So let’s cut to the chase and talk about what’s really going on
here. Was the take-down of Colonel Allen West decided by a
Machiavellian cabal in both parties that began with the redrawing of
Florida Congressional voting districts, both state and federal? And was
this alleged decision made to move him out of the district controlled
by the Democrat Mark Foley called the Chihuahua in high heels?
By insiders cutting a deal to move West up to the Democrat ex pat
region of St. Lucie County, he would be folded in between GOP enclaves
in both Martin and Indian River Counties. Now the Democrats couldn’t
have that, so a white guy with a rich daddy was plugged in to a district
whose election supervisor was a female black activist, and we’re off to
the races. And is the real kicker here a story line circulated
through the volunteer re- ount watchers this past week? Was Allen West
removed because operatives in Congress feared he would start up an
“Impeach Obama” movement building out of Benghasi-gate becoming known as
Fast and Furious on steroids?
A Tea Party Email entitled “Massive Election Fraud” points out that in
59 Philadelphia voting districts, Obama received 100% of the votes with
not even a single vote recorded for Mitt Romney, “a mathematical and
statistical impossibility.” The National SEAL Museum, a “polling
location in St. Lucie County, FL had a 158% voter turnout-the highest
voter overage in the entire country and second was Palm Beach County, FL
with a 141% voter turnout overage.” And the Email continues: “In Wood
County, OH, 106,258 voters were registered to vote in a county with only
98,213 eligible voters.” Photo ID analysis reveals Obama won “in
every state that DID NOT require a Photo ID and lost in every state that DID” require one.
When I told Ft. Pierce black activist Chris Williams that this wasn’t
a black-white thing and that it’s a male-female thing, he
wholeheartedly agreed. He tried but failed to get language on the St.
Lucie ballot, supervised by Gertrude Walker, to do something about
exorbitant utility bills, reportedly upwards of $1,600 a month, being
yoked onto impoverished black families. He failed because these petition
signatures somehow got lost in some warehouse somewhere. When black
bail bondsman Vince Gaskins was told by Walker that he won before he
lost, a white woman with family ties to the utility was announced as the
new mayor of Ft. Pierce.
And now we get to Colonel West who famously said “I’d walk through
hell with a gasoline can to save my men.” Was the West take-down cast
in the high heels and uber-feminism now taking over this country?
My handyman said the women want power over men. Is that why the long
knives in D.C. came out after the good colonel? Was Sandra Fluke a
harbinger of a matriarchy set to drive America into oblivion by
wussyfying our great military, by emasculating our men? Ernest
Hemingway’s “Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” has the answers for
you!
SOURCE http://american3rdposition.com/?p=8416
Photo Credit: roniweb Creative Commons
The New Republic is a publication that really has no business not displaying the hammer and sickle on its website’s homepage, so left-wing are its writers. Timothy Noah writes for TNR
that President Obama, with no need to appeal to the majority of the
country anymore since he will not be up for re-election, should now rule
by executive fiat: “With the election over, the president can now take
bolder action on a host of domestic issues that don’t require
cooperation–or even input–from Congress. Though some of these actions
might be controversial, that concern matters less now that Obama has
faced voters for the last time.”
Noah here is admitting that he
wants Obama to dictate rather than to comply with the separation of
powers established by the Founders.
Isn’t it incredible that liberals are so willing to be ruled and
dictated to? Where does this desire come from? What makes a man
volunteer his rights in order for a politician to execute his own
agenda? As demonstrated in all of the Democrats’ policy positions, they
fear having to be responsible for their actions. When things go badly,
they can blame someone else–the person who led them there. Hence their
constant strive to elect leaders who are so eager to assume ever more
power–specifically, left-wing Democrats.
An example of one of the
unilateral moves Noah wishes Obama to make in this second term is to
grant amnesty to even more illegal immigrants than he did in his first
term, particularly to “agricultural workers,” a phrase which any
Republican would be called racist for uttering, the suggestion that many
gardeners and landscapers are Hispanics (even though it’s true).
“Such leadership,” says Noah, “could finally pressure Congress to get moving on immigration reform.”
You
see, Obama will take action first, directing the Department of Homeland
Security to stop deporting the illegal gardeners and landscapers
(“agricultural workers,” euphemistically) employed by the white liberal
elites, and this will encourage Congress to follow suit. “Well, Obama is
going to grant amnesty anyway,” Noah seems to believe they will say, “So let’s just get it over with. Amnesty for all!”
Not going to happen. Nor will Republicans agree to any of the other
proposals Noah suggests to the President, which you can read at the link
above.
But as Noah says, who needs Congress? Not Obama. This
liberal totalitarian wants Obama to impose his will on the rest of the
country, seemingly unaware of the long-term consequences of bestowing
onto any president the power of diktat, a power that all successive
presidents will also have. And that includes Republican presidents.
What makes the head of a crime family happier than a witch in a broom
factory? Finding out that he will be keeping his job another 4 years
and knowing that virtually no one can touch him. His chief enforcer is also happy as he is keeping his job, at least for another four years.
In
1789, Edmund Jennings Randolph became the first US Attorney General
under President George Washington. Randolph, an attorney had previously
served as Governor of Virginia before accepting the position as the top
legal advisor for the newly formed nation where he would represent the
US government in cases before the Supreme Court.
Since Randolph’s
time, the role of US Attorney General has expanded to head the
Department of Justice, created in 1870, where he/she is considered to be
the chief lawyer and law enforcement officer of the US government. As
such, the US Attorney General is expected to be the archetype law
abiding citizen in the nation.
Today’s US Attorney General, Eric Holder has proven to be anything
but the archetype model law abiding citizen. In fact, it seems more
like the chief enforcer for the nation’s top crime boss, Barack Obama.
Together, the two of them have repeatedly broken one law after another
along with committing multiple violations of the US Constitution. Since
Holder is the top cop and prosecutor in the country, he’s virtually
untouchable.
Yes, the US House of Representatives can impeach
Holder, but that would leave the actual conviction up to the Democratic
controlled Senate, which we all know won’t happen.
Several of Obama’s Cabinet leaders have informed him that they will
be resigning soon. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are among those that are jumping
ship. It seems that Obama has tried to keep Holder in place, but there
are rumors that he will only stay for another year.
While that is good news in some ways, one can only wonder who the next top crooked cop will be. Within the halls of Capital Hill, names such as
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have been floating around
as a possible replacement for Holder. From a conservative point of
view, that would be like replacing one liberal lawbreaker with another.
A few other names have wafted on the winds of rumor which include Sen.
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Gov. Deval
Patrick of MA.
I honestly believe that Napolitano could be worse than Holder. As for
the other three, I don’t think any of them could be much worse than
Holder, and perhaps could even be better, but I won’t hold my breath.
I’ll just be glad if and when Holder is gone.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When black voters gave President Barack Obama 93 percent support on Election Day in defiance of predictions that they might sit it out this year, black leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief.
That
encouraged those leaders to try to leverage more attention from both
Obama and Congress. Although they waver over how much to demand from the
president — particularly in light of defeated GOP challenger Mitt
Romney's assertion that Obama gave "gifts" to minorities in exchange for
their votes — they are delivering postelection wish lists to the
president anyway.
"I think the president heard us loud and clear. The collective message was, 'Let's build on where we already are,'" the Rev. Al Sharpton
told reporters after a White House meeting last week with a collection
of advocates representing largely Democratic constituencies.
Specifically,
Sharpton said, that means keeping the brunt of the looming "fiscal
cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts off the backs of the middle
and working class.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous aimed that same message at Congress, especially on where tax relief is extended.
"We
need Republicans to think hard and to pull back from the cliff 98
percent of our families, who make up the bulk of this nation, from
seeing our taxes being raised," Jealous said.
Blacks made up 13 percent of the
electorate this year, about the same as 2008, while participation among
whites shrank slightly to 72 percent and Hispanics increased to 10
percent, national exit polls showed. Black leaders point to that
minority participation as they sharpen their calls for initiatives to
address black unemployment, which was 12.7 percent when Obama took
office, peaked at 16.5 percent roughly a year later, and stood at 14.3
percent in October. The overall unemployment rate is 7.9 percent.
National Urban League President Marc Morial
acknowledged in an interview that "we sweated turnout all the way to
the end," because the country's underlying economic conditions made it
tougher to mobilize black voters. Within days of the election, Morial
sent to Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., an "urgent petition" asking that Obama's
second term focus on economic opportunity and income inequality.
A
jobs program should emphasize infrastructure and public works,
broadband technology and energy "with a special focus on those
communities where unemployment is and remains stubbornly and
persistently high," Morial's letter said.
"We who represent the nation's urban communities will demand a seat at the table in these discussions," he wrote.
African-American voter samples in
national exit polls are not useful for providing turnout measurements.
Census surveys and other analyses eventually will provide turnout
numbers for specific racial groups. But exit polls can be used to examine different groups as shares of the overall vote. And there, experts say, is where the evidence can be found of how much black voters delivered for Obama.
Nationally,
Obama's share of the black vote was down slightly from four years ago.
But in some key states, turnout was higher and had an impact, said David
Bositis, an expert on black politics and voting at the Joint Center for
Political and Economic Studies.
Blacks
made up 15 percent of the electorate in Ohio, up from 11 percent in
2008. And 97 percent of those votes went for Obama, leading Bositis to
say Obama's margin of victory in the state came from black voters.
In Michigan, the black share of the vote grew from 12 percent in 2008 to 16 percent in 2012, according to exit polls.
"Michigan
was one of the states the two parties jostled around, and eventually
Republicans decided they were not going to win, and one of the reasons
was the big increase in the black vote," Bositis said.
In Missouri, a state Obama lost in both elections, the black vote went from 13 percent to 16 percent of all voters.
Bositis said the black share of
the vote remained roughly the same at 23 percent in North Carolina,
which Obama narrowly won in 2008 but lost in 2012, and 13 percent in
Florida, which Obama won both times. In Virginia, which Obama won in
both elections, black voters were 20 percent of all voters, he said.
Women and people from ages 18 to 29 had the strongest participation levels in the black community.
In 2008, black women
had the highest turnout rate, 69 percent, of all groups. Their 2008
record created a sense of obligation among some black female leaders to
take an active role against new state voting laws they said threatened
to curb black voter participation. Black women made up 60 percent of the
black vote this year and voted 95 percent for Obama.
The
enthusiasm of black women was demonstrated in Florida when more than
250 churches marched their congregations to the polls as part of the
"Souls To the Polls" early voting campaign, said Melanie Campbell,
president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic
Participation. A large percentage of the marchers were women, Campbell
said.
"Countless women stood
in line for hours to vote early so they could volunteer to work at the
polls to help in the fight against voter suppression," Campbell said.
Black
voters ages 18-29 made up 26 percent of the black vote nationally, a
turnout close to what it was in 2008, according to the national exit
poll. They voted 91 percent for Obama.
Republicans had reached out to
black voters in 2004 and saw their share of the black vote increase in
that election, Bositis said. But he said that in 2012, the outreach was
nonexistent.
Michael Steele,
former Republican National Committee chairman, said the GOP had an
opportunity this election to connect with black voters on unemployment,
health disparities, incarceration and other issues.
"How the heck do you win if you don't engage in the conversation?" Steele said.
___
Follow Suzanne Gamboa at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi
faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding
his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered
violence in the street and exposed the country's deep divisions.
The Judges' Club, a body representing judges across Egypt,
called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding
the "downfall of the regime" - the rallying cry in the uprising that
toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.
Mursi's political
opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly
empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations
on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.
Issued late on
Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after
he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree
defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new
parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.
It also shields the
Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt's new constitution from a
raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution,
and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house
of parliament.
Egypt's highest
judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an
"unprecedented attack" on the independence of the judiciary. The
Judges' Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.
That demand was
echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. "There is no
room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent
measures and then says 'let us split the difference'," he said.
"I am waiting to
see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S.,
by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity," he
said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.
More than 300
people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned
violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.
POLARISATION
Liberal, leftist
and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to
row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a
man once jailed by Mubarak.
In a sign of the
polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own
protests that day to support the president's decree.
Mursi also assigned
himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed
during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor
general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero's welcome at the
Judges' Club.
In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.
The Mursi
administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to
speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak's rule to a new system of
democratic government.
Analysts say it
reflects the Brotherhood's suspicion towards sections of a judiciary
unreformed from Mubarak's days.
"It aims to
sideline Mursi's enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and
head off any legal challenges to the constitution," said Elijah Zarwan, a
fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.
"We are in a
situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and
harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down."
ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS
Following a day of
violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas
hung over the capital's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising
that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.
Youths clashed
sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for
a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out
traffic.
Al-Masry Al-Youm,
one of Egypt's most widely read dailies, hailed Friday's protest as "The
November 23 Intifada", invoking the Arabic word for uprising.
But the
ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter
application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind
Mursi's decree.
The Nour Party, one
such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama'a
al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it
would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the
Mubarak regime.
Samir Morkos, a
Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to
resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi's spokesman. Speaking to the London-based
Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: "I refuse to continue in the
shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition".
Mursi's decree has
been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of
praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between
Israel and Palestinians.
"The decisions and
declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians
and for the international community," State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland said.
The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.
(Additional
reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and
Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)
In 1985, the “One-Year Bible” was published in many translations
around the world – from the Living Bible to the Catholic Bible to the
New King James version to the New American Standard and the English
Standard Bible.
Those Bible translations provide verses to read each day of the year – from both the New and Old Testaments.
Jonathan Cahn, the messianic rabbi who wrote “The Harbinger” and offers his teaching in “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” movie, recently discovered that every one of those “One-Year Bible” versions place Isaiah 9:10 on Sept. 11.
“This has been the case since 1985,” said Cahn on a recent Jim Bakker TV show. “It’s been there for years. Millions of Americans have been reading this verse on Sept. 11 for 16 years before 2001.”
It’s just the latest example of dozens of links between the attack of
9/11 in America and the attack on ancient Israel described in Isaiah
9:10, revealed in both the book and the movie. Cahn says the harbingers
for America – messages he believes are from God – continue to mount.
On the series of TV shows that aired just after the November
election, Cahn said the vote itself has significance in the context of
his teaching, which has swept through America and the world in the form
of “The Harbinger” and “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.”
“The leader of a nation can make a big difference,” said Cahn. “When
you look at Israel, when you had an immoral king, it led the nation into
immorality. When you had a righteous king, it led the nation into
revival. It’s not dependent just on the leader. But what the president
does, what the Congress does – the laws affect everyone. It affects the
preaching of the Gospel, the teaching of the young and the next
generation – all of this. What just happened is significant. America
made a choice. It was a sign of a turn against the ways of God.”
Cahn also mentioned the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the New York area – particularly on Ground Zero.
He cited the words of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appearing at the
site of destruction and telling a television interviewer: “This is the
Ground Zero site. This is a monument to human capacity and human
endurance. And, this is New Yorkers’ way of saying we’re not going to
give up. We’re going to come back and we will. This city will rebuild
and the state will rebuild, and I believe will be the better for it.”
For those who have read “The Harbinger” or seen “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” those words have special meaning.
It was a message all-too-familiar from U.S., state and city leaders
in the wake of the 9/11 attack: “We will rebuild. We will come back
stronger.”
The words mimicked – sometimes with precision – those of ancient
Israel in Isaiah 9:10: “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build
with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them
into cedars.”
And that’s the pattern that has been revealed in Cahn’s bestseller
and the movie that has been the No. 1 faith film in America for the last
35 weeks.
It continued in the words of some officials in the wake of Sandy’s
flooding of New York and New Jersey – including by the governor of New
York speaking on network television from Ground Zero.
So what?
Cuomo may blame catastrophic man-made climate change. But Cahn doesn’t.
“A number of years ago, as I was standing at the edge of Ground Zero
in New York City, I came across the first puzzle piece of an ancient
biblical mystery and a prophetic message known as ‘The Harbinger’ that
concerns the future of America,” explains Cahn, who helped write and
narrate the two-hour documentary “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.”
Cahn says he has since found nine harbingers that tie the problems
America has experienced beginning Sept. 11, 2001, with parallels that
led to the destruction of ancient Israel.
“Before God judges a nation, He sends warning,” explains Cahn. “He sent
warning to ancient Israel. He even allowed its enemies to breach its
borders in a devastating strike that would traumatize the nation. It was
a wake-up call, the call to return to God. But the nation responded
with defiance. God then gave nine harbingers of judgment, nine prophetic
signs, alarms and foreshadows of what was to come. Now America is the
nation in rapid departure from God’s will. And God likewise allowed an
enemy to breach its borders in a devastating strike – the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was, likewise, a wake-up call. But
America, like Israel, has not responded with repentance, but with
defiance. And now the nine harbingers of judgment have reappeared and
have done so on American soil.”
Isaiah 9:10 is a verse in which Israel’s national leaders utter a vow
of defiance following an attack by Assyria. It declared that the nation
would not repent before God, but would defy Him instead. Cahn reveals
in “The Harbinger” – and in even more dramatic fashion in the video –
that beginning the day after Sept. 11, 2001, American leaders began
repeating that 2,500-year-old vow, word for word.
“Having no idea what he was doing, the majority leader of the U.S.
Senate (Tom Daschle) was declaring America as under the judgment of
God,” Cahn says. “It was the reenactment of an ancient mystery – and
bore the most grave of consequences.”
He continues: “According to the ancient mystery revealed in the Book
of Isaiah, if after that first calamity and warning, the nation doesn’t
return to God but responds in defiance, it will end up triggering a
second calamity. It was because of this ancient key, that, seven years
after 9/11, the American economy collapsed. In the days after 9/11, the
Federal Reserve slashed the base interest rate in an attempt to defy the
consequences of the attacks. That action put us on the path leading to
the collapse of the American economy seven years later. In 2008, the
government made a second fatal mistake, another ill-fated financial
decision, that would trigger the collapse of the American economy.
Amazingly, it took place on the seventh anniversary of the uttering of
the ancient vow on Capitol Hill.”
Cahn also reveals in “The Harbinger” and “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” something
that readers and viewers universally find astonishing – that New York’s
Ground Zero actually represents more than the former financial center
of the country. It represents the exact place at which America was first
consecrated to God in prayer by the country’s new leaders.
“When judgment came to Israel, the calamity returned the people’s
attention to the place where the nation had been consecrated to God –
the Temple Mount,” says Cahn. “God was calling the nation back to
Himself. What about 9/11? Could there be, in the American calamity, as
well, a mystery of return? Could there be a prophetic message hidden in
the place where it happened? There is a place where America was
consecrated to God in prayer. It is also a place linked to a prophetic
warning given on that same day – uttered by the nation’s first president
– now coming to pass.”
In 1789, newly inaugurated President George Washington gave a
prophetic warning at Federal Hall in New York City. He declared that
America’s prosperity and protection were dependent upon its adherence to
God. Later, the political leaders of the young nation gathered at St.
Paul’s Chapel to commit the nation’s future to God’s purposes. That
chapel is located at Ground Zero and miraculously survived 9/11
virtually unscathed.
Cahn, the pastor of the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in
Wayne, N.J., says America is uncannily re-enacting ancient Israel’s
behavior prior to its judgment and eventual fall. He found a sympathetic
ear for his message in WND founder Farah, who produced “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” as a follow-up to “The Harbinger.”
The key to decoding the harbingers, Cahn says, is found in
understanding the seemingly innocuous words of Isaiah 9:10, what it
meant to Israel and how the history seems to be repeating itself in
America today.
These words were first uttered by leaders in Israel and in response
to a limited strike by Assyria on the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali – an
attack the prophet makes clear is actually part of a limited judgment
by God against apostasy. It wasn’t meant to destroy the nation, but to
awaken it, according to most commentaries.
But, says Cahn, Israel didn’t take the cue. Instead, the response
from the people in Isaiah 9:10 is one of defiance. The brick buildings
were toppled, but they vowed to build bigger and better. The little
sycamore trees may have been uprooted, but they vowed to plant bigger
and better cedars in their place.
God, speaking through Isaiah explains what will happen as a result of
their pride and arrogance and failure to heed the harbinger: Bigger and
more potent attacks will follow. Because neither the northern kingdom
of Israel nor the southern kingdom of Judah truly repents, the first is
eventually swept away by Assyrian invaders and the latter is carried off
into captivity by the Babylonians for 70 years.
But what does this have to do with the United States of America –
particularly what the U.S. experienced on 9/11 and since? Cahn has found
some eerie parallels.
“In the aftermath of the attack, the nation was stunned,” said Cahn.
“Everyone was trying to make sense of what had happened – this
unprecedented attack on America. The very next day, Sept. 12, then
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle presented America’s response to the
world. And what did he say?”
Daschle said: “America will emerge from this tragedy as we have
emerged from all adversity – united and strong. Nothing … nothing can
replace the losses of those who have suffered. I know there is only the
smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation.
But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that speaks to all of
us at times like this.”
He then went on to read Isaiah 9:10.
“Daschle has no idea what he is doing here,” explains Cahn. “He
thinks he’s offering comforting words to a grief-stricken people, but he
is actually embracing the spiritually defiant and arrogant words of the
children of Israel, proclaiming the ancient and ominous vow of the
leaders of that nation. He doesn’t realize it, but he is actually
inviting more judgment on the nation.”
It might be of some significance that Daschle, one of the most
powerful men in the nation when he spoke those words, later fell into
disgrace – to the point where he couldn’t even serve in Barack Obama’s
Cabinet.
That might have been the end of the story – if no other top leader in
the nation uttered those strange and obscure words after 9/11. But
that’s not the case.
On the third anniversary of the attack, Sept. 11, 2004, another
powerful U.S. senator running for vice president that year and who would
famously run for the presidency four years later, gave a speech to the
Congressional Black Caucus.
This time, John Edwards’ entire speech was built on a foundation of Isaiah 9:10:
“Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning, we have the Lord’s
Word to get us through,” he said. He then read Isaiah 9:10. He went on
to talk about how America was doing just that – rebuilding with hewn
stone and planting cedars.
Later, in his first State of the Union Address in 2009, Barack Obama
hearkens back to the same theme. And now Cuomo – right back at the site
of the original attack.
In “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” viewers get to see these remarkable,
largely forgotten or overlooked speeches, which directly link the events
of 9/11 and the events referred to in Isaiah 9:10.
But aside from such statements, which could be chalked up to
political talk and coincidences, is there anything else linking Isaiah
9:10 to 9/11 and the shockwaves that followed, including two economic
crashes?
The video documentary, like the book, is full of shocking parallels.
There was actually a very famous sycamore tree felled in the attack on
the World Trade Center. It was replaced by trees in the same genus as
the cedar. There have been many plans made to rebuild the twin towers
bigger and better and a large “hewn stone” was actually quarried out of
the Adirondack Mountains in New York and brought to Ground Zero as a
cornerstone.
“The parallels are truly stunning,” says Farah, founder of WND, who
produced the documentary for WND Videos. “In fact, they are overwhelming
in their number and their exactitude. I am persuaded God is trying to
tell America something and Rabbi Cahn has found the key to unlocking the
message.”
By Sonja Isger
Drake has had an ultrasound and awaits a CAT scan before doctors determine their course of action, Dr. Ken Simmons said.
UPDATE 3 p.m.: Specialists at the University of
Florida’s veterinary hospital are still trying to determine whether
Drake the injured German shepherd needs yet another surgery to recover
from one of several gun shot wounds.
“It’s all in their hands,”
said his owner Florida Highway Patrol trooper Bobby Boody, who
accompanied Drake and pilot veterinarian Dr. Ken Simmons to Gainesville.
“There’s not much more I can say or do. It’s been a little stressful.”
Simmons
and Boody flew back to West Palm Beach from Gainesville about 2 p.m.
Friday, leaving Drake in Gainesville, where the German shepherd is
expected to spend more time recovering. “He may be staying up there for a
while,” Boody said.
Friday afternoon, the doctors seemed to agree
that in addition to all the other damage done by at least four bullets –
two broken limbs, a puncture to his brow, a hole in his jaw – he may
also have a tear in his esophagus that’s been preventing him from eating
or drinking, Simmons said.
The question they faced Friday
afternoon is whether the tear warranted surgical mending or would heal
better on its own, Simmons said.
Drake’s survival to this point is nothing short of miraculous, Simmons and Boody agreed. UPDATE 11:40 a.m.: Dr.
Ken Simmons and Drake arrived safely in Gainesville this morning. Drake
has had an ultrasound and awaits a CAT scan before doctors determine
their course of action, Simmons said. UPDATE 8:50 a.m.:
Dr. Ken Simmons, veterinary technician Tammy Randall and former police
dog Drake are flying now to Gainesville to University of Florida’s
veterinary hospital. UPDATE 6:50 a.m. : The
veterinarian caring for former police dog Drake will be flying the dog
to Gainesville this morning. Dr. Ken Simmons reports that the dog is
stable and “looks pretty good this morning” but continues to battle to
stay well. He says Drake will get a cat scan to look investigate what
could be a hole or tear in his esophagus. A team of surgeons is on
standby at the University of Florida’s veterinary hospital to care for
Drake should he need surgery, Simmons said. The vet said he’ll be flying
the dog out of Lantana airport about 8 a.m. today.
Drake, the former police dog clinging to life after being shot at
least four times during an attempted burglary, may be flown to
Gainesville for emergency surgery Friday morning, his veterinarian said
Thursday.
A new complication arose today, possibly making the trip
necessary, said Dr. Ken Simmons, owner of the suburban Lake Worth
animal hospital where the 5-year-old German shepherd has been treated
this week.
Fluid was discovered around the dog’s lung, indicating
either a wound or an infection that hadn’t been detected before. Simmons
said he suspects a bullet may have nicked his esophagus, creating the
deposit of fluid.
“It could be a hole or a nick,” said Simmons,
who operates Simmons Veterinary Hospital on Lake Worth Road. “If it just
a nick, it could heal by itself, and if by tomorrow morning we see him
improving, there may be no need to go to Gainesville.”
But if he
feels it is necessary, Simmons — a private pilot with a Cessna 206 —
says he plans to fly to University of Florida School of Veterinary
Medicine, his alma mater, where a CAT scan and emergency surgery can be
performed. Simmons has been in touch with authorities there about the
case.
“Right now we feel we have a finger in the dike,” Simmons said. “but
we want to do all we can to save the dog. He’s a fighter, an
unbelievable fighter.”
Drake was shot late Sunday when three
juveniles broke into the suburban West Palm Beach home of his owner,
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Bobby Boody.
Palm Beach County
County sheriff’s investigators took a 16-year-old male into custody late
Wednesday. The teen, whose name was not released because of his age, is
facing charges of burglary while armed with a firearm and felony
cruelty to animals. A sheriff’s spokesman said Thursday the other two
juveniles involved were still at large.
Investigators tracked the
teen down because he is wearing an ankle monitor. He is on probation
through the Division of Juvenile Justice for burglary and grand theft.
He confessed to being the shooter and told investigators his group knew
the house belonged to a law-enforcement officer and targeted it because
they believed there were guns and money inside.
“He had no remorse,” Detective Philip DiMola said. “I asked him, ‘Did you think about that dog today?’ He said no.”
If you are a business owner, you are well aware that President Obama
has imposed over 6,000 new regulations on businesses in just 90 days.
This doesn’t even begin to address the massive amount of regulations
imposed over the last 4 years. The bigger picture is that it’s all part
of his plan to “OVERWHELM” the system.
Karl Marx said that capitalism will eventually fail and that
communism is the solution and end game. He says you can wait for that to
happen, or you can accelerate the process by overwhelming the system
and destroying capitalism. There will be so much chaos that it is easy
to take away rights and take control as the government savior.
Once that occurs, you implement communism. This process can only be
understood by the “enlightened” government leaders (Obama and the like).
The masses are too stupid and ignorant to understand how good communism
will be for them, so they need to be forced down that path, by any and
all means possible. Lie, deceive, create class and race warfare issues,
and use catastrophes (and if there are none, make some up; the ends
justify the means.) That is why every time Obama speaks about anything,
you will notice that it is always very dramatic (and the world will end
if we don’t do it right away.) Examples include Obamacare and his “Jobs bill.”
If the progression is not fast enough, then Karl Marx says you need
to kill people to help the greater good achieve “enlightenment”. That is
why in Russia, they killed 60 million of their own people, for the
greater good. Of course, the greater good is so the top 3% in government
leadership can have all power and wealth and remove all means for the
masses to ever be able to topple them, including taking all rights,
removing all weapons, and eliminating religion.
To deflect those who say that Obama is not a Marxist..
His favorite college professors are Marxists, his favorite books were
written by Marxists, his parents and grandparents were Marxists, their
friends were Marxists, and his administration is full of Marxists. I
know they don’t like that term; it is “progressives” now.
As dumb as he seems, I actually believe he knows what he is doing.
The unfortunate part is that we don’t think it could ever happen here,
and we don’t know enough about communism to realize what is happening.
Most of us don’t even know much about our own Constitution and the reasoning and brilliance behind its development.
Read the Federalist Papers and other writings from our Founders; they
knew we would want to move towards socialism, and so they wrote the
Constitution the best they could to prevent that.
Photo credit: Dan Jacobs (Creative Commons)
This viral video videtorial is based on a November 23, 2012 editorial by Joseph Farah, founder and publisher of WND.com.
The
silver lining under the dark cloud of the Republican debacle of 2012 is
that the so-called "leaders" have it all figured as to what went wrong.
These
leaders — the same ones who selected Mitt Romney as the nominee of the
party — believe success in the future means they need to be the ones to
pick nominees for the Senate, rather than leaving that up to Republican
voters.
In other words, they still believe they lost the
unloseable election to the most failed president in American history
because of Todd Akin. Never mind the fact that they lost every Senate
race where their chosen candidate got the nomination. They were just
too hands off in 2012. They don't plan to make that "mistake" again in
2014.
Isn't that good news?
Seriously, there are several people who
have to go if the Republican Party is to reinvent itself in a way that
will allow it to be more competitive in future elections: Mitch
McConnnell is one. John Boehner is another. And Karl Rove is the third
member of the arrogant, self-interested triumvirate.
McConnell
and Boehner, for instance, are tripping over themselves to accommodate
Barack Obama in his second term — offering up support for "comprehensive
immigration reform," a euphemism for amnesty for millions of illegal
aliens who will vote Democratic in 2014 and 2016, raising the debt limit
again to ensure Obamacare is funded and not even considering how this
complicity will position the Republicans as a non-viable alternative to
the Democrats in future elections.
And notice how the
Democrat-loving media cheerleaders are loving and applauding and
encouraging every self-destructive move the Republican establishment is
making in the aftermath of the election.
And in the absence of
any conservative Republican choices, why should voters choose a liberal
Democrat wannabee when they can have a real liberal Democrat?
Enjoy watching any of hundreds of more videos at CleanTV.com.
By Franklin Raff (Editor’s note: this was written Wednesday, just before the cease-fire.)
Just a quick firsthand account of the situation here for friends in
the business. I am now in my studio with the monitors on all the major
networks, the “missile shields” down, (well – they’re sort of like thick
steel shutters) and wanted to paint a few quick, clear pictures for
you.
Today, as you are probably aware the conflict escalated with at least
one bus bombing downtown. I was quite near there at the time and
everyone sort of detoured their way around that area while emergency
personnel rushed in. One has to be extremely careful after a blast as it
is common terrorist practice to plant secondary bombs in order to take
out people rushing in to help the wounded. As of this moment, suspects
in today’s attack “may still be” at large, so we are staying off the
streets.
You should know that there is a general code of communication here
whereby it is taboo to discuss, disseminate, or broadcast specific information regarding missile landings, bomb effects, etc. This is of
course due to the fact that this information can be used to aid enemy
targeting and ranging, to say nothing of propaganda efforts. Speaking of
which, Hamas’ efforts in this regard are slipping a little. According
to a Fox report moments ago: “Solid evidence now reveals how Hamas and
Islamic Jihad in Gaza have been deliberately placing their civilian
population in mortal danger, choreographing a number of seemingly gory
scenes, as well as releasing images from other conflicts, such as Iraq
and Syria, and passing them off as dead Gazan civilians killed by
Israeli missiles.”
The intentional greying of specifics for one reason or another may be
one reason why mainstream media reports are dodgy on the situation
here. The other reason, of course, is that many mainstream media
reporters are flocking to Gaza where they can be fed information by
those with whom many – not all – seem to sympathize. Israel explicitly
and incessantly warns journalists in Gaza to stay away, physically, from
Hamas operatives. We hear it all the time locally. This advice,
tragically, has not been heeded: a fact largely ignored in recent,
absurdly irresponsible comments in the press about “Israel targeting
journalists.”
Press people: THIS IS WAR. STAY AWAY, PHYSICALLY, FROM HAMAS
OPERATIVES. Stay away from them. Report what you want but do your
talking on the phone.
A less unpleasant vignette, aside: Israel is an intensely
family-focused culture, and the high regard and affection for children
here transcends all imaginable cultural and ethnic divisions. One
notices this regularly in restaurants, for instance, where kids are
treated like royalty. (My French friends / clients invariably contrast
this with the situation in Paris, wherein families with children are
often begrudgingly seated in the back corners of bistros.) In the time
after today’s blast, I noticed parents of all stripes – Orthodox,
secular, Arab Israelis, Ethiopians, European types, the new Sudanese
refugees – discussing the situation, the locations of bomb shelters,
offering each other transportation, playing with the children, etc. And –
everyone is pitching in to help older folks do just about everything.
Life goes on. That’s the motto here. Friday’s “main event” in my
circle was a sailboat race and we decided to go on with it with about 40
yachts in the fleet. I was on shore with the race committee at the
moment one rocket landed. When the sirens went off, everyone hit the
deck, in this case, literally. I will not say where it landed, or how
close it was, but I witnessed the explosion at the moment of impact.
Nobody was hurt in this instance, but it was quite something. It is
public information, whether or not reported, that in certain types of
rockets, Hamas has replaced part of the off-the-shelf explosive payload
in their smaller rockets with additional fuel capacity in order to
achieve the range required for a Tel Aviv hit. You may draw your own
conclusions from that.
As you probably know, Israel demands a cessation of Hamas rocket
attacks as prerequisite for a cease-fire. Hamas representatives have
said, whether or not it is true, that they are holding longer-range
rockets in reserve. They are also promising more homicide-bomber attacks
if a cease-fire cannot be reached. I know this, and more, by the way,
because I was with my friend Aaron Klein when his source confirmed it.
If you want the best news on the situation here, I strongly advise you
to add his reports and updates (WABC radio, WND, kleinonline.com) to your media diet. He is totally plugged in – so much so it is almost shocking.
I was here during the “disengagement” from Gush Katif / Gaza, by the
way, and visited that lovely, prosperous, and productive town in the
days before and during the evacuation of the Jews. (The reason I
describe the town is because its buildings, streets, businesses, parks,
and manicured lawns reminded me of Scottsdale or Santa Fe – whereas to
see it depicted in the mainstream media one would have thought it
consisted of a bunch of wacky zealots on a mound of dirt.) I gave an NRB
Prayer Breakfast speech about the disengagement experience which you
can see on YouTube if you are interested. What I would like to point out
is that that land was given away to Gaza for “peace,” and yet only days
after the Israelis were yanked from their homes, farms, and synagogues,
those same places were peppered with rocket launchers aimed at Israel –
the same ones we face today. “Land for peace” seems as dark and
murderous a prospect on this day as it was in the time of Chamberlain
and Hitler.
Rockets have been landing daily, from Gaza, on Israeli towns like
Sderot for years. Every day, or almost every day, for years. Now they
are landing on Tel Aviv, so the news is more difficult for the
mainstream media to ignore. But the facts, however you choose to
interpret them, are the same. Israel has been under attack from the
moment of its inception.
We are well. The people here are highly focused and extremely
resilient. Let’s all hope and pray for a speedy and enduring solution to
this terrible situation and for minimal loss of life and carnage here
and for those who presently suffer under Hamas.
Best to all,
Franklin Raff franklin@raffradio.com
We witnessed another one of Barack Obama’s oddities with the Muslim
Brotherhood. The first anomaly was when Obama was almost giddy when the
Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, ascended to
power. The Muslim Brotherhood had openly called for the destruction of
the United States “from within”, most recently apparent in Muslim
Brotherhood front groups like CAIR calling for the purging of any
training materials within the FBI and CIA that “offended” Muslims.
Barack Obama of course dutifully complied.
The most recent oddity, however, is Obama calling on Morsi to “broker
a truce” between Hamas and Israel. Hamas has fired on average one thousand rockets
per year at Israel from the Gaza strip; and for eight days, Israel did
something that they should have done a decade ago: fight back.
Keep in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization
of Hamas. Keep in mind that, like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood has
called for the annihilation of Israel. So for Obama to call on Morsi to
“broker a truce” is ridiculous.
The so-called “truce” amounts to Israel ceasing to defend herself and
the opening up of the Gaza strip blockade that has kept Iran and other
extremists countries (now Egypt) from shipping more powerful weapons to
Hamas.
Furthermore, Obama colluding with someone who is part of an
organization that has openly called for the destruction of the United
States amounts to treason in my book.
CBS News is reporting that it was the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence that purged references
to “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from talking points given to Susan Rice,
the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Rice used those talking
points to promote the lie that the Benghazi massacre resulted from a
spontaneous mob protest rather than a planned terrorist attack. CBS adds
that the CIA and FBI signed off on this false version of events.
This is all farce, of course. There being
no more honor among con-men than among thieves, there comes a time in
all busted conspiracies when the conspirators start pointing fingers at
each other. With their guy safely reelected, this spectacle has finally
drawn the Obamedia’s attention to the president’s Benghazi travesty.
Let’s not get lost here. It is critical to step back and bear two things
in mind:
(a) All of the players here, including Obama and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton (both of whom the CBS report purports to absolve), are
guilty of conspiracy — in this case, to mislead Americans about the
cause of the attack and to aid the administration’s Islamist allies,
whose objective is to impose sharia blasphemy standards on our country
(a project on which the Obama administration has been colluding with the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation since 2009). It was not for their
own benefit that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and
Rice were, respectively, doctoring talking points and using them to
create a false impression. Obama was the intended beneficiary. Patently the White House
— which pitched Rice to the Sunday shows because Obama wanted to get
the Mohammed-movie talking points publicly aired — was in the loop.
(b) Given that the conspiracy is a
cover-up, there is the more salient matter of what is being covered up?
The brain-dead mantra in Washington is always — all together now — “The
cover-up is worse than the crime.” That is not true here. To be sure, it
is very serious that Rice was sent out to trumpet the false narrative;
that Clapper apparently orchestrated the purge of information about
al-Qaeda’s complicity; and that a compromised General David Petraeus
appears to have knowingly misled Congress (that’s a felony) in his
initial briefing about Benghazi on September 14. They and others
involved in the cover-up should have a day of reckoning. But vastly more
significant is what the administration was and is so desperate to
obscure by the cover-up.
There are three areas of great concern:
1. The Benghazi attack was the natural result of Obama’s Libya policy.
Four Americans were killed in Benghazi as a
direct result of President Obama’s unprovoked and, I believe,
unconstitutional war in Libya. This foolish gambit had the easily
foreseeable result of empowering Islamists, very much including violent
jihadists who now have access to much of the Qaddafi arsenal, in
addition to other arms and training they received from the U.S. and NATO
in the mission to overthrow Qaddafi (then, an American ally).
As Wednesday night's cease-fire went into effect--amidst continuing
rocket fire from Hamas--many Israeli reservists returned home
disappointed that the government had not launched the ground attack for
which they had been called up. One soldier, quoted
by Ynetnews, said that "as a resident of Beersheba [which was hit by
several rocket attacks] there is a sense of disappointment. (The
violence) will repeat itself and we'll find ourselves back here again
and again. They (government) should have let us complete the mission."
Much of the Israeli public agrees that a ground war would have been
preferable to no war at all, given the continued threat of attacks from
Gaza--and given that Hamas is declaring victory. A new poll suggests that
support for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fallen
sharply, by as much as 25 percent, since he accepted the cease-fire,
likely after intense pressure from the Obama administration. A poll
prior to the cease-fire indicated that 70% of Israelis opposed it, and
wanted to fight to remove Hamas from Gaza altogether.
Once a lock for re-election early next year, Netanyahu is now considered politically vulnerable. He is at pains to convince
his own voters that Israel came out of the conflict as a winner by
destroying much of Hamas's rocket infrastructure--perhaps because Hamas
was able to replenish and improve its arsenal with help from Iran since
the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. He may draw some comfort
from the fact that his left-wing opponents are split with the imminent return of former opposition leader Tzipi Livni to the scene.
When Netanyahu was elected in 2009, he ran on the promise that only
he, of all Israel's leaders, would be able to resist pressure from new
U.S. President Barack Obama, whose intention to bully Israel was already
clear. In this week's cease-fire, however, Netanyahu is seen to have
buckled to pressure from the Obama administration. Paradoxically, the
Iron Dome missile defense system, which helped defend Israeli cities
from rocket fire, has become a source of leverage for Obama, since U.S.
military aid helps Israel defray its heavy cost.
Most Israelis--and even, apparently, the White House--believe that the cease-fire will not last. Hamas had already violated it by shooting dozens of rockets into Israel past the 9 p.m. deadline on Wednesday; now the Palestinian terror organization is accusing
Israel of firing at Palestinians near the border fence (Israel says
that they were trying to infiltrate, and that it fired warning shots
first). Hamas says that it will approach Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood
government--which has been newly-emboldened as regional mediator--with
its complaints.
The reason peace is unstable is not because Israel wants war--which,
absent Hamas's repeated attacks, it would much prefer to avoid--but
rather that Hamas's very purpose is to attack Israel. In
effect, Hamas is now the Sunni wing of Iran's Shiite terror axis, and it
attracts and maintains both political and financial support by
attacking Israeli civilians, even though there are costs to Palestinian
civilians (both from Hamas rockets and Israel's responses). Until
Hamas--and Iran--are no longer a threat, war will continue to fester and
flare. Photo credit: Reuters
Benefit concert for those
serving at Ft Hood! The Message of Liberty by Jordan Page. Speech by
Stewart Rhodes founder of Oath Keepers reminding them that their Oath is
to the Constitution not to a commander or the President.
We
need those serving to know that they will not be alone when they stand
down if given an unconstitutional order. There are thousands of Oath
Keepers. We need those serving to hear the Oath Keeper message!
Conventional wisdom is that children of same-sex parents do as well
as, or even better than children from intact, two-parent married
households. Many studies make that assertion.
It is massively wrong according to a new, very large, thorough study
published this week by the journal Social Science Research. It was
written by Mark Regnerus, a scholar at the University of Texas. The New
Family Structures Study, or NFSS, is a breakthrough report.
Regnerus compares how young adult children, aged 18-39, of a parent
who has had a same-sex relationship fare on 40 different social,
emotional and relational outcomes when compared with traditional and
other families.
The biggest differences were between children of women who have had a
lesbian relationship – and those raised by still-married biological
parents.
Fully 69 percent of those with lesbian mothers were on welfare as
children – four times the 17 percent in intact families ever had that
experience. In fact, 38 percent of the adult children of lesbian mothers
are currently on welfare versus only 10 percent of those with married
parents. That’s the same 4-1 ratio.
Only 8 percent of adult children from intact homes were unemployed
when interviewed in 2011 versus 28 percent with a lesbian parent.
What’s most shocking is that only two people of those with married
parents were ever touched sexually by a parent or an adult – while 23
percent of those with a lesbian mother had that experience! Golly, they
are 11 times more apt to be molested!
The design of the NFSS research was brilliant.
Most research on the impact of homosexual parenting has relied on
interviews with same-sex parents who are from convenience samples. For
example, the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study conducted last
year “recruited entirely from self-selection from announcements posted
at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores and in lesbian newspapers in
Boston, Washington and San Francisco.”
Such a sample is biased toward including better-educated, wealthier
people who visit bookstores. What about the less educated or less likely
to be employed? They aren’t interviewed. Of course, the children of
these more affluent parents are more apt to do well.
By comparison, NFSS asked 3,000 young adults if either of their
parents had a same-sex relationship while they were growing up. Result:
175 reported their mother was in a homosexual relationship, and 73 said
the same about their father. That’s about 1.7 percent, a figure
comparable to other studies. The sampling was so carefully done that it
included both those with listed phone numbers and those who only use
cell phones (about half the total).
Only 23 percent said they had spent at least three years in the same
household with a romantic partner of their mother; an additional 57
percent did so for at least four months.
Among those with a father in a homosexual relationship, fewer than 2
percent said they had spent at least three years in that household.
These relationships are much more volatile and short lived, but neither
compares with the stability of married heterosexual parents.
Also, by interviewing young adults of homosexual parents, we can see
how the experience shaped their adult lives. This is vastly more useful
information than asking volunteer same-sex parents if their kids are
doing well. Of course, they sayyes.
More results: Three times as many young adults of lesbians were
currently cohabiting as those with married parents (24 percent versus 9
percent). Even more young adults (31 percent) of divorced parents were
living together. Twice as many from intact homes were employed full time
as those with lesbian mothers.
Only 5 percent of those with married parents had considered suicide
in the past year versus 12 percent of those with lesbian parents and 24
percent with homosexual fathers. That’s five times those from intact
homes. Similarly, a young adult of married parents is less than half as
likely to be in therapy “for a problem connected with anxiety,
depression, or relationships” – as those with homosexual parents (8
percent versus 19 percent).
Only 12 percent of young adults with married parents had ever cheated
while married or cohabiting, but a big 40 percent of adult children of
lesbians had done so.
Just 8 percent of those from intact homes had ever been forced to
have sex against their will versus 31 percent with lesbian parents and
25 percent of “gay” parents.
These are huge differences.
They should be cited by those opposed to same-sex marriages.
In the last two weeks, I helped gather signatures for a statewide
referendum on whether to reverse a vote by the Maryland Legislature
legalizing same-sex marriage.
I hope this information will give fresh ammunition to those trying to protect traditional marriage – and children.
Michael J. McManus is president of Marriage Savers and a syndicated columnist.
It's
Thanksgiving. Our forefathers were thankful to live on a
newly-discovered continent, and later they were thankful to live as
freemen who had escaped the British Empire's rule and control over their
lives.
Today we
are thankful for what yet remains of the traditions which have marked
our country's greatness over two Centuries. But many of us are harried
somewhat as we have noticed that our great country is drifting toward
collectivism and away from the individualism which forged and formed
America as the greatest nation on earth, in all of earth's human
history. Now people in all fifty States are talking about secession.
It's driving the communists mad. While enjoying our holiday, let's look
into the idea of secession vs collectivism. It will do the Pilgrim
proud to hold such contemplations on this very special day. It also
would please the ghost of Henry David Thoreau, don't you agree?
Secession is in the wind today,
experiencing a surge after the November 06, 2012 elections. Many on the
"right" are very fearful of the agenda of those on the "left", and to
those who are awake to, and aware of, the reality that
both sides are equally dangerous
to American freedom, the whole messy
political left-right-paradigm slime-bath is offensive and disgusting.
Damn the Republicans and Damn the Democrats both to Hell, I say, and so
do all three or four other Americans who've figured this out.
The
idea of secession drives communists, socialists, and collectivists in
general madly wild and passionately fearful. If you don't want to play
their game of centralized control over society and culture, the average
communist/collectivist sees you as a direct threat. He must control
you via the state (government) or he sees you as a threat.
Most
Americans showed clearly with the election that they want the
collective way of life and they want a powerful central government to
ensure that everyone, including those who do not wish to
participate in their centralized government's authoritarian power games,
must ante up and place their bets just like all the good little
statist boys and girls. Your refusal to play their game is perceived as
a threat to them, and it makes them defensive. Being as how
defensiveness always attacks, they jab out at you for not joining into
their view of societal adhesion.
To
prove that I'm not exaggerating, I'll offer a novel idea which most
Americans have never read, although it's a part of our heritage as
Americans. It was written circa 1884 by an American libertarian
philosopher named Herbert Spencer, in his immortal essay entitled "The Right To Ignore The State". I am predicting that the comments under this article shall be, uhm, er, "colorful" at the very least: Here is Spencer -
As
a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be
subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit
the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry.
If
every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes
not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop
connection with the state - to relinquish its protection, and to
refuse paying toward its support. It is self-evident that in so
behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his
position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an
aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to
continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral
law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the
taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement
of his rights.
Government
being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals
to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the
connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ
such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this
mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses
all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of
maltreatment - a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He
cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the
law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
To
assess one's predisposition toward being either a statist or an
individualist, one merely need read that passage over again about three
or four times and think on its meaning. How one ultimately perceives
the logic and philosophy contained in that brief mental exercise
determines in a recognizable way one's predisposition as a statist or
as an individualist.
No
collectivist can enjoy reading the writings of this nation's Founders,
or the writings of the 19th Century libertarians, while any individualist derives
intense joy and hope in so reading. The Founders spoke of "unalienable
rights" which come from Nature or Nature's God, and they codified
those rights as coming from, deriving from, a higher authority than any
man-made government. Collectivists, especially collectivists of the
communist and socialist bent, hate and fear that kind of consciousness.
To the statist, the very idea of a soul seceding from the collective
government is a threat and must be eliminated. Hence Homeland Security's
inherent psychological premise, and hence its hell-for-leather assault
on patriotism and Constitutionalism and individualist dissent within
our American society today.
For the strong in spirit, for the individualist, I'll offer this little brief film by Chris Duane of
Don't-Tread-On-Me. It's about personal secession from the futility of the "madding crowd".
via :Judicial Watch
In the midst of an economic crisis and a looming fiscal cliff,
President Obama has generously committed $6 billion for a “sustainable
energy” partnership with Asia. You can’t help but wonder what the
commander-in-chief is thinking!
It’s bad enough that he’s blown hundreds of millions of dollars on
failed clean energy programs in the United States (remember the $535 million Solyndra boondoggle) but now he’s asking American taxpayers to finance similar dubious projects 10,000 miles away. Check out the White House fact sheet announcing
the brilliant plan, which is officially called the U.S.-Asia Pacific
Comprehensive Partnership for a Sustainable Energy.
Its announcement was timed around President Obama’s tour of Asian
Pacific countries this week. Under the plan the federal government will
blow $6 billion over four years to bring “renewables and cleaner energy”
to selected Asian nations. Details are still sketchy, but according to
the White House announcement, this will occur because the cash will
increase access to American technology, services and equipment.
The goal is to help Asia “implement energy infrastructure,” the feds
claim. This is dire because energy and the environment are among the
most pressing issues confronting our region, according to the White
House fact sheet. Benefitting from Uncle Sam’s largess will be the tiny
southeastern Asian country of Brunei (population around 400,000) and
nearby Indonesia, which is huge in comparison with around 250 million
residents.
The new “partnership will offer a framework for consolidating and
expanding energy and environmental cooperation across existing regional
forums to advance efforts to ensure affordable, secure, and cleaner
energy supplies for the region,” the White House asserts. “Bilateral and
multilateral energy and environmental initiatives are flourishing in
the Asia Pacific, and the United States, in partnership with Brunei and
Indonesia, will help coordinate and enhance these efforts, share best
practices, and leverage existing initiatives across the various forums
that undertake this work.”
Here are some examples of how this will all go down as per the
administration; the State Department, which is responsible for
implementing the nation’s foreign policy, will oversee a $1 million
“energy capacity-building fund to support partnership activities via
project preparation and technical assistance.” The U.S. government’s
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which supposedly helps
American businesses gain footholds in emerging markets, will provide up
to $1 billion in financing for sustainable power and energy
infrastructure projects and the Export-Import Bank of the United States,
the country’s official export credit agency, will make $5 billion
available to eligible countries.
By Douglas W. Phillips and Elijah Brown For close to a decade and a half, I have had the honor of leading
more than a thousand people on Faith and Freedom Tours in Plymouth and
the Boston area. Plymouth and the story of the Pilgrims which is honored
through our national Thanksgiving Day celebration is one of the most
precious stories of faith, fortitude, and the providential care of God
for his Church in the history of Western Civilization. Not surprisingly,
it is a historical record which is under great attack from revisionist
historians and radical leftists groups. During my own tours of Plymouth,
I have personally been heckled by representatives of radical Marxist
Indian groups, have actually watched as markers which bring a false
witness to the Pilgrim legacy have been placed on the most sacred
historic locations of the Pilgrims at the urgency of these groups, and
have spoken to members of the Plymouth community who have been
physically assaulted by radical leftists when presenting the Pilgrim
story. Some of these incidents have been documented in my article Plymouth Crock. Behind this assault on the great Pilgrim legacy are a series of
myths rooted in a historical revisionism which is not only at war with
Christianity, but with a fair and reasonable account of the facts which
inform our interpretation of the origins of the American nation in
Plymouth. With the help of Elijah Brown, the following is presented to
offer some perspective on the debate.
Thanksgiving Day should stand out in our hearts as one of the most
sacred and significant days of celebration of the year. The importance
of Thanksgiving Day does not merely stem from its patriotic value as the
oldest national celebration in American history. The day should not be
observed simply to maintain a historical tradition that was cherished
long before it was officially declared a national holiday. Thanksgiving
Day is momentous because it not only calls our remembrance to the
awe-inspiring work of God’s providence among our forbearers, but also
allows us to connect with them in a real way by demanding a perpetual
reflection on the providence of God in our own lives. Whether joyfully
or with more than a little misgiving, on Thanksgiving Day the nation
acknowledges that we are the heirs of our Pilgrim Fathers. Thanksgiving
provides a national identification that should connect with every
American on a deep and intimate level. It is a day that points to the
firm conviction that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and
that we are the residual beneficiaries of God’s favor bestowed upon, and
celebrated by our ancestors, during that first Thanksgiving feast. As
we gather around our family tables in celebration of God’s providence
and provision we are the fulfillment of the hope of those godly men and
women; we are the enduring testimony to the fruition of their
multi-generational vision of faithfulness.
At the same time, it is perhaps for this very reason that the
hallowed importance of Thanksgiving Day is diminished in our modern
culture. The necessary reflection on God’s providence invoked on this
day is something that the unregenerate heart simply cannot grasp, much
less celebrate. The essential theme of man’s utter dependence on God is
something to which men shaped by the egotistical philosophy of the
enlightenment cannot relate. The exclusive adoration and deep fidelity
to Jesus Christ practiced among the Pilgrim Fathers is something that
this secular generation finds intolerable. For this reason, each year
the observance of Thanksgiving Day has gradually diminished into a day
celebrated by an excess of parades, food, and football. Thanksgiving Day
has been even further eroded by the radical left who, out of their
hatred for God, has revised history to distort and pervert America’s
Christian heritage. While the Christmas holiday has inherited its
fictitious flying reindeer and Easter has inherited a fictitious egg
laying rabbit, it seems that Thanksgiving has inherited a fictitious
historical narrative, equal to those other absurdities, and accompanied
by a barrage of unwarranted ridicule and speculative doubt.
For this reason, there are many who view Thanksgiving Day as a national
day of mourning. While Thanksgiving Day is a happy time, many cannot
celebrate the occasion without a small feeling of shame for the
oppressors and remorse for the oppressed. Of course, such an
understanding of history is based on a fictitious and speculative view
of Pilgrim/ Indian relations. It is incumbent on Christian families of
this generation to debunk the myths invented by those who seek to
divorce history from truth because they have rejected God, the sovereign
author of history. By debunking these myths we hope to reflect on the
true meaning of this day of thanksgiving and restore a culture that
gives proper glory, honor, and thanksgiving to God. We confront these
unhappy skeptics to defend the honor and preserve the legacies of the
Englishmen and Native Americans that gathered in friendship during that
first thanksgiving harvest. The myth-making ability of modern skeptics
seems to be limitless, but here let us contend with those myths that
have been the most widely propagated and generally believed concerning
our Pilgrim Fathers and their Native American friends. MYTH #1: The first thanksgiving was a pretext for “bloodshed, enslavement, and displacement that would follow in later decades.”
A diligent appeal to the actual historical source documents reveal a
very different account of what took place between the Pilgrims and
Indians. From the beginning, William Bradford relates that the Pilgrims
and Indians made a binding peace accord which contained six principle
terms: (1) That neither group would harm one another; (2) that any who
does harm will be held accountable; (3) that they will not steal from
one another and anything stolen will be restored, (4) that they would
become military allies, protecting one another in instances of attack;
(5) That neighboring confederates would also be welcomed to the peace
accord, and (6) that when they met they would come unarmed. Both parties
honored this treaty, which remained unbroken for over half a century
following the first thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims treated each Native American tribe individually and
never attacked any tribe unless they had been attacked first. Conflicts
and wars that occurred prior to 1675, were always carried out by the
Pilgrims in conjunction with their Native American allies, and always
according to the terms of the treaty. If a Plymouth citizen treated an
Indian improperly, they were tried in a court of law and punished. In
1638, the Colony of Plymouth hanged three colonists for the murder of a
single Indian. In that same year a colonial court of law denied a town
the right to retaliate against wrongs committed by an Indian tribe,
because it was found that the town had committed an earlier violation of
Indian rite.
In 1675, the peace accord was broken, but not by the Pilgrims. The
treaty was broken by King Phillip of the Wampanoag tribe, who rejected
Christianity and declared war on the Colonists. King Phillip’s first
acts of aggression were carried out on Native Americans who remained
friends with the Colonies. In addition, the colonists were by no means
swift in declaring war against King Phillip. The hard decision came only
after eight towns were attack in a period of three months; children
were burned alive in their homes, and their parents subjected to
cannibalistic ritual torture. King Phillip’s war was, per capita, the
most devastating war ever to be fought on American soil. This bloody war
marked a turning in the relations between the Indians and settlers.
MYTH #2: The first thanksgiving was not Christian and was not a thanksgiving.
Two original source documents provide first hand accounts of that
first thanksgiving among the Pilgrims and their Indian friends. William
Bradford writes of that time “they found the Lord to be with them in all
their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which let
His Holy name have praise forever, to all posterity.”1 Edward Winslow
relates that on that first thanksgiving “for three days we entertained
and feasted... . yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from
want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”2 The Pilgrims
together with a large company of Indians celebrated three days of
thanksgiving unto God for His providence in providing for them a land
and a bountiful harvest. While it is not clear that the Indians present
during the celebration believed in Jesus Christ, it is known that
through the missionary efforts of the Pilgrims a great number of Native
Americans, including their king, did believe. Not only was this
gathering a time of giving thanks for an abundant harvest, their thanks
was directed toward the God of Christianity for the harvest He had
provided for them.
MYTH #3: The Pilgrim Fathers were racists who treated the Indians as an inferior race.
Racism as we understand it today is a modern invention predicated on
an evolutionary view of man which understands various races as following
similar, but differing paths of evolution. According to the
evolutionary worldview, some races of men have more quickly evolved or
have evolved better than others have. However, this way of thinking
would have been foreign to the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth.
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth understood men and cultures in
light of a biblical worldview. This means that they did not consider men
as members of any particular race, but as men divided by tribes,
tongues, and nations. Almost from the beginning, the Pilgrims and
Indians enjoyed a relationship of common ground and mutual respect for
one another.
Moreover, the Pilgrims invited Indians to partake in a desegregated
society. Many Indians like Squanto, lived among the Pilgrims and were
highly esteemed by the Pilgrims. There are records of Indians who were
permitted to sit on the juries of the Pilgrims. By the middle of the
seventeenth century, Harvard College accepted Native Americans as
students, having as part of its original charter the education of the
English and Indian youth of this country. The common schools and grammar
schools established by the Pilgrims had accepted Indian children as
students almost from the beginning of their existence. MYTH #4: The primary reasons for the Mayflower voyage was to further the financial ambitions of the Pilgrims.
If an historian wanted to understand the reasons why the pilgrims
risked everything to come to America, it would be expected that he might
consider the reasons the Pilgrims themselves gave for coming to
America. William Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation provided the following
reasons: (1) there were threats of war in Holland and the Pilgrims did
not want to become entangled in a foreign war; (2) there were not enough
opportunities to support the multigenerational vision they shared for
their families; (3) they desired to find a place where they would be
able to preserve the faith among their children; and (4) they desired to
come to America for the advancement and propagation of the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
The Pilgrims had a bold vision for a biblical family and a biblical
community. They left Holland to be a “city on a hill”, an example of
what God can do through a small group of faithful families. It is tragic
that we find that many of the bad influences related to materialism,
youth culture, entertainment, excess, and complacency that the Pilgrims
sought to leave behind them in Holland, are the types of things many
look forward to on Thanksgiving Day. MYTH #5: The Pilgrims stole land from the Indians.
When the Pilgrims arrived in America, the Native Americans had no
concept of private land ownership. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims bought
plots of land from the Indians anyway. In addition, the Pilgrims
respected the borders of Indian Territories and even protected the land
occupied by the Native Americans from other invading Native American
tribes according to the peace accord. To this day, many of these
original land contracts exist and can be seen in Plymouth,
Massachusetts. Early historians like Bradford, Winslow, and Elliot also
provide first hand accounts of these land transactions.
While there were possible instances of abuses among certain
individuals, the general rule of law among the Pilgrims required the
purchase of land at a fair price, the respect for land markers, and the
observance of private property. Historian Alden Vaughan, although not
always favorable to the Pilgrims, wrote, “There is no evidence that any
New England land for which the native claimant existed was taken under
the guise of vacuum domicilium.... Plymouth Colony set a patterns of
Puritan land acquisition that was later observed by Massachusetts Bay
and its off shoots.”3 MYTH #6: The Pilgrims were somber, rigid, and joyless group of people.
If the Pilgrims had been somber, cold, ridged, and joyless people,
they would have had legitimate reasons for it. In England, they had been
persecuted and forced to flee to Holland where they were strangers in a
strange land. When they embarked for America, they spent almost two
months on the Mayflower below deck, and were not permitted to venture
above the deck of the ship. Once they landed in America the winter came
upon them so fast that half of them died the first winter. During this
time they buried their dead at night under the cover of darkness to hide
their numbers from the Indians who they feared might raid them.
Yet, in spite of all of this, the Puritans were always joyful, kind,
and longsuffering. They wore colorful and fashionable clothing and
enjoyed entertaining and feasting in the company of both friends and
strangers. They were diligent to care for the poor and the sick even
among those who had persecuted and ridiculed them with the vilest
language. They were hard working and industrious, but always looking for
opportunities to enjoy the company of others. The first thanksgiving
itself provides a window into the kind of happy people the Pilgrims
were. On this occasion they aside three days to celebrate by sporting,
entertaining, showing hospitality, giving gifts, and enjoying the
plentiful harvest. MYTH #7: The Pilgrims came to America for religious liberty, but denied it to others.
Contrary to what is now commonly taught and widely accepted, the
Pilgrims did not come to America to gain religious liberty. To be sure,
this was a primary reason for leaving England, but the Pilgrims had
enjoyed religious liberty in Holland for over 12 years. Yet they came to
America with the express goal of “the advancement and propagation of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Religious liberty with pluralism today was
never an idea that would have been tolerated among the Pilgrim and
Puritan congregations. God had commanded, “You shall have no other Gods
in my presence.” Since God is omnipresent, this meant that the public
worship of idols could not be tolerated.
However, this does not mean that the Pilgrims were indifferent to
those who did not believe in Jesus Christ. From the beginning there were
non-Christians, and differing denominations that lived among the
Pilgrims at Plymouth. They were never ostracized or denied equal rights
under the law. William Bradford relates one story in which a group of
non-puritans complained that it offended their conscience to work on
Christmas day, as the Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas. As it was a
matter of conscience, they were allowed to take the day off for the
observance until they were taught otherwise. While they did not adhere
to modern notions of religious pluralism, they did not persecute those
who did not share their convictions.
Conclusion
Ultimately, these myths do not originate from a desire to cast the
Pilgrim Fathers into doubt, as much as it is an attempt to cast doubt
upon the God of the Pilgrim Fathers. The skeptic in America is like a
man who is dying of thirst while floating on an ocean of water, because
he is a member of a civilization that was miraculously established by
the providence of God, but he finds no place for himself in it. His only
alternative is to invent a false view of history that exalts the idea
of a “noble savage” who loves and worshiped the creature rather than the
Creator.
As we gather around the family table for Thanksgiving Day we should
consider the fact that we are the fruition of God’s blessing poured out
on our Pilgrim Fathers. The liberty that we enjoy is a product of the
first chartered documents of the Pilgrims who, beginning with the
Mayflower Compact, examined the Scriptures and drafted these charters on
principles of self-government and freedom under God. As we lift up our
hearts in song and thanksgiving to God we affirm the success of their
multi-generational vision; gathering in confirmation that their toil and
hardship was not in vain. On Thanksgiving Day we gather as living
testimonies of what God can do through a small number of faithful
families who forsake all else to advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
