Gomorrah Returns

Our president makes it official. We are Gomorrah.

President Obama and "Tiller the Killer"

Dr. George Tiller, the notorious late-term abortionist, was recently murdered by a mentally ill man with little or no connection to pro-life groups. I wonder what President Obama thinks about this situation? Let's listen in on his speech...

Obama: "...we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject:  the killing of innocent men, women, and children."

Wow. He's taking a stand against abortion! Let's listen some more...

Obama: "It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children."

Interesting use of the metaphor "rocket." I suppose an abortionist's needle or saline solution or whatever method of termination he chooses could be akin to a "rocket." I wonder if the President will start quoting the Bible soon?

Obama: "The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

Not exactly the Bible, but is he using the Koran to defend the murder of Tiller as if the murderer has "saved all mankind" by saving Dr. Tiller's next appointment's baby? I can hardly believe my ears!

Oh, my mistake. President Obama wasn't talking to a crowd in Kansas, he was talking to a crowd in Cairo. I wish he was as pro-life in America as he is in the Egypt!

Obama Youth: A Dangerous Place For Christians

The "Serve America Act" was signed into law last March with a few pats on the back and little news coverage. At a cost of about $6 billion, it is intended to "expand the ranks of AmeriCorps" and "bring federal volunteer programs under a single umbrella." According to the New York Times, it broadly expands national community service programs, increases the number of positions from 75,000 to 250,000 and creates new ranks of paid "volunteers" to work in areas of education, clean energy, health care and veterans affairs. Most of the benefits are paid in college grants, so it's clearly directed toward the youth of America.

While it stresses community service, there is one thing strictly verboten: religious expression. The First Amendment states:

Clearly, the First Amendment does not apply in the Obama Youth. The bill reads:

Granted, few people want their tax dollars spent on something that establishes a mosque to convert people to Islam, but that does not negate the fact that the "Save America Act" directly violates the First Amendment when it prohibits the free exercise of religion, abridges the freedom of speech and forbids the right of people to peacably assemble if it involves uttering the words "Jesus," "Bible" or "God."

Given the current political climate, which will jail people who say that homosexuality is, according to the Bible, a sin, who trusts a program that directly prohibits the freedom of religion? If someone asks a participant in this massive volunteer army why they want to serve and their answer involves religious motivation, like "Jesus said we are to serve our brothers," then they are "engaging in any form of proselytization." If two people have a Bible study after a full day of volunteerism, they are "engaging in religious instruction."

The "Save America Act" sounds like a great idea with noble causes, but is it really noble to undermine the constitution and threaten religious freedom? It's time to really save America and throw this "progressive" piece of legislature in the trash before good people are thrown in jail.

2009 or 1934? (Both!)

In 1933, as today, a new president stepped into the White House, vowing change and decisive action at a time when a banking crisis posed a grave threat to the nation's economy. New Yorkers waited for food in 1934. In the '30s, total government spending as a share of the economy was less than 20 percent and the unemployment rate averaged more than 17 percent.

The economic morass that confronted Franklin D. Roosevelt 76 years ago was undeniably deeper and more ominous than the trouble President Obama is facing. Yet, according to economists and historians, there are also some telling similarities and cautionary lessons to be drawn from the experience of the Roosevelt years in the 1930s.

Roosevelt had his triumphs. He stemmed panic and stabilized the banking system with a combination of deposit insurance, government investment in banks, restrictions on banking practices and his "fireside chat" radio addresses, which repeatedly steadied the national mood and bought Roosevelt time to make changes.

Still, even after the government assistance, the surviving banks were shaken and lending remained anemic -- much as the nation's banks today are reluctant to make loans again, despite receiving more than $300 billion of taxpayers' money in Round 1 of the federal banking bailout.

So, throughout the 1930s, economic recovery remained frustratingly elusive and arrived only with the buildup for World War II in the 1940s.

The shorthand verdict on Roosevelt, economists and historians say, is that he was an eloquent and skillful politician, and an innovator in jobs programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and in regulatory steps like the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission to police Wall Street. But Roosevelt, they say, while brilliant in many ways, did not have a sure grasp of how to guide the economy as a whole.

"Roosevelt had some successes, but we hope that Obama is going to do better," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. "Otherwise, we're in trouble."

Cartoon from the 1934 Chicago Tribune. Article excerpted from the New York Times, January 26, 2009.

The (Ear)Mark of a Liar

In 2007, Sen. Barack Obama submitted 112 federal funding requests, known as earmarks, totaling more than $330 million in taxpayer funds. On the campaign trail, candidate Barack Obama railed against earmarks and promised that as president he would go through spending bills "line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." After passing the "bailout" plan, the president instructed US mayors to "spend that money wisely, free from politics and personal agendas," but he cannot do the same.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the budget Obama just signed contains 8,816 earmarks worth $7.6 billion. It includes $155.9 million worth of projects inserted by six members of the Obama administration who were members of Congress when the bill was first written. It was debated and passed after Obama was elected to office, but he chose to let them stay. Vice President Joe Biden got 56 earmarks totalling $52.1 million, including $13.7 million for the Intracoastal Waterway from the Delaware River to the Chesapeake Bay and $190,000 for a children's museum in Wilmington.

Is there any other way to construe the chasm between the words of Obama-as-candidate and the actions of Obama-as-president as anything short of duplicitous? He could have vetoed the bill, then perhaps been overridden by Congress, but he did nothing to stop it. In fact, he gleefully signed it. A scant fifty days into his administration, he has not only broken a campaign promise, but broken it in a massive way during perilous economic times.

The global economy may be difficult for the average person to understand, but it's stunningly simple to assess the character demonstrated in the Oval Office thus far. His actions and words do not line up. That makes him a liar.

Additional sources: cnn.com, news.yahoo.com, politifact.com.

An Administration of Fluid Ethics

The day after his grandiose inauguration, President Obama issues an Executive Order titled, "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel." In it, he stipulated that members of his administration would not "participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment." For example, a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company could not move into a leadership position at the Department of Health and Human Services without a two-year gap in between.

Sounds great. Almost refreshing. Finally some common sense and integrity in Washington DC.

Too bad it was a sham.

Within hours, the administration was issuing a "waiver" for William Lynn, the former Raytheon lobbyist named to the #2 position in the Defense Department. According to their website, Raytheon is "a technology leader specializing in defense, homeland security, and other government markets." So Lynn went from working on behalf of a government defense contractor to hiring government defense contractors. He was just the first of a barrage of similar appointments.

Next came Mark Patterson, a former advocate for Goldman Sachs, who is now the chief of staff to Tim Geithner. Aside from the fact that Geithner didn't pay his own taxes, yet now oversees the IRS, Patterson will be the #2 man sending taxpayer-funded bailouts to his former employer. Ethics shmethics!

According to the Times of India, Obama has appointed 17 lobbyists to take key positions in his administration. Presumably, they will all get the appropriate "waivers" so that a little thing like ethics won't get in the way of the same tawdry practices that have become the norm for our government. Oh, how I long for change.