What’s interesting in the news today?
1. As we prepare for the Easter season we should obviously be thinking of the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf. Many will give up things for Lent as a symbolic sacrifice of their own. It’s a great time of year for opportunities to share what Christ has done, why He did it, and how it affects us. I’ve always thought the focus should be entirely on Christ, the cross, and what it means to the world.
Some people though, are using it as an opportunity to push for social justice and climate change issues.
Misguided? In my mind it is. They don’t seem to have Christ as the focus and seem to be wasting a chance to share the true meaning of the season. In their defense they do witness to the public during this, but it doesn’t seem to be their primary focus.
But what do you think?
From FaithAndLeadership “Katharina Wilkins still passes on things like alcohol and Facebook during the season of Lent, but what’s really important to her is giving up needless car rides and investment in fossil fuels. That’s because, for the third year in a row, Wilkins is participating in the annual Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast.”
“The Carbon Fast was started in 2011 by New England Regional Environmental Ministries (NEREM), which describes itself as “a loosely affiliated group of Christian environmental activists from throughout New England.” It asks Christians to deepen their commitment to the fight against climate change between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.”
“The goal is to reduce carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving human-made climate change. It is created when people burn fossil fuels and clear forests. In 2013, mean atmospheric carbon dioxide reached more than 395 parts per million (ppm), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Many climate scientists believe that the safe upper limit is 350 ppm.
This year, each week of Lent has a different focus. Themes so far have included public witness, simplicity and fossil fuel divestment. One link has an online calculator so participants can figure out the carbon cost of their current lifestyle and develop a goal to reduce it. Other suggestions range from flying less and living more simply to talking to a congregation about divestment and joining with others to protest the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”
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2. This just get’s more interesting. Cummings is complaining of McCarthyism in the IRS investigation.
From Politico “Rep. Elijah Cummings is pinning the McCarthyism label on Rep. Darrell Issa in the ongoing fight between the two Oversight Committee leaders about the IRS targeting scandal from last year.
The Maryland Democrat who is the ranking member of Oversight has put together a report saying Issa is pulling from the playbook of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who waged an infamous witch hunt against alleged communists in the 1950s.
As Issa, a California Republican and the Oversight chairman, pushes for former IRS official Lois Lerner to be held in contempt for invoking her Fifth Amendment rights not to testify before the committee, Cummings’s office is releasing research Wednesday showing the majority of the previous times Congress took such a step were during McCarthy’s investigations.”
That’s what I’d expect a guilty party to say, and yeah, he’s lookin guilty.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the panel’s top Democrat of prompting the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 to target a conservative organization applying for non-profit status.
Issa said records obtained last week from the IRS show communications from the office of ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about True the Vote, a Texas-based, non-profit conservative group that aims to prevent voter fraud.
The communications at one point involved Lois Lerner, the ex-IRS official whom Issa’s panel is poised to hold in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to provide testimony about her involvement in targeting conservative groups.
“The IRS and the Oversight Minority made numerous requests for virtually identical information from True the Vote, raising concerns that the IRS improperly shared protected taxpayer information with Rep. Cummings’ staff,” a statement from the Oversight panel reads.”
Is this also why he has obstructed this investigation from the start? Talk about a conflict of interests. He’s quite possibly been investigating himself.
But he also had plenty of willing co-conspirators.
From TheWashingtonTimes “In one case the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees who conduct politics on government time, said it was “commonplace” in a Dallas IRS office for employees to have pro-Obama screensavers on their computers, and to have campaign-style buttons and stickers at their office.”
“In another case, a worker at the tax agency’s customer help line urged taxpayers “to re-elect President Obama in 2012 by repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,” the Office of Special Counsel said in a statement.
OSC said it is seeking “significant disciplinary action” against that employee.
Another IRS employee in Kentucky has agreed to serve a 14-day suspension for blasting Republicans in a conversation with a taxpayer.”
And we also now know that Lois Lerner was considering a move to OFA, the Obama campaign spinoff. It appears that was to be her reward for targeting conservative groups and helping re-elect Obama. But then the scandal hit, so she got taxpayer funded retirement instead. Nope, no scandal here. 🙄
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3. Another busted meme.
From TheDailyCaller “Americans have recently been hit with some of the largest premium increases in years, according to a Morgan Stanley survey of insurance brokers.
The investment bank’s April survey of 148 brokers found that this quarter, the average premium increase for customers renewing an insurance plan is 12 percent in the small group market and 11 percent in the individual market, according to Forbes’ Scott Gottlieb.
The hikes — the largest in the past three years, according to Morgan Stanley’s quarterly reports — are “largely due to changes under the [Affordable Care Act],” analysts concluded. Rates have been growing increasingly fast throughout all of 2013, after a period of drops in 2012.
While insurers were hiking premiums since 2012 by smaller amounts, the lead-up to the Obamacare’s launch has seen the average rate at which premiums are growing fourfold.”
And some are starting to realize that while they may have health insurance, that doesn’t mean they have health care. But don’t worry, they’re blaming doctors, not Obama and the Democrats that created this mess.
From EbonyMag “As a proud new beneficiary of the Affordable Health Care Act, I’d like to report that I am doctorless. Ninety-six. Ninety-six is the number of soul crushing rejections that greeted me as I attempted to find one. It’s the number of physicians whose secretaries feigned empathy while rehearsing the “I’m so sorry” line before curtly hanging up. You see, when the rush of the formerly uninsured came knocking, doctors in my New Jersey town began closing their doors and promptly telling insurance companies that they had no room for new patients.
My shiny, never used Horizon health card is as effective as a dollar bill during the Great Depression. In fact, an expert tells CNN, “I think of (Obamacare) as giving everyone an ATM card in a town where there are no ATM machines.” According to a study 33% of doctors are NOT accepting Medicaid. Here in Jersey, one has a dismal 40 percent chance of finding a doctor who accepts Medicaid – the lowest in the country.”
The govt. is offering incentives for doctors, but they’re not biting. As one of the story’s comments said, embrace the suck, after all, you voted for it.
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Wandering Views 
Do you remember when I suggested that Obamaare would suck all the air out of the room of politics? What else is there to talk about? Who wants to talk about Obamacare?
About Rep. Cummings, he’s a Democrat. What else would you expect from a Democrat?
(I know, I just talked about something political but not Obamacare.)
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Things are escalating in Nevada. We had a confrontation between federal officers and protesters. Now it appears militias are coming in as well.
IF you watch the video of the confrontation at the link,
THIS COMES WITH A NOT SAFE FOR WORK, LOTS OF CUSSING CONTENT WARNING!!!!!!
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2014/04/10/expect-to-see-a-band-of-soldiers-militia-members-arrive-at-nevada-ranch/
“The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that two militia members from Montana and one from Utah have arrived at Cliven Bundy’s ranch.
“We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.”
Payne said that militias from New Hampshire, Texas and Florida are likely to join and stand with Bundy and stay at his ranch.
“They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne told the Review-Journal, adding that hundreds of militia members are expected.”
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1. There were a lot of quotes from the United Church in there. Due to family ties, we have attended that denomination from time to time. The last time, the sermon was all about the environment, with no mention of Christ. Considering that the United Church now denies the deity of Christ in its confession, they might consider dropping the name of church altogether and just become an environmental club.
It is very important that Christian learn to be good stewards of the earth. However, such a stewardship is for the benefit of fellow human beings. The ugly side of radical environmentalism is that it is anti-human, treating humans as a disease that needs to be eliminated from the earth. I have even seen statements that try to find human causes for such seismic events as the tsunami in Japan.
There is growing evidence that human activity can actually increase the earth’s biodiversity. I recently heard an example from Britain, where the traditional stone hedgerows led to an increase in bird species on the island. Another is the natives of the Amazon, whose traditional farming methods allowed more varieties of plants to grow in the rainforest. So humans need not always have a negative impact.
It is greed and impatience which leads to wanton destruction of natural resources. The way to combat that is not to make humans feel like parasites of the earth. Rather, they need to know that they have a purpose and a reason for existing on the earth. The story of Creation would be an excellent place to start.
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Very well stated, Roscuro!
Bob, I tend to agree with you on Obamacare, particularly since no major political figure is proposing real market reforms and telling the American people the truth about healthcare.
I am watching relations between Russia, China and India with interest. I think Asia is going to be on the upswing during this century. It will be interesting to see how India and China use their increased influence.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-09/putin-seen-signing-china-gas-deal-as-crisis-forces-russia-s-hand.html
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I don’t really like David Frum, but his article about Putin’s plans for Ukraine are interesting. I must say that HRW has been on the money about this issue since the crisis began.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/russias-plans-to-partition-ukraine/360017/
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China and India don’t like each other. But China is aggressive, India is not. Japan is pacifist.
China is going to face a crisis shortly because of their one child policy. Lots of men without women. I don’t know how this will play out. But it won’t be good for anyone.
China wants hegemony in the western Pacific, and they will get it.
The war with Japan was about that.
China will get it without firing a shot against an enemy.
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Frum and I actually agree. I just read an article discussing the change in Frum over the last few years and I’ve joked he’s found his inner Canadian but his Conservatives north of the border (including his sister) won’t like this article. They’ve pushing a hard anti-Russian line to appease Ukrainian Canadian voters, but Frum points out the logic of Putin’s move and the very real inability of the west to mount any real response.
Just recently, my PM Harper criticized the eastern Ukrainians and their Russian sponsors for street assemblies and takeovers of gov’t buildings. However a month ago Harper was praising the exact same behavior of Ukrainian nationalists and their western sponsors. Putin is now employing the same tactics as the west with a far more important and/or necessary goal — friendly gov’t on his own border, energy supplies to the Crimea, and economic integration. The West has far less at stake.
Its also important to note that the West and the Ukrainian nationalists could have waited until 2015 elections which would have conferred greater legitimacy on the pro-EU parties. Perhaps they were more confident of success in the streets than in the ballot box.
Note on doctors and the ACA. When universal medicare was introduced in Saskatchewan (first place in North America) the doctors went on strike and refused to accept gov’t health cards as payment. Eventually they came around and the same will happen here. Not to mention newly graduating doctors who will be happy with a steady supply of new patients as they build their own practice. New doctors who accept ACA will find they have a quicker way to an established full practice than their older colleagues did when they started (unless the older doctors relent and start accepting new patients)
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Chas — China is a paper tiger. fearsome on the outside but a small poke or fire and its in trouble.
Gender disparity is one issue. Corruption is huge. Pollution is out of control and a serious health issue. Inequality is an insult to the Communist facade they seem compelled to maintain. Ethnic minorities are restless — Mongols, Uighurs, Tibet, etc. Central control is breaking down as regional rivalries (Shanghai/Guangzhou/HongKong vs Beijing) take over. Currently they are keeping their large export surplus with an artificial low yuan but internal and external pressure is pushing the yuan to market levels and forcing the Chinese to lose their manufacturing advantage. It may be three years or thirty years but there will be trouble, it may explode, implode or just whimper bit something will bring it down.
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Ricky — you would’ve loved Jon Stewart’s opening bit commenting on the NCAA and the athletes. Look it up.
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hwesseli, you are too smart to be “just” an 8th grade science teacher. Why don’t you move into administration. You may be able to live on the retirement benefits. You certainly will be better than many.
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