Tag: New York Times

Iowa Caucus Analysis: Winners, Losers, and Unbelievable Spin

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

ss-120102-iowa-01.660;660;7;70;0Alright. As Maureen McGovern sang, “There’s Got to Be a Morning After”.

Now that the dust has settled, what can we learn from the results of the First Event of the Primary Season, the Iowa Caucus, or, as it is called, the “Hawkeye Caucai”?

Edward J. Rollins is a former assistant to President Ronald Reagan, who managed Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign. He is presently a senior presidential fellow at Hofstra University and a member of the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. He is Senior Advisor for Teneo Strategy.

Rollins, a Fox News Contributor, has submitted the following op ed, analyzing the results of yesterday’s Iowa Caucus on the Republican Side of the Aisle…

It is always interesting to watch democracy in action and Iowa is ground zero.

Many political pundits and media analysts complain about the attention Iowa receives from candidates and the media because it goes first. But it also is a state filled with people who are willing to pay attention, to go to small events and forums (more than 1,500 have been held) and to show up at a caucus on a cold, often snowy night to participate in a ritual few states duplicate.

Millions of dollars are spent on TV commercials (over 60,000) and organization that Monday night produced a record turnout.

Iowa doesn’t always produce the eventual winners but it does eliminate the losers. With 17 Republican candidates starting this process, there are really only three or four real candidates now with voter support and sufficient monies to go on to the remaining contests.

With a record voter turnout in Iowa, the winner, Ted Cruz goes on with his extraordinary organization and conservative supporters with a big upset.

Marco Rubio, the best debater, came on strong and gained real momentum. He came very close to coming in second. Certainly he has to be viewed as a very serious candidate and the best bet to become the establishment candidate.

Trump is Trump and his special appeal to new voters and the angry anti-Washington element will go on, too, but with unpredictable results. He also paid a price for missing the last debate and fighting Fox News.

Ben Carson held his 10 percent base, but his candidacy is short lived and beyond Iowa has minimal support.

The biggest losers are Bush, Christie and Huckabee. Bush spent the most money and dropped like a rock.

Christie’s bluster, unlike Trump’s, didn’t sell. He has no money and no future in this race.

And Huckabee, who won this race eight years, and thought he could be a serious challenger against Romney in 2012, was a bottom dweller getting less than 2 percent of the vote. He raised no money and has no appeal and barely has enough money left to buy a bus ticket back to Arkansas. He quickly waved the flag of surrender and wisely quit the race.

One more may make the cut after Iowa, but this is the field now and it will be fascinating to watch.

Monday night’s win is a giant victory for Cruz and his team. He won in spite of a greater turnout than in years past and benefited from the dramatic increase in new voters. And now on to New Hampshire!

So, the Grand Old Party’s cup runneth over, They are seemingly blessed with 3 strong contenders for this Presidential Candidate Nomination.

The problem, as history has shown, is the fact that the Iowa Caucus is not exactly a bellweather by which to determine what will happen in November.

The other problem for the Republican Establishment, is the fact that they absolutely cannot stand the candidates that came in first and second.

Rubio, in the past, has proven to be a useful ally.

Things promise to be interesting in the months leading up to the convention.

Meanwhile, over at Propaganda Central for the Democrat Party and the Clinton Machine, otherwise known as the New York Times, Nate Cohn tried to declare the Queen of Mean, the winner of a VIRTUAL TIE.

Bernie Sanders is right: The Iowa Democratic caucuses were a “virtual tie,” especially after you consider that the results aren’t even actual vote tallies, but state delegate equivalents subject to all kinds of messy rounding rules and potential geographic biases.

The official tally, for now, is Hillary Clinton at 49.9 percent, and Mr. Sanders at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday morning.

But in the end, a virtual tie in Iowa is an acceptable, if not ideal, result for Mrs. Clinton and an ominous one for Mr. Sanders. He failed to win a state tailor made to his strengths.

He fares best among white voters. The electorate was 91 percent white, per the entrance polls. He does well with less affluent voters. The caucus electorate was far less affluent than the national primary electorate in 2008. He’s heavily dependent on turnout from young voters, and he had months to build a robust field operation. As the primaries quickly unfold, he won’t have that luxury.

Iowa is not just a white state, but also a relatively liberal one — one of only a few of states where Barack Obama won white voters in the 2008 primary and in both general elections. It is also a caucus state, which tends to attract committed activists.

In the end, Mr. Sanders made good on all of those strengths. He excelled in college towns. He won an astonishing 84 percent of those aged 17 to 29 — even better than Mr. Obama in the 2008 caucus. He won voters making less than $50,000 a year, again outperforming Mr. Obama by a wide margin. He won “very liberal” voters comfortably, 58 to 39 percent.

But these strengths were neatly canceled by Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. She won older voters, more affluent voters, along with “somewhat liberal” and “moderate” Democrats.

This raises a straightforward challenge for Mr. Sanders. He has nearly no chance to do as well among nonwhite voters as Mr. Obama did in 2008. To win, Mr. Sanders will need to secure white voters by at least a modest margin and probably a large one. In the end, Mr. Sanders failed to score a clear win in a state where Mr. Obama easily defeated Mrs. Clinton among white voters.

Mr. Sanders’s strength wasn’t so great as to suggest that he’s positioned to improve upon national polls once the campaign heats up. National polls show him roughly tied with Mrs. Clinton among white voters, and it was the case here as well. It suggests that additional gains for Mr. Sanders in national polls will require him to do better than he did in Iowa, not that the close race in Iowa augurs a close one nationally.

Mr. Sanders will have another opportunity to gain momentum after the New Hampshire primary. He might not get as much credit for a victory there as he would have in Iowa, since New Hampshire borders his home state of Vermont. But it could nonetheless give him another opportunity to overcome his weaknesses among nonwhite voters.

As a general rule, though, momentum is overrated in primary politics. In 2008, for instance, momentum never really changed the contours of the race. Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa allowed him to make huge gains among black voters, but not much more — the sort of exception that would seem to prove the rule. Mr. Obama couldn’t even put Mrs. Clinton away after winning a string of states in early February.

Continue reading the main story Write A Comment There’s an even longer list of candidates with fairly limited appeal, particularly Republicans like Rick Santorum, Pat Buchanan or Mike Huckabee, who failed to turn early-state victories into broader coalitions.

The polls this year offer additional reasons to doubt it. Mrs. Clinton holds more than 50 percent of the vote in national surveys; her share of the vote never declined in 2008. The polls say that her supporters are more likely to be firmly decided than Mr. Sanders’s voters.

Back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire by Mr. Sanders might have been enough to overcome that history. The no-decision in Iowa ensures we won’t find out.

Wow.

I haven’t seen a job of spinning like that since Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold. (look him up, kids.)

Mr. Cohn, as we say down here in Dixie,

That dog don’t hunt.

  1. While Sanders’ strength does rely with white voters ( which is funny, because you Democrats are supposed to cherish DIVERSITY, but, I digress…), his base of power lies in the New England States, home of his Millennial Minions and a bunch of those college towns, which you referred to.  And the last time I checked, New Hampshire is located in New England.
  2. Mrs. Clinton’s Voter Base have begun to distance themselves, en masse, from her. She carries more baggage than the image of the late Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) and his buddy (Willem Dafoe), rolling through the airport, in the Biographical movie, “Auto Focus” …And, she’s just as sleazy.
  3. Momentum “never really changed the contours of the race in 2008”, because it was all on Obama’s side, from the get-go. When you have the ground troops of SEIU and their partner-in-crime, ACORN, going door-to-door for you around the nation, it provides you with an insurmountable lead in “the community”. Hillary does not have access to those ground troops.
  4. BIG QUESTION: What happens if Obama and the Democrat Elites decide that they don’t like what they are seeing, so Obama orders the DOJ to indict Hillary and Crazy Uncle Joe enters the Primaries to “save the day”?

Clinton, no matter what those “smarter than the rest of the country” in the Northeast Corridor may choose to believe, is neither trustworthy nor likable as the polls have shown, time and again. Her Political Accomplishments are all negative, bordering on the nonexistent.

Bill’s coattails can cover up only so much political stain (Ask Monica).

Somebody had better hide all of the sharp instruments at the New York Times. This could get ugly.

Get your popcorn ready.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

Dr. Ben Carson, the Mississippi State Flag, and Liberal Hypocrisy

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Banning-Flags-600-LIYou hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. – Matthew 7:5 (KJV)

When trying to decide what to write about this Sunday Morning, I came across this opinion piece, disguised as an article, on nytimes.com:

 LOUISVILLE, Miss. — In single strokes after the massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston in June, Confederate battle flags were taken from statehouse grounds in South Carolina and Alabama, pulled from shelves at major retailers like Walmart and declared unwelcome, if to limited effect, at Nascar races.

What here is not so simple in Mississippi. The Confederate battle flag is not simply flying in one hotly disputed spot at the State Capitol but occupying the upper left corner of the state flag, which has been flying since 1894. And as recently as 2001, Mississippians voted by a nearly two-to-one ratio to keep it. Recent polling suggests the majority have not changed their minds. 

“My flag’s been flying for 33 years, and I’m not about to take it down,” said Nancy Jenkins, 58, a postal worker who is white and who flies the Mississippi flag and the United States flag at her house a block south of Louisville City Hall. “It doesn’t stand for hate. It means a lot of people fought and died.”

Over the past few months, there have been scattered outbreaks of municipal defiance by those who find the Confederate flag offensive, as mayors and city councils from the Delta to the Pine Belt have decided to no longer fly the state flag.

But beyond these sporadic gestures, any organized effort was always going to wait until politicians were on the safe side of this year’s election. With the closing of the polls on Tuesday night, what could turn out to be the last battle over the Confederate flag in Mississippi has begun in earnest.

“It’s all about momentum,” said Dane Waters, the president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation, which organizes ballot initiatives and referendums nationwide. “If you take a pocket here and pocket there of things happening, I don’t think anything is going to change.”

This week, Mr. Waters, a self-described conservative who has been retained by a group of people he declined to name, will arrive in Mississippi to pick up a difficult task: forming an unlikely and perhaps unmanageable alliance of preachers, business executives, state boosters and civil rights advocates to remove forever the Confederate battle flag from the state flag.

He is working with the Flag for All Mississippians Coalition, which was started by Sharon Brown, an activist in Jackson, who is black. The campaign has already been organizing supporters and held a hundreds-strong rally at the State Capitol. But Mr. Waters spoke of other tools that will be brought to bear outside the public eye, such as pressure on political donors and lobbying in the Legislature.

The coalition that he and others are trying to put together would need to unite groups almost never politically aligned, testing the depth of what Mr. Waters called the state’s “tremendous social, economic and racial divide.”

In the immediate aftermath of Charleston, it seemed that such a coalition might be possible here. Several conservative political leaders called for a change, including the state’s two United States senators and the speaker of the Mississippi House (inspiring critics to print “Keep the Flag, Change the Speaker” yard signs). Down came flags at city buildings in Grenada, Magnolia, Starkville, Clarksdale and Yazoo City. In October, even the University of Mississippi lowered the flag at the circle where segregationists once clashed with federal troops over the admission of James Meredith.

But the move to change the flag, which, in the words of the daughter of the state senator who designed it, was intended to “perpetuate in a legal and lasting way that dear battle flag under which so many of our people had so gloriously fought,” is not widely popular. It takes no time at all in any Mississippi downtown to find that out.

Darn skippy, Percy.

My family and friends, down here in Realityville, in NW Mississippi and, my Facebook Friends, who participate alongside me on Political Chat Pages, will testify that nothing gets my 56-year old blood pressure up faster than hypocritical, condescending Liberals.

This story is a prime example of one of those loathsome creature’s thought processes.

While this New York Times reporter has been trying to remove the speck from the eyes of Mississippians, his fellow Liberal “Journalists” at http://www.politico.com manufactured a false “news story” in an effort to get Dr. Ben Carson, World-renowned Neurosurgeon and Christian Conservative American, who just happens to be black, to drop out of the Republican Primary Race for that Party’s Presidential Nomination.

As I reported yesterday, before Politico admitted to lying by changing the “Lead” of their article, Rush Limbaugh, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio made the following accurate observation on his program:

I think what we have here is an electronic lynching.  We have an electronic lynching being conducted against a Republican African-American candidate by a majority white, mainstream American liberal media where — if you’re not a good liberal and a good African-American on their plantation — they are gonna take you out.  And we are witnessing it.  It’s the same thing, folks, that happened to Clarence Thomas back in 1990 I believe it was. Again, back in 1990 there wasn’t any Fox News. There wasn’t a blogosphere.There were just the beginnings of the conservative presence on the web — and there was me, talk radio. But there was nothing else.  This is the kind of thing they used to get away with. This used to be the standard way news happened.  This is not character assassination.  This goes way beyond character assassination.  This is an attempt to destroy Carson’s reputation, his political future, his career, his credibility, all of it.  This is intended to destroy him.  Like just told our liberal caller: It’s the only way these people can win.  They think Carson’s a lunatic and they still can’t — or are not comfortable taking him on in the arena of ideas.  They have to character assassinate and destroy. 

This is despicable, despicable stuff.  

American Progressives, both Democrat and Republican, continue to try to take advantage of the horrible church massacre in Charleston, SC, in order to accomplish something that they have been trying to do for years: minimize the South’s political clout and erase our uniqueness as a region, through the taking away of a symbol of our heritage, and, any traces of the historical aspects of the Confederate Side of the Civil War, as exemplified by the current mission of Outgoing Memphis Mayor AC Wharton and his minions on the City Council, to dig up Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, and move their bodies and a statue of the general, which all currently “reside” in a downtown park in the Medical Center.

The Alinsky-approved Tactics, currently being employed by Barack Obama and his Liberal minions on both sides of the aisle, are giving them, at best, a temporary victory, as shown by the results of a CNN poll, which shows that the opinion of Americans concerning the Confederate Flag remains unchanged in the last 15 years.

The poll shows that 57% of Americans see the flag more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol of racism, about the same as in 2000 when 59% said they viewed it as a symbol of pride.

At the same time, how many black children are being born out of wedlock?

Among non-Hispanic blacks, the figure is highest, at 72.2 percent; for American Indians/Alaska Natives, it’s 66.9 percent; 53.5 percent for Hispanics; 29.4 percent for non-Hispanic whites; and a mere 17.1 percent for Asians/Pacific Islanders.

These Americans, unlike the majority of us, are growing up without appropriate parental guidance, i.e., no one teaching them “the way in which they should go”.

The Great Society created a dependent class, which, instead of diminishing as it’s members joined the workforce, increased from generation to generation, relying on the federal government to provide their every need.

Uncle Sugar became Mother, Father, Preacher, and Doctor to generations of Americans. This “plantation mentality” continues to this day.

Instead of moving forward, by exercising the self-reliance that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached so well, these people I saw, were content on being “taken care of” by Uncle Sugar, as if being held down by their own poor, miserable circumstance, was a good thing.

Since August of 2014, the results of LBJ’s “Great Society” have been the lead story in seemingly, every television newscast, on every newspaper front page, and on every internet news/political website, as the results of a president espousing Racial Division and Class Warfare “reap the whirlwind”.

Meanwhile, these same condescending Liberals, who created the failed “great Society”, insist that everything will be better is we just rewrite history, all of us Southerners “sit down and shut up” and remove the Confederate Battle Flag, including the Mississippi State Flag, from public view.

And, allow them to continue to be condescending hypocrites.

NOT A CHANCE.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Obama Had Senator Kerry Secretly Contacting the Iranians in 2011

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Schumer-Deal-NRD-600Just when you think that the details of United States President Barack Hussein Obama’s and Secretary of State John Kerry’s worse-than-Chamberlain Iran deal could not get any more unthinkable…

The plot sickens…

The Middle East Media Research Institute reports that

Iranian officials recently began to reveal details from the nuclear negotiations with the U.S. since their early stages. Their statements indicate that the U.S. initiated secret negotiations with Iran not after President Hassan Rohani, of the pragmatic camp, was elected in 2013, but rather in 2011-2012, in the era of radical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[1] The disclosures also indicate that, already at that time, Iran received from the U.S. administration a letter recognizing its right to enrich uranium on its own soil. Hossein Sheikh Al-Islam, an advisor to the Majlis speaker, specified that the letter had come from John Kerry, then a senator and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Iranian vice president and top negotiator Ali Akbar Salehi said that Kerry, while still a senator, had been appointed by President Obama to handle the nuclear contacts with Iran.

Now, why would Obama have Kerry, who was not even Secretary of State, yet, have secret “nuclear contacts” with Ahmadinejad and the Mad Mullahs?

Simple. Family ties.

Courtesy of AllenB.West.com…

You not might be aware that in 2009, the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed.

Of course you’re not aware of it.

Brian (Behrooz) Nahed is son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it is now shortened and Americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time his engagement to Bradford Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years.

Gosh, I wonder why??

Gee, do you think Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations with Iran at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif? Let me explain.

Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs in the Rouhani administration and has held various significant diplomatic and cabinet posts since the 1990s. He was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations.

Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise. I have to say, connecting the dots gets more and more frightening.

But it gets even worse. Guess who was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed? Javad Zarif’s son.

Does this bother anyone at all?

Apparently Kerry only revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were “too polite” to bring it up.

Polite? Somehow the words “Iran” and “nuclear capability” just do not go with the word “polite”.

The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, has purposely and surreptitiously handed a Rogue State of Radical Muslim Barbarians the means of the destruction of both the United States of America and  our staunch ally, Israel.

Schmuck.

Don’t believe me?

Allow me to introduce you to an actual Leader: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.

Here is what he had to say, after the announcement of this “wonderful deal”:

The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday.

The leading international powers have bet our collective future on a deal with the foremost sponsor of international terrorism. They’ve gambled that in ten years’ time, Iran’s terrorist regime will change while removing any incentive for it to do so. In fact, the deal gives Iran every incentive not to change.

In the coming decade, the deal will reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars. This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region and its efforts to destroy Israel, which are ongoing.

Amazingly, this bad deal does not require Iran to cease its aggressive behavior in any way. And just last Friday, that aggression was on display for all to see.

While the negotiators were closing the deal in Vienna, Iran’s supposedly moderate president chose to go to a rally in Tehran and at this rally, a frenzied mob burned American and Israeli flags and chanted ‘Death to America, Death to Israel!’

Now, this didn’t happen four years ago. It happened four days ago.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, said on March 21 that the deal does not limit Iran’s aggression in any way. He said: ‘Negotiations with the United States are on the nuclear issue and on nothing else.’

And three days ago he made that clear again. ‘The United States’, he said, ’embodies global arrogance, and the battle against it will continue unabated even after the nuclear agreement is concluded.’

Here’s what Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, said about sanctions relief, which is a key component of the deal. He said: ‘A rich and strong Iran will be able to stand by its allies and friends in the region more than at any time in the past.’

Translation: Iran’s support for terrorism and subversion will actually increase after the deal.

In addition to filling Iran’s terror war chest, this deal repeats the mistakes made with North Korea.

There too we were assured that inspections and verifications would prevent a rogue regime from developing nuclear weapons.

And we all know how that ended.

The bottom line of this very bad deal is exactly what Iran’s President Rouhani said today: ‘The international community is removing the sanctions and Iran is keeping its nuclear program.’

By not dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, in a decade this deal will give an unreformed, unrepentant and far richer terrorist regime the capacity to produce many nuclear bombs, in fact an entire nuclear arsenal with the means to deliver it.

What a stunning historic mistake!

Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran and Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction.

We will always defend ourselves.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. How refreshing.

As I have written before, while the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and his Secretary of State John (I served in Vietnam) Kerry celebrate their “wonderful, magnificent deal” with the Rogue Radical Islamic Nation of Iran, there a four American citizens, including a Forgotten American Man of Faith, being held in the squalor of Iranian Jails.

An American President who cared about the citizens of his country would not have done this.

United States President Barack Hussein Obama has proven himself to be more concerned about America’s Enemies than our Allies…and, more concerned about reaching out to Muslim Radicals than demanding the release of Christian American Pastor Saeed Abedina, who has been held captive by Iran since the summer of 2012, and his fellow prisoners.

Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal” that is destined to not only blow up in their faces, but also “where alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears” and in the heart of the Holy Land, itself.

Obama’s concern is not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens of the United States.

Obama, as he always has been, is concerned with himself and leaving a marvelous legacy as president.

Giving Iran the means to “kill the infidels” will definitely cement Obama’s Legacy…if there is anyone left to remember it.

Iran has always been, since the ouster of the Shah, a rogue nation. They are a threat to every nation who stands in the way of their crazed Political Ideology, disguised as a “religion”.

Obama knows this. That is why he kept Kerry’s secret “nuclear contacts” hidden from the American People.

As is being shown by the nationwide reaction to this idiotic deal, Americans are not buying it.

Obama has screwed both God’s Chosen People and the nation which he is sworn to protect…for the sake of his own ego’s contentment.

And, if Congress does not stand up to him, America will reap the whirlwind.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

 

The War Against Christianity: A Question of Intolerance

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

 

American Christianity 2

There has been a lot of discussion the past couple of weeks, concerning the Constitutional Rights of Christian Americans versus the hypocritical use of the words “tolerance” and “discrimination” by the American Left.

Napp Nazworth, writing for The Christian Post, makes the following observation…

Businesses should not discriminate, liberals proclaimed loudly in explaining their opposition to religious freedom laws. Three recent actions supported by liberals demonstrate that is not true.

1. Bakeries Should Be Able to Refuse Bible Verses

Christian activist Bill Jack was denied service when he went to Azucar Bakery in Denver and asked for two cakes in the shape of open Bibles. He asked for the words, “God hates sin — Psalm 45:7,” “Homosexuality is a detestable sin — Leviticus 18:22,” “God loves sinners,” and “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us — Romans 5:8,” on each of the “pages” of the Bible cakes.

Azucar Bakery is in the same state where the bakery Masterpiece Cake was successfully sued for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding.

In a January interview with The Christian Post, Jack explained that he supports Azucar Bakery’s right to deny him service because they oppose the values he wanted written on the cakes. He only made the requests to find out if Colorado would be hypocritical. It was.

In Colorado, if a customer wants a cake with Christian values written on it, bakers are allowed to decline service if they disagree with those values. If a customer wants a cake for a same-sex wedding, bakers are not allowed to decline service if they disagree with same-sex marriage.

2. Pharmacists Should Refuse Death Penalty Drugs

The American Pharmacists Association approved a policy last month discouraging its members from participating in death penalty executions by providing the drugs required for lethal injections.

The move was encouraged by a letter sent to the group signed by 31 anti-death penalty and liberal organizations, including Amnesty International, the NAACP, National Council of Churches, SumOfUs and the United Methodist Church.

Liberal websites, such as The Huffington Post, Democracy Now and Think Progress, wrote positive reports about the move. There were no critics mentioned in their reports arguing that pharmacists should not have the right to decline their customers.

These reactions contrast sharply with liberal reactions to the notion that pro-life health care workers should not be forced to choose between participating in an abortion and losing their job.

3. Businesses Were Right to Boycott an Entire State Because of a Religious Freedom Law

In reaction to a religious freedom law passed in Indiana, Liberals were not only supporting, but praising Apple, Angie’s List and Salesforce for threatening boycotts in the state over the new law.

These liberals appreciated these companies making business decisions based upon their moral convictions. This exposed a glaring contradiction in their position: those companies opposed the law because it could (in some circumstances) let businesses make based upon owners’ religious convictions.

At its core, the issue was about wedding vendors, like Masterpiece Cake mentioned above, who declined service for same-sex weddings due to their religious convictions. Essentially, this means the companies were opposing a law that could (but not necessarily would) give small business owners the right to decline business for a particular event, by declining business with an entire state.

More than that, Angie’s List, Apple and Salesforce were much more extreme in their position than the wedding vendors. While wedding vendors opposed to working same-sex weddings would have no economic impact (because there are plenty of vendors willing to work same-sex weddings), boycotts by large companies would hurt local economies and workers — even those workers who agreed with their position. Yet, to hear liberals tell it, those companies were heroic while same-sex marriage opponents are bigots.

In a Thursday article for The Federalist, The Acton Institute’s Jordan Ballor put it well: “The problem in this instance, then, is not that companies like Angie’s List threaten economic sanction, …. The problem, rather, is that the freedom to discriminate is claimed by such companies for themselves but not extended and recognized for others. Boycotts against discrimination as such thus depend on the very thing they oppose. In this sense, the discriminatory actions of businesses ought to be judged alike, whether they are based on religious convictions or secular morality.”

So, what is it that American Liberals want Christian Americans to do, concerning the fact that our Holy Scriptures, God’s Word itself, condemns homosexuality?

According to Dr. Michael Brown, writing for The Christian Post, one  for the New York Times, believes that there is a simple solution to the “problem.”

Simply rewrite the Word of God.

How can the religious community live in peace and harmony with the LGBT community? New York Times columnist Frank Bruni has the solution. Just rewrite the Bible.

In his April 3rd column, “Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana,” Bruni, himself gay, recognizes that Christian beliefs are not necessarily grounded in hatred. The problem, he claims, is that, “Beliefs ossified over centuries aren’t easily shaken.”

Bruni, for his part, wants to shake us free from our fossilized faith.

According to Bruni, who evidences little or no understanding of how believers view the Scriptures (namely, as God’s inspired Word), if we hold to the view that homosexual practice is sinful, this is our “decision” and “choice.”

So, ironically, whereas homosexuality was once considered a choice, now what we believe about homosexuality is a choice.

After all, he argues, the belief that homosexual practice is sinful “prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing.”

So, Bruni thinks he can simply dismiss the Scriptures as “ancient texts,” explaining “all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their authors, cultures and eras.”

But for devout Jews and Christians, the Scriptures are not just any writings, full of biases and blind spots.

If that were the case, there would be no basis for our faith whatsoever and no absolute moral foundations of any kind.

Forget about homosexuality. We would have no reason to hold to any of the fundamentals of our faith if Bruni’s description was accurate.

Not only so, but Bruni wrongly claims that for those of us who hold to the authority of the Bible, “the advances of science and knowledge” mean “nothing.”

To the contrary, all the scientific advances in the world cannot determine what is or is not moral, and there’s nothing we know today that changes our view that God did not design men to be with men and women to be with women. The new interpretations of Scripture that the “progressive” Christians are touting (and which Bruni applauds) are not based on new textual or archeological or linguistic discoveries. They are based primarily on emotional arguments, since there is nothing in the Bible that supports homosexual practice.

Bruni also repeats the common misconception that there are just a handful of “scattered” texts that deal with homosexual practice.

To the contrary, every law dealing with marriage and family, every positive example and precept, every illustration in the Bible about sexuality morality is based on heterosexual relationships (see, for example, Genesis 2:24; Exodus 20:12; Matthew 19:4-6; Ephesians 5:22-33).

That’s why there was not a need to condemn homosexual practice on every page. Everything in Scripture was against it. (To be perfectly clear, the Bible plainly teaches that God loves every human being, that all of us are fallen and in need of redemption, and that Jesus died for heterosexual and homosexual alike. The issue here is the meaning of marriage and the standard of sexual morality.)

Bruni cannot countenance this for a moment. Instead, he claims that our biblically-based faith “elevates unthinking obeisance above intelligent observance,” which is why “our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

So, those of us who hold to biblical morality are “unthinking” and “prejudiced” people who need to be “freed” from our antiquated beliefs.

It’s high time, Bruni opines, for us to catch up with the 21st century. How utterly primitive of us to believe that there’s anything wrong with homosexual relationships or acts!

Bruni, however, sees positive trends, pointing to a number of books by Christian authors who advocate a reinterpretation of the Bible, claiming that we have outgrown other biblically based views over time, like the justification of slavery or the nature of gender roles.

…Bruni cites with approval a quote from Mitchell Gold, a furniture maker and gay philanthropist who says, “church leaders must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list.'”

And Bruni means it when he says “made to” – as in pressured to or forced to or coerced to. As he writes at the end of his column, “His [namely, Gold’s] commandment is worthy — and warranted. All of us, no matter our religious traditions, should know better than to tell gay people that they’re an offense. And that’s precisely what the florists and bakers who want to turn them away are saying to them.” (Of course, Bruni misrepresents the positions of these Christian business owners as well, but why deal with truth when caricature is so much more effective?)

So, rather than follow the biblical commandments, which are explicit and unambiguous when it comes to both the heterosexual nature of marriage (“from the beginning,” as Jesus said) and the sinfulness of homosexual practice, we should follow the new “commandment” of Bruni and Gold and simply rewrite the Bible.

Well, here’s a note to Mr. Bruni and The New York Times: A billion years from now, when the names of Frank Bruni and Mitchell Gold and the Times itself are long forgotten, the words of God will still stand (Isaiah 40:7-8; Matthew 24:35), and those florists and bakers whom you ridicule in this world will be highly esteemed in the world to come.

The fact is that churches and denominations and religious groups may come and go, but the Word of God is here to stay.

We do not sit in judgment on the Scriptures; the Scriptures sit in judgment of us. And while they call us to love our neighbors as ourselves, they also forbid homosexual practice.

That is not about to change.

As I wrote earlier this week, the Far Left, have proven that they cannot stand Christian Americans. It is evident from their condescension toward us and derision of our traditional values and ethics in their propaganda. Our Constitution gives us Religious Freedom in its very First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Please note that this amendment does not say “in some circumstances”.

I have said time and time again, that I find it funny that those among us who claim to be the most tolerant are actually the least tolerant of all.

However, this attack on our faith as Christian Americans, is not funny at all.

This Media Blitz, concerning the fact that Christian Americans refuse to support “Gay Marriage”, which was the impetus behind the President’s scolding Christian Americans about “not being loving enough” is not about discrimination, it is about control. Control of American Christians’ daily lives.

It is a rewriting and an attempted negating of God’s Word by those who cannot win a political or spiritual argument and are now trying to win a culture war by claiming that this law is something that it is not, and by rewriting Christianity by leaving out Individual Salvation through repentance of sin.

Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler ‘ s Minister of Propaganda, once said that

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The current lie that Obama and his sycophants are telling the American Public is that, somehow, the less than 24% of Americans who feel the same way as the Progressives in the Far Left do, somehow outnumber the 74% of Americans who proclaim Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior.

And, that overestimation just doesn’t add up.

Not even in Common Core.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Rolling Stone Lied About UV “Rape” Story

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

 

 

Media Bias MeterHonesty…is such a lonely word. – Billy Joel

The New York Times reports that

Rolling Stone magazine retracted its article about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after the release of a report on Sunday that concluded the widely discredited piece was the result of failures at every stage of the process.

The report, published by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone, said the magazine failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice” to verify details of the ordeal that the magazine’s source, identified only as Jackie, described to the article’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

On Sunday, Ms. Erdely, in her first extensive comments since the article was cast into doubt, apologized to Rolling Stone’s readers, her colleagues and “any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article.”

In an interview discussing Columbia’s findings, Jann S. Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, acknowledged the piece’s flaws but said that it represented an isolated and unusual episode and that Ms. Erdely would continue to write for the magazine. The problems with the article started with its source, Mr. Wenner said. He described her as “a really expert fabulist storyteller” who managed to manipulate the magazine’s journalism process. When asked to clarify, he said that he was not trying to blame Jackie, “but obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep.”

The Columbia report cataloged a series of errors at Rolling Stone, finding that the magazine could have avoided trouble with the article if certain basic “reporting pathways” had been followed. Written by Steve Coll, the Columbia journalism school’s dean; Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs; and Derek Kravitz, a postgraduate research scholar at the university, the report, at nearly 13,000 words, is longer than the 9,000-word article, “A Rape on Campus.”

After its publication last November, the article stoked a national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses and roiled the university.

The police in Charlottesville, Va., said last month they had “exhausted all investigative leads” and found “no substantive basis” to support the article’s depiction of the assault. Jackie did not cooperate with the police and declined to be interviewed for the Columbia report. She also declined, through her lawyer, to be interviewed for this article. She is no longer in touch with some of the advocates who first brought her to the attention of Rolling Stone, said Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Wenner said Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs.

Since the 1960s, America’s newsrooms have been overwhelmingly staffed by Liberals.

However, nowadays, a Conservative watchdog organization keeps an intense watch on the antics of the Main Stream Media:

The Media Research Center, headquartered in Alexandria, VA, began modestly with a handful of employees, a black and white TV, and a rented computer. The first order of business was to organize a research operation second to none. For years, conservatives could only present the anecdotal evidence of liberal journalists’ bias — a question in this interview, a statement in that report. However, anecdotal examples of bias do not prove a liberal agenda. Only through thorough, comprehensive, and ongoing analysis based on quantitative and qualitative research can one document liberal bias in the media.

From a $339,000 initial annual budget, the MRC has grown to be the nation’s largest and most sophisticated television and monitoring operation, now employing 60 professional staff with a $10 million annual budget.

The result of the MRC’s work is a mountain of evidence to use in combating the undeniable bias. The key to the MRC’s effectiveness is the ability to prove bias by using scientific studies and word-for-word quotes from the media.

For example, the MRC reports that:

In May 2004, the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press (in association with the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists) surveyed 547 journalists and media executives, including 247 at national-level media outlets. The poll was similar to ones conducted by the same group (previously known as the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press) in 1995 and 1999. The actual polling was done by the Princeton Survey Research Associates.

KEY FINDINGS:

Five times more national journalists identify themselves as “liberal” (34 percent) than “conservative” (just 7 percent). In contrast, a survey of the public taken in May 2004 found 20 percent saying they were liberal, and 33 percent saying they were conservative.

The percentage of national reporters saying they are liberal has increased, from 22 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 2004. The percentage of self-identified conservatives remains low, rising from a meager 4 percent in 1995 to a still-paltry 7 percent in 2004.

Liberals also outnumber conservatives in local newsrooms. Pew found that 23 percent of the local journalists they questioned say they are liberals, while about half as many (12 percent) call themselves conservative.

Most national journalists (55 percent) say the media are “not critical enough” of President Bush, compared with only eight percent who believe the press has been “too critical.” In 1995, the poll found just two percent thought journalists had given “too much” coverage to then-President Clinton’s accomplishments, compared to 48 percent who complained of “too little” coverage of Clinton’s achievements.

Reporters struggled to name a liberal news organization. According to Pew, “The New York Times was most often mentioned as the national daily news organization that takes a decidedly liberal point of view, but only by 20% of the national sample.” Only two percent of reporters suggested CNN, ABC, CBS, or NPR were liberal; just one percent named NBC.

Journalists did see ideology at one outlet: “The single news outlet that strikes most journalists as taking a particular ideological stance — either liberal or conservative — is Fox News Channel,” Pew reported. More than two-thirds of national journalists (69 percent) tagged FNC as a conservative news organization, followed by The Washington Times (9 percent) and The Wall Street Journal (8 percent).

The way the Main Stream Media views themselves is quite different from the way Americans view them.

On July 25th of 2011, thehill.com published a poll focusing on voters’ perceptions of Media Bias:

A full 68 percent of voters consider the news media biased, the poll found. Most, 46 percent, believe the media generally favor Democrats, while 22 percent said they believe Republicans are favored, with 28 percent saying the media is reasonably balanced.

The share of voters who believe the media are too friendly with politicians is almost twice as large as those who find their coverage of politicians appropriate. Forty-four percent of voters assert the former; only 24 percent believe the latter.

The picture is not much brighter on the general question of ethics. Fifty-seven percent of voters think of the news media as either somewhat or very unethical, while only 39 percent see them as somewhat or very ethical.

With more and more news stories, such as this one, turning out to be outright lies, it has become very apparent that, the Main Stream Media’s “broadcast journalists” don’t feel that they have to feign objectivity anymore.

The majority of the “News Operations” in our country long ago sold out to the Democrat Party and their own Liberal Ideology. Sensationalism, propaganda, and toeing the Party Line, have replaced Journalistic Ethics and objectivity.

And, all too often, as in the case of the Duke Lacrosse Players and, almost, these young me from the University of Virginia, the Main Stream Media can irreparably damage people’s lives.

…And, shape the destiny of a country through lies, innuendo, and cover-up.

“And, that’s the way it is, April 6th, 2015.”

Until He Comes,

KJ

A Mistake in Communication? Or, a Stealthy Trap?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Well…Conservatives (including this one) have been waiting for Mitt to shoot straight with the American people…And he did.

The question being asked today is: was this a good thing or a bad thing?

The New York Times has the story:

Mitt Romney described almost half of Americans as “dependent upon government” during a private reception with donors this year and said those voters were likely to support President Obama because they believe they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

The blunt political and cultural assessment by the Republican presidential candidate offers a rare glimpse into Mr. Romney’s personal views as the campaign enters its final 50 days. Liberals quickly condemned the remarks as insensitive, and Mr. Obama’s campaign accused him of having “disdainfully written off half the nation.”

The recordings surfaced even as Mr. Romney sought to retool his campaign message amid internal campaign sniping and calls from Republicans outside the campaign for him to be more specific about how his policies will fix the nation’s economy.

The video clips raised the possibility that his campaign would once again be sidetracked by Mr. Romney’s own words, a problem that has plagued the former Massachusetts governor since his hard-fought battle with Republican rivals during the nominating contests earlier this year.

The video of Mr. Romney making the comments was posted on the Internet Monday afternoon by Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, which said it had obtained the recording and had confirmed its authenticity. The magazine said it was concealing the identity of the person who took the video and the location and time of the recording.

The New York Times is unable to confirm where or when the clips were taken. The author of the article on the Mother Jones Web site, David Corn, said the video was taken after Mr. Romney won the Republican nominating contest, but he declined to comment further.

The video was apparently unearthed with help from James Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter, who lists “oppo researcher” on his Twitter bio, told New York Magazine that he helped find the videos and get them to Mr. Corn at Mother Jones. He is credited with “research assistance” on the Mother Jones Web site. Mr. Romney has repeatedly compared Mr. Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting both were failures.

In one video segment, Mr. Romney described how his campaign is writing off “47 percent of the people” who will vote for Mr. Obama “no matter what.” He adds that those people “are people who pay no income tax” and says “so our message of low taxes doesn’t connect.”

Mr. Romney said that “my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Yes, what Romney said was the cold, hard truth. But, there were better ways he could have said it.

Romney communications director Gail Gitcho issued this statement in response to the release of the original speech: 

Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work. Mitt Romney’s plan creates 12 million new jobs in four years, grows the economy and moves Americans off of government dependency and into jobs.

Back on February 6, 2011, Fred Thompson wrote the following article for The New York Daily News:

Today, America remembers President Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth. It should come as no surprise that Reagan is a personal hero of mine and it should also come as no surprise why this is the case. I’m honored to share a similar story with our 40th President, one which saw two boys from small towns eventually find their way to Hollywood and Washington – although not quite in the same order and not quite with the same results.

But while our paths were different, having a taste for what he experienced has given me a more profound respect for Reagan’s ability to captivate and connect with the American people, an art that has been largely lost to the politically correct posturing and strategic doublespeak of today. Yes, some of his political success derived from his training as an actor. After all, all politicians are actors in some form or another.

But not all actors make good politicians and certainly the reverse is true as well. More than most Presidents, Reagan’s success was tied directly to his ability not just to speak to the American people, but to communicate with them. Entire books have been written on Reagan’s ability to communicate, but his reputation as The Great Communicator boils down to three basic traits: he was simple; he was clear; he was sincere.

Let’s not confuse “simple” with “simplistic.” Reagan was by no means simplistic. To the contrary, he communicated wide-reaching ideology and complex policies in terms people could understand. For instance, Reagan summed up his approach to the Cold War as, “we win, they lose.” His detractors called it naive, but that simple phrase communicated volumes about Reagan’s philosophy and strategy when it came to facing down the Soviet Union.

And Reagan’s message wasn’t meant only for American audiences but for international audiences as well. When Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” the political establishment in Washington howled – but those trapped behind the Iron Curtain cheered. Reagan’s message was for all who hunger for freedom and as leader of the free world, Reagan understood that he spoke for them.

It was for that reason that Reagan insisted, despite the objections of his own State Department, to keep a line that will echo across the ages: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The State Department famously removed the phrase from drafts of Reagan’s speech – repeatedly. Each time, Reagan reinserted it, because he knew it would be heard by the whole world.

Allow me to preface my closing remarks by saying: I want Romney to be our next President.

If this speech was some sort of stealth campaign, designed to beclown the Obama Campaign and their sycophantic Media Lackeys, then , congratulations, Mitt…well done.

If it was a comment given under the illusion of privacy, then all I can say is he needs to learn from the 1980 Campaign of Ronald Reagan:

In order to achieve the landslide victory which we all hope that he will have, as Ronaldus Magnus achieved, Romney needs to be a UNITER, not a DIVIDER.

We have one of those living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave already.