Wednesday
OBAMA'S SPEECH TOMORROW!
September 7, 2011, of our 9th year of publication.
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A thought for today, or for this week:
"It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square,
that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation.”
President Gerald R. Ford
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FOR NO LOGICAL REASON, SOME PEOPLE ARE EAGERLY
AWAITING OBAMA'S SPEECH TOMORROW EVENING;
PERHAPS BECAUSE IT MAY BE HIS LAST CHANCE
FOR PERFORMANCE RATING REDEMPTION
But consider the president's problem: What oration can his handlers load into his
teleprompter for this major effort to salvage his failed presidency, as he struggles
with his re-election campaign, that will offset the fact that in the entire month of
August his total economic approach created not one job -- the first time since
World War II (that's 1945, 66 years ago) that our economy produced net zero
jobs for a month.
Or can his teleprompter-loaders offer something that will offset the prevailing
news story that the Solyndra factory in Fremont, CA -- where just last year Mr.
Obama held a major televised speech event as he gave the firm $535 million of
"stimulus" money -- this week laid off its 1,100 employees, shut its doors, and
declared bankruptcy. Solyndra is the 3rd solar energy company to file for
bankruptcy this year, although in that funding speech Obama promised 1,000
new workers would be employed in the new plant being built. Columnist Debra
Saunders expressed it thus: "Solyndra debacle spotlights Obama's folly."
It is doubtful that there will be much -- if any -- encouragement to remember
that Sunday, Sept. 11, is the 10th anniversary of the Islamic attack on America
which has been designated in our national memory as "9/11." The Obama White
House has issued new guidelines concerning any observance of the attack, which
include this basic premise: “A chief goal of our communications is to present
a positive, forward-looking narrative.” Under the new guidelines, government
officials are to warn that Americans must be prepared for another attack -- and
must, in response, be resilient in recovering from the loss. "Resilience" is defined
in the guidelines as taking "many forms, including the dedication and courage
to move forward." And we are urged to "honor all victims of terrorism, in
every nation around the world ... whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or
Belfast, Mumbai or Manila, or Lahore or London." After the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor in 1941, we had a national song, "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor,
as we did the Alamo." Attitudes have changed under this administration, and we
are not encouraged to remember that this attack was by adherents of Mr. Obama's
"peace loving" Islamists.
(We pause to remind you of our announcement in last week's abbreviated
issue, that on Sunday, Sept. 11, we will proudly fly the American flag from every
residence, business and public building, in remembrance of those who lost their
lives in that vicious attack on our nation.)
And to add to his mounting total of problems, a new poll of Republican
voters in the early primary state of South Carolina, conducted by the Democrat
polling company, Public Policy Polling, disclosed that 65% question whether Mr.
Obama was even born in the U.S.A. According to PPP's published results (Aug.
25 - 28), when asked: "Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United
States?" 44% answered "No," and an additional 21% answered "Unsure,"
making a total of 65% questioning his birthplace. One tends to recall the words
attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "You may fool all the people some of the time,
you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all
of the people all the time."
Beyond the national concerns about jobs and the economy, there are deep
concerns over the efforts of what the Bible calls "false prophets" to distort the
Christian message, and attempt to bring it into conformity with man-made opinions
of what they conceive of as a modern "Christian" religion. From the website
ProphecyNewsWatch.Com, there is this evaluation: "Today's new brand of
Christianity has a different gospel and is targeting thousands of the younger
generation with a so-called hip, cool, experiential spirituality... with the
ecumenical philosophy of uniting people from all faiths to work together and
bring about a new world of peace and harmony....It's stretching its tentacles
around the souls of unsuspecting youth, setting them up for the lie that
subjective emotions of 'power' and 'experience' are 'feelings' to be held
higher than an objective walk in the Christian Faith, based in Truth found in
the Pure Word of God. The Bible warns of great heresy and apostasy in the
church of the last days... of false teachers, prophets, doctrines..."
Illustrative of this departure from the positive affirmation of the Bible-based
Christian faith is a recent attack on Scriptural language by Tim Stevens, the
"Executive Pastor" of an Indiana mega-church, who recently spoke to the
Christian Post concerning his annoyance with the word "saved" as found in
the Scriptures. "I've recently noticed that I'm becoming more annoyed by
the word 'saved' than ever before ... I have similar hesitations with 'born
again,' probably because it's also an insider term." Stevens traces the use
of the word "saved" to one verse, Romans 10:13. Perhaps someone will point
out to Mr. Stevens that the concept of being "saved" is presented more than
50 times in the New Testament in the ministry of Jesus Christ and Paul. To
throw it out would be to discard the salvation teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.
As for his annoyance with "born again," this is a teaching in the actual words of
Jesus, who said, very simply and clearly: "Ye must be born again." (John 3:7)
In 1740, George Whitfield, whom Charles Spurgeon called "the greatest preacher,"
was approached by a man who asked him why did he preach in every sermon,
"Ye must be born again." And Whitfield replied, "Because ye must be born again."
An interesting and reasonable comment on international affairs: From
international mediator Douglas Noll, whose latest book, Elusive Peace, has just
been released: "In order to protect their power, position and privilege, the
international community developed three tools for dealing with conflict:
standing militaries, diplomats, and legal systems. When your only tools
are limited to force, persuasion and litigation, peace is not likely to break
out soon." (Hello, Washington . . . U.N. . . . et al. . . are you listening?)
It's as if our Founding Fathers were watching events in Egypt, Libya, etc.
"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied,
and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest
of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only
reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the
measure of right...." (James Madison, 1786) Madison was predicting what we
are seeing come to pass, that what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton label as
"democracy," should be more accurately referred to as "mob rule."
From our research, we've carefully chosen "What Others Are Saying" . . .
Tony Adkins (Conservative Action Alerts): "Barack Obama just granted
amnesty to millions of illegal aliens ... but he did it by executive order. He
thinks that he can do whatever he wants without going through Congress.
... He knows that his approval rating is dropping like a stone, he knows that
he’s lost the support of the Latino community, so now he’s giving illegal
aliens amnesty in the hopes that Hispanics will then vote for him. However,
most legal immigrants don’t believe that amnesty is the answer. They came
to this country the lawful way..."
Robert Ringer ("Time to put America above politics"): "It's pretty bad
when a president's speeches have become so predictable that people are
bored in advance ... But, with his gray matter still hopelessly entangled in an
ideology that has failed world-wide for centuries, Obama is psychologically
incapable of changing his script. Certainly his advisors must be telling him
that Americans won't react well to another stiff teleprompter speech filled
with more spending (as in, 'stimulus'), more taxes (class warfare), more debt,
more unemployment benefits ('to increase consumer spending'), and more
government control over individual's lives. They are painfully aware that
this is now a losing set of talking points."
Larry Kudlow ("A Reagan Moment"): "Big government financed by easy
money is a lethal economic combination. It must be reversed. We should be
reducing the regulatory and spending state while keeping money predictably
stable... The supply-side nostrum that worked so well for 20 years, beginning
with Ronald Reagan, was low tax rates, light regulation, limited government
and a hard dollar... This is a Reagan moment. We need a new leader who can
get the economics right and reverse our decline. Literally, for the whole world,
nothing is more important."
Ludwig von Mises (Austrian-American economist): "Whoever prefers life to
death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery, must defend without
compromise private ownership in the means of production."
And among this week's classic "One Liners" . . .
From Andre Carson (D, IND): "Some of them in Congress right now of this
Tea Party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree."
(Like Maxine Waters (D, CA), a master of civility in political rhetoric.)
From "da Tagliare" (in GodfatherPolitics.com): "It is time for the blame
shifting to stop. We are in this mess because of President Obama’s policies."
And there are a few random "Afterthoughts" . . .
Last week, our "condensed" issue skipped our countdown to the next
Election Day, Nov. 6, 2012. As of today there are 426 days to pray for
our nation and for wisdom for its leaders, and for God's direction as we go
to the polls and vote to reclaim America to the kind of a nation it was always
intended to be.
At last, a Senate leader speaks out on the reality of terrorism: Senate
Homeland Security Chairman, Joe Lieberman (I, Conn), said this week what
we have long known to be true, that the Obama administration refuses to call
our enemy in the war on terror what it really is: "violent Islamist extremism."
Lieberman said that the administration's "approved" term -- "violent extremism"
-- obscures the fact that we are at war with "violent Islamist extremism."
Sometimes these multi-billionaires are difficult to understand. Warren
Buffett, one of the nation's absolutely top wealthiest individuals, recently
came out in favor of Obama's plan to increase taxes on the wealthy, a move
which was puzzling at first. Now it has been revealed that Buffett's own
company, Berkshire Hathaway, currently owes about $1 billion in unpaid
taxes. It's puzzling: while he complains that the rich aren't paying their fair
share, his own company is fighting to avoid paying their already due share.
We remain impressed by the prevailing wisdom of our Founding Fathers:
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived
from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought
it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and t
heir blood." -- John Adams, 1765
"A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble
execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill
executed, whatever may be its theory, is, in practice, a bad government."
-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many
parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, 1824
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