The War Against Christianity: Obama Vs. The Little Sisters of the Poor

American FreedomWhen I was a child, I was taught by my parents to respect others. Quite frankly, I was raised to be a Southern Gentleman.

Any slip in saying “Yes, ma’am” or “No, sir” was met by a swift correction by my mother.

That same respect went out to everyone, regardless of their religion. I suppose that it was because my folks were members of America’s Greatest Generation, as I have recorded before, who all pulled together in the dark days of the Depression, the terrifying days of Word War II, and the uncertain days of the Cold War, when there was a nuke hidden around every corner.

They had to work hard, and with one another, for everything they had, and, in doing so, they became determined that their children would be raised with American values, principles, and ethics.

A couple of examples that I remember of that “mutual respect”, centered around my Mother. When I was in Second Grade, around 1965, she came down with severe Diabetes. Her doctor was a wonderful, old Jewish gentleman, whom my Mother had worked the Front Desk for.  He made sure that she got the best of care in the hospital, because she was not only his past employee, but his friend, as well.

While I was visiting my Mother in St. Joseph Hospital, in Memphis, TN, in walked this big, Black man, wearing a suit, with a red liturgical shirt and collar. His name was Parker, and he worked the loading dock at the 20 story Sears Building in Midtown Memphis, where my folks worked. He was another friend of their’s.

I remember his big old smile, and soft gentle demeanor, as his huge hands enveloped mine and my Mother’s, as he led us in a prayer for her recovery.

Not to beat a dead horse, but, please remember, this was Memphis, TN, in 1965.

Blows your Southern Stereotypes all to Hades, doesn’t it?

But, I digress…

Anyway, I was sitting at my desk in my office at work yesterday, when a Bing Update flashed across the top of my computer screen that President Barack Hussein Obama, still blowing $4,000,0000 OF OUR MONEY in Hawaii on his Family Vay-cay and his Administration, were urging the Supreme court to ignore Justice Sotomayor’s unexpected temporary injunction, stopping the Administration from forcing Catholic Institutions to provide free Birth Control, including abortiafacients, under Obamacare.

Politico.com summarizes the situation…

On New Year’s Eve, Sotomayor granted the Denver nursing home a last-minute, temporary reprieve from the health care law requirement that health coverage for employees include contraception. She will now have to decide whether to keep the temporary order in place, dissolve it, or take the issue to the other justices, who could decide to review the whole case in the coming months.

Justice Department lawyers in their response Friday said that the Little Sisters for the Poor Home for the Aged uses a Christian health insurer that is recognized as a church under U.S. employment law — and is already exempt from the Affordable Care Act contraception requirement.

“Applicants have no legal basis to … complain that it involves them in the process of providing contraceptive coverage,” government lawyers wrote to the court.“This case involves a church plan that is exempt from regulation” under a 1974 labor law that predates the president’s health care law.

The Little Sisters, in their reply to the government’s brief on Friday afternoon, said that signing a piece of paper allowing contraception — even if it doesn’t result in contraception being handed out —is itself a violation of their religious protections. That certification is part of the current legal process for religious non-profits that object to providing the contraception.

No matter which path Sotomayor takes, the central questions on contraception and religious nonprofits could eventually work their way through the legal system and return to the high court through this case or a different one.

The court has already agreed to take two separate challenges to the contraceptive requirement, but they involve religious owners of for-profit businesses, not religious nonprofits like this Denver nursing home. Dozens of religious-affiliated groups, dissatisfied with the Obama administration’s attempts to address their concerns, have petitioned federal courts to eliminate the requirement.

Anything the court does in the Little Sisters case could also affect nearly 500 religious non-profits that work with the Little Sisters and others on the lawsuit.

In all, more than 90 legal challenges have been filed around the country. A Supreme Court decision against the contraceptive rule would undercut but not cripple the health law. The birth control rule is a small piece of the overall law, but it’s been another source of ongoing political controversy for President Barack Obama’s signature law.

The Obama administration argues that employer health plans need to include contraception to ensure that women and their babies are healthy. Opponents of the policy — notably, the Catholic bishops — say that the administration is requiring some businesses to forgo religious beliefs against the use of contraception.

The case brought by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged falls into an unexpected loophole in the ACA’s contraception coverage.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration tried through regulations to accommodate religious-affiliated nonprofits over contraception. It allowed groups like the Little Sisters to tell their insurance company or third-party administrator that they objected on religious grounds. The insurer or administrator would then have to provide contraceptives to the employees at no charge.

The premise was that an insurer or administrator would not have the same objection to providing such products. But the catch here is that the Little Sisters’ administrator — the Christian Brothers Employee Benefits Trust — is also run by a religious order.

The Christian Brothers, who joined the Little Sisters on the lawsuit, qualify as a church under employment law known as ERISA. And under that law, if they don’t want to provide contraception, the federal government has no recourse to force them to do so.

So, why is the Obama Administration so desperately trying to make Catholic Institutions provide services which are diametrically opposed tho the tenents of their faith?

I believe that it is all about respect for Americans’ Faith.

With this Administration, more so than any Administration which has gone before, the insensitivity and, downright blatant opposition to the role of Christianity in American Everyday Life, has led to the heretofore unthinkable situation of the Department of Justice and the American Court System being used as a bludgeon to keep us “uppity” Christians in line, so that we do not interfere with the plans of a Secular All-powerful State.

Sound familiar?

The Obama Administration’s ongoing war with the Catholic Church over providing these services is just one example of a deliberate movement to isolate Christianity from American’s Everyday Lives and regulate our relationship and following of Jesus Christ to a 2-hour window on Sunday Mornings.

However, try as it may, this Administration may have Pyrrhic Victories, but in the long run, it will not succeed.

Y’see….I know how this thing ends.  I’ve read The Book.

Until He Comes,

KJ 

More Than Half of Female Marine Recruits Can’t Pass Their Annual Physical Fitness Test

bettyboopfatiguesThe subject of placing American Women in the military into combat roles has been a contentious issue, to say the least.

Beginning last year, the Administration decided that it would begin to place American Women into combat roles within our Armed Forces.

However, as with everything else that has been done to our American Culture, during the Obama Administration, is does not matter if the Administration’s Plan actually works. It only matters that they feel better about themselves for having implemented it.

On February 3rd, 2013, the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, gave a live interview before the Super Bowl, during which he discussed the subject of Women in Combat.

Thehill.com reported that

President Obama defended the Pentagon’s decision to lift the ban on women in combat roles, saying that he had no hesitation sending female troops into harm’s way.

“Women as a practical matter are now in combat,” Obama said during a live interview Sunday on CBS before the Super Bowl. “They may not get treated as if they are in combat, but when they are in theater, in Iraq or Afghanistan, they are vulnerable, they are wounded and they’ve been killed.

“They have carried out their jobs with extraordinary patriotism and distinction,” he added.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey last month lifted the ban on female servicemembers being in ground combat units, a move which could open up as many as 237,000 new positions to female troops.

The military services, though, have until 2016 to make the case for leaving some positions or occupations closed to women.

Obama said that female troops had shown that they could handle the rigors of military life. The president said there were already “extraordinary women in uniform who can do everything a man can.”

“One of my military aides is about 5-feet tall, probably weighs 100 pounds. You put a 50-pound pack on her and she can do things that you or me would keel over doing,” he added.

“The truth is that women are serving, they are taking great risks. What we should not do is somehow prevent them from advancing in an institution that we all revere,” said Obama.

Yes, Mr. President. Women are serving…and taking great risks. However, what happens if a woman is not physically able to lift the weaponry that she will be called upon to use in combat?

The Washington, DC Fox Affiliate reports that…

More than half of female Marines in boot camp can’t do three pullups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year, prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement, part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs.

The delay rekindled sharp debate in the military on the question of whether women have the physical strength for some military jobs, as service branches move toward opening thousands of combat roles to them in 2016.

Although no new timetable has been set on the delayed physical requirement, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos wants training officials to “continue to gather data and ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed,” Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, said Thursday.

Starting with the new year, all female Marines were supposed to be able to do at least three pullups on their annual physical fitness test and eight for a perfect score. The requirement was tested in 2013 on female recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., but only 45 percent of women met the minimum, Krebs said.

The Marines had hoped to institute the pullups on the belief that pullups require the muscular strength necessary to perform common military tasks such as scaling a wall, climbing up a rope or lifting and carrying heavy munitions.

Officials felt there wasn’t a medical risk to putting the new standard into effect as planned across the service, but that the risk of losing recruits and hurting retention of women already in the service was unacceptably high, she said.

Because the change is being put off, women will be able to choose which test of upper-body strength they will be graded on in their annual physical fitness test. Their choices:

-Pullups, with three the minimum. Three is also the minimum for male Marines, but they need 20 for a perfect rating.

-A flexed-arm hang. The minimum is for 15 seconds; women get a perfect score if they last for 70 seconds. Men don’t do the hang in their test.

Officials said training for pullups can change a person’s strength, while training for the flex-arm hang does little to adapt muscular strength needed for military tasks.

The delay on the standard could be another wrinkle in the plan to begin allowing women to serve in jobs previously closed to them such as infantry, armor and artillery units.

The decision to suspend the scheduled pull-up requirement “is a clear indication” that plans to move women into direct ground combat fighting teams will not work, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the conservative Center for Military Readiness and a critic of allowing women into infantry jobs.

“When officials claim that men and women are being trained the same, they are referring to bare minimums, not maximum qualifications that most men can meet but women cannot,” Donnelly wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Awarding gender-normed scores so that women can succeed lowers standards for all. Women will suffer more injuries and resentment they do not deserve, and men will be less prepared for the demands of direct ground combat.”

While, as human beings, men and women share biological similarities, the two sexes are most decidedly different…especially in the bodily strength department. That’s not just this Southern Gentleman’s opinion, it is a scientific fact.

From science.howstuffworks.com:

Women’s lower body strength tends to be more closely matched to men’s, while their upper body strength is often just half that of men’s upper body strength. In a 1993 study exploring gender differences in muscle makeup, female participants exhibited 52 percent of men’s upper body strength, which the researchers partially attributed to their smaller muscles and a higher concentration of fatty tissues in the top half of the female body. Another study published in 1999 similarly found women had 40 percent less upper body skeletal muscle. Even controlling for athletic aptitude doesn’t tip the upper body strength scales in favor of the female; an experiment comparing the hand grip strength of non-athletic male participants versus elite women athletes still revealed a muscle power disparity in favor of the menfolk.

Liberals, in their zeal to turn America’s Armed Forces into a Social Engineering Laboratory, have done both our nation and the American Women, who wish to serve in our military, a grave disservice. 

While American Women are most certainly bright, intelligent, and capable, they clearly do not possess the upper body strength to pass the same physical standards required for combat duty, that their male counterparts must pass.

And, in a combat situation, the difference in upper body strength between the sexes, could also mean the difference between life and death, not just for the female combatant, but for her fellow Americans in that combat situation, as well.

To lower the Physical Standards for the Marines,or any other branch of our Armed Forces, will cost lives.

No political point is worth that.

Until He Comes,

KJ

It Has Been Quite a Week for Christian American Conservatives

WashingtonPrayingIt has been quite a week for Christian Americans. We celebrated the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, amid a national controversy, created by one humble, self-made millionaire from Louisiana, who dared to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, in an attempt to explain his feelings regarding the sin known as homosexuality.

He wound up having to remind those who do not understand, that, as Christians, we love the sinner, but, hate the sin.

And, even though, Commander Phil Robertson was “un-suspended” and will be back with “Duck Dynasty” on A&E, when it resumes taping in Spring of 2014, an uneasiness about America’s Culture War remains.

Average Americans are asking themselves:

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.

We’ve got Gays serving openly in our Armed Forces, and marching 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.

Just the other day, 600 “yutes” rioted, tearing up a mall in Brooklyn, because they heard a rapper would perform there.

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, and whow embraces our enemies and alienates our allies.

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.

During internet “discussions” this week over the Phil Robertson Controversy, Liberals have made attacked and made fun of my Faith and Values.

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

Obama Lauds Negotiation “Victory” Over Iran…Goes on Hawaiian Christmas Vacation…American Pastor Remains in Iranian Jail.

PastorSaeedAs President Barack Hussein Obama and his family enjoy their $4,000,000 Hawaiian Christmas Vacation, ON OUR DIME, an American Pastor sits, abandoned to die, in Iran’s most horrible prison, ignored by an Administration who would rather proclaim “victory” after negotiations with those same barbarians, which ended with Obama and his Administration making Former British PM Neville Chamberlain look like Gen. George S. Patton, in comparison.

Fox News reports that…

Naghmeh Abedini, whose husband, Saeed Abedini, is serving an eight-year prison term in Iran after being arrested more than a year ago while visiting his homeland, told FoxNews.com she felt betrayed when she later learned U.S. diplomats were negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran even while claiming nothing could be done for her husband.

“Initially, when I went to the U.S. government, they said we don’t have a direct relationship with Iran,” Naghmeh Abdeini said, moments after telling a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee her husband’s health is failing in prison. “Here we were sitting across table from Iran. It was our best leverage. It should have been a precondition.”

The Boise, Idaho, mother of two said her husband’s relatives in Iran have been able to meet with him sporadically, and have given her grim news about his condition. She said the imprisoned American’s father saw Abedini 10 days ago and reported that has internal bleeding from repeated beatings at the hands of guards and fellow inmates and was covered with lice.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, said “time is running out” for Abedini, who experts believe would be unlikely to survive eight years in Iran’s brutal prison system. Smith said Abedini and two other Americans being held in Iran should have been the first order of business when U.S. and Iranian diplomats sat down for talks, sometime earlier this year.

“You begin every conversation with it; it should be center of every conversation and every conversation should end with it,” Smith told FoxNews.com. “How can we have a discussion with any regime when they are torturing our citizens?”

Earlier, lawmakers on the panel heard the distraught wife detail her fears for her husband and the heartbreak she and their two children feel due to his absence.

“His condition has worsened and the kids and I fear his life,” she said, before holding up a photograph of her children on their first day of school. “Tears were streaming down my face as I got the kids ready for school with their father missing.”

Abedini “went to Iran to build an orphanage for Iranian children last year” and “remains in an absolute hell-hole prison,” Smith told the committee.

A U.S. State Department official.

“We continue to have serious concerns about the fate of a dual national U.S.-Iranian detained in Iran Saeed Abedini,” the official said. “As we noted previously, President Obama raised Mr. Abedini’s case in his Sept. 27 phone call with President [Hassan] Rouhani and we continue to urge the Iranian government to release Mr. Abedini so that he may be reunited with his family.

“We have been repeatedly clear that we are calling on Iran to release all detained U.S. citizens and we will continue our efforts until Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Robert Levinson all return home,” the official added.

On the night of November 24th. President Barack Hussein Obama spoke to the nation concerning the fabulous, toothless deal which he and the Haughty One, Sec. of State John Kerry had acquiesced to with the Mad Mullahs of Iran….

On our side, the United States and our friends and allies have agreed to provide Iran with modest relief, while continuing to apply our toughest sanctions. We will refrain from imposing new sanctions, and we will allow the Iranian government access to a portion of the revenue that they have been denied through sanctions. But the broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously. And if Iran does not fully meet its commitments during this six-month phase, we will turn off the relief and ratchet up the pressure.

Over the next six months, we will work to negotiate a comprehensive solution. We approach these negotiations with a basic understanding: Iran, like any nation, should be able to access peaceful nuclear energy. But because of its record of violating its obligations, Iran must accept strict limitations on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.

In these negotiations, nothing will be agreed to unless everything is agreed to. The burden is on Iran to prove to the world that its nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes.

… The world is united in support of our determination to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran must know that security and prosperity will never come through the pursuit of nuclear weapons — it must be reached through fully verifiable agreements that make Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons impossible.

As we go forward, the resolve of the United States will remain firm, as will our commitments to our friends and allies –- particularly Israel and our Gulf partners, who have good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions.

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it.

Negotiations? More like surrendering to the enemy. Where has the State Departments vaunted “Smart Power!” been concerning Saeed Abedini?

Pastor Abedini converted from Islam to Christianity over 10 years ago, and was previously sanctioned for evangelizing in Iran. However, according to the 34-year-old father of two, he had only returned to Iran to help establish an orphanage when authorities yanked him off a bus in August of 2012 and tossed him into the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

They got around to a “trial”, eventually, and sentenced him to eight years. He has since been moved to Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj, a prison that houses Iran’s most violent criminals. His supporters report that he has been beaten and tortured in the prison. It is reported that Rajai Shahr Prison was built to accommodate 5,000 inmates, but at present houses about 22,000. This over-population has led to severe overcrowding and inhumane conditions.

Evidently, President Barack Hussein Obama values sucking up to a Radical Muslim Country which supports Terrorism, and is working on a Nuclear Bomb, with which to destroy “The Great Satan” (America), more than he does securing the freedom of a Christian American Pastor, being held in barbaric conditions, by Obama’s “new friends”.

Actions speak louder than words.

Priorities…priorities.

Until He Comes,

KJ

NSA Wiretapping Ruled Unconstitutional. Congressional “Caine Mutiny” Hearing to Follow?

obamabigbroRemember all of Obama’s Domestic Scandals, beside Obamacare? Well, regarding the one involving the NSA, it is possible that, to paraphrase Obama’s Former Pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,

Obama’s chickennns…are coming home…to roost!

Yesterday, wsj.com reported that…

President Barack Obama, facing growing pressure from Silicon Valley, will meet Tuesday with executives from Google Inc. Facebook Inc. and other technology and telecommunications giants to discuss their concerns about America’s surveillance operations.

According to the White House, Mr. Obama will also meet with the executives to talk about progress with the troubled online federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov, and ways the government and technology industry can partner to boost economic growth.

The meeting comes a week after a group of technology companies jointly penned a letter to lash out at the Obama administration for collecting information on Americans. The companies said they wanted to see greater oversight of the government’s surveillance operations and limits on the government’s authority to compel companies to disclose data about their customers.

The letter followed a wave of disclosures about U.S. spying operations by Edward Snowden, a former government contractor now in Russia. The president will also talk about the national security concerns prompted by the leaks and their effect on the economy.

The administration has been reviewing U.S. spying operations and considering steps to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Last week, a presidential task force submitted to the White House more than 40 recommendations to overhaul the National Security Agency. Mr. Obama’s chief spokesman, Jay Carney, said the White House was reviewing the report and would make public the full report in January.

This news comes on the heels of a ruling by a Federal Court Judge that telephone surveillance of Americans that has been conducted ad infinitum by the NSA, violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.

Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

The preliminary injunction Leon granted Monday does not require him to make a definitive ruling on the constitutional questions in the case, but does take account of which side he believes is more likely to prevail.

Leon’s 68-page opinion is the first significant legal setback for the NSA’s surveillance program since it was disclosed in June in news stories based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. For seven years, the metadata program has been approved repeatedly by numerous judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and found constitutional by at least one judge sitting in a criminal case.

The very fact that the  National Security Agency (NSA) even existed, was not revealed for more than two decades after its establishment in 1952.

Of all the US intelligence services, it is has,for a long time, been the best hidden, and has prided itself on having the fewest leaks – at least until Edward Snowden came along.

When Harry Truman set up the NSA, its mission was to monitor communications abroad. However, what politicians and civil rights organizations have know, since the Senate unveiled it in 1975, is to what extent its ferocious appetite for data has encompassed American citizens.

As technology has evolved, so has the NSA’s capacity to intercept Americans’ communications. Satellites intercept calls and emails in the ether and beam the information back to earthbound receiving stations. One estimate suggests that each of these bases hoovers up roughly one billion emails, phone calls and other forms of correspondence every day, and the agency has up to 20 bases.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows…

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The actions of the NSA, are, of course, nothing new. as far back as Prohibition, government authorities have tapped American’s phones, if they felt that they were involved in “suspicious activities. However, those incidences of “wiretapping” were always done under the Rule of Law, with those doing the tapping have a warrant from a judge in their hand.

What we are dealing with here is nothing less than a usurpation of power, am old Soviet Union-style spying on one’s own countrymen, by an out-of-control NSA, whose petulant, didactic Commander-in-Chief, in his zeal to wield the power of the Oval Office, has pushed our Constitutional Republic in the direction of a Socialist Police State.

Through his use of such Government Agencies such as the NSA and the IRS to intimidate and harass his political opponents, President Barack Hussein Obama has exhibited a fearful paranoia that makes President Richard Milhous Nxon’s Watergate Scandal appear as inconsequential as a deck chair on the Titanic, and Obama as unstable a leader as Captain Queeg, so brilliantly played by the late, great Humphrey Bogart in “The Caine Mutiny”.

If Obama is ever brought before Congress to testify on his scandals, his prevarication and eventual meltdown will make Captain Queeg’s unraveling pale in comparison.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Charitable Giving in America: Liberals Talk the Talk. Christian Conservatives Walk the Walk.

American Freedom

This time of year, Americans’ thoughts and hearts turn toward helping those who are less fortunate.

We are reminded of the plight of others every time we pass by a volunteer at a Salvation Army Kettle,

And, that got me to thinking, Who actual gives more to charity, the Vocal Minority, America’s Liberals…or the Silent Majority, Christiam American Conservatives?

I have noticed over the years, that when a Christian American Conservative, such a myself, writes a Blog concerning Christianity in America, Liberals jump up on their hind legs and start complaining that Conservatives ARE the problem with Christianity in America, and, that Christian Conservatives are the least charitable, least caring of Americans.

A pretty silly statement, when you think about it. One that is so blatantly false, it’s laughable.

Realclearpolitics.com posted the following article by George Wills on March 27, 2008,  featuring information gathered by Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, who published “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism”…

— Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

— Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

— Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

— Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

— In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

— People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and “the values that lie beneath” liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.

The single biggest predictor of someone’s altruism, Willett says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks’ book says, “the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have ‘no religion’ has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s.” America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative. One demonstration that religion is a strong determinant of charitable behavior is that the least charitable cohort is a relatively small one — secular conservatives.

Reviewing Brooks’ book in the Texas Review of Law & Politics, Justice Willett notes that Austin — it voted 56 percent for Kerry while he was getting just 38 percent statewide — is ranked by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as 48th out of America’s 50 largest cities in per capita charitable giving. Brooks’ data about disparities between liberals’ and conservatives’ charitable giving fit these facts: Democrats represent a majority of the wealthiest congressional districts, and half of America’s richest households live in states where both senators are Democrats.

While conservatives tend to regard giving as a personal rather than governmental responsibility, some liberals consider private charity a retrograde phenomenon — a poor palliative for an inadequate welfare state, and a distraction from achieving adequacy by force, by increasing taxes. Ralph Nader, running for president in 2000, said: “A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.” Brooks, however, warns: “If support for a policy that does not exist … substitutes for private charity, the needy are left worse off than before. It is one of the bitterest ironies of liberal politics today that political opinions are apparently taking the place of help for others.”

In 2000, brows were furrowed in perplexity because Vice President Al Gore’s charitable contributions, as a percentage of his income, were below the national average: He gave 0.2 percent of his family income, one-seventh of the average for donating households. But Gore “gave at the office.” By using public office to give other peoples’ money to government programs, he was being charitable, as liberals increasingly, and conveniently, understand that word.

Last Friday, The Christian Post published the following article about a very familiar Christian American Conservative, a man who is carrying on his father’s legacy of touching people all over the world in the name of Jesus Christ and who, coincidentally, has been banned by President Obama and His Administration from speaking to our Armed Forces at Christmas.

Franklin Graham, president of nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse, joined project organizers, local families and survivors of Hurricane Sandy at one of New York City’s major airports this week to personally send off more than 60,000 gifts to some of Typhoon Haiyan’s most vulnerable victims in the Philippines.

“Do you know what these gifts are going to mean to these kids? It means that somebody loves them, it means they haven’t been forgotten. It will mean everything in the world. It will give these little kids hope,” Graham told more than 300 attendees at Thursday’s event.

The evangelist and son of the Rev. Billy Graham was flanked by young singers of the Christian Heritage Academy and a loaded Boeing 747 over his shoulder as he thanked participants during the send-off ceremony at Hangar 19 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).

“It’s about letting the children of the world to know that God loves them and God hasn’t forgotten them,” Graham added in his interview with The Christian Post. His Samaritan’s Purse international relief organization has been delivering emergency aid to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan forced more than 3.9 million residents to flee their homes. The powerful Nov. 8 typhoon has killed at least 6,000 people and injured more than 27,000 others.

The organization’s annual Operation Christmas Child outreach will be delivering shoe boxes stuffed with goodies and essentials to thousands of Filipino children to let them know that Christians on the other side of the world are praying for them and contributing to their needs.

The other day, at Mandela’s Funeral, I noticed that, when former President George W. Bush got up to speak, Mandela’s faithful booed, and gave him a poor reception, after greeting President Obama as “a true son of Africa”. Very curious. 

Per CNN, in the four years following the unprecedented creation in 2004 of the funding mechanism known as PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), Bush sent some $19 billion to Africa and other hard-hit parts of the world.

On the other hand,last year,the Obama Administration unveiled a budget that reduces AIDS funding globally by roughly $214 million, the first time an American president has reduced the U.S. commitment to fighting the epidemic since it broke out in the 1980s during the Reagan administration.

Illuminating, isn’t it?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Barack Obama and the $5,000,000 Selfie

Obama SelfieYesterday morning, the world watched as Liberals, Communists and Former U.S. President George W. Bush spoke at the Funeral of Former South African President and Leader of the bloody ANR, Nelson Mandela.

The 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama was welcomed as a “True Son of Africa” and after receiving thunderous applause for a rain-soaked crowd of 35,000 South Africans, preceded to lecture…err…eulogize the late Communist Leader.

Mandela showed us the power of action; of taking risks on behalf of our ideals. Perhaps Madiba was right that he inherited, “a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness” from his father. And we know he shared with millions of black and colored South Africans the anger born of, “a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments…a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people,” he said.

But like other early giants of the ANC — the Sisulus and Tambos — Madiba disciplined his anger and channeled his desire to fight into organization, and platforms, and strategies for action, so men and women could stand up for their God-given dignity. Moreover, he accepted the consequences of his actions, knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price. “I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I’ve cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and [with] equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” (Applause.)

Mandela taught us the power of action, but he also taught us the power of ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the need to study not only those who you agree with, but also those who you don’t agree with. He understood that ideas cannot be contained by prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper’s bullet. He turned his trial into an indictment of apartheid because of his eloquence and his passion, but also because of his training as an advocate. He used decades in prison to sharpen his arguments, but also to spread his thirst for knowledge to others in the movement. And he learned the language and the customs of his oppressor so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depend upon his. (Applause.)

Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions. He was practical, testing his beliefs against the hard surface of circumstance and history. On core principles he was unyielding, which is why he could rebuff offers of unconditional release, reminding the Apartheid regime that “prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

Actually, Mandela’s early release hinged on him renouncing all violence, which he refused to do….as victims of he and his wife’s favorite execution method of “necklacing” would attest to…if they were still here to do so.

Anyway, do you know how much the Obama’s attendance at Mandela’s Funeral cost us, boys and girls?

$5,000,000 of OUR MONEY was spent for Scooter and Mooch’s little jaunt, during which he shook the hand of Cuban President Raul Castro, another Marxist Leader who is running his country straight into the ground, continuing the mission of his brother Fidel.

And, as you saw by the picture in the upper left corner of today’s blog, he used this solemn occasion to pose for a “selfie” with the beautiful Blonde Prime Minister of Denmark, and the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron.

That’s a torqued-off Michelle Obama, sitting in the background. Whether she’s P.O’ed about the inappropriate “Selfie” or the pretty blonde, I don’t know.

Although, knowing her usual disposition, it’s probably both.

As the late, great American Patriot and America’s Clown Prince, Red Skelton used to say, speaking about his wife, in an aside to the audience,

I’m not saying she’s mean…but, where she spits…grass never grows again.

Most Americans, in a moment that will never come again, had the same reaction to Obama’s stupid stunt as Mooch did.

And, guess what, the rest of the world agrees with us.

In a story about the inappropriate self-aggrandizement by the Manchurian President, the Denmark Dish, and Scooter’s bud Cameron, the London Daily Mail asks,

Is this REALLY time to take a selfie, Dave?

So, in the spirit of that question, allow me to ask what Obama’s MSM Lackeys won’t…

Does your Family Tree not fork, Barry?

As if the entire world was not laughing at us already for being stupid enough for electing a lightweight like you twice, now you have to act like a 14 year-old stuck in a church service he did not want to attend.

I swear, Scooter.

You must think “decorum” is something Mooch’s Staff does to a room in the White House  and “class” is something you skipped in Hawaii to go chooming with your buds.

You are an embarrassment. A President of the United States is supposed to represent his country with dignity at a State Funeral.

Not act like he is hanging out with his fellow 9th Graders at the local Chicago Pizzeria.

Yesterday, Comedian and Political Observer Dennis Miller quipped,

“Obama is a Selfie”.

He is right. And, a dangerous, immature, petulant “Selfie” at that.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama, Mandela, and Thatcher: “When the Legend Becomes Fact, Report the Legend.”

MandelaMichelleIt has been announced that President Barack Hussein Obama, his wife, Michelle, and two former American Presidents will be attending the Funeral of Former South African President, Nelson Mandela.

This diplomatic show of respect comes 7 months after Obama’s Presidential snub of the funeral of one of the most pivotal figures in the war against Communism in the 1980s, British  Prime Minister and staunch ally of America, the “Iron Lady”,  Margaret Thatcher.

On April 13, 2013, National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland posted the following Opinion Piece on foxnews.com:

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest today in Great Britain. The “Iron Lady” died last week at age 87.

Some commentators have expressed surprise that President Obama did not send a high-level official delegation to her funeral. I’m way beyond surprised. I’m ashamed….and angry.

After all, it is standard operating procedure for the Vice President or First Lady or, at a minimum the Secretary of State, to attend funerals of foreign leaders, even those from lesser nations.

Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.

It goes without saying that when one of the longest serving leaders of America’s closet and most enduring ally dies, the United States should send a large and distinguished delegation of America’s leaders, past and present.

Not this time.

The White House offered a lame excuse — all the senior Obama administration officials are way too busy to take 24 hours out of their hectic schedules to pay respects to the woman who helped win the Cold War, turn around the British economy, and shatter the glass ceiling of the English-speaking world.

Vice President Biden, for example, was presiding over a series of votes on gun control in the Senate, late Wednesday afternoon. Okay, understood. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that no senior administration official could spare the time or make the effort to head ‘across the pond’ for a few hours.

One suspects something else is at play besides busy government executives struggling to get through their long work days, staggering under the weight of their official responsibilities.

Could it be that Margaret Thatcher was a Tory? That she battled British Trade Unionists and won? That she worked hand-in-hand with Ronald Reagan, the incarnation of evil for many left-wing Democrats?

It used to be American politics stopped at the water’s edge, and that American

President’s honored foreign leaders, regardless of their political persuasions or party.

No longer.

By failing to send even one senior level official to Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, this President has shown that partisan politics now extend beyond the grave.

Shame on you, Mr. President. You and your administration look cheap, small and petty.

Former Secretaries of State Kissinger, Shultz and Baker did attend Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral. Kissinger opened relations with China and hammered out the first Middle East peace agreements in the 1970’s. Shultz negotiated the first arms reduction agreements with the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. Baker helped bring down the Berlin Wall, push the Soviet Empire to the point of collapse, and won the first Gulf War in the 1990’s. But while they were giants in their day, they are not part of your team. The snub to the British was palpable – only yesterday’s men could be spared.

And frankly, Mr. President, this makes you look foolish as well.

Perhaps if you had sent some senior members of your administration as part of the American delegation, they could have pulled aside those former leaders to ask for a little advice. Because, Mr. President, in case you’ve been too busy to notice, your reset with Russia is a failure, your Middle East peace efforts are going nowhere, and North Korea has just become a nuclear power.

Back to the Present. Are you aware that President Obama ordered all American Flags at Government Installations to be flown at half-mast to honor Nelson Mandela?

Who was Nelson Mandela?

He was a transformative figure, to be sure. But, he was not the saint that Obama, his administration and their media lackeys are portraying him as.

Back in 1990, Tim Graham of the Media Research Center wrote the following for their newsletter, MediaWatch, on the occasion of Mandela’s trip to the United States. He recently re-posted the information on newsbusters.org.

Communism. In their rush to proclaim him a symbol of freedom, none of the networks covered Mandela’s ideology or the relationship between Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In his own handwritten manuscript How To Be A Good Communist, Mandela wrote “Under a Communist government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.” With the exception of NBC’s Bob Kur and Mike Jensen, no reporter even mentioned Mandela’s support of economic nationalization. With Mandela’s ideas and “loyal and disciplined” membership in the ANC, would South Africa become a multi-racial democracy or a one-party Marxist state like its neighbors? No one asked.

Political Prisoner. “The former long-time political prisoner will address Congress,” Dan Rather announced when Mandela arrived. TV reporters called Mandela a political prisoner eight times, but never referred to Mandela as a saboteur or terrorist, even though Amnesty International declared in 1985 that “Mandela had participated in planning acts of sabotage and inciting violence, so that he could no longer fulfill the criteria for the classification of political prisoners.” Network reporters did report Mandela’s refusal to renounce violence in 14 stories, but most referred to it only in the context of fighting apartheid, not in the context of the ANC’s involvement in black-on-black violence or the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.

Arafat, Castro, Qaddafi. Without Ted Koppel’s June 21 “town meeting” with Mandela, the tour might have escaped controversy completely. Questioners asked Mandela to explain his praise for Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Moammar Qaddafi. The questions were prompted by Mandela hailing Castro’s Cuba in May: “There’s one thing where that country stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in its love for human rights and liberty.” A week later in Libya, he praised Qaddaf’s “commitment to the fight for peace and human rights in the world.” These statements, which appeared in The New Republic, were never quoted on the networks when he said them, or when he visited here.

The networks barely reported Mandela’s ABC remarks until Jewish and Cuban groups and print outlets made them an issue, mentioning the controversy in 26 stories. ABC, which taped the Koppel special in the afternoon on June 21, didn’t find the remarks worth including in a story on that night’s newscast summarizing the “town meeting.”

The next morning, Good Morning America did one story on the remarks, but left it out of its three other newscasts. NBC’s Today aired three stories without mentioning the remark. Harold Dow left it out of the one story on CBS This Morning. In fact, NBC and CBS dropped the Mandela story from its morning news for the next two days. On the Evening News, CBS gave the remarks brief mentions on June 22, 25, and 28. NBC Nightly News spent 45 seconds on the remarks on June 22, and included brief mentions on June 24 and 26. But the show ignored Mandela from June 27 to 29, when Mandela was greeted by thousands of protesting Cubans in Miami.

ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to question Mandela’s contentions. Reporter James Walker noted: “Many find it a paradox that Mandela asks Americans to involve themselves in South Africa’s internal affairs while he refuses to pass judgment on the internal affairs of Libya or Cuba, or to involve himself in America’s racial problems.” But Peter Jennings dampened the impact with his remark on Castro: “The Cuban President has long been a leading supporter of liberation movements in southern Africa.”

Puerto Rican Assassins. The networks never reported some other terrorists Mandela praised. He welcomed to his Harlem speech platform three of the four Puerto Rican terrorists who shot and wounded five U.S. Congressmen in 1954. “We support the cause of anyone who is fighting for self-determination, and our attitude is the same, no matter who it is. I would be honored to sit on the platform with the four comrades you refer to.” The quote appeared in the early local edition of The New York Times June 25, but the Times dropped it from later local editions and the national edition.

ANC Antics. The networks have repeatedly failed to report recent events that give the Mandela legend a less lyrical ring. When a South African court implicated his wife Winnie in the beating and murder of a 14-year-old, only CNN PrimeNews briefly noted the incident. ABC, CBS and NBC have ignored it. On June 11, ANC members murdered Sipho Phungulwa in apparent retribution for Phulungwa’s public allegations that the ANC tortured and killed dissident members. The networks have never mentioned it.

ABC’s Don Kladstrup was the only reporter to put Mandela’s importance in South Africa in context: “Mandela is not the undisputed leader of all South African blacks.” Kladstrup reported that more than six black organizations are fighting apartheid, and interviewed black activists who said “Heaven help us if the ANC takes over here” and “If you do not go along with them, they will run roughshod over you.” Kladstrup reported: “Many complain: why does Nelson Mandela talk with President de Klerk, but refuse even to meet with Chief Buthelezi, leader of South Africa’s Zulus?” Kladstrup wondered whether a multi-racial democracy would emerge: “Many fear not until blacks remove the wall of intolerance that now divides them.”

I’m not saying that we should not have representatives at Mandela’s Funeral.  He was a noted World Leader. However, as Reporter Maxwell Scott said in the John Wayne/Jimmy Stewart Classic, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence”

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Mandela is an iconic figure to the American Left, and is thus being portrayed as such by the Obama Administration and the MSM.

I predict that t-shirts honoring him will soon be as popular as those honoring Che, and, for the same dubious reason.

A final observation: I thought that Barack Hussein Obama was supoosed to be the “First Post-Racial President”?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Lied About Living With His Uncle…and Just About Everything Else.

ObamalyingNo man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. – Abraham Lincoln

President Obama has had to backtrack on another lie. And, this one involves a member of his family.

The Boston Globe Reports that

President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting.

Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation.

On Thursday, a White House official said the press office had not fully researched the relationship between the president and his uncle before telling the Globe that they had no record of the two meeting. This time, the press office asked the president directly, which they had not done in 2011.

“The president first met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “The president did stay with him for a brief period of time until his apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months, but after law school they fell out of touch. The president has not seen him in 20 years, has not spoken with him in 10.”

The White House said Obama’s immigration case was handled “without any interference from the president or the White House.”

Onyango Obama’s immigration case raised numerous concerns about a potential conflict of interest after his arrest in August 2011 for drunken driving in Framingham. The arrest revealed his outstanding deportation orders and his relationship to the president.

Shortly after his arrest, he told an officer, “I think I will call the White House.”

Obama is the second relative of the president’s father to face deportation to Kenya since he took office.

Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s sister, won asylum in 2010 after a federal official disclosed days before the president’s historic election in 2008 that she was living illegally in the United States, in Boston public housing.

Now…if you listen to the Liberal Pundits, us poor ig’nant hicks in the Heartland should be thankful that Obama lies so much to us.

John Blake wrote the following in an opinion piece for cnn.com, posted on 11/24/13…

…Sure, we tell our children about Washington cutting down the cherry tree. The 19th century writer Parson Mason Weems inserted that fable into his 1800 biography “A Life of Washington.”

But then we close the children’s book and turn on the TV to admire the lethal duplicity of a leader like the mafia patriarch Vito Corleone in the classic 1972 film “The Godfather.”

We want our presidents to have a little gangster in them. It’s the presidential paradox that scholars Thomas Cronin and Michael Genovese talked about in their recent book, “The Paradoxes of the American Presidency.”

They wrote:

“We want a decent, just, caring, and compassionate president, yet we admire a cunning, guileful and, on occasions that warrant it, even a ruthless, manipulative president.”

The most sublime execution of presidential deception comes when a president discovers that he doesn’t have to lie to deceive. Why lie when a simple misimpression will do, says James Hoopes, an ethics in business professor at Babson College in Massachusetts.

These presidents learn from Machiavelli, who said that the Prince must be a “fox and lion” — a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify enemies who would trap him, Hoopes says.

…If you still think you want a leader who is always honest, consider the fate of one recent president.

He vowed during his presidential campaign that “I will never tell a lie to the American people.” He wore a sweater during a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office because he had turned down the White House thermostat to conserve energy. He brought peace to the Middle East and even taught Sunday school.

He was also swept out of the Oval Office after one term.

“The country fell apart,” Mott says of this president’s time in office. “He was too noble, too pure. He didn’t know how to play people against one another. He should have read his Machiavelli.”

That president was Jimmy Carter. He won the Nobel Peace Prize after leaving office, and he’s been widely praised for his humanitarian efforts around the globe. He still builds homes for the poor around the world.

No one ever labeled Carter a liar while he was in office.

But then hardly anyone calls him a great president today.

Yeah. But, Pbama makes the inept, clueless Jimmuh Carter look like a cross between Einstein and Mother Theresa.

ESPN Columnist/CNN Liberal Pundit LZ Anderson said during a debate the other night on CNN…

…And, time and time again, Americans have said we can deal with the lies that President Obama tells us because we believe in his heart, he has the best interest for the American people.

Ummm…no, we don’t.

CNN.com posted the following on their Political Ticker Blog, on November 25, 2013…

Only four out of 10 Americans believe President Barack Obama can manage the federal government effectively, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning also indicates that 53% of Americans now believe that Obama is not honest and trustworthy, the first time that a clear majority in CNN polling has felt that way.

According to the survey, conducted last Monday through Wednesday, 40% say the President can manage the government effectively. That 40% figure is down 12 percentage points from June and is the worst score Obama received among the nine personal characteristics tested in the new poll.

“A lot of attention has focused on the President’s numbers on honesty in new polling the past three weeks, but it looks like the recent controversy over Obamacare has had a bigger impact on his status as an effective manager of the government, and that may be what is really driving the drop in Obama’s approval rating this fall,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

I believe that Americans are way beyond tired of Obama’s lies. He does not have the trust of the American People that he once had.

Obama is no longer given the “benefit of the doubt” by the majority of Americans.

And, once you prove yourself untrustworthy, it is very hard to win back peoples’ trust.

Given Obama’s petulant, narcissistic personality and propensity to prevaricate, I would say, that in his case, it will be impossible.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obamacare Imploding: Harry Reid…His Staff…and America’s Young People…Don’t Want it.

obamacaremoeAs I was riding to and from work yesterday, I noticed that Obamacare is still leading the news. There is no escaping it.  The Signature Legislation of  President Barack Hussein Obama installed by a totally Democratic Congressional Vote, taken in the middle of a cold winter’s night, has literally taken the Finest Healthcare System in the entire world and is turning it into an inefficient State-run, soon-to-be Single Payer, Ball of Confusion (with a nod to the great Temptations) .

But, wait…it’s not the President’s fault!!! (At least that’s what the Loony Left is saying.)

According to The Formerly Semi-sane Juan Williams, a Liberal Pundit seen on Fox News,

You should be blaming your insurance company because they have not been providing you with coverage that meets the minimum basic standards for health care.

Let me put it more bluntly: your insurance companies have been taking advantage of you and the Affordable Care Act puts in place consumer protection and tells them to stop abusing people.

The government did not “force” insurance companies to cancel their own substandard policies.The insurance companies chose to do that rather than do what is right and bring the policies up to code.

Ummm…what code? You mean the code arbitrarily set by the Affordable Care Act?  That code?

As a Former Independent Health Insurance Agent, I can tell you that all policies that are now being declared “bad” under Obamacare were all approved by State Insurance Commissioners’ Offices. Otherwise, they would have never been sold.

But, please, little Juanito, carry on…

…your insurance company must cover what are called “essential health benefits.”

What are “essential health benefits?”

They are clearly defined on HealthCare.gov:

“Essential health benefits must include items and services within at least the following 10 categories: ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.”

Hold on there, Hoss! Are you saying that the Free Birth Control which Obama is attempting to force Christian Employers to carry and which the Supreme Court will shortly decide on, is not an “essential health benefit”?

Don’t look now…but…you’re right.

Y’know…I have a question. If Obamacare is good enough for us average American Citizens…why isn’t it good enough for the people who voted for it…and their staffs?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is allowing some staffers to keep their health insurance instead of making them buy it through an ObamaCare exchange, although he was one of the strongest Capitol Hill supporters of the 2010 law.

The Nevada Democrat is exercising his discretion under the president’s signature law to designate which staffers can keep their federal insurance plan and which must now purchase a policy through the District of Columbia’s health-care exchange.

However, he purportedly is the only top congressional leader to exercise that option, which resulted in sharp criticism Wednesday from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, perhaps the staunchest ObamaCare opponent on the Hill.

“Sen. Reid’s decision to exempt his staff … is the clearest example yet of ObamaCare’s failures and Washington hypocrisy,” he said. “His staff worked to pass it and continue to promote it, now they don’t want to be part of it because it’s a disaster.”

The distinction is between personnel staff, forced onto the exchange, and leadership and committee staff, who are allowed to keep their federal plan.

However, drawing a distinction is difficult because some duties overlap,” a Reid staffer told Fox News.

The staffer could not give a breakdown. But Reid is going on the exchange and says he is happy with its options.

An amendment to ObamaCare by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley forced staffers onto the exchanges, but additional changes allow for some flexibility. Still, the final rules, put forth by the Office of Personnel Management, leave some discretion with the lawmaker. 

Discretion? Dinghy Harry is to discretion as Rosanne Barr is to Beverly Sills. (Look her up, children.)

In order for Obamacare to work, 18-29 year olds must buy into it, in order to fund the cost of older Americans. Unfortunately, for Obama and his minions…

The Harvard “Millennials” poll found only 22 percent of young Americans — defined in the survey as between 18 and 29 years old — plan to sign up for ObamaCare. Even more troubling for the administration, fewer than a third — only 29 percent — of people who currently do not have health insurance plan to enroll.

“Actuarially, the [Affordable Care Act] depends upon these young Americans signing up,” Trey Greyson, director of Harvard’s Institute Of Politics, said. “Our survey shows that the administration has a lot of work to do to get them on board.”

Indeed, the Affordable Care Act relies on a large pool of young, healthy enrollees to pay for older, sicker Americans. Without their premium support, the entire system is at risk of collapse.

As I wrote yesterday, Obama is in the middle of a huge Youth Push, trying desperately to get America’s “yutes” to buy into his Ponzi Scheme.

So far, it looks like Obama and the Dems have misjudged America’s Young People.

They seem to want no part of Obamacare.

Gosh. It’s almost like they were actually raised here. 

Until He Comes,

KJ