the Maryland Court of Appeals, and the court ruled, “Neither the First nor the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to stifle all rapport between religion and government.”

The “School Prayer” case then made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Leonard Kerpelman addressed the court saying prayer in the public schools had been tolerated for so long that it had become traditional and that anything that is unconstitutional does not become constitutional through tradition. He went on to say the Constitution had erected a “wall of separation” between church and state, at which point Justice Potter Steward interrupted, asking where this wording appears. Kerpelman was stumped and an embarrassing silence followed. When he regained his composure, he stated that the text was not explicit on the point but that it had been interpreted to mean so.

Remarkably, the National Council of Churches and several Jewish organizations favored Madalyn O’Hair’s case! Not a single Christian organization filed a brief in support of school prayer. The Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in favor of abolishing school prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. Justice Tom Clark wrote, “Religious freedom, it has long been recognized that government must be neutral and, while protecting all, must prefer none and disparage none.” The federal government considers atheism to be a religion, and this Supreme Court ruling favored atheism, at the expense of the Christian majority.

Down here in Dixie, we still pray at school functions…and that fact drives that idiotic bunch of atheists up in the Great White North, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, absolutely nuts. So much so, that they have made it their mission in life, to sue every school that dares have any sort of prayer at any event, on campus or off.

The FFRF has achieved a modicum of success in our court system. However, at least in the South, school organizations such as the Fellowship of Christian Students and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes are still flourishing.

On a side note, I am proud to have helped raise a step-son, who was the head of both of these organizations at his high school, and is now in seminary.

I remember back in elementary school, every morning we began school by singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and then, reciting The Pledge of Allegiance. Even remembering that ritual today, I find comfort in it.

In the South, at least in the Mississippi County in which I live, the school day still begins with the recitation of the Pledge, which is led by a group of students, standing around a microphone in the Principal’s Office.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case in many schools around our blessed land.

Nowadays, good old-fashioned American Patriotism is not considered Politically Correct.

So, what is the cause of this 180 degree turn from where we were, as a mostly cohesive society, based on love of God and Country, which I remember so fondly from my childhood, to where we are now as a country comprised, to a certain extent,  of individuals, who believe in relative morality, situational ethics, and a malleable Constitution.

Learned individuals have been trying to discern exactly what has caused this Societal and Cultural Decline, and in the process, they have blamed it on everything from poor schools to poverty to malnutrition.

Being a simple man, (Hey, that would make a great title for a rock song. Oh, wait. It was. Never mind.) I believe that because Americans have wanted, for at least 3 generations now, to give their children everything materialistically possible, they have to a great extent, ignored their children’s spirituality.

God’s Word tells us that we, as parents, should

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

The dissolution of the American family and the pressure on parents to provide for their children, has certainlty contributed to Americans’ priorities getting waaay out-of-whack.

Instead of training our children in the way they should go, we have, as a society, allowed the television, video games, government-run schools, and our children’s peers to be their surrogate parents.

The selfish hedonism we are witnessing in our country is a direct result of parents abandoning their roles, as the spiritual and ethical teachers of morality to their children.

So, now the Obama Administration is stepping in to fulfill the Parental Role.

An action, which will, most certainly, make a bad situation worse.

After all, as President Ronald Reagan used to say,

The scariest nine words in the English Language are, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.”

Americans need to rediscover our Christian Heritage of Love of God and Country, before it is too late.

Until He Comes,

KJ