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Brad Pitt’s Mom Supports Romney

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I have given much thought to Richard Stoecker’s letter (“Vote for Mormon against beliefs,”June 15). I am also a Christian and differ with the Mormon religion.

But I think any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon.

Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.

I hope all Christians give their vote prayerful consideration because voting is a sacred privilege and a serious responsibility.

JANE PITT

Reprinted from New-Leader.com Op-Ed under heading “Election-Casting ballot deserves prayerful consideration”

Growing Dependence Day

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With the level of the federal deficit approaching $16,000,000,000 (trillions), the interest on which costs Americans the first $1,200,000,000 they make every day, and the recent explosion of federal power over the citizens and the states as handed to U.S. socialists by the Supreme Court, the independence from government rule and tyranny sought by our Founders is all but neutralized. We and our children are indebted and imprisoned by design of a leftist attack on our country.

A polarization has occurred in the nation—as the left has chipped away at personal liberty and individual sovereignty over the past several decades, those who cherish freedom have finally begun to become more vocal in their resistance. But is it too little, too late? The left has made tremendous inroads in their quest to replace King George with its own elitist panels, commissions and czars, and within the past week its inches of ground winning have become feet.

In the name of laborer parity and elevating the ethnically or socially disadvantaged, the socialists and communists of the past century have robbed the people of the world of their birthright, established by the labor and sacrifice of their 18th and19th Century Forbearers. In the name of pretended “fairness” leftist forces have lowered the wealth and opportunities of everyone rather than elevate the status of the less fortunate.

Look at any country where socialism and liberalism have penetrated the veil of liberty. Not one of them has improved the quality of life of their working people.

Where do we find the bottom half of earners in America? With all of the talk of the 1% and the 99% in this country, and the mindless chants of brain-dead occupiers in the streets, even an overtaxed economy like ours has rendered our own 99% the 1% of the world. Nearly all of our poor live in good housing, have clean water and food aplenty, a computer of some kind, and cell phones and cable television. They live better than the royalty of many of the earth’s nations.

Additionally, the tremendous generosity and military might of Americans has been the salvation of billions of people around the world, whose leftist economies have left them with nothing but squalor, want and exposure to dictators and war lords (usually leftists).

We hear of the Tea Party these days, and the name is spoken with disdain by over half of the country, and almost all of the mainstream media. Does any of them actually recall where the term originated? Do they remember how an oppressive monarch imposed taxes that were hard to bear and intruded into the personal liberties of a hardworking people, and that those people finally decided that they would take no more and rose up in rebellion, starting with throwing British tea into the harbor?

No, sadly enough, most young adults these days are the products of a dumbing-down campaign launched by the left and its educational arm, the National Education Association. They have mush for brains and their education consists of nothing more than pop culture and global warming propaganda.

We have nearly come full circle. We have hundreds of millions dependent on government and its handouts, a White House dedicated to the overthrow of the Constitution, and a Supreme Court has decreed that the people are to be taxed even for services they DO NOT purchase at the government’s command.

King George is back, liberty has been strangled to near enslavement, and this time it will take more than a few muskets to rid us of the burgeoning oppression. America has not seen such dark times since the Civil War. I say the Civil War, because in all other wars the enemy was external. If we fail to immediately change our course, we will be irretrievably carried back under the oppression of dictatorship. We invite all liberty loving Americans to join the revolution, and to regain our independence from oppressive, centralized government.

PUBLIUS

Benedict Roberts and Stare Decisis

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts exploded from the closet last week, revealing himself for the undercover leftist that he is, forever propelling the US into an Orwellian nightmare of government control and loss of personal liberty.

As the White House braced for a Supreme Court ruling on its Health Care legislation, which is not only extremely unpopular among voters, but had been telegraphed as facially unconstitutional by a majority of the Court in oral arguments, only a few die-hard socialists believed the act would be upheld upon judicial review by the Court. White House spokesman Jay Carney was already carrying out the left’s Talking Points Memo agenda of trying to saddle the GOP with the idea of the unconstitutional mandate, which forced Americans to buy a government mandated commodity, or suffer a penalty for disobedience.

The usual luke-warm judicial slug on the Court, Justice Kennedy, was thought to be the only conservative-leaning justice with the poor judgment to actually consider such an expansion of government power. He had made it clear during oral arguments, however, that even he was opposed to such an exponentially compounded expansion of government intrusion into the lives of American citizens. As the ruling came down, all of us, left and right, were shocked that Chief Justice John Roberts had actually made himself the swing vote to uphold the draconian law, shifting heretofore unconstitutional powers to the federal government.

Since that fateful day last week we have heard members of the left and their media propaganda outlets spiking the ball in celebration. We have simultaneously heard those on the right analyzing Justice Roberts’ written majority opinion, incredulous, sifting for some scintilla of logic or constitutional authority to make some sort of sense of it all. Perhaps the dear boy was telegraphing a method of ensuring Obama’s defeat in November, we have heard.

In fact, no such response for the ruling is possible. What many pundits fail to understand is the concept of stare decisis. This is the principle that once the Court has decided a constitutional principle, it remains decided–forever!

Indeed, the law of the land will always be that the federal government has no restrictions on what it can force the American people and the states to do, as long as it can be imposed under the taxing authority. The implications of this contorted theory of constitutional law cannot be overstated. The long-term ramifications of this unmitigated power shift are incomprehensible, and WILL become a source of unspeakable sorrow for this people in years and decades to come.

The Constitution written by our Founding Fathers is no more. The Tenth Amendment is dead.

Now, we are at the fork in the road.  We either follow Obama and his socialists down the path they offer, or we turn them out of office, forever, and put those into office who value the personal liberty we obtained and fought to maintain in every war since the Revolution.

Perhaps the time has inexorably arrived that we must re-invoke the wisdom of one of those Founders:

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Thomas Jefferson

The Biggest Tax Increase In History!

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Barack Hussein Obama has promised the American people on numerous occasions that he would not increase taxes on any American or American family earning less than $250,000 a year.  When pressed for clarification and commitment, his response has been a consistent No New Taxes, reminiscent of Bush I’s “Read My Lips.”

“I can make a firm pledge: under my plan no family making less than two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars a year will see any form of tax increase.”

Video: Barack Obama Pledges Not to Raise Taxes

The president and his congressional leaders on the left specifically pitched his health care act as not being a tax. They claimed vehemently that it was not a tax, and ridiculed conservatives who said it was indeed a tax. They insisted that Obamacare was constitutional pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Then, of course, as soon as the administration got in front of the supreme court they began claiming that Obamacare was indeed a tax. The argument seemed ridiculous if not ingenuous in light of all of the left’s posturing and protesting that it was not a tax.

Today the supreme court announced that Obamacare passes constitutional scrutiny because it is . . . A TAX!

And not just a tax.  As a tax, Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in the history of the U.S. Will it increase the taxes of Americans earning less than $250,000 a year? YES!!!

Of course, the upshot is that President Obama and all of those on the left who forced Obamacare down America’s collective throat were lying. It was indeed a tax. It was a Trojan Horse. It was subterfuge on the scale of a stolen revolution, or of a communist power takeover.

Today is a day of decision for the American people. Each of us must ask ourselves the questions:

Are we ready to join the left in its march toward socialism?
Or do we take back our country today?

There is no longer any middle ground. The die is cast, and we either end the government’s expansion into every aspect of our lives, and shut down 90 percent of the bureaucracy and rein back entitlements to a safety net level, or we capitulate to Obama and the left and allow the federal government to completely take over.

Video: Barack Obama Pledges Not to Raise Taxes In Any Form

Romney HAS an Economic Plan

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We are surprised each time we hear that presidential candidate Mitt Romney needs to come up with an economic plan if he wants to distinguish himself from President Obama–who has proved he has no economic plan. Certainly, throwing trillions of taxpayer and borrowed dollars at his friends’ companies and organizations has resulted in nothing but record high unemployment rates, burgeoning deficits, and economic downturns.

So does Mitt Romney have a plan to reinvigorate the US economy? Indeed, on his campaign’s website his plan is laid out quite clearly: “Mitt Romney will rebuild the foundations of the American economy on the principles of free enterprise, hard work, and innovation.”

Also, Romney has very clearly stated that his “plan seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation, and government programs. It seeks to increase trade, energy production, human capital, and labor flexibility. It relinquishes power to the states instead of claiming to have the solution to every problem.”

In other words, Mitt Romney’s plan is the exact plan that the founders put into place for America through its Constitution; the same plan that elevated our nation from a mere agricultural colony to a major world leader in every category and kept us there for several decades–until the left began its socialistic experiments with our economy.

So why the debate over whether or not Romney even has a plan? Because to the main stream media and the entire left, if the government isn’t managing every aspect of the economy, forcing its will on the people and taking their money and liberty in the process, it is no plan at all. Indeed, centralized control of production, distribution, and labor is the very essence of socialistic government, and it has NEVER succeeded, not anywhere or at any time in the world’s history. This kind of troubled thinking is exactly what got the country into its current mess.

When Obama sidesteps blame for the current state of the economy, he refers to President Bush and republicans in general and says that they are the guys who did this to our economy. Is this true? The truth is that our economy was in a recession when George Bush (II) took office. Later that year the economy took a serious hit with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, shutting down major portions of American transportation and industry. Democratic policies forcing lenders to extend unsecured loans to unqualified borrowers is what has led to the greatest downturn in the US economy since the Great Depression. Democratic high taxes and burdensome over-regulation have crippled our economy, and to the extent republicans have been willing to go along with these democratic policies, they must share responsibility for the problems they have caused.

Lowering taxes always floods the economy with capital–as happened under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. That is the stimulus that will put Americans back to work–which will be great news to the 15.5% that are currently unemployed or underemployed, and for the rest who are waiting for a raise.

Yes, Mitt Romney has a plan to revitalize the American economy, the American Plan, and anyone who wants to see America come back from the brink would be wise to support his candidacy.

PUBLIUS

The Audacity of Arrogance

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Community Organizer Barack Hussein Obama released his first book about himself in 1995, titled Dreams from My Father, as publicity to launch his Senatorial campaign. The book has only recently received any scrutiny, and reveals a very disturbing ideology and series of life choices in the form of socialist associations and heavy drug use of the would-be leader.

Obama’s second book about himself, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, was then written and released by Senator Barack Hussein Obama, as publicity to launch his presidential campaign. The reader quickly learns that Obama’s version of the American Dream is much different than that of the average American.

The promises made to the American people in Obama’s campaigns turn out to bear no resemblance to his actions in office: There would be no rise in taxes for anyone under $250,000 per year, Obamacare would not raise the cost of health care and those who preferred their own plan would not lose it. Also, Gitmo would be closed down and the wars in the middle east would be turned off like a spigot. Or here’s a good one . . . his administration would be the most transparent of any, and the partisan rhetoric would end. How about this one—Obama would cut the federal deficit in half!? In fact, of all of the promises made by candidate Obama, Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact.com of the Tampa Bay Times demonstrates that he has reneged on two-thirds.

No doubt, many of the broken campaign promises were leftist pipe-dreams and would be devastating to the country, and with thankful hearts we recognize that President Obama got a taste of reality on several fronts once he took office, and began to see the world from a more realistic viewpoint, carrying on many of the policies of the Bush administration, notwithstanding the venomous denunciation of those policies by Obama and the left beforehand.

The fact remains, however, that Obama is an ideologue, and his political thinking is much different than that of most American’s, and completely the opposite of the founders of our nation.

Notwithstanding his adoption of some less radical paths once in office, Obama has still been guilty of ignoring the will of the American people on several issues, and has comported himself more like a ruler in many regards, than a public servant—as he was elected to be.

Something the president fails to understand is that the American people do not want him to rule over them like a dictator. Ruling by executive order, as Obama has done on several occasions, most recently in the case of granting amnesty to illegal aliens, circumvents the constitution, making Obama an official enemy of the Constitution, and of the people it protects. During the Obamacare debate in congress the republicans attempted to discuss the unconstitutional portions of the act, inclusions not supported by a clear majority of Americans. While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in classic Orwellian-speak passed off debate with the left’s curt, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it,” Obama’s response was more draconian in tone: “We won, you lost,” so just sit down and shut the hell up.

The administration has refused to accept responsibility for its many failures and shortcomings, and has stonewalled congressional attempts to get at the heart of corruption and unlawful activities in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice as well as other agencies under the administration.

It is the president’s arrogance over the past three and a half years that has alienated those supporters who bought into his “civil tone” and hope and change campaign promises. His loss of personal likeability and following Mitt Romney in the polls at this point in the election does not bode well for his re-election bid.

If the president has any Hope to remain in office for another four years, he absolutely must Change his attitude. The American people got rid of King George, and if pushed too far, they’ll do likewise with any other person who sets himself up as a dictator.

PUBLIUS

Obama’s Middle Class is Not America’s Middle Class

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We who have watched the transformation of America’s political landscape over the past few decades better understand what has been lost than newcomers to the scene. There have been changes, and many, and most for the worse.

The left’s drumbeat, from the beginning and in all countries they have infiltrated and destroyed has been that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Is that true?  And if so, what is the real cause?

We hear President Obama speak of his unrivaled protection of the “middle class,” as though he invented the idea of the middle class.

Who is the middle class in America? It used to be that it consisted of the majority core of the hard working people who were fulfilling their version of the American Dream—education for children, home ownership, predictable and comfortable retirement, etc. These have traditionally been the majority of the country, tax payers who did their fair share, and wouldn’t take handouts as long as they were able-bodied. Is this the “middle class” of which President Obama now speaks and claims to represent?

In fact, it is no secret that nearly half of all Americans contribute nothing these days to federal income taxes. Is this Obama’s middle class? Certainly, a tax scheme that requires no contributions from half the population is either backed by an incredibly strong economy, has extremely low tax rates, or is grossly unfair in its distribution of the tax burden. In our case, it is the last. In our May 10, 2012 article Bringing Fairness to Taxes we demonstrated that relatively few Americans shoulder the heavy burden of America’s spending addiction, with the top 25 percent of earners paying 87 percent of the total burden, and what can’t be squeezed out of them is merely bought on credit, creating an inevitable collision course with economic Armageddon.

We are compelled to ask the question, if the bottom half of the country doesn’t contribute to the federal income tax base, who is in the middle class? Shouldn’t the middle class be somewhere in the middle? We instinctively imagine that the middle class would consist of those above the bottom, and below the top, forming a bell curve. Although a bell curve is a technical concept with many possible variables, if we are in a class being graded on a bell curve, we would expect that there is a top 20%, a bottom 20%, and 60% distributed throughout the “middle.” There is our true middle class.

In our historical social structure, indeed, we had 1) the wealthy, who got that way through risk taking investment, hard work, or inheriting from one of those, 2) the less fortunate or poor, and 3) the 60% in the middle who worked hard to get an education, pursue a career, buy a home, educate their children, and retire comfortably. In most cases, the upper 80% provided aid and assistance to the bottom 20%, enabling millions to be elevated out of poverty—something our left leaning government has entirely failed to do with $ trillions.

Although we still hear much of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the truth is that since Obama took office, the average American family has lost 40% of its net worth—rich, middle class and poor. With 11 million family homes sinking into the quicksand of foreclosure during Obama’s tenure in office, and the rate climbing fast in 2012, much more of the remaining wealth will be destroyed by the time the next president takes the oath of office. Since taking office Obama has seen the addition of over 6 million Americans to the poverty rolls, with those on food stamps doubling to 47 million, and unemployment averaging 9%.

No, Obama’s rainbow coalition of supporters is not the middle class. It is heavily weighted to that portion of the population that has nothing to lose by raising the taxes on the portion who actually pay all of the taxes, or by spending the income of future generations. It is made up of those who are not part of the historic middle class, but instead those with ideological or racial axes to grind.

Divide and conquer has been the method of despots from the beginning, and the left divides Americans from the middle class by telling groups that their interests are adverse to those of other groups, but that if they all assemble under the umbrella of the Democratic party, their unity will give them political strength.

The scheme has been successful, from the viewpoint of the left and its insatiable appetite for power, but it has come at the expense of the middle class’s American Dream.

It is time for Americans to come together and to reject the lies of the left. We are not a splintered nation with adverse interests that set us against one another, but a unified group seeking what our middle class forbearers sought—liberty, peace and prosperity, with everyone pulling his own weight and contributing to the whole. We should be looking to politicians who believe in the America of Washington, Jefferson, Jay, Franklin, and all those who sacrificed so much so that we would have the opportunity to choose freedom and prosperity over the servitude and poverty offered by Obama’s left.

PUBLIUS

Obama– Carter 2.0

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President Jimmy Carter promised Hope and Change to an America dragged through the mud by a media feeding frenzy during the Nixon Watergate era.

The left got the white house handed to them, along with the congress, and nothing could stop the wholesale implementation of liberal-progressive policies. Anyone who lived during the Carter administration knows that it was a horrific time in American history.

Carter began his presidency by apologizing for American success, and it wasn’t long before Arabs began slapping him around like the whimp he told them he was.

OPEC decided the US was powerless to oppose them, and they immediately began cutting oil supplies and raising prices. Carter’s response was classic Democrat, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of global free markets–impose price freezes on gasoline in the US. World oil markets naturally sought out the more lucrative markets and we well recall the gas lines stretching for blocks as Americans waited for hours to get their tanks filled, reminiscent of the Depression Era shortages and rationing schemes.
In grand Neville Chamberlain style Carter immediately tried diplomatic talks with the Soviet Union feeling that thrill going up his leg as the Soviets put their signatures on pieces of paper with him. Of course, while agreeing to limit expansion, the USSR invaded Afghanistan behind his back, bitch-slapping the president of the United States in front of the entire world.

Carter also withdrew US support of the Shah of Iran, historically a strong U.S. ally in the Middle East, one of few who recognized Israel as a sovereign state. Without our support the Shah was forced into exile, replaced by a fundamentalist government, hostile to the U.S. Iranian students stormed the US embassy and took 53 Americans hostages, and held them as political prisoners for 444 days. Carter had been paring back the US military and saw his duty as Commander in Chief as unbecoming a Progressive President, and when it was time to send in a military extraction team to get our hostages out, the equipment failed in one of the greatest military blunders in history. The hostages were kept in Iran and paraded before the world media up until President Elect Ronald Reagan sent Iran the message, “Let my people go,” and they were brushed up and sent back immediately.

Carter, the Apologizer in Chief, also gave up US control of the American-built Panama Canal, affording China and other nations greater access to our easier trade routes, further harming US trade superiority. Seeing no deterrence, the Soviets further expanded their influence in the Western Hemisphere by helping leftists overthrow governments in Central and South America.

Democratic economic strategies had our US economy spiraling in a tailspin, with the prime rate at 21 percent, killing business expansion and the housing market. Of course, unemployment skyrocketed under these circumstances.

DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

This writer has always said that American politics has been reduced to this: The Democrats take control of government based on promises of throwing a big party, and the next morning the Republicans are called in to clean up the mess.

At what point will America wake up to the reality that the policies of the left don’t work? It’s time to install a conservative government, and to keep a conservative government in place . . . and replace the long-term growth, development and expansion of personal liberty that we enjoyed for the first 100 years. Call me old fashioned.

PUBLIUS

Wisconsin Unplugs the Machine

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Wisconsin is a state like many others in the Midwest, home to working people just trying to live the American dream. In recent decades the state has been heavily influenced by unions, with Democratic political leaders striking sweetheart union deals in the tradition of leftist politics. The scheme is similar to the Harry Hopkins political plan—Tax, Spend, Elect!—only with a middleman inserted between the politician and the treasury; the union boss.

Indeed, like so many states that have handed the reins of government over to union bosses, Wisconsin has become the poster child for union/government collusion to drain the public coffers through graft, corruption, and mandated inefficiency and waste. With a $3.6 billion budget deficit hanging over the state’s head, Wisconsin voters found themselves backed into a corner, and forced to make the ultimate hard choice—vote in a Republican governor to clean up after the party thrown by the Democrats.

Sure, nearly everyone liked things the way they were. High taxes, government over-regulation and unions siphoning the profits off the state’s economy served the purposes of those receiving the money—namely, union bosses, Democratic politicians and their capitalist cronies. They went out every political season and sold their scam to the public, telling them that the “working people” were getting their piece of the pie, and that as long as the status quo was enforced, no one would get hurt.

The $3.6 billion deficit changed the status quo, however, and the voters had to face the reality of the union/government scam. Reluctantly, they brought in Governor Scott Walker and allowed him to do the job that responsible government must do. He and his bare majority in the state capital passed legislation that stripped the most egregious abuses of power from union boss hands. The uproar was heard around the state as militant union thugs “occupied” the capitol building and the streets, while Democrat senators left the state en masse during session to rob the legislature of a quorum to pass its initiatives.

This temper tantrum resulted in tens of millions of dollars in damage to the state, and a recall effort against those who had dared stand up to the corruption that had taken over Wisconsin.

Last night the people of the state spoke. Indeed, in the mere year since Governor Walker and new bare-majority passed their demonized legislation, we discover, yet again, that Republican reality saved the day for Wisconsin, and the crushing debt was eliminated, and tens of thousands of new jobs created.

The political machine that took over our country when unions were allowed into the public employee realm is beginning to cough and sputter. As other states take heart and begin to pull the plug on union/government collusion, we will see similar results—good for states and citizens, and bad for union bosses and Democrats who rely on their forced dues kickbacks to fund populist campaigns.

The Silent Majority is back, and it is taking back its country. The next stop? Washington, D.C., and its union run Democratic Party bosses. We might even take the unions out of teaching, and get our children the educations we are paying for.

PUBLIUS

Obama vs. Catholic Church

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President Barack Hussein Obama’s open war on Christianity was officially launched less than three months into his presidency on April 15, 2009, when he insisted that the gold “IHS” monograms for the name of Christ be covered up with black painted plywood in Gaston Hall at the Catholic church’s Georgetown University, where he delivered a speech on economics. Didn’t that very thing happen in “Damien: Omen II”?

Of course, Barack Obama has always been hostile toward Christianity, and Christian principles, championing anti-Christian causes like gay marriage (although he flipped against it for a few years to get elected, then recently flipped back to rally his base), abortion (which has eliminated tens of millions of American blacks from our population), the poverty and servitude of debt and the government dole, and general principles of immorality (yes, Christianity teaches virtue and honesty). Although he claims to be Christian, when it serves him, his professed brand of “Christianity” is a Black Liberation Theology, which has its roots in Marxism–an anti-Christian philosophy.

Then there was the contrived “war on women” that Obama declared was extant in the conservative camp. Of course, “pro-woman” according to the left necessarily means anti-baby (kill them where they live), anti-child, anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-virtue (a characteristic becoming of both sexes, but a 4-letter-word to the left). Stay at home mothers “haven’t worked a day in their lives” according to those in the Obama camp, and are unworthy of inclusion in a serious discussion of what women desire in America. Ms. Fluke was paraded out as the poster child for women who demand that the government provide free contraceptives for their extramarital, recreational sex. If conservatives feel that the open availability of contraceptives is sufficient for women, then that just shows how anti-woman they are, according to the Obama camp, because American taxpayers should be burdened with the costs of extramarital recreational sex for law students and other leftist activists who no longer believe in personal virtue before marriage. If Rush Limbaugh dares enumerate the type of women that flaunt premarital recreational sex, then he is necessarily a bigot. How completely Orwellian.

Most recently, when the Catholic Church declared that it was abhorrent to their religious beliefs and practices to provide birth control to Catholic Church employees, as mandated under Obamacare, the administration told them to sit down and shut the hell up, because Obama decides what the church will do, not God and his word. The church has filed suit against the administration, as have the majority of the states in the union who have received similar abuse by a power-mongering administration run amok.

The president and his anti-Christian cronies have done everything they set out to do, and the constitutionality of their acts will be weighed in the balance by Article III courts. The left has waged war against Christianity for several decades, chipping away at the First Amendment with every prohibition of free exercise.  Now, they are attacking actual establishments of religion, taking on the largest in the country, with over 60 million members. For those on the left who have no idea where the terms “free exercise” and “establishment of religion” come from, let us provide a brief lesson in Constitutional law:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” First Amendment to the Constitution.

POTUS is not the PONTIFF. The federal government has overreached–again–and its time they got their wings clipped. We urge all Catholics, and all other Christians to vote against Obama’s anti-Christian rampage in the upcoming elections.

PUBIUS

Is Romney’s Religion a Problem?

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Although most political commentators seem to agree that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith is an off-limits issue in the campaign, there is a definite undercurrent that it could become problematic for him, perhaps in the Christian-fundamentalist “Bible Belt,” or especially if the Democratic media hit squads ignore the “faith” advice of cooler heads and decide to begin strafing the nominee on their own. The backlash risk is one they seem more willing to take with each passing week.

Is the faith of a candidate really an issue that can, or should be considered when deciding fitness for office? In fact, if a belief system takes its possessor too far afield from the beliefs of the average American voter, then it can have an impact (“I was born a snake handler, and I’ll die a snake handler!” Moe Szyslak).

The truth is that the subject of religious faith is of itself a minefield, and must be gingerly navigated under the best of circumstances. Even among those who consider themselves to be  Christian, the traditional majority religion of our nation, serious doctrinal divisions exist between the various denominations, and were we to begin throwing epithets at every Christian church that believes differently than our own, a bloody civil war would be the inevitable result.

It used to be that the Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—or LDS for short) was thought by some to be non Christian, or a cult. Indeed, a review of the literature of “competing” churches reveals that many Christian ministries in the Bible Belt launched massive campaigns against the LDS faith, printing millions of tracts warning their parishioners not to talk to the Mormons. In retrospect it appears that this assault had more to do with massive numbers of their congregations converting to the LDS faith than actual cult or non Christian beliefs. The LDS Church is now the 4th largest Christian denomination in the U.S., and most of those converted from other Christian churches. In the 19th Century American Christian mobs likewise persecuted the early Mormons, murdering them and their leaders, stealing their land and property, raping their wives and daughters, and finally driving them out of the country into the far west where they settled, and built an empire. It was not America’s finest hour.

So what are some aspects of Mormonism that give pause to some Christian ministers? Are there Mormon doctrines that are repugnant to Biblical teachings? As all may know, theology is often a matter of biblical interpretation. For instance, in Roman Catholic theology (the largest American Christian denomination with nearly 70 million members), the doctrine of transubstantiation tells us that in the Eucharist, the substance of wheat bread and grape wine changes into the substance of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, literally, not figuratively, while all that is accessible to the senses remains unchanged. Is this doctrine true? Does the wheat wafer actually, literally become the physical body of Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Savior? Does the wine actually and literally become the physical blood of Christ? Do Catholics truly eat Christ’s body, and drink his blood during the Eucharist? I do not speculate about the accuracy of the doctrine, but it does set the benchmark by which we can measure the doctrines of other Christian churches, even the LDS Church. Faith is personal, and because it deals with matters that come to individuals spiritually, we are hard pressed to judge their reality until they come to us as well.

The editors have used some very conventional tools to survey the tenets of the LDS religion. We have also checked these tenets against biblical teachings.

What do Mormons believe? Ask one. Go to their website. Read the Book of Mormon. Consider their “I’m a Mormon” ads. They have strong family ties. They believe that God the Father is the Supreme Being and creator. They believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and that through the atonement he saved all humanity from death. They believe that sex is reserved for marriage. They treat their bodies like temples and don’t partake of harmful substances. They believe in baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. They believe in repentance, and forgiveness. They believe in the resurrection. They believe in communicating with God though the Holy Ghost. They believe in the gifts of the Spirit, including faith, revelation and prophecy. They believe in eventual judgment for unrepentant acts committed against others. They believe in being good neighbors and faithful friends. They believe in education and hard work. They believe in sharing the gospel and a better style of life and send tens of thousands of their young adults on 2 year missions every year.

Are these beliefs biblical? Despite any personal interpretations, we are hard-pressed to find doctrines that are alien or repugnant to the holy writ. Others may interpret biblical passages differently than the Mormons at times, but all the doctrines are present in the Bible. We could even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation is present in the Bible, if one accepts the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.” Matthew 26:26

So who has knelt before the priest to eat the literal body of Jesus Christ? John F. Kennedy, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Clarence Thomas, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Andrew Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, Steve King, Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Clooney, John Kerry, Sargent Shriver, Pat Toomey, Al D’Amato, Geraldine Ferraro, Rudy Giuliani, Carol Moseley Braun, Ken Salazar, Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd, Loretta Sanchez, Joe Manchin, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Alda, Samuel Alito, Anne Bancroft, William Brennan Jr., Nicolas Cage, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Frank Capra, Gary Cooper, Francis Ford Coppola, Bing Crosby, Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert De Niro, Faye Dunaway, Clark Gable, Galileo Galilei, Alec Guinness, Arlo Guthrie, Nicole Kidman, Bill Maher, Bill Murray, Napoleon, Robert Novak, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon, Antonin Scalia, Martin Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Spencer Tracy, John Travolta, Andy Warhol, James Woods, and even Oscar Wilde, to name only a few.

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Obama – The Cool President

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There’s no doubt that Barack Hussein Obama is a populist politician. In many ways he is the every man . . . proving to the masses that indeed, anyone can become the president of the United States of America.

It is a fanciful dream of every American, that each little citizen child can grow up to become the most powerful leader in the world. It is part of our heritage, that no matter how humble the beginnings, or how disadvantaged due to some quirk of life, in this country it is possible to overcome the hurdles and rise to the very top; and in fact, it is true.

In the case of Barack Obama, he was born a minority baby in Hawaii (although he claimed to be born in Kenya when promoting the first of multiple autobiographies) to mixed-race parents (raised by his grandparents), and was saddled with a Muslim name. Although most of his records have been sealed and whisked away to vaults where the vetting process has been declared DOA, he appears to have done well in school at times, and have finished well at ivy league institutions.

Barack Obama appears to have been a fairly common intercity youth, and describes himself as abusing alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, and leaves room to believe there were additional drugs and related activities in the mix.

Obama was a player as a young adult, and describes his out-of-marriage affairs with women of multiple races, although the fact has been recently reported that the identities of these women were mere creations, composites generated for purposes of the books about himself.

Politically, Barack Obama is a Chicago minority street fighter, fitting well into the Democratic machine — “Vote early, vote often!” He describes himself as a “community organizer,” which in retrospect appears to have included an armband of some sort and included duties like registering the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to vote. His politics are those of the ’60s campus radical, as are those of his mentors and appointees. He has exchanged treasury dollars for support and votes in the tradition of his party and as promised, has siphoned trillions of them off to promote his social welfare utopian ideals — most of those dollars ending up in the hands of his cronies. Although this “tax, spend, elect” cycle is short-lived per force, concluding when the treasury is emptied, the tactic often plays well to the electorate, in the short term. That run is about over judging from the 50 percent increase in the national debt in just the first 3 years of Obama’s presidency.

The President has recently been seen making the television show circuit, demonstrating to his base that he is indeed the man they were told he was just 4 years ago — before he demonstrated a deaf ear to the citizens of the nation, and turned his tenure into a non-stop vacation cruise around the world.

The President’s White House is reported to be a boy’s club, hostile to working women and focused on sports television programming and drinking beer with other cool guys.

So is Barack Hussein Obama the coolest president we’ve had in the White House? He’s not the player that Kennedy and Clinton were, and he hasn’t put away as much booze as some of the record holders . . . but all in all, it appears safe to say that he is indeed the most common man that has graced the hallowed sanctum of the people’s house.

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Hope and Change Now Defined

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President Obama ran on hope and change when he asked America to make him the president. On the day he took office gasoline prices were $1.79.

The average unemployment rate under George Bush was 5.2 percent, considered full employment for those seeking work.

Candidate Obama blasted the Bush administration for those “dismal numbers.”

Now gasoline prices are stuck near $4.00 a gallon with no relief in sight and the real unemployment and underemployment rate remains above 15 percent, and it is much worse for American minorities.

Even the government’s official unemployment numbers have the president’s unemployment rate above 8 percent for most of his administration, averaging 9.0 percent. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified Wednesday that he projects the official rate will remain between 8.2 and 8.5 percent for the remainder of 2012, and that takes into consideration all of the job seekers who just give up and fade away from government statistics.

You may recall President Obama’s famous interview with Matt Lauer on “Today” on February 1, 2009 (we’ve inserted the video below), just after taking office as he asked the congress for his first economic stimulus package—nearly $900 billion.

Lauer: At some point will you say ‘Wait a minute. We’ve spent this amount of money; we’re not seeing the results. We’ve got to change course dramatically.’

Obama: Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing I find about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. I’ve got four years. A year from now people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years then there’s going to be a one term proposition.

Does this indicate that Obama will be voting for Romney in November, because despite increasing the national debt a full 50 percent from $10 trillion to $15 trillion in just 3 years, the economy is much worse than when he took the helm. Of course, the President’s re-election team has begun chanting the mantra that if unemployment dips below 8 percent or gasoline prices drop 10 cents, then that is evidence that the President’s leadership is superior. They’re wrong.

Voters are shaky with Obama’s track record, and a new Fox News Poll reveals that Americans aren’t giving him a lot of credit for effort. Here are the answers of those who were asked-

BEST THING PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS DONE TO HELP THE ECONOMY:

15%      Stopped Job Loss/Recession
8%        Loans to Auto Industry
7%        Stimulus Bill
5%        New Health Care Law
43%     Done Nothing to Help

The poll also asked the question that Ronald Reagan posed to voters: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Of course, as painful a memory as the Jimmy Carter economy was, you may be surprised to learn that the average unemployment rate during his administration was just 7.6 percent–a number that the current administration would claim to be a resounding success.

Obama Comes Out

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Pundits scratched their heads at Vice President Joe Biden’s unexpected declaration of support for gay marriage. In the following days speculation grew that the White House was telegraphing a major policy shift announcement. For anyone who was paying attention or who cared to look at the record, President Obama has never been opposed to alternate lifestyle trends, and has specifically been a consistent supporter of gay “rights,” championing the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. military.

In fact, pressure has been building for some time in the President’s base as a result of his reluctance to come out of the closet on the gay marriage issue. On Wednesday, President Obama announced during an ABC television interview, that he now supports gay marriage. Newsweek magazine, which has featured Obama on several of its covers, this week added a rainbow halo, canonizing him with the epithet “THE FIRST GAY PRESIDENT.”

Predictably, within days of making his position clear on the issue the President has received a deluge of campaign contributions from his hard left supporters—who were overtly withholding funding support pending his public announcement. Starting with the $40,000 per plate Hollywood bash hosted by George Clooney, the re-election campaign has garnered a quick $21 million resulting directly from the President’s change of public position on gay marriage.

The President insists that he has not flip-flopped on gay marriage, but has simply “evolved” his views. Regardless of the President’s assertions on his reasons for changing his stance, a CBS/New York Times poll reflects that American voters are ignoring contrived social issues coming out of the White House, and that 62 percent believe that the economy is the pivotal issue in this election—an issue that the President is apparently trying to obscure with a recent flurry of social issues discussions.

While the President is calling on the congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, GOP challenger Mitt Romney has confirmed his agreement with the American people that marriage is between a single man and a single woman. A full 67 percent of Americans believe the President’s revelation on his gay marriage views is politically motivated; a clear attempt to gather support and money. Over 25 percent of those polled say that the President’s announcement has caused them to reconsider their support of his re-election.

Will the President’s obvious pandering to the far left hurt his re-election chances? The CBS/New York Times poll shows Mitt Romney pulling ahead in what has been a close race. Why is the President’s campaign flailing? It could be that Christian African-Americans who are strongly opposed to gay lifestyles and other issues of morality are beginning to reassess their carte blanche endorsement of the man who promised them so much, and has delivered nothing but skyrocketing unemployment in their families and neighborhoods.

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