Month: October 2012

by

A Biblical Model of Government

Note from Allen

I may have been too hasty in my eagerness to give you folks more content from someone new. It appears the piece I posted was not a complete, finished version. The fault for this rests entirely with me, not the author. Again, I jumped the gun. I get what the author was saying, and feel they had some excellent observations. But in all fairness, an incomplete work does not accurately reflect the authors intent or points. They did not asked for it to be removed. I have taken it upon myself to do it. I apologize to the readers, and especially to the author, for my error here. I hope that soon we can update with a more complete piece that is a better representation of the authors intent.

Sincerely,

Allen Jackson

 

 

by

News/Politics 10-11-12

What’s news today?

This seems to be the obvious answer. Again. Or still.

The story changes yet again, from Yahoo

“Senior State Department officials on Tuesday revealed for the first time certain details of last month’s tragedy in the former Libyan rebel stronghold, such as the efforts of a quick reaction force that rushed onto the scene and led the evacuation in a fierce gun battle that continued into the streets. The briefing was provided a day before department officials were to testify to a House committee about the most serious attack on a U.S. diplomatic installation since al-Qaida bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 14 years ago.

The account answers some questions and leaves others unanswered. Chief among them is why for several days the Obama administration said the assault stemmed from a protest against an American-made Internet video ridiculing Islam, and whether the consulate had adequate security.”

Read more here

And it looks like security officials have decided they aren’t going under the bus for this failure by the Obama admin. From ABC

“ABC News has learned that Eric Nordstrom, the former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, has told congressional investigators that security at the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was “inappropriately low” – and believed that State Department officials stood in the way of his attempts to change that.

Nordstrom and the commander of a 16-member Security Support Team, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, heard that foreign fighters were flowing across the Egyptian border and were making their way across the border to the Libyan city of Derna – which is to the east of Benghazi — and from there were making their way to Benghazi. But State Department officials seemed oblivious to their Benghazi post’s vulnerability.”

Read more here

And WeaselZippers has some of the video of the testimony here

So now we know who the sacrificial Lamb will be via ForeignPolicyCable

“In an often heated congressional hearing Wednesday, lawmakers and witnesses alike pointed to State Department official Charlene Lamb as the person most directly responsible for rejecting multiple requests for increased security at the U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya prior to the Sept. 11 attack.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) excoriated the State Department for rejecting requests from the U.S. Embassy in Libya for an extension of temporary security forces that were withdrawn in the months prior to the attack that killed Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In a dramatic moment at the hearing, Issa released unclassified cablesfrom March and Julythat the State Department had refused to release, detailing those requests.”

Read more here

More video from WeaselZippers here

Meanwhile the mother of the Ambassador is just fed up with the lies, via the WeeklyStandard

“COOPER : we’re talking tonight with pat smith whose son sean smith was killed in the benghazi attack. today his son asked mitt romney to stop invoking her son’s name on the campaign trail. pat smith did not speak about anyone’s political agenda tonight. she is, however, bitter ly disappointed with the search for answers.who told you that they would give you information?

SMITH: you will love this. obama told me, hillary promised me. joe biden was a pressure and a real sweetheart. they all told me that — they promised me. i told them please, tell me what happened. just tell me what happened.”

“COOPER: so you, are still waiting to find out what happened to your son what they know, or even what they don’t know.

SMITH: right. officially yes. i told them don’t give me any bologna you can keep your political stuff, just tell me the truth. and i still don’t know. in fact, today i heard that he died of smoke inhalation.”

Read more, and the video from CNN, here

They’ve been lying from the start. This is a total failure of Obama’s supposedly great foreign policy skills. Meanwhile Hillary is MIA.

by

James O’Keefe Strikes Again!

You know I’m a conspiracy nut, so you should have seen this coming.

Remember folks, vote early and often!

And if you need help, just stop by Obama’s Organizing For America, they’ll help you.

From ProjectVeritas, via the DailyCaller

“Videographer James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas caught an official for President  Barack Obama’s re-election campaign helping who she thought was an Obama  supporter set herself up to vote more than once in November.”

““We visited Organizing For America voter registration tables around New York  and Organizing For America headquarters around the country,” he said.

The video then cuts to a montage of different clips of Obama campaign  volunteers and staffers all over the country helping O’Keefe’s Project Veritas  activists get set up to vote twice, a sign there’s likely more to come.”

Read more here

Here’s the video.

by

News/Politics 10-10-12

This is the thread for news. What’s on your mind today?

Let’s start with ObamaCare today. How’s that workin’ out?

Uh, not well, not well at all.

From CNBC

“The owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants is putting more workers on part-time status in a test aimed at limiting the impact of looming health coverage requirements.”

“Darden Restaurants declined to give details but said the test is only in restaurants in four markets across the country. The test entails increasing the number of workers on part-time status, meaning they work less than 30 hours a week. Under the new health care act, companies will be required to provide health care to full-time employees by 2014. That would significantly boost labor costs for businesses.”

Read more here

Now before anybody goes and starts up an Occupy Darden rally, consider why this is happening. The answer is ObamaCare. And it’s already hammering our economy and these companies. It’s not only causing hours to be cut, it’s eliminating jobs as well. It’s just not what this economy needed.

From the WashingtonExaminer

“Fully implementing Obamacare regulations have already cost the U.S. economy $27.6 billion and more than 18,000 jobs according to a new study released today. Just the top ten most expensive regulations have cost $24.4 billion, according to the new non-partisan and independent American Action Forum (AAF) report.

Just complying with the state health exchanges alone has to cost employers $3.4 billion according to the AAF totals which were compiled from Federal Register data. In addition to the regulatory costs, AAF estimates that Obamacare regulatory compliance has eaten up more than 60 million hours in paperwork. At 2,000 hours a year that comes to 30,000 jobs.

The AAF paper also calculated the regulatory costs and job losses in each state for the top ten must expensive Obamacare regulations. California has borne the brunt of Obamacare’s costs suffering $3.4 billion in costs and 2,917 jobs lost. Texas has been hit second hardest with $1.8 billion in costs and 1,292 jobs lost.”

Read more here

And here’s the PDF of the study from AmericanActionForum

—————————————————————————————————————–

I found this interesting as well. It appears the Presidents assertions about Romney’s economic plan have been inaccurate.

I know,

😯

shocking right?

From HeritageBlog

“The Tax Policy Center is the industry standard for producing high-quality tax data that are integral to tax policy debates. However, in this TPC report, the authors’ choices and assumptions lead them to a carefully chosen result that is misleading and biased. This hinders the debate on tax reform because lawmakers and the public need accurate information to make good decisions.

At best, this TPC analysis confirms that tax reform will require political leaders to make difficult decisions. This is self-evident. If tax reform were easy, Washington would have reformed the current 26-year-old code long ago.”

Read more here

The whole debunking of this flawed study, also from Heritage, is here

Here’s what a Princeton economist has to say, via Breitbart

“Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, and liberal think tanks have claimed Mitt Romney’s plan to cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent is bad arithmetic, but a Princeton economics professor, Harvey Rosen, examined Romney’s proposals in a paper and concluded Romney’s plan would work. The economy would have to grow by 3 percentage points more over the term of his plan than it would have without his plan.”

Read more here

The whole piece from the Princeton economist is here in PDF

by

Pulpit Freedom Sunday 10-9-12

As you may already know, this past Sunday was designated Pulpit Freedom Sunday. It was an attempt to force the IRS, and the courts, to remove the federal statute enacted by LBJ which they feel unfairly limits churches from endorsing candidates for office from the pulpit. Let’s face it, Democrats have been doing this for years at certain churches anyway, and those churches have never faced penalties for it. The IRS is on shaky ground here, and they know it, that’s why they seem reluctant to enforce the law. They don’t seem to be in a hurry to have the courts review this, opponents say because they know they will lose. Usually, a strongly worded letter is as far as it’s pursued. But isn’t it time the courts revisit this?

Now I’m of two minds on this. I can see why a church might like the freedom to advocate for candidates that join them in sharing biblical reasons to take one position over another. But at the same time, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of politics being the focus of a worship service. I, like most of you I’m sure, don’t attend church for political reasons or guidance. I attend to join others in worshipping and praising God, as well as to continue to learn what His word says. I think if you know and study God’s word, you will already know which candidate you should support. Hearing my pastor say it isn’t necessary, and it’s not why I’m there.

Here’s a little more info on the group behind it, and some news on it.

The Speak Up Movement

The Alliance Defending Freedom

Here’s some news on it from Breitbart.

“Doubtless many of you are thinking to yourself, “That’s illegal—churches can’t endorse candidates.” You are correct that such endorsements violate a federal statute. However, that statute is almost certainly unconstitutional.”

“When serving in the Senate on July 2, 1954, Johnson pushed through the Johnson Amendment on the Senate floor without any committee hearings or discussion, making it illegal for nonprofit tax-deductible entities to speak in any manner intended to influence an election.

As ADF—a Christian legal organization that fights for the unborn, marriage, parental rights, and religious liberty—explains at its Pulpit Freedom website, this broke almost 200 years of practice where American pastors could freely speak on their understanding of how biblical principles applied to major issues facing the country, and which candidates for office those pastors believed did a better job of adhering to Christian principles in their proposed government actions. Video messages from leaders such as Pastor Jim Garlow and ADF’s lead lawyer on this project, Erik Stanley, walk visitors through the history of this issue and the specifics of ADF’s plan to combat this silencing of churches.”

“The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution protects the ability of churches—including pastors and lay Christians—and adherents of other faiths—to freely live out their faith through participating in the political process. And the Supreme Court has made it clear for more than a century—most recently in 2010 in Citizens United v. FEC, that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment guarantees that citizens can speak as freely through a corporate entity (such as a church) as they can individually about political and social issues.”

Read more here

So my questions are these. Did your church participate, and what do you feel the result was if they did? And what of the group promoting it?

by

News/Politics 10-9-12

What’s news today?

This story is interesting. The more we know, the worse it gets.

From TownHall,

“A new report obtained by Townhall from the non-partisan Government Accountability Institute [GAI] shows the Obama campaign has potentially violated federal election law by failing to prevent the use of fraudulent or foreign credit card transactions on the official Obama for America [OFA] donation webpage.”

“OFA has specifically touted its “grassroots” success by showcasing the majority of its donations coming from those giving less than $200. It appears the campaign also solicits funds for less than $200 in order to avoid having to report the name of the person making a donation under FEC rules.”

“Obama.com was purchased in 2008, and, although Obama.com is owned by a third party, not the campaign itself, the site redirects its foreign traffic, a whopping 68 percent, directly to the official Obama for America campaign donation page. The Obama campaign’s official and main website, BarackObama.com, sees 43 percent of its traffic coming from foreign IP addresses, according to web metrics firm Markosweb and noted in the report.”

Read more here

And here’s more on where that money may be coming from, via HotAir.

“Most Republicans recall the Doodad Pro controversy from almost exactly four years ago, where Team Obama campaign websites turned off credit card security checks that allowed fraudulent and foreign donations to flow into the campaign.  Could that be happening again?  According to a new independent report from the Government Accountability Institute and reported by Breitbart, not only is it actually happening again — it’s actually gotten worse.  A bundler for Barack Obama has set up a shady website operation to collect donations to the campaign, but it’s based in Shanghai, and the bundler has ties to the Chinese government:”

“There is no other conclusion to reach but that this decision was deliberate, especially since it became an issue just before the 2008 election.  The Washington Post reported on it, at least for a brief time, and it became a topic of some interest among Republicans in Congress.  Even if one was inclined to chalk it up to error by an inexperienced campaign in 2008, that excuse no longer applies in 2012 — especially not when the campaign seems more concerned about fraud in merchandise sales, which would cost them more in reversals (product costs) than returned donations would.”

Read more here

Why does it matter? For that we go to Reuters,

“U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign and its Democratic allies raised $181 million in September for his re-election effort, the largest total that either side has announced yet in the 2012 campaign.”

“Obama’s campaign said on Saturday that more than 1.8 million people donated to it last month. Of that, 567,000 were new donors. A vast majority of the donations – 98 percent – were $250 or less. The average contribution was $53.”

Read more here

So how easy is it to commit fraud? This easy, according to the folks at RedState 

“Here now is the screenshot of what Barack Obama’s campaign processed as a donation to the campaign.  This would not have happened had the Obama campaign taken basic steps to verify credit card information.  But, as always, Team Obama relied on someone else to fix their mess — the bank.

Had basic checks been implemented, this donation would have been rejected.  Keep in mind that all the information present except the credit card information is completely made up.”

Read more here

And with a pre-paid card, there is no bank to catch it.

—————————————————————————————————————–

UPDATE

Bi-partisan fraud?

From Breitbart

“There are 380 members of the House of Representatives seeking reelection that have active donation pages on the web, and 194 have campaign websites that require donors to enter their credit card security code, known officially as the Card Verification Value (CVV). Of the remaining 186 members of the House of Representatives who lack basic anti-fraud protections, 125 are Democrats and 61 are Republicans.

In the Senate, 25 senators’ campaign donation websites were found to lack basic credit card protections; four are Republicans, 20 are Democrats, and one is an Independent.”

Read more here