Obama Decides To Break The Law and Use TARP For Whatever He Desires

Dear Leader has decided that he will use the TARP funds for whatever he wants to use them for, even if it is against the law:

Orszag Admits Obama Admin Intends to Break Law

During questioning last week on Capital Hill, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag admitted the Obama administration intends to break the law and use TARP funds for whatever they desire. 

Passed by Congress in 2008 using scare tactics, the $700 billion TARP bailout specifically designated that all monies recouped must be used to pay down the national debt. But President Obama has included the expenditure of TARP funds in his 2011 budget despite its illegality.

It appears the $787 Billion Stimulus package wasn’t a large enough slushfund for the Democrats. They’ve found a golden TARP piggy bank to siphon off monies to purchase votes for the upcoming election.

The law is not just for the little people, Mr. President.

The Secular Wolves Close In

Christian Americans must commit to taking an active stand against the galloping secularism of our time

The Secularist Wolves and Religious Freedom

By Peter Marshall

The secularists who constantly attack our religious rights in today’s America remind me of wolves endlessly circling the campfire, just beyond the ring of light, eyes gleaming in the darkness. Periodically, a beleaguered Christian snatches up a First Amendment firebrand and lunges at the wolves with it through a court action that forces them to retreat momentarily. But, the wolves keep returning, each time slinking a little bit closer to the Christians.
 
I’m writing today about the steady erosion of our religious liberties, particularly in regard to the continual chipping away of the First Amendment right to resist being forced to act against one’s religious convictions in public life.
 
* A Montana judge rules that healthcare providers are required to arrange for euthanasia when a patient requests it.
 
* A California court penalizes doctors for referring a patient to another clinic because they did not want to perform in-vitro fertilization for an unmarried couple.
 
* The Equal Employment Commission rules against a Catholic North Carolina college for refusing to provide its employees with health insurance that covers contraception, which is against Catholic doctrine.
 
* Catholic Charities in Boston is forced to shut down its adoption services because the Massachusetts court decrees that it will have to place babies with homosexual couples, in contradiction of Catholic doctrine.
 
* The Ninth Circuit court seeks to compel a park on CaliforniaState land to remove a long-standing memorial cross, rather than trade the land with the cross into private hands.
 
* A New Hampshire divorce court orders a Christian mother to stop homeschooling because her daughter “appeared to reflect her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith” — (which translated merely means, I suspect, that she is a committed Christian like her mother).
 
* Virginia mother Lisa Miller has defied a Vermont court order of January 1 to deliver her beautiful seven-year-old biological daughter Isabella to her former lesbian partner, Janet Jenkins. Lisa became a Christian, got out of lesbianism, and does not want to expose Isabella to Janet Jenkins and her lifestyle. Lisa has taken her daughter and disappeared, forced into hiding to protect her child from the monstrosities of modern secular sexuality.
 
Even in the face of these developments there is no reason for panic. None of these incidents by itself spells a crisis in the practice of American Christianity. None of them in itself presages the end of the freedom of religion in our country. Even all added up together they do not indicate that Christians are being thrown to the wolves by the courts — at least not yet. But the courts are allowing the secularist wolves to creep ever closer. And, to continue employing the allegory, the courts are shrinking the size of the First Amendment fires that our Founding Fathers bravely lit against the world’s darkness. Every judicial ruling against someone attempting to stand on his or her First Amendment religious freedom rights sets a precedent for the denial of those rights in the next court case.
 
What are Christians to do?
 
The choice of many, if not most of us, seems to be accommodation and appeasement. Or, what I call the Rodney King plea: “Can’t we all just get along?” The underlying motive here is invariably one of currying favor — trying to gain acceptance from the secular world around us. One of the most egregious examples of this comes from storied Notre DameUniversity’s President, Father John Jenkins. Last year, he invited President Obama, a notoriously pro-abortion politician, to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame’s graduation. Here, at one of the great bastions of the American Catholic Church was an open, deliberate, highly visible rejection of the Catholic (and of course Christian) teaching that abortion is sinful and wrong. For a supposedly Christian university to so publicly honor a man who, throughout his public career has bent over backwards to support the slaughter of unborn babies, is to dishonor the Christian faith. Jenkins tried the nakedly political ploy of supposedly balancing the scales by inviting Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon to receive the prestigious Laetare Medal at the same time. To her everlasting credit, Ms. Glendon, a conscientious Catholic, refused the honor. In an open letter to Father Jenkins she explained that in honoring Obama the university was acting in express defiance of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
 
Appeasement never works. Whether it’s Father Jenkins trying to be Catholic and at the same time currying favor with the secular academic world, or Neville Chamberlain throwing Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in 1938 in an attempt to make him stop bullying Europe, you cannot make a bully change his behavior by trying to curry favor with him. We conservative Christians can never succeed in holding on to our shrinking religious rights by “making nice” with the militant secularists. That will not work.
 
Another option open to us is to simply withdraw from the culture and adopt a ghetto mentality that concentrates on huddling in our local churches while decrying the sad state of things in society. This is what one columnist termed “the Amish option.” This, of course, is exactly what the militant secularists want us to do. “You Christians can believe anything you please, as long as you keep it to yourselves.” To a great extent, this is the posture adopted by British Christians, and to a slightly lesser degree, by Canadian ones as well. But, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not, by definition, able to be kept to oneself. “Go into all the world and proclaim,” our Lord said. Christianity demands involvement with our neighbors. Further, since Satan hates all things Christian, and seeks to destroy Christians altogether instead of being satisfied to make them merely less influential, he will not allow an increasingly secular society to leave Christians alone to mind their own business. The Neronian persecution of the Early Church teaches us that the great Enemy of our souls will cause his secular minions to actively pursue and hunt down the people of God.
 
And, speaking of minding your own business, it is becoming much more difficult for Christians to do that. To be an evangelical Christian and also a pharmacist is becoming a contradiction in terms. Refusing to sell a prescription for the “morning after” abortifaciant can cost a pharmacist his job these days, if the customer sues. In Canada, preaching against homosexuality can cause a pastor to be convicted of hate-crimes speech. And if Canada is there already, can America be far behind? We may well see the day in the not too distant future when clergy that refuse to perform same-sex marraiges will be stripped of their right to perform marriages recognized by the state. The wolves are not inclined to leave us alone.
 
Withdrawal is really not a viable option.
 
Two religious freedoms are at stake here: the freedom of conscience for the individual, and the freedom of religion for churches. The loss of either is severely damaging for America; the loss of both is devastating. As the secularists seek to strip the public square of all religious influence, they seek to shame Christians’ beliefs, silence public Christian speech, abolish Christian teaching from education, and prohibit Christian argument against any sinful and immoral elements of modern life.
 
But, if religious speech and Christian involvement in society is gradually eliminated, if Christians are intimidated by suppression or refused participation in society because of their Christian faith, then society will be the loser. Consider the sad outcome of the State of Massachusetts’ insistence that  Catholic Charities of Boston must place babies with homosexual couples. That Catholic organization could not abide by the court’s ruling without violating the Church’s (and Holy Scripture’s) stance on homosexuality. So, it closed its adoption agency, depriving the people of Massachusetts of one of the best social service organizations in the state. A sad thing indeed.
 
Note that as a society becomes increasingly secular, than the compassion and caring will disappear, because Christians are far more motivated to help the poor, hurting, and needy than secularists are. But, of course, the secularists will never admit that. They can’t afford to believe that they fall short of Christians in charity and at the same time maintain their smug superiority, which may be the only thing preventing them from becoming Christian.
 
The Church of Jesus Christ cannot shrink from the duty to which its Lord has called it: to stand up to the wolves and proclaim that Jesus Christ is the only cure for all of society’s ills; that every human being is made in the image of God and valued by Him, and therefore is worthy of our protection and care; and that the eternal truths proclaimed by Holy Scripture from ancient days are still the truths which give purpose and meaning to life today.
 
In a democratic, open, and free society, all religious believers must be free to live publicly according to their consciences. Correspondingly, all churches must be free to publicly proclaim the Gospel of Christ, administer programs of charity, denounce sinful aspects of society, and defend the dignity and life of those unable to defend themselves.
 
To this end, we Christian Americans must commit to taking an active stand against the galloping secularism of our time. Pastors and churches must throw off their reluctance to speak out against the evils of our time because of their fear of losing their 501 C-3 status, or incurring the disapproval of the local newspaper, or their denomination, or their friends, or the deacons, or whomever.
 
Against the encroaching wolves, we must be willing to fight for genuine religious freedom for all Christian believers (and others, too): the freedom to earn a living as Christians, the freedom to educate our children as Christians, the freedom as Christians to minister to the poor and needy, the freedom to participate as Christians in the debate of public policy, and most important of all, the freedom to proclaim the Gospel that Jesus Christ is the Resurrection and the Life into every corner of an American culture that is more and more captive to a spirit of death.
 
Stand. And proclaim the truth of Christ, my friends.
 
Thrust the burning light of Christ’s truth at the wolves.
 
“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
 
It never will. 

America’s Acceptance of It’s Own Decline and Demise

I know a man who served as a pastor in Rhodesia back in the late 1970’s-early 80’s who gave a startling seminar I attended in 2002. He gave a presentation that began with a slideshow of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 that showcased a massive coronation parade – all the nations of it’s empire were presented in a majestic show of both grandeur and power. It was clear to see by how many peoples and nations represented the British Empire how it was said that the sun never set on it.

In a little over seven years from the coronation – Britain was HALF of what it was at the Queen’s coronation and had clearly fallen into decline. It’s world reserve currency was replaced by the Dollar and Britain took a back seat to world politics.

But it was an easy decline for the British people, because America picked up the slack and there was no harm put upon Britain herself. She was suddenly free to pursue the social experiments that consigned her to permanent satellite status and irrelevance.

This pastor explained how her colonies suffered a very different fate – and told of the horrors of Rhodesia’s upheaval, revolution, misery and genocide to the point of where it is today as Zimbabwe.

Then this pastor gave a warning, about how rapid America’s decline into ruin could occur. Even more rapidly than Britain’s collapse if our own people, like the British, accepted the shrinking of our super power status. The difference being, we will not have another Anglo/Western power to cushion our collapse and settle us down into Socialism easy.

We will have a violent replacement of our position by something entirely hostile to our very existence.

Amazingly – I read this piece by Mark Steyn today – and while it is lengthy, he makes the same case – with similar examples, and does a great job of highlighting the danger of being seduced into accepting our decline. 

THE SEDUCTIONS OF DECLINE

In a more dangerous world, American decline will be steeper, faster and more devastating than Britain’s – and something far closer to Rome’s.

Serious consideration should be given to where we find ourselves and what our near-future may end up becoming.

Obama Reveals His True Dictatorial Desire and Nature

America is in the hands of a dangerous pathological narcissist who is letting the veneer of statesman slip to reveal his true nature; that of a dictator.

 

Obama’s first State of the Union speech revealed that Obama was not going to waver from his Left-tilt bent into Marxism even after the trouncing Democrats have received in the last several elections culminating in Scott Brown’s election to the seat held for decades by Ted Kennedy.  Obama proved that he truly is a pathological narcissist that is angered over his loss of popularity in the polls.  What we saw on Wednesday night was an angry petulant child lashing out at his perceived enemies while touting himself as savior by his non-achievements.  His bold-faced lies began nearly the moment he started speaking and did not let up until he got to his Mussolini-esque defiance at “I don’t quit!”.

What stood out in the speech, were two things that revealed his dictatorial nature:  his slam of the Supreme Court;  and his decree that he will issue an executive order to seat a debt commission that the Senate voted him down on.

He has spent the last year actively pitting one group of Americans against another.  After the failed Jihadist terror attack on Christmas day, he pitted one federal agency against the other to absolve himself of blame.  Last night he began to pit each branch of government against the other.

Despots do this, not presidents.

Obama’s demagoguery of the Supreme Court was unprecedented.   He first lied and misconstrued the facts of the case, which given the fact he was supposedly a Constitutional lawyer, cannot be simply chalked up to ignorance.  Obama claimed during his speech that the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC,

“opened the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections”.

He then raised the demagoguery by stating:

“Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”

The president’s statement is patently false and deliberately misleading. 

The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Period.

And rightfully so.

Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. 

Foreign corporations are expressly prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.” 

Of course it is now major news that Justice Samuel Alito dared to defy the wannabe-king by mouthing the words ‘That’s not true” while shaking his head.  

In true Pravda fashion, the State-run  sycophantic media lapdogs of Obama – instead of checking into WHY Justice Alito would be shaking his head at Obama’s remarks, attacked Justice Alito for daring to disagree with Der Fuhrer.  Shaking your head, yelling “You lie!” or refusing to stand and applaud Obama is grounds for complaint from both the White House and his media.  In nations that have already gone down the path Obama is taking us – such insolence is met with a gunshot to the head, followed by burial in a mass grave.

The bashing of this decision by SCOTUS demonstrates either blithering ignorance or willful loathing of the law.  I’m going to assume the latter given Obama’s tenure as a Constitutional lawyer.  He then went on and directed Congress to circumvent the Court’s decision in the Citizens United vs Federal Election Commision decision and “right that wrong”.

Such is hubris of a kind not seen in the Oval Office.

But Obama did not stop there in revealing his true self.

He then chided the U.S. Senate for blocking his proposal to create a ‘debt reduction commission’.  Because of their blocking, Obama will simply create the commission by decree.

“Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans” 

Because HE refuses.  The Monarch refuses to allow the pesky Separation of Powers and the Constitution to get in his way of destroying the country.  With such open and deliberate defiance, one has to wonder that if his Health Care Takeover plan meets a similar fate in the Senate – will he will do the same thing – and simply enact his desires by decree?

This is what tinpot Marxist dictators like Hugo Chavez do.

We are in mortal danger here as Obama lets the veil slip – and we see the dragon’s skin underneath his thin veneer of coolness.

Mark Alexander notes that it is Obama Versus the Constitution and Ben Shapiro points out the media’s blame Alito strategy.

Red Letter Christian Socialist Jim Wallis Concurs With Obama’s Attack on Banks

The High Priest of Obamanation and Socialism urges changing the free market for the “common good”.

One of the greatest dangers besides the Marxist in the White House that our culture faces is the Christian Socialist Movement.  Combining Leftist (Progressive) politics with selected parts of the New Testament, Red Letter Christian Sojourners seek to equate Christianity with Socialism – and therefore Christian duty.

Along with attacking Biblical Christian stands against Homosexuality and Abortion, this week Jim Wallis decided to give religious weight to Obama’s plan to nationalize the banks by regulating their size and activities. I’m still trying to find the scriptures where Jesus said Christians should empower the government to order businesses to give charity and to regulate their business to ensure ‘righteousness’.

I’m going to comment on this backwards religious Marxism as prompted by the article.

Liberal Evangelical Christian Jim Wallis Rips Banks; Calls Bonuses ‘Sins of Biblical Proportions’ 

When you breach the sacrosanct wall between church and state, and use religion to promote policy, bad things happen. At least, that’s what the left has been telling us for years.

But Rev. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and author of “Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street,” sees it differently. Wallis used his interpretation of religion, particularly the Bible, to play the populist card and categorize portions of the American private sector as greedy on MSNBC’s Jan. 21 “Morning Joe.”

“These bank bonuses, I would say, are a sin of Biblical proportions,” Wallis said. “But to pick on the banks alone misses the point. It’s a symptom, I think of a real erosion of societal values because new maxims have taken us over – ‘greed is good,’ ‘it’s all about me and I want it now.’”

Yes, this is true.  Especially if you are a Marxist like Obama or a Christian Socialist like Wallis, who see no problems with being greedy with YOUR business, YOUR property, YOUR money.  It’s all about THEM and they want to tell you what to do with your money NOW.  Greed is good if you can disguise it as government charity.

Wallis suggested our society adopt a values system that sounded more like socialism than the rugged individualism that has made American great. He proposed using the economic downturn to implement these “values.”

Wallis is a known Socialist who has been busy creating “The Christian Left“, an amalgamation of Socialism and Community Leftist Activism coupled with their insistence that Jesus was a Socialist due the red letters He spoke.   They use the Sermon on the Mount as a proof text to justify their assertion that being a good Christian means being a good Socialist. 

“To those, I want to propose some old virtues like ‘enough is enough,’ ‘we’re in this together,’ and I love the Native American notion that you value decisions today by their impact on the seventh generation out,” Wallis said.

Yes, he’s proposing pagan virtues not found in scripture.  I do not find any translation of either the Hebrew, Greek or Chaldee that says “enough is enough” or “We’re in this together and therefore the government should nationalize your business”

“Now that would change things. So, I think we need to use a crisis to recalibrate and to think, if we miss the opportunity, all pain, suffering – my hometown of the Detroit, I was just there to launch a book, launching a book in the worst city in the country but it was the right place before going to New York. We don’t do this, we won’t redeem this crisis. So, let’s use the chance to rethink our values here.”

Hmmmm, “use a crisis to recalibrate what we think”?   Who was it that said “Never let a crisis go to waste”?  Oh yes, Obama’s very own Rahm Emmanuel.  It’s interesting that Wallis is of the mind we should use this crisis to ‘rethink our values’.  Didn’t Obama suggest something similar in his crusade to “change the foundations of the country”?  If you do some digging on their website, you’ll discover what those ‘progressive’ values actually are.  They are not biblical.  They are massaged to appear biblical.

But I’m curious there Mr. Wallis, in the spirit of ‘rethinking our values’ – the profits you are making from this book of yours – I assume you are sending them to Haiti or to someone who needs to keep his house in Detroit being foreclosed on?

From a policy standpoint, Wallis suggested America use these reassessed values to create this so-called “new economy.”

“Well, wealth doesn’t trickle down,” Wallis said. “We’ve learned that. But bad behavior does. And so, I think underneath this economic crisis there is really a values crisis. And how we get a moral compass for a new economy and I’m hearing this from business people, from unemployed workers.”

I do not find Jesus asking His disciples to use their values to create a ‘new economy’.  Make disciples, baptize – yes.  Make a Socialist economy?  No.  In Wallis’ estimation, Capitalism is of the Devil, Socialism is of God.  In his mind, Capitalism and the Free Market are the ‘values crisis’ that needs to be changed.  Socialism is the new ‘moral compass’ in his liturgy.

Wallis related a story about a protest in which he participated in Dec. 2009.

“I was standing on the steps of the Treasury Building with people that were being foreclosed upon and they talked about what happened,” Wallis said. “And they began to cry and I get up as the religious leader and I just got mad. I said, you know, we extended grace to these big banks because we are afraid after meltdown. They’re extending no grace to the people who need it – small businesses need help to do jobs. That’s right.”

I thought Grace was the province of God?  I was not aware that grace is about extending money to people who owe on mortgages they could not afford in the first place.  All Wallis advocates here is irresponsibility and the religious virtue of helping people be irresponsible.

As for the Wall Street bonuses, which banks are contractually obligated to pay and some employees rely upon in lieu of a regular salary – Wallis said to send them to Haiti.

“And these $150 billion, these bonuses, this could erase the budget gap in 50 states. this could provide health insurance for 30 million people. A quarter of it could prevent and postpone foreclosures until 2012. This is a lot of money. I say send the bonuses to Haiti or something like that.”

So, a “Christian virtue” is to have others dictate and tell you what you should do with your own money?  Matthew 20 more than counters this envious and tyrannical mindset, for Jesus Himself says in His parable of those who want to tell the Estate owner what he should do with his money “Am I not permitted to do what I choose with what is mine? Or do you begrudge my generosity? Is your eye evil because I am good?” Matthew 20:15

Wallis channeled his inner-Ellsworth Toohey to bash the market system and called for the change for “the common good.”

Yeah.  Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Obama all said the same thing.

“We lost, Mike [Barnicle], the notion of the common good,” Wallis said. “The invisible hand of the market let go of the common good. How do you restore a sense of community again? That’s I think the issue before us.”

“Morning Joe” panelist and CNBC “Closing Bell” anchor Maria Bartiromo asked Wallis if the American dream was still achievable.

“The chances of that are less than ever because of how the debt is stacked from the top,” Wallis said. “That kind of opportunity is what we need.”

The “common good” Mr. Wallis?  James 1:27 defines what pure and undefiled religion is.  What you mean by ‘common good’, is not the same thing James or Jesus advocated.

‘Common good” to you is “Communism”.

This Morning In The Bunker: Der Fuhrer Learns Scott Brown Wins “Ted Kennedy’s” Seat

It Was Only A Matter of Time

Before the nuts blamed global warming or the failure of the Copenhagen conference for the earthquake in Haiti.

They did not disappoint.

Now watch the fallout about Pat Robertson’s comment about the Haitian disaster.  Nary a word about what Commie Danny Glover had to say will make it beyond the blogosphere.

I imagine the headlines will be about how horrible and judgmental Christians are while Glover gets celebrated as being ’sensitive’ and ‘right on’.

Meanwhile Messiah Obama has spoken about the Haitian plight several times now.  We should expect the seas to part; food to multiply; people to be healed and raised from the dead because The One has stated that HE would not forget them.

The Weak Jesus of Modern Churchianity

“Judge not, lest you be judged”;  ”Compassion and tolerance”; “Meekness”; “love”; “Never a harsh word”.

Those are a sampling of the scriptures and sentiments used to render Christianity  in this country and the West – impotent and of no power.  Modern Christianity has constructed an entirely new Jesus for itself.  A Jesus whom would never utter an angry word of condemnation, would never fight or go to war, who does not condemn sin or expect His followers to overcome sin.  Churchianity has decided to make those tenets it’s primary doctrine rather than to transform the world by encouraging repentance.  That teaches instead that we are to be “tolerant” of the sinful world and not to “judge the world” by condemning sin. Because it is now said that to condemn the sin is to condemn the sinner, because the sin defines who the sinner truly is.  And they say, Jesus would not judge someone for who they are.

Christianity, once a bulwark to the oppressive unGodliness and tyranny of men, has become conformed to the world, in order to believe a deception that there is nothing in this world Jesus would fight or stand against.

This sentiment, plaguing the Christian church is one of the major reasons Christianity is being shoved out of the culture and into the closet by secular hedonists.  Christians are no longer standing, they are bowing down and surrendering the culture without a fight because they have been deceived into thinking being Christian means loving and accepting everything under the doctrine of tolerance.  Praying for our enemies now means we should accommodate and make exceptions for our enemies to oppress us.  Doing so is the highest form of Christian tolerance.

But Satan is NOT tolerant, and this secular culture that has replaced the Christian culture is the most INTOLERANT of any dissent, belief or practice outside of Islam itself.

The weak Jesus of modern Churchianity is being steamrolled and crushed by secularism, debauchery and  political apathy.  It is no wonder why Islam is conquering the globe while Secularists apologize for and are allied with them in their shared quest to rid the world of Christianity.

So who is the real Jesus?  The meek and lowly waif and figure of modern abandonment theology that only loves and forgives and pours out blessings?  Or is there something modern Christians are missing?

The Real Jesus

By Jim O’Brien

I don’t know exactly when it was that I looked at the picture behind the preacher on Sunday morning and said to myself “That picture is a fake!” but I do remember saying it in Sunday School class.  It didn’t earn any gold stars.
 
Maybe it was after reading Paul’s statement that “nature itself teaches you that long hair on a man is a disgrace” (1 Cor. 11:14 GNB) I couldn’t envision the Apostle Paul saying that if Jesus had sported long hair.
 
Nor was he handsome. In fact Isaiah’s description of the Messiah says “there was nothing attractive about him, nothing that would draw us to him.” (Isaiah 53:2 GNB)
 
It could have been when I first realized that any man who had grown up working in construction during the 1st Century A.D. would of necessity be a brawny guy. The picture just didn’t look very tough.
 
The picture on the wall did not look like the Christ who will return to the earth to make war described in Revelation 19:11-16.
 
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns
 
And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses.  And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
 
And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” 
 
The typical picture of Jesus often overlooks the account of Jesus throwing out the moneychangers from the temple. (Matt. 21:12) How many moneychangers where there?  The Bible doesn’t say.  But it was a large area so one could reasonably expect it to be several, maybe a score or more.  No wimpy man could physically throw out that many men and turn over their means of doing business.  That was my kind of guy.
 
There is the Jesus that painted a verbal picture of carnality and said  “for after all these things do the Gentiles seek.” (Matt. 6:32 KJV)  

Jesus was too strong to be confined by politically correct speech. As in the time when he called the political and religious leaders of his day a bunch of snakes the children of snakes and asked how they could escape hell. (Matt. 23:33) That’s the kind of statement that makes the heart of an Irishman beat strong.
 
It’s also the kind of statement that makes me think something has been lost from mainstream Christianity.
 
The other day some news analysts were discussing the recent revelation of the sins of Tiger Woods, the golf phenom. It’s hard to pass a check out counter at the super market without reading about his loss of income and speculation about an impending divorce. So someone asked if Tiger can make an emotional recovery from the sins of the past. Brit Hume replied:  

“The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.”
 
The reaction to Hume’s statement was predictable. A writer for the Washington Post demanded that Hume apologize because he had offended about half a billion Buddhists. Funny, there are over two billion Christians on the earth and multiple thousands being persecuted, some martyred almost on a daily basis around the world by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims yet the American press seems strangely unconcerned about the offense caused to Christians.
 
Maybe the reason is that mainstream Christians resemble more the picture on the wall at the front of church than they do the man who stood alone against a mob intent on stoning a woman taken in adultery.
 
Maybe Christianity needs an infusion of the real Jesus, not the picture on the wall.

Tyranny Under The Boy-King

My friend, the Rev.  Peter Marshall hits one out of the park with his most recent commentary, and makes some disturbing observations as we enter 2010.

I Will Make Boys Their Princes 

Peter Marshall

There are certain Old Testament passages that seem terribly relevant to America these days. Isaiah 3:4 and 12, and Proverbs 29:2: 

“And I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them. 

“My people — infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.

O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.” 

“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.” 

This is not a particularly happy note on which to begin the New Year, but folks, as we move into the early days of 2010 I just don’t see much to be happy about when it comes to the state of the nation. When I said above that these verses are “terribly” relevant, I chose that word advisedly. The course on which the Obama Administration has embarked our country is indeed terrible. For my money, the President is not up to the job. But it’s worse than that — much worse. 

I find myself wondering whether the hideous mistakes he’s making as President of the United States stem from the fact that Obama is simply not qualified to handle the job, or whether they are occurring for more sinister reasons.

Peter, there’s no wondering for me.  They are occurring DECISIVELY for sinister reasons and for reasons Obama has stated and written publicly.  They are also stated and evidenced by the Marxist Subversives who groomed him to the presidency like terrorist William Ayers, Atheist George Soros and Marxist race-baiters like Van Jones and Jeremiah Wright.  Obama stated unequivocally that he sought to “fundamentally change” the United States of America.  It continues to stun me how many people still do not grasp the depth of what he meant when he said that. Obama and his Politburo should make it clear to any casual observer that the undermining of our foundation and culture is precisely the goal and intent.

I will go so far as to say what few others will warn about Obama and this tyrannical bunch now in power.  Given the  past history of boy-king narcissist demagogues like Obama – the genocide of our own people at the hands of these people is in our near future if they are not stopped.

His dedicated focus on copying the failed 20^thcentury European experiments with socialism cannot be solely the product of ignorance about history and economics, though he has dangerously high levels of both. No, Obama’s problems are not just ignorance mixed with stupidity. Actually, he has smarts — he’s a quick study, and he’s shrewd and calculating. Those traits served him well in his rise up through the corruption of Southside Chicago politics. I’m afraid that I have to say that the word “wicked” in Proverbs 29:2 applies to the present Administration. The pending healthcare bill is wicked — I see absolutely nothing good about it. It is a horrifying intrusion into and takeover of our free enterprise system, and threatens to lay an unbearable tax burden on the American people, without fixing the areas of healthcare it should have addressed. It is well over 2,000 pages long, and most members of Congress have no idea what’s in it. The original Social Security bill was 52 pages long, and the contrast speaks volumes. It is an unqualified disaster of huge proportions, and I will have more to say about this in detail when the Senate and House conference produces a final product. 

Then there is the horrific (one runs out of negative adjectives when describing Obama’s programs) threat announced by the Administration. Since the Congress will not pass the awful Cap and Trade legislation on carbon dioxide emissions, the EPA has declared that it will go ahead and impose drastic cuts on industry anyway. This will, of course, put destructive burdens on an already shaky economy. 

EPA proposes the nation’s strictest-ever smog limits today, a move that would put Los Angeles, Chicago, their suburbs and much of the rest of the country in violation of federal air quality regulations.

I have written recently about the wrongheaded insanity of Obama’s foreign policy (which is bestowing on it an unwarranted dignity, since anything one could call a policy doesn’t seem to exist). And there will be more to say about that in coming months, you may be sure. 

One can go on and on listing the disasters inflicted on the world by this Administration in the year they’ve been at it, but today I want to focus on the matter of our struggles with global terrorism. This has been raised anew by the Christmas Day attack on Delta Flight 253 and the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (hereafter KSM) in New York City. 

“I will make boys their princes.” Obama really does seem to be a boy, in the sense that he has an immature, uninformed, and badly skewed view of the world. The indicators are that he does not take seriously that America is at war with global jihadists, who have made it clear that they are determined to destroy us. This is not an exaggeration, nor some sort of paranoia on my part — these people have made statement after statement saying that their objective is to bring us down and destroy our “infidel” civilization. I believe them. 

Obama and his Administration, per his order, refuse to use the words “terrorist” or “jihadist.” He has also banished the phrase “war on terror.” Janet Napolitano, former Governor of Arizona, and now in way over her head as the Director of Homeland Security, runs away from the reality of global terrorism by renaming it “man-caused disasters.” The President consistently downplays and minimizes the nature of the terrorist threat against us. Immediately after Nidal Hassan’s mass murder at Fort Hood, Obama warned us “against jumping to conclusions,” when the conclusions that this guy was an Islamic jihadist engaged in a terrorist attack were screamingly obvious. Even worse were Obama’s references to terrorist Abdulmutallab as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” Charles Krauthammer, who is my favorite political columnist these days, vividly remarked that that was akin to FDR saying to the Congress on the day after Pearl Harbor: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.” 

By the grace of God (and let me underline that!) Abdulmutallab’s explosive device failed to ignite properly, and when one of the passengers quickly jumped him any damage to anyone except the terrorist was averted. 

Janet Napolitano quickly made the incredible statement that “the system worked.” No, it certainly did not! Of course the President went public with the correct statement that what was almost a monstrous tragedy had been made possible by “human and systemic failures.” But that was too late to prevent the Administration from making itself look completely foolish, due to Napolitano’s brainless blurting. 

What did work on that Delta flight was good old fashioned Yankee alertness, resourcefulness, and quick action on the part of passengers and crew. The security system utterly failed. The terrorist’s own father alerted our government ahead of time — twice — and nothing was done. Abdulmutallab should have been immediately put on international no-fly lists, pending a thorough investigation. But, of course, this kind of practice, which is an obvious basic step that has to be taken to keep the skies safe, would instantly bring a huge outcry from the civil liberties people. In conditions of war, however, sometimes civil liberties have to undergo temporary suspension in order to expose and capture the undercover agents that the enemy employs. The Constitution makes provision for that very thing, which President Abraham Lincoln made use of during our Civil War, when he temporarily suspended the right of habeas corpus in order to prevent the undermining of the Union war effort. And, if memory serves correctly, Woodrow Wilson did something similar during World War I. There is no remote chance, unfortunately, of our current President doing any such thing, given his unwillingness to face the reality of the crisis. Mark my words, the way in which the Obama Administration is conducting the war on terror is greatly encouraging the jihadists to continue to launch attacks against America — particularly within the continental U.S. We can look forward to more of the same. 

Why? Because any terrorist act which takes place on American soil is being treated as a matter for a civil court, instead of a military tribunal. What this means is that civil laws apply, instead of military law. What the President should have done is to announce that Abdulmutallab was an illegal enemy combatant without uniform caught in the midst of an attack on civilians, and that he will be interrogated by military personnel to get information on his connections with al Qaida. But, what happened instead was that he was jailed in Detroit and instantly got “lawyered up” as if he were a domestic criminal. Which means that the first thing his lawyers told him was to shut up, and tell the authorities nothing. So, we lost the opportunity to learn from this enemy everything he knows about al Qaida, how they trained him, who his contacts were, etc. 

As Krauthammer has pointed out, this treatment is completely nonsensical. If we had found this guy in Yemen, where he was being trained as a terrorist, we could have snuffed him out with a Predator drone — quickly, efficiently, and without recriminations. But, if we catch him in (or over) the U.S. in the very act of attempting mass murder, he “instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.” We don’t even get a chance to practice our waterboarding techniques! All of this, because we have a government in power that doesn’t even want to correctly name our enemies, much less properly combat them. 

The KSM trial in New York City promises to be a media circus, which will probably devolve into a farcical political show trial. The fact that he’s being tried in civilian court means that through his lawyers’ rights of discovery and cross examination KSM will have access to critical information about intelligence sources and methods. That is precisely what happened in the New York City trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced by the court to turn over to the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators, including the name of Osama bin Laden. “Within ten days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.” In addition, as KSM spends the rest of his life behind bars here in the U.S., he will have the opportunity to share all the information that he has learned with inmates. And, as everybody knows, one of the most fruitful sources for jihadist recruiting is the American prison population. 

Further, KSM has already confessed to planning the World Trade Center attacks, and has stated that he wants to be executed for it — angling for the chance to play the Islamic terrorist martyr role. Instead, he will now take advantage of all the publicity surrounding the trial in the world’s media center to make his case for jihad before the cameras and microphones. So, attacking a U.S. military target, like the U.S.S. Cole, gets you a military tribunal and swift justice levied out in comparative obscurity. But, attack thousands of civilians on American soil, and you get your Miranda rights, lots of lawyers, instant global celebrity, and a huge propaganda platform — all courtesy of Obama’s leftist Attorney General, Eric Holder, who is the one insisting on doing it this way. 

We’re only about a year into a four-year Presidential term, folks. Lots of opportunities for more horrendous leadership to come out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But, in November of this year, we the people get an opportunity of the mid-term Congressional elections to express our attitudes about the “wickedness” coming out of Washington. God grant that the people will rise up. May the “guides” (who) “mislead” us be replaced, and may the “righteous increase,” that the “people (may) rejoice.” If we truly depend on God’s grace and blessing, and actively do our part, we can change the direction of our nation. 

Obama’s C-Span Lies as Pelosi’s Politburo Moves Healthcare Negotiations Behind Closed Doors

It’s actually refreshing to see the former mainstream media actually attempting to pull off some honest reporting.

Obama made more than 8 SPECIFIC promises that the Health Care negotiations would be done in full public view and on C-span.  Like everything else, he lied.  Here’s the video proof – though one has to wonder how long it will remain before Youtube yanks it.  Kudos to Naked Emperor News for nailing it.

Here’s the Wicked Witch of D.C. pulling a Josef Stalin on declaring that the health care debate has been the most “open and honest and transparent process”.  Notice the hatred and contempt she displays when pressed with the fact she is not being forthright with the fact the conference negotiations are taking place in secret behind closed doors, AFTER the fact the bills themselves were created in secret by unknown persons in the Obama Administration (Communist Van Jones reportedly helped write the omnibus Stimulus bill).

When pressed by the White House Press Corps, Obama Propaganda Stooge Robert Gibbs refused to answer any questions and spouted this belligerent gibberish.

So clearly, the Constitution, tradition, rules and ethics are out the window with Obama’s Politburo hacks recreating the Kremlin West and doing The Kruschev in ramming this thing down our throats whether we like it or not, and they refuse to be held to account whether we like it or not.

It’s called tyranny folks.  They simply have not gotten to the bayonet and club stage.

But they will.

It’s what ALL MARXISTS in power resort to in order to get their way.

UPDATE: White House permits only ONE HOUR of coverage of the Health Care Bill.