Tuesday
THE 'OUTRAGE' CONTINUES
THE 'OUTRAGE' CONTINUES, BUT THERE
ARE ALSO REASONS TO REJOICE
Last month we cited California Ph.D.scholar,
Alisa Wilson's comment: "I am outraged that my
country, the United States of America , is in a
state of moral and ethical decline." Judging
from the responses from our readers, Ms. Wilson
expressed the views of many American Christians.
From the beginning, at his election as president,
we have urged Christians to pray that God would
give wisdom to President Obama to do what is
right for our nation. We continue to urge that
kind of prayer support. Early on we took the
position that until he actually began to do things as
president, we would not commend or criticize just
because he was a Democrat and a Liberal, and
was essentially unknown to us.
Now he has begun to do things, and thus far there
isn't much that he has done which we can commend.
Granted, he came into office as a major recession
was forming. His solution thus far has been to follow
the lead of Franklin D. Roosevelt who took a similar
recession and nurtured it into a full blown depression
lasting for 10 or 11 years. So disastrous was the
Roosevelt administration that just two years after his
death Congress passed an amendment to limit future
presidents to two terms, and the ratification of the
22nd amendment was accomplished in 1951. Yet
the Roosevelt method of solving financial problems
by pouring government money into the private sector
has been developed and refined by President Obama
to its present catastrophic proportions.
And these financial blunders have been accomplished
with virtually no executive level economic team in
place, aside from the to-date totally ineffective
Secretary of the Treasury, labeled by the pundits as
"Tiny Tim" Geithner.
Instead, the president has focused on putting into
positions of leadership executives who hold to his
extremely Liberal, anti-Christian views -- for example
as Secretary of Health and Human Services he chose
a true abortion zealot, former Kansas Governor,
Kathleen Sebelius. His first act in this area has been
to authorize federal funding of embryonic stem cell
research, which relies on the killing of more babies to
permit experimentation in this field.
Speaking to this problem, Randy Thomasson of
SaveAmerica.com wrote: "Obama is making us
pay to kill little humans. He is changing us from
a culture of life into a culture of death." The story
further reminds us that this decision follows several
other executive decisions to fund the destruction of
human life at taxpayers' expense. and points out
that this is funding of an immoral science that has yet
to yield a single success.
In his remarks at the signing of the measure, Obama
said he would seek to “ensure that our government
never opens the door to the use of cloning for
human reproduction.” But neither in his remarks nor
in the executive order itself did he say anything about
stopping the cloning of human embryos in order to
extract their stem cells for research.
This assault on traditional Christian convictions, is
added to his support of homosexual efforts involving
same-sex marriage, and restrictions on federal funds
available to religious groups and enforcement of the
requirement that doctors and hospitals opposed to
abortion must perform such procedures or face loss
of their license.
These acts, and others, are of serious concern
to American Christians. We Evangelicals have lost
our leadership in the past few years, but the heritage
of this nation is firmly Christian in principle, and it is
up to us to develop new leaders to reclaim America
for God and the Christian faith.
And what do the opinion polls show? The reliable
Rasmussen Reports, which conducts daily surveys
instead of occasional ones, reports that the president's
approval index has declined steadily since the week
of his inauguration.The index is calculated by subtracting
the strong disapproval rating of the president from the
strong approval rating, and varies as those two ratings
change. During inauguration week the rating was in the
strong +28 to +30 range, but has declined steadily to
the beginning of this week when it hit a new low of
+6. And both Consumer Confidence and Investor
Confidence ratings are at all time lows. Despite the
defensive spin concocted by the Democrat leaders,
it is difficult to disagree with the facts.
More gaffes - Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton:
further proof that inexperienced amateurs should not
mess around with international politics. In a recent
meeting with the Russians in Germany, Vice President
Biden made the remark that the two countries should
press the "reset" button So Secretary of State Clinton
followed the lead of her leaders and presented Russian
Foreign Lavrov with a red pin, bearing the English
word "Reset" and a Russian word having the same
meaning, which Clinton said they had worked hard to
choose the correct word, and said she hoped they got
it right. Lavrov's reply was frank:"You got it wrong."
The Russian word our State Department experts chose
was "overcharged.."
It hasn't been the best week for Secretary Clinton. Earlier
she pledged $900 million (that's almost a billion) to the
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Now several members of
Congress are objecting to this massive handout to these
dedicated opponents of Israel and the West -- notably
America.
Two applicable comments: from Winston Churchill,
"To build may have to be the slow and laborious
task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless
act of a single day." And from H.G. Wells,
"Human history becomes more and more a race
between education and catastrophe." At the
moment, in the international race in which we are
engaged, catastrophe appears to be winning.
But there are occasional hopeful signs that evil
is not in complete control. The U.S. Supreme Court
has taken a big step to protect Ten Commandment
monuments on hundreds of county courthouse lawns
and other public land across the nation. In a unanimous
decision, the main opinion was written by Justice
Alito, who drew a line between "government speech"
-- choosing which privately donated monuments to
display on public land -- and "private speech" in a
public forum. The First Amendment protects the latter
but doesn't restrict the former, he said.
And in another court decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit has reversed a ruling that held the
Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church, in Montana in
violation of law for speaking about the state's marriage
amendment. The charge was brought by a homosexual
activist group."Churches shouldn't be penalized for
expressing their beliefs," said Alliance Defense Fund
legal counsel, arguing that "They should never be
forced to forfeit their free speech rights just because
the government decides to enact unconstitutional
laws requiring them to remain silent on social issues."
The court ruled the law is unconstitutionally vague and
its application in this case violated the church's First
Amendment rights.
The real Founding Father on international trust:
"There can be no greater error than to expect, or
calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation.
It is an illusion which experience must cure, which
a just pride ought to discard." - George Washington
Some Random Afterthoughts . . .
A new word in our vocabulary -- perhaps not yet
in every dictionary, but doubtless will be soon. It is
Celebutards, defined as: "A compound of celebrity,
debutante, and retard, this blunt term describes
lazy and egotistical stars with too much money,
fame, leisure time, and media attention, but too
little common sense or knowledge, who love to
spout off on topics about which they have zero
expertise." Seems like a useful new term. Not
unsurprisingly, Celebrities Barbara Streisand, Sean
Penn and Al Gore are among the first honorees of
the new designation. Award winning New York
Post columnist Andrea Peyser also included Rosie
O'Donnell and Madonna, among others.
Oooops! Error in re "Global Warming" -- Al
Gore and his pseudo scientific arguments in favor of
his theory of "Global Warming" ran head-on into a
huge error concerning their much heralded melting
of Arctic ice. The error began in early January and
persisted until mid-February, and caused climate
scientists to under-estimate the extent of the ice to
an extent larger than California, whose area is about
163,700 square miles. The admission of the error by
the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
stated: said: "Upon further investigation, we found
that data quality had begun to degrade over the
month preceding the catastrophic failure. As a
result, our processes underestimated total sea ice
extent for the affected period ... this underestimation
grew from a negligible amount in early January to
about 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square
miles) by mid-February.” Perhaps errors like this
have helped lead to the adoption of a new name for the
Gore theory: "Climate Change" instead of the original
term: "Global Warming.".
A new item of concern for Christians: in her recent
visit to Israel, Secretary of State Clinton conveyed a
message to Israeli officials, making it clear that the
movement toward the establishment of a Palestinian
state is -- in her words -- "inescapable.” Simply stated,
she is advising President Obama to use all of the power
of his office to pressure Israel to divide Jerusalem, and
give away Judea and Samaria. If she succeeds, East
Jerusalem, where our Lord was crucified and arose
from the grave -- important sites in the Christian faith
-- will become an Islamic fundamentalist capital, and
neither Jews nor Christians will be welcome there;
not pleasant decisions from the new administration.
An unpleasant note on which to close: In the latest
American Religious Identification Survey released this
week, the percentage of Americans who claim to be
Christians dropped by 11 points, from 86% of the
population in 1990 to 76% in 2008. But if that doesn't
disturb you, perhaps this report will: the number of
Americans who claim no religion at all, now outnumber
every major religious group except Catholics or Baptists,
and now represent 15% of the population, double the
number from the 1990 survey. It seems that a re-
dedication to fulfilling the Great Commission of Jesus
Christ might be in order.
A pertinent word of warning from a Founding
Father: "If Congress can do whatever in their
discretion can be done by money, and will
promote the General Welfare, the Government is
no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated
powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular
exceptions." -- James Madison, 1792
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