Altar at Mission Carmel Catholic church

Merry Christmas!

St John Cantius Catholic Church in Chicago

From Mission Carmel Catholic church in Carmel California

A liberals view of protecting children

A liberal recently complained that some Republican was against a bill that, among a plethora of other things such as forcing all states to adopt California's animal friendly people hostile farm policies, made it illegal to take a child to a dog fight.

While I don't think dog fights are good and I certainly don't think a child should attend it's not really my place to tell parents how to raise their kids on that sort of issue.  Though to be honest if such a law passed I wouldn't expend any energy objecting to it.

What's really interesting however is that liberals who oppose children seeing dog fights fight like dogs against any law that would require Internet porn sites to ensure that children can't see the porn.

Instead liberals tell us that parents must pay to buy software that will block the porn sites.

This is liberal logic; children watching animals hurt themselves is wrong unless it's on National Geographic and it's a lion killing a gazelle but children watching the most perverted porn which exploits people as objects is ok.

Of course since liberals are comfortable killing their own children if those children are inconvenient it's not surprising that liberals will have other ideas about child care that are at odds with common sense.

Part of an Italian Nativity scene from St John Cantius Catholic church in Chicago

Pope Francis as conservative

As with previous comments by the Pope the media has distorted the contents of Evangelii Gaudium(EG) in order to declare that the Pope supports secular liberalism.

The reality is that EG supports conservative economic policies while condemning radical libertarianism and the welfare based exploitation of the poor developed by liberals.

When reading EG it’s important to understand how Catholics view the authority of the Pope.  The Pope, protected by the Holy Spirit, has a profoundly special authority on matters of faith and morals. That does not mean that the Pope is an expert on the proper way to achieve the moral goals the Pope espouses.

For example when Blessed Pope John Paul II spoke of “…the option or love of preference for the poor…”, a feeling echoed in EG, he was expressing a moral position; we must care for the poor.  In such proclamations the Popes provide guidance in following the teachings of Christ.

Once we accept our obligation to help the poor however the Church does not teach that the Pope has any special competence in determining what worldly mechanisms will be most successful in achieving that moral good. While that does not mean that we should ignore the statements of Popes on economics, after all Pope Francis’s appeal is based on his lived solidarity with the poor which embodies his opinions with a special gravitas, it does mean that the Pope saying “economic solution A is better than economic solution B” is on par with any other well intentioned, well informed person’s opinion.

Pope Francis recognizes this in EG when he writes:

…neither the Pope nor the Church have a monopoly on the interpretation of social realities or the proposal of solutions to contemporary problems.

To understand what the Pope said it’s important to realize that EG does not change Church teaching on economics.  The Pope said 

I take for granted the different analyses which other documents of the universal magis­terium have offered

That would include Pope Leo XIII encyclical on socialism that says

For, indeed, although the socialists, stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary, have been accustomed to distort it so as to suit their own purposes, nevertheless so great is the difference between their depraved teachings and the most pure doctrine of Christ that none greater could exist:

The first example of liberal attempts to distort EG is their concentration on the limited comments on economics and social justice and their lack of coverage of the Popes statements condemning abortion and the persecution of religion by those who would push religion out of the public square, ie liberals.  This selectivity tries to put liberals support for the killing of 1.4 million American’s every year on par with conservatives rejection of the economic ghettoization of the poor.

But even the liberal spin on EG’s comments on economics is biased and contradicts what the Pope actually said. The most controversial point that liberals latch on to is:

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about great­er justice and inclusiveness in the world.

Liberals read this as a condemnation of conservative principles but the reality is that it is only a condemnation of the most extreme libertarian positions.  The Pope condemns a radical individualism not the actual political positions held by the vast majority of conservatives in America today.

“Trickle down” is a pejorative liberal way to smear JFK’s common sense declaration that “a rising tide lifts all boats”.  Reading all of EG clearly shows that the Pope is condemning the concept that economic growth alone with no government involvement in the economy is a workable solution for the poor.

Conservatives recognize that the government has a role in the economy; that robber baron capitalism is not good for America or Americans.  For example conservatives believe the government should deal with monopolies and condemn insider trading. Conservatives also support minimum wage laws—the dispute tends to be about where the value should be set—and the need for a safety net, as espoused by no less of a conservative than Ronald Reagan, for those in true need.

EG itself advocates a very conservative view about how to help the poor; give them the opportunity to have jobs:

This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives.

Conservative policies support all of the objectives mentioned by the Pope while liberal policies have been proven to go against what the Pope recommends.

Conservatives support school vouchers to introduce competition into education and to provide the poor with quality education. Liberals support the teacher’s union’s demands for higher wages even as the inner city public schools continue to fail the poor.

Obamacare is actually reducing people’s access to healthcare even as it supposedly increases their access to healthcare insurance. Aside from those who can’t afford the drastically higher premiums under Obamacare many are losing access to healthcare because the payment rates to healthcare providers are so low under Obamacare that peoples ability to actually be treated is going down.  Conservative solutions on the other hand are designed to reduce healthcare costs, thereby improving access, and increase the freedom of Americans in regards to healthcare.

Conservatives, starting with JFK, have known that reducing the impact of government improves the economy and creates new jobs.  Liberal economic policies, now under Obama and in the past, have lead to high unemployment and wage stagnation that deny the poor opportunities.

The reality is that it is conservative policies that strive to achieve the goals the Pope cites while liberal policies merely push the poor into the economic ghetto of welfare.

Another area where conservatism supports what the Pope is calling for is that the poor cannot be excluded from society because every person has intrinsic value as a child of God:

The poor person, when loved, “is esteemed as of great value”, and this is what makes the authentic option for the poor differ from any other ideology, from any attempt to exploit the poor for one’s own personal or political interest.

Liberals continue to support a failed welfare system that provides food and circuses for the poor but which destroys their families and gives them no hope to become productive members of society; generating the very exclusion that the Pope condemns.  Liberals accept this because it increases liberal’s political power by ensuring the votes of the warehoused poor go to liberals.

Conservative policies on the other hand are designed to bring the poor into society by helping them get jobs and realize the intrinsic potential of the poor.

The Pope also shows his agreement with conservative concepts when he declares that economic growth is essential albeit not sufficient:

Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth:

In the end a reading of the EG coupled with an understanding of historic Church teaching on economic principles shows that conservative policies designed to provide a temporary safety net for the poor while giving the poor the tools they need to become part of society are in full agreement with the Popes restatement of the Church’s historic call to care for the poor.

Liberal policies that push the poor into an economic ghetto and deprive the poor of the tools necessary to unleash their native potential go directly against the Popes call for inclusion into society of the poor.

As Blessed Pope John Paul II said “Be not afraid!” for the Pope is not on the side of American liberal’s plans to replace God with government but rather on the side of conservatives who strive to harness the potential of the poor by mainstreaming them in society.

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Liberals distort the teachings in the Popes latest document

Basically the Pope actually endorsed conservative economic solutions.  An article explaining that will either be showing up on American Thinker or here in the next few days that shows that.

A new Munich

By giving Iran relief Obama has ensured that internal pressures against the theocracy will be relieved, that Iran will have money to continue to support Assad in Syria, and that Iran will be able to pick up where they stopped when they decide they want nuclear weapons.

Of course even that presupposes that Iran lives up to its commitments and that the US can determine if they do.  Experience has shown that it's easy to hide stuff in a country the size of Iran so to assume that we'll know if the Iranians aren't cheating is a bit of hubris on the Presidents part.

In this case as in everything the President does he sides with Muslims who condemn the West and equate the US with satan while doing nothing to support truly democratic voices in the Muslim world--when Iran was appearing to have an Arab Spring several years ago Obama did nothing to support it for example.

Like most liberals however Obama has no problem with Muslim fanatics because he believes that once they realize how wonderful liberals are the Muslims will have no beef with America. In fact Obama and Muslim fanatics share the same enemy; Christians.

As Obama works to destroy religious liberty in America he can't but help identify with Muslims who are ceaselessly working to oppress religious liberty around the world.

Liar in Chief; modeling modern liberalism

Obama knew people wouldn't be able to keep their policies but he repeatedly said otherwise.

That lie is going to cause a lot more Americans to suffer than any purported lie Bush told about Iraq. 

Of course while the liberals attacked Bush over and over about that "lie" they ignored the fact that Bush was just repeating what the CIA and the intelligence agencies of Russia, Germany, Britain, and France were saying.

Liberals kept chanting that Bush lied and Americans died. Will they repeat that when Americans die because they can't afford health care insurance due to ObamaCare forcing cost effective policies out of the market? Not to mention the Americans who are going to die because Obamacare's death panels will say they're not worth the expense of the care they need.

It's important to understand that at the core of modern American liberalism is the thirst for power.  Like their cousins, Nazi's and Communists, liberals believe that any means is justified in order to ensure liberal political ascendency.

Obama is not an anomaly. If you surf FaceBook you'll find hundreds of meme's by liberals.  If you research them the best you'll usually find is that they either leave out key data, misrepresent the data, or fail to mention that Democrat politicians do the same thing.  The worst you'll find, which occurs a lot of the time, is that the meme is an outright lie.

Once a liberal said that the Republicans were going to cut the CDC budget by $10B.  It turns out the CDC budget is something like $1B/year which means that if the Republicans shut down the CDC--which they weren't proposing to do--it'd be 10 years before $10B was cut.

Another example is how liberals continually call conservatives racists even though conservatives support school choice--so blacks can get a decent education--, enterprise zones in cities--so blacks can get jobs--, and an end to the number one killer of blacks in America, abortion.  Amazingly liberals are all for abortion--which kills as many as 60% of blacks in places like New York--, opposed to school choice or any other solution to the failed inner city schools--except more pay for the incompetent union teachers--, and refuse to consider enterprise zones or even let non-union companies like Walmart provide good jobs for blacks in the cities.

That's  not unusual.  Many liberals have no compunction lying about even the most serious things so long as it gets them political power--witness Clinton blaming Rush for the Oklahoma City bombing.

It would appear that liberals are students of the famous Nazi propagandist Goebbels who was reported to have said that if you tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe you.

It's time that liberals be branded not as Americans with a different set of solutions but Americans who want a different America where the government is not of for and by the people but rather where the people are subservient to the government.

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St John Vianney Roman Catholic church

You've got to be a speaker.

No I don't mean you have to give speeches.

But if we're going to win this country back to honesty it's critical that everyone in the know makes sure that the low information voters understand that Obama is breaking the law all the time and that that's bad.

Let them know that if they like the illegal things Obama is doing--like not defending laws he doesn't like or using executive orders to make laws Congress won't pass--they won't like it if the next administration has a different perspective than they do.

Liberals win elections only when they manage to hide what they really want--you can keep your health plan-- or when people don't know what's going on--Benghazi...is that something for sore muscles?.

The Main Stream Media won't report on Obama's or Liberal's failures so it's up to us.

Don't be obnoxious but drop some bombshells into conversations like:

Wow I couldn't believe the Democrats held American hostage and shut down the government.

People can disagree on abortion but Obama opposing requiring medical care for babies that survive an abortion seems pretty cold.

Unemployment is horrible and Obama never even talks about it anymore.

Will the NSA care about our phone calls once they get their hands on all our medical records?

Be prepared to support whatever assertion you put forward.  If the folks you're talking to are sane but ignorant you might just change a vote in 2014.

Venting on atheists

There is a certain group of atheists who are very very difficult to deal with.

They basically say that the don't have to prove anything since they don't believe in anything.

The problem is they turn around and say there is no God. Not they don't believe in God but there is no God.

That is they say that if you believe in God you're wrong.

Now that's not a lack of belief; it's a strong belief that there is no God.

There are several things that have to be true if there is no God including:

• The evidence for God is wrong
• The universe can self create
• The universe can be explained by purely materialistic phenomena
• We have no free will--all we are is brain chemistry

Yet atheists can't prove any of these things is true.  These things may be true but they can't be proven based on what science currently can explain.

As a result atheists,those who say there is no God, believe there is no God based on faith not science or facts. They may be right but their faith is still faith not facts.

What is irritating is that they constantly attack and mock people who believe in God and refuse to admit that their beliefs are based on faith.

They honestly don't understand that their faith that God is unlikely is not something that is a fact.

In the end they will be converted by God not by us so all we can do is try to expose this group of atheists to logic and truth and hope that opens a window by getting them to question their faith.

Liberal hypocrisy on display

Republicans said we should delay the individual mandate for Obamacare for a year since the system clearly wasn't ready.

Democrats and their lap dogs in the media howled at how evil and stupid that was.

Now Democrats are suggesting it and voila the exact same idea is being declared to make a lot of sense.

Liberals and the media care only about power not about the people or about what's right for America.

If a Republican said God is good the Democrats would condemn him.  Wait... bad example because if a Democrat said God is good the Democrats would condemn him too.

If a Republican said that we need to care for the poor the Democrats and the media would condemn him but if a Democrat said the exact same thing he'd be commended for his compassion.

Bob Costa's bigotry

Bob Costas thinks American Indians are too stupid to know when they’re being mocked. That’s a pretty bigoted view of Native Americans.

Costas declared the term Redskins to be an insult and a slur

But think for a moment about the term “Redskins,” and how it truly differs from all the others. Ask yourself what the equivalent would be if directed towards African Americans, Hispanics, Asians or any other ethnic group. When considered that way, “Redskins” can’t possibly honor a heritage or noble character trait, nor can it possibly be considered a neutral term. It’s an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present day intent.

Earlier in his tirade about the name of the Washington football team—the Redskins—he said

And in fact, as best could be determined, even a majority of Native Americans say they are not offended.[by the name Redskins]  It turns out 83% of Native Americans say that pro-teams with Indian related names should not change their names; quite a big majority.

What Costas is saying is that he needs to help American Indians understand what they should and shouldn’t be upset about because they’re too intellectually deficient to figure it out for themselves. 

After all when does a person tell someone else they think is intelligent when that person should and shouldn’t be offended by something?  That sort of “advice” is reserved for those who are assumed to be too clueless to figure out they’re being insulted.

Costas’s comparison to other racial groups is wrong because unlike Redskins the equivalent terms for Blacks and other racial groups do have a derogatory history.  Black face for example describes how racist whites painted their faces black in order to avoid having to allow Blacks on stage.

The term Redskin however is associated with fierce fighters which is why it’s a great name for a football team.

While Costas claims that the name Redskins demeans Indians it appears that Indians side with the rational folk who recognize the obvious; who in their right mind would name a team for something or someone they disrespect?

A teams name is like a totem to inspire fans. Can anyone imagine the Washington losers, the Washington traitors, the Washington welfare moms, the Washington tax dodgers, or the Washington politicians?

Of course not.  A teams name is chosen because not only do the people choosing the name have a great deal of respect for what the name represents but they also believe that the majority of fans will respect the name as well.

When real Americans think of Redskins they think of primitive but brave warriors who fought even though massively outnumbered and out gunned.  To this day when people think of Apache or Sioux they think of strong and proud warriors.

What we see here is Costas projecting his own racism on others.  Conservatives reason that if Native Americans aren’t offended there is no reason to change the name but Costas believes that he knows better than American Indians what is wrong and that he has an obligation to guide the helpless Native Americans to the “right” point of view.  What’s more racist than saying that all the members of another race are all too stupid to figure out when they’re being discriminated against?

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The Third World slow motion

Rush made a good point awhile back. The average American isn't feeling the pain of Democrat policies. Sure taxes are high but the average person doesn't see that since taxes disappear from their paychecks before they see their real pay.

Similarly why the unemployed, and those who have given up hope, are kept buoyant by liberal welfare, food stamps, and disability payments.  Even if they blame Obama--which is unlikely since the media is constantly lying--they are probably afraid that the Republicans would let them starve--more media lies.

The stock market is doing well so people who have 401K's are feeling good. Similarly the housing market is slowly--very very slowly--recovering in spite of Obama.

But the prices of Obamacare may be one place where people see that Democrat policies are negatively impacting them.

It's unclear if it's enough.  Democrats are like people who max out their credit cards; it feels great until you can't borrow anymore and you have to start living life low in order to pay your debts. Sadly by the time we get to where Greece is it'll be too late. The Democrats will all have gotten rich and the voters who they lied to will be left holding the bag.

What' we're seeing is the slow motion looting of a country--just like in third world dictatorships--where the Democrats steal the peoples money to buy votes--just like in the third world except there instead of buying votes they buy the military.

This won't end well unless the American people wake up to what's happening.

Day 15 of Democrats holding America hostage until we allow Democrats to decide what healthcare we are entitled to.

Day 13 of Democrats holding America hostage until we give them control of our lives

If they can't even manage the bloody website how can they hope to manage our healthcare?  Yet they continue to hold the Government hostage with the deliberate intent of hurting Americans--else why but barriers around an open air unattended veterans memorial?--until we turn over more of our freedoms to them.

If you're upset about the NSA spying on you then why do you want the same government to have full access to all your medical records which are probably a lot more dangerous than a list of who you've called on the phone.

Day 12 of Democrats holding America hostage until we give them the power of life and death over us.

If they're willing to withhold the things we pay for now what will they do when we need medical care?

Urge Republicans to stand up to the Democrat coup

Democrats are interested in only one thing; getting more power over Americans.

Democrats have shutdown the government and denied Americans the services their tax dollars pay for in order to ensure that Democrats get control over Americans health care so that the Democrats will literally have the power of life and death over every American.

This is essentially a coup by Democrats because they're denying the legitimacy of the elections that gave Republicans control of the House.

They are doing so because Democrats truly believe they are ordained by their inherent greatness to run the lives of the benighted fools in fly over country who cling to their religion and guns.

It's critical that we stop this latest Democrat attempt to steal a huge section of the economy from free markets and the American people.

What good does it do us to elect Republicans if those Republicans won't stand up for the principles they campaigned for?

Will we stand by and let the Democrats threaten Americans?

The whole shutdown is about Democrats telling Americans to get in line and obey Democrats or else Democrats will prevent Americans from benefiting from the tax dollars they pay.

It's a protection racket pure and simple; let us control your medical care or we'll hurt you by closing the national parks.

It's time to expose the war Democrats are waging on taxpayers for the sole purpose of increasing Democrat power over us.

Forget the $1000 dollar military toilet seats.

Back when liberals felt safe bashing the military they used to use the hyper expensive toilet seats in some military transports. They ignored the fact that commercial airplane toilet seats cost hundreds of dollars for the same reason; they're not supposed to kill people in a crash by flying off.

But now we have a much better example of why the government will never ever be the cheap option.

For over 1/2 billion dollars the Obama administration couldn't make a working web site to buy Obamacare.  They spent more money than was needed to launch Facebook or Twitter and all they got was a lousy digital equivalent of a rock.

Now this may be intentional given that people are having sticker shock when they see how much more Obamacare will cost than their present policies. Maybe Obama wants the software to be down until after the 2014 elections.

Obamacare ads

I don't control the ad content but I can apologize for ads for Obamacare.  Mea Culpa.

Gay “weddings” and KKK Cross burnings

If a man wearing a KKK sheet walked into a bakery run by a Black man how many Americans would think that the Black man should be required to sell the bigot a cake?

We don’t know the answer precisely but we know other than the folks at the ACLU it’d be unlikely that any American who wasn’t a fan of the KKK would say that the law requires the Black baker to sell a croissant to a public racist.

While most Americans are not yet lawyers they realize that freedom of speech, in addition to protecting pornographers, protects the right of non-verbal speech, in this case refusing to sell a cupcake to a Cross burning bigot.

Similarly most Americans realize that if Black bakers all united and refused to provide cakes to KKK members the KKK members will find someone else to satisfy their sweet tooth.  Additionally it’s important to note that a cake is not necessary.  If a man in a KKK sheet walked into an ER the majority of people would probably feel sorry for the Black doctor on call but would still think that the doctor should treat the racist if a lack of treatment would result in the racists death—though it’s hard to imagine a Black doctor refusing to care even for a racist.

Now if the man walks into the store and the Black baker just thinks he looks racist but nothing he says or does indicates he’s racist then it would be possible to find some folks who might say that the baker would have to sell the man a donut even if the baker thinks the man looks like a member of the KKK.  But even in that case most Americans would probably not be enthused about the government telling a private business owner who he had to provide products for.

The most extreme circumstance would be when the KKK member walked into the bakery and said he wanted a cake for the next nights Cross burning on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s grave.

It would be hard to find anyone, once again excepting the ACLU, who would say that the law required that Black baker to bake a cake for a KKK Cross burning.

But that scenario is identical to the one being played out in numerous cases across America relating to so called gay weddings.

These business owners aren’t refusing to provide flowers, photographs, or cakes to gays; they’re refusing to provide those services/products for so called gay weddings.  If a gay man walks into any of those businesses and asks for a cake, photo, or flower arrangement he’ll get it with no problem even if he identifies himself as gay—though why he’d do that is unclear. 

Those cases are identical in nature to when the KKK member walks into the Black bakery and asks for a cake. 

When the gay man walks in and asks for a cake for his so called gay wedding the situation is identical to the KKK member asking for a cake for his Cross burning party.

In both cases the business’s decision is based on the fact that their product would be associated with an event, not an individual, that they felt was morally wrong. Further in both cases we know the customers can go elsewhere to get the service or item they want.

We know that according to a Rasmussen poll 85% of Americans believe that business owners should not be required to provide non-essential services to so called gay weddings.

We know that the Constitution says nothing about gay weddings but explicitly declares that every American has the right to exercise, that is practice, their religion which would mean, in a rational world, that there would be no question about compelling business owners to support an activity they find morally wrong—like demanding a Jewish deli cater a Nazi luncheon.

Imagine if the law said that a Jewish deli worker would have to attend a Nazi rally in order to serve the food. Then imagine how a Christian would feel attending a gay wedding to take photos. Would any rational person believe that society was being served by using the law to force either of these scenarios to occur?

Sadly we don’t live in a rational world anymore.  The same voices who are persecuting people who object to so called gay marriage—a unique and barely 5 year old phenomena—would be taking exactly the opposite tack if a gay baker refused to provide a cake for say an National Organization for Marriage fund raiser.

We can see that from the fact that 13 gay bakeries refused to bake a cake saying gay marriage is wrong and not one liberal is upset about it.

This attack on business owners is nothing less than content based censorship.  If burning a flag is protected speech because it sends a message then refusing to provide a cake for a so called gay wedding is also a Constitutionally protected exercise of both the religious and speech elements of the First Amendment.

The liberal view of rights in America is becoming clearer.  To liberals rights are not inalienable but rather are given by government to certain people. Gays have the right to be married because government says so but people of faith don’t have the right to live their faith because government hasn’t given them that right.

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The "spirit" of Pope Francis

After the Second Vatican Council liberal Catholics poured through the totally orthodox writings of the Council looking for text that could be interpreted in multiple ways, at least one of which supported liberal views and went against the clear intent of the Council.

Given that the Bible, written by God, is open to misinterpretation--witness the whole Protestant phenomena where good God loving people belonging to different Protestant denominations interpret the Bible in very different ways-- it's not shocking that human documents, like those of the Council, can be misinterpreted. 

We also know that even carefully written documents can be interpreted in multiple ways based on experience with contracts and laws--which is why so many lawyers are so rich.

Those liberals aided their cause by acting as if everything the Church had taught before, which the Council felt no need to repeat, had been mysteriously destroyed.

But when the Council's words were so clear that they were not easily misinterpretable the liberals invoked the "spirit" of Vatican II.  In the minds of liberals the "spirit" of Vatican II was what the Council really intended to do even though the Council never did it.

Essentially the "spirit" of Vatican II was liberal Catholics acting like Protestants and declaring that they, the liberal Catholics, had the authority to define Church teaching.

We see the same thing in how the media and liberal Catholics are trying to reimage Pope Francis.

The Pope says that it's not his to judge a man who sinned, by homosexual relations, decades ago but since then has lived a chaste life. 

The first thing to note is that God clearly calls on us to judge actions not people, judging people is God's prerogative not ours.

The second thing is that not judging a sinner is not saying that their sins are not bad.  When the Pope says that so called same sex marriage is from the devil it takes a lot of "spirit" to declare that when the Pope refuses to judge a person suffering from same sex attraction who slipped up decades ago the Pope is saying that living an active homosexual lifestyle is ok.

Even the "harsh", in the mind of hedonists, Pope Benedict XVI said that suffering from same sex attraction is not itself sinful in any way.

Additionally it's important to keep in mind that Pope Francis is not Cardinal Dolan.  Until very recently the Popes experience has been formed by what he saw in a country where the majority of people are Catholic and where the relationship between the Church and society are very different than they are in the US.

Hence when the Pope says we should avoid condemning sins all the time he's speaking from his experiences in a country where unwed mothers have a problem finding a priest to Baptize their daughters not a country, which Dolan is familiar with, where "Catholic" politicians openly push abortion and the oppression of the Church via the HHS mandate and yet hardly any Bishops or priests condemn them.

But by effectively invoking the "spirit" of Pope Francis--by interpreting what the Pope says as though it comes from a vacuum where the teachings of the Church don't exist-- liberals claim to know that the Pope is throwing off the 2000 year old teachings of the Church.  As with Vatican II what's really happening is that liberal Catholics are going all Protestant on us but unlike the original Protestants--who had the honesty to admit they were no longer Catholic--liberals want to pretend that they can define Church doctrine.

What liberals really care about.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/what_democrats_really_care_about.html

Keep reminding your friends that the Democrats shut down the government

We're in a war for the low information voters.  The media will continue to lie and blame Republicans for the Democrats actions.

Make sure you set everyone you know straight; the Republicans voted to fund the entire government except for Obamacare and the Democrats chose to shut down the government instead of compromise.

And the Republicans are trying to fund key parts of the government, like an NIH program to help kids with cancer, while Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate, says that he won't help those kids because it isn't in his own best interest.

Democrats are on the record favoring denying medical help for children just so they don't have to compromise with Republicans.

How to show it's a Democrat shutdown

With the Obama fawning media in full gear trying to convince low information voters that the shutdown is all due to evil Republicans here's an approach to help the uninformed see the light.

At every point the Republicans have been trying to avoid a government shutdown.

They could have shutdown the government and demanded that Obamacare be repealed--after all that's why they got the majority in the house.

Instead they simply said no funding for Obamacare this year but we'll fund the entire rest of the government while we try and fix or replace Obamacare with something that won't bankrupt the country but will still address some of the problems in our medical system--such as too many lawsuits and the inability of people to carry insurance from job to job.

Given that the Republicans weren't interested in shutting down the government all the Democrats had to do is admit they lost the elections for the House in 2010 and 2012 so that in order to respect those elections Democrats had to renegotiate Obamacare.

Instead the Democrats, and the Democrats alone, decided to shut down the government.  They didn't have to, they weren't forced to, they decided it would be the best option for them.

Essentially while the Republicans were trying to minimize the impacts of this significant disagreement between Americans--most Americans aren't fans of Obamacare and even the die hard Democrat unions are now against it--the Democrats were thinking about how to hold America hostage.

This was made clear when Obama said he'd veto any partial funding measures other than for the military.  If Obama wasn't trying to blackmail Americans into supporting his demand for control over their healthcare he'd have jumped at the chance to alleviate some of the consequences of Democrats in the Senate refusing to respect the results of the last election.

At every step in the path Democrats have been acting like selfish uncaring little children who declare that unless everyone plays by their rules they're going to take their ball and go home.

Democrats are like Communists.  Communists believed that once a country became Communist it could never return to Democracy no matter what the people wanted--the Brezhnev doctrine. Democrats believe that once they get a hyperpartisan bill passed without a single Republican vote no future election can change that bill.

And Democrats are so intent on getting control of your healthcare--we all know that Obama lied about being able to keep our current plans since the news is full of stories of companies dropping their employee's healthcare coverage--that they're going to threaten the average American with a complete cessation of government functions if Americans don't give in.

To recap:
1) Republicans have done everything to not shutdown the government
2) Democrats shut down the government when they didn't have to just so they could take control of your healthcare decisions
3) Democrats are refusing to fund any part of the government until they get their way
4) Democrats seem to think that once Democrats pass a law future elections can't ever change it

Obama takes ownership of the shutdown

Obama has said he'll veto any partial budget bills that get passed, for funding the national parks for example.

That means that Obama is the one responsible for the shutdown.

He's willing to shutdown the government just so he can take over your health care.

Given that it's obvious he's been lying to us about Obamacare from day one it's clear Obama is interested in power not helping people.

Lie 1: You can keep your current insurance.  Companies drop their coverage and so workers can't keep their current insurance.

Lie 2: Prices will go down or at least not go up as fast.  The costs on the California exchange were higher than private policies before the exchange.  We're hearing stories from all over about massive rate increases.

Lie 3: Liberal conscience clauses for people of faith.  The HHS mandate orders people to violate their religious beliefs.

Obama is picking increasing the governments power over helping those who need the help of government when he's shutting down the government.

Fighting for the right to slavery

The Democrats shut down the government over Obamacare because a core belief of the Democrats is that the work of others belongs to Democrats; that Americans should be Democrat’s tax slaves.

The Democrat party has always been the party of slavery and exploitation but over time they’ve tried to paste a smiley face over their beliefs.

No longer do Democrats want those whose labor they steal in manacles; now they use the law to purloin American’s hard earned wages.  By taxing Americans to support a wide spectrum of activities that don’t benefit taxpayers Democrats are effectively enslaving the roughly 55% of Americans who pay income tax.

Of course modern American tax slavery is not as bad as what African Americans endured in the pre-Civil War Democrat run South.  But that does not mean that taking from those who work to fund Democrats pet projects and restricting the freedoms of Americans is not a type of slavery lite.

The very concept of a “right” to health care says that some people are entitled to the labor of others, just as with slavery.  A right is something everyone is entitled to and therefore if a person can’t pay for that right on their own others are required to pay even if those others gain no benefit. The rights in the Constitution on the other hand were specifically crafted to ensure that they don’t require financial subsidy by Americans. 

The absurdity of a “right” that requires other people to fund it can be seen by thinking about Somalia.  Are Somalian’s rights being denied because their country is too poor to fund American quality medical care?

That raises another issue just what level of health care do Democrats believe people have a right to?  Should every high school dropout who is too lazy to work have the “right” to the same quality of medical care as someone who has worked hard all their life? Should people who avoided buying health insurance and instead spent the money on luxuries and then developed an expensive medical condition have the same insurance bills as people who always paid for health insurance?  It would appear that Democrats would answer both of these questions in the affirmative; making tax slaves of responsible people in order to ensure that irresponsible people don’t suffer the consequences of their actions.

Further we know that Democrats do discriminate between who does and who does not have a “right” to medical care. Democrats like the medical system in England that denies care to people based on their behavior—such as being overweight-- so long as that behavior is not avoiding work or using drugs.  It appears that Democrats believe in a “right” to health care so long as people live their lives in ways that Democrats approve of—just as Democrats slaves in the South were rewarded when they were obedient and punished when they were not.

The Democrats shutting down the government in order to make sure they gain control of the health care of Americans is just the latest in a long line of Democrat actions designed to turn more and more Americans into tax slaves in order to buy the votes Democrats need to stay in power.

On one hand Democrats condemn wage slavery—working for a company and getting paid for it—while on the other they constantly work to expand tax slavery—being taxed ensure that others won’t suffer the consequences of their bad decisions—dropping out of school, doing drugs, being illegal etc.

When the country was founded the role of government was to provide services that benefitted everyone; defense, police, etc. When that was the case taxes benefitted those who paid them. But Democrats over the last 80 years—starting with FDR—have turned the government into a vast plantation of tax slaves where the fruits of the labor of Americans are used for things that don’t benefit the taxpayers.  When tax dollars are turned over to those Americans who don’t labor or are used to support policies that don’t benefit taxpayers but which Democrats would like to see but are unwilling to fund themselves the taxpayer becomes a tax slave whose hard earned dollars are confiscated by Democrats to spend as they please.

Everyone agrees that some level of support for the poor is necessary; in a society as rich as ours we can’t allow people to starve to death or freeze in the winter—even Ronald Reagan supported some sort of safety net.  But  when 79.1% of the “poor” in America have either cable or satellite TV and 84% of the “poor” have air conditioning it’s clear that Democrats have taken us far beyond any safety net.  Given that most of the growth in the poor is due to the Obama economy and Democrat policies of high taxation and massive regulation the best hope for the poor is more jobs and economic growth not converting those people who have managed to stay employed into tax slaves.

Anyone who listens to Democrats can instantly see the deliberate disingenuousness of their rhetoric.  How can an honest person simultaneously declare that the Pentagon is a huge mass of corruption and inefficiency and then turn around and say that the very same federal government is capable of administering American health care efficiently?  It would appear that Democrats believe that federal government workers who are willing to die for their country are more corrupt than those who aren’t.

The reality of course is that the bigger an organization is the less efficient it is; and there is no organization bigger than the Federal government.  Sometimes we need to have a large organization in order to achieve some necessary objective, such as defending the country, so that we must tolerate the inefficiency.  On the other hand as Catholic social teaching has taught for millennia the concept of subsidiarity is one that has been shown to work well. Basically keep everything as local as possible.

This makes sense in that no reasonable person can honestly claim, given the historical record from the socialist failures of the 20^th century, that centralized planning is more efficient than the free market.

Yet Obamacare is a massive step towards centralized control of services that spell life or death for the average American.  Democrats recognize that costs will go up which is why Obamacare includes a massive tax increase on young healthy Americans—turning them into tax slaves for those whose health care costs will be subsidized—and a variety of other taxes.  Does anyone who is not a low information voter think that the IRS and the other parts of the Federal government that will run Obamacare will be more efficient than the current private system?

Republicans have shown there are less wasteful solutions for some of the real problems with the health care system—from being able to keep insurance when changing jobs to tort reform-- but Democrats have shown no interest in any sort of compromise. That’s because the core objective of Obamacare is not to ensure that people have the “right” to health care but to increase the level of servitude of American tax slaves and restrict the freedom of all Americans to choose their health care.

It’s critical that we make sure that people realize that Obamacare will cost Americans more and will reduce their freedom and that Democrats are not interested in helping but in controlling Americans.

When American’s realize that the Democrats shut down the government in order to increase the power of Democrats over Americans and to increase the servitude of taxpayers voters may begin voting what they believe rather than buying into the Democrat lies.

Feel free to follow tom on Twitter

Obamacare benefits....?

The unions don't like it.

Workers losing their health care coverage don't like it.

Workers being shifted to 29hrs because their employers can't afford Obamacare don't like it.

People buying on the exchanges have to pay more than they used to so they don't like it.

People who haven't lost their insurance are afraid they might so they don't like it.

Young people who have to pay big bucks for something they don't need don't like it.

So who does like it?

The dependent class, the folks who can't carry their own weight.  Not those who have physical or mental limitations but those who just don't mind living off the sweat of another persons brow.

The whole purpose of Obamacare is to make more Americans dependent and to pay off the already dependent for voting for Obama and Democrats in general.

Obamacare the biggest bribe in the history of America!

What the Pope really said; it's probably not what you think

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/what_the_pope_really_said.html

Iran Contra II; liberal hypocrisy on Benghazi

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/the_hypocrisy_of_iran_contra_ii.html

Liberals; afraid of guns in the hands of honest men.

Liberals keep trying to make it hard for honest law abiding Americans to have guns.

Simultaneously liberals oppose harsher sentencing for people who use guns in crimes.

So it can't be that liberals are opposed to or afraid of guns in general.  If that were the case they'd be leading the march to put gun using crooks, the only people who sane folk don't want to have guns, who use guns away for a long time.

It would appear that liberals actually are mostly concerned about average Americans having guns. Bill Clinton went so far as to effectively make US military bases gun free zones--there were Marines at the Navy Yard with guns but they weren't allowed to have ammo so they had to stand by and watch the tragedy unfold.

I think that the root cause is that liberals are afraid of the hoi polloi as are most folks with aspirations to dictatorship.

Liberals want to impose what they believe is good on us--ranging from promiscuous sex to small sodas-- and they want to make sure that we have no way to say no to government edicts.

Please pray for the victims of the Navy Yard shooting and their families!

Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art though amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Obamaland where Obama can do no wrong.

see my commentary at American Thinker

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/the_chicago_way_in_obamaland.html

Obama trusts Assad more than he trusts Americans.

Wow in order to walk back his idiotic red line Obama is going to trust Assad to surrender all of his chemical weapons and to do it by the middle of next year.

Tell you what let me pay my taxes 9 months late; you can trust me for it!  Oh yeah and don't bother to check my taxes you can trust me to do them right!

Israel and an attack on Syria

Any US strike on Syria would be bad news for Israel.  There's no doubt that Assad would either directly or through proxies like Hizballah attack Israel. Right now Assad is afraid to do that because the last thing he wants is Israel injecting itself into the Syrian civil war.

But those short term attacks are not the real problem from the Israeli perspective. The real problem is that anything that helps get rid of Assad is very likely to be bad for Israel.

Israel probably realizes that they're better off with Assad than with the rebels just as Israel better off with the Mubarak's Egypt and the newest Egypt than with Mursi's Egypt.  Better a hostile but sane neighbor than a hostile neighbor convinced that Allah is calling for genocide.

Assad is afraid enough of Israel to limit the support he provides to Hizballah.  If the Syrian rebels win and if the extremists have any influence--which they seem to have-- we can expect to see the limits on what sort of weapons go to Syria, including WMDs, quickly, even if only temporarily lifted. And if you believe that the UN or any other organization can be sure it gets all of Syria's chemical weapons, where a man can carry enough to kill thousands, then I've got a great deal on a time share for an over water transportation system in Brooklyn I'd like to interest you in.

Syria transferring advanced Russian weapons or residual Syrian chemical weapons to Hizballah is the real nightmare for Israel.  Hizballah armed with long range missiles loaded with nerve agents that can be absorbed through the skin, and hence not stopped by gas masks, could be an existential threat to both Israel and the Middle East.

It's not inconceivable that if thousands of Israeli citizens are murdered by a Hizballah chemical attack that Israel will retaliate against Hizballah, or Iran, with nuclear weapons. Before rejecting that possibility ask yourself what the American public would demand if Hizballah killed hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers with a chemical attack? 

Syria; an Obama victory

The media will portray Syria as a marvelous victory for Obama.  It was Obama's resolute stand that forced Syria to agree with Russia's suggestion of putting chemical weapons under the control of an international body after all.

The media will ignore that no one who listened to Obama's red line and then red line what red line or to Kerry's sabre rattling will think that Obama was in fact resolute about anything other than avoiding taking a political blood bath in the USA.

The media will ignore that no international organization can prevent Syria from using the "controlled" chemical weapons unless they move the chemical weapons out of Syria.  And just what country is going to be willing to host Syria's chemical weapons?

The media will ignore that a lot of nerve gas goes a long way so how can anyone know if the Syrians have turned it all over?  It only takes thousandths of a gram of Sarin to kill someone so even if the Syrians can only hide a thousand pounds, a fraction of the weight of an SUV which range from 2000 to 8000+ pounds, they'd still have enough to kill a lot of civilians.  After the US liberated Iraq we found, because the wind blew the sand away, a number of huge fighter jets that we had no idea were there. Given that any international organization will have far less access to Syrian information than the US did it's kinda silly to believe that the Syrians can't keep some nerve gas around for a rainy day.

Low information voters will think that Obama "won" the day just as low information voters--who were pretty much everyone back in the day of the major media monopoly--back in the day thought that JFK won Cuba because they didn't know that JFK agreed to not liberate Cuba and agreed to withdraw US missiles from Turkey.

Syria; the no win option

Unfortunately Obama has painted the US into a corner.  Unlike Bush who got the support of the country before going into Iraq Obama issued his red line before anyone had a chance to decide if getting involved in another Middle East morass was a great idea.

The essential problem is that in there are currently two likely choices in the Middle East; vicious dictators who protect minorities and Islamic fundamentalists who oppress everyone and kill off minorities.  Egypt may turn out to be a third option, a benevolent plutocracy, but they will get there on their own without need for American military intervention.

If we support Assad we can help ensure there will be no genocide directed against Christians but then we're effectively supporting his mass murder of dissenting civilians who just want to be free.

If we support the rebels we can help end Assad's oppression but from what we can see the Islamic nuts will be able to wage war against Christians. 

If Obama had acted 2 years ago, instead of praising Assad, when the rebels were mostly good Muslims who had no problem with a multi-religious society things would have been different.

But now there is no good reason for us to intervene in Syria to help decide who wins.

The only rationale for any sort of limited strike is to teach governments that they can't use nerve gas on their people but the reality is that Assad has killed a lot more innocent civilians with conventional weapons than with nerve gas so any strike would be unlikely to stop the real problems of governments killing their own people.

I don't believe we ever need to get the worlds approval to employ military force when we're in the right, say liberating Greneda, no amount of world approval can make a military intervention that does not accomplish anything beneficial for either the USA or the people of the country we intervene in a good thing.

But if we don't follow through on Obama's commitment then our enemies will doubt our will; Clinton's running out on Somalia convinced Ossama that he could attack the US with impunity.

The good news is that no one is afraid of Obama nor does anyone think he'll do anything militarily in response to foreign aggression so the US can do the right thing, not attack Syria, comforted by the knowledge that Obama has already ensured that the enemies we should be scaring already know that Obama's America will always look for compromise.

In the playground that is the world the bullies already know Obama will give up his lunch money without a fight.

Why amnesty?

When someone breaks into your house and demands you serve him the natural response is to throw the churl out. Yet many in America today say we should in fact pay the bills for the illegals who have broken into our house.

We're told that these millions of unskilled workers who can often not even speak English will, somehow, help the country.

If that were so then why not ship them all back home where they can help their own countries?

Even better if American really needs 10 to 30 million people who lack skills--and the fact that liberals believe this may explain why liberals don't care that the public school system is failing miserably in providing our children with useful skills--why not ship out the criminals who are illegally in the US and allow millions of unskilled, but at least honest, foreigners in?

I mean if we really benefit from adding millions of people who are likely to take more than they produce--even though many will pull their own weight--why not at least reward honest people not those who feel free to ignore the law so long as they benefit from it?

Time to wage lawfare against out of control politicians

Is it time to wage lawfare against politicians who think themselves to be above the law, like Obama and Jerry Brown?

See my article on American Thinker

Why Syria but not Iraq?

President Obama condemned liberating Iraq and installing a non-sharia law based democracy in that formerly oppressed land.

But now he's getting all Rambo about Syria?  Obama is so enthused about putting American lives at risk he's not even going to get Congressional approval like Bush did for Iraq.

While using nerve gas against civilians is not a nice thing it appears that we don't even know if the Syrian government approved of the strike.

Thirty months ago when al Qaeda wasn't a key player in the anti-Assad movement it would have been a no brainer to assume that it was the government not the rebels who sprayed nerve gas on civilians. But today the idea that an al Qaeda mole in mid level management took advantage of the command and control confusion in the Syrian military to manufacture an incident is not totally insane.

But even if Assad did order the strike why should the US get involved? It's not like the current rebel movement is all that appealing. Sure many are good Muslims who don't want Sharia law and who would oppose murdering people for the crime of not being Muslim. But based on past history there's a good chance that the mass murdering Islamic fascists will take over the post Assad Syria.

The only reason for limited US involvement would be to send a message that using nerve gas against civilians will be expensive for the user.

A limited strike therefore might be a good idea. Even if the Syrian government wasn't behind the attack they deserve to be punished since any nerve agent used by the rebels would have had to have come from the government.

The basic idea is that a limited strike would punish the Assad regime either for using nerve gas on civilians or for not closely guarding its nerve gas supplies well enough.

If however Obama goes all out for the rebels it'll be hard to not conclude that he likes Muslim extremists. Syria alone is not sufficient evidence but when you throw in Obama's support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, his unwillingness to condemn the Islamists in Libya, and his silence when the Iranians were trying to be free it seems credible that Obama really has no problem with Muslim extremists.

Democrats declare the Constitution doesn't apply to them

See my blog post at American thinker

Democrets declare the Consitution doesn't apply to them.

President Waffle

The best way to avoid a fight is to convince your opponent that you have the ability, and even more importantly the will, to take steps that will ensure that he will suffer more than you will if he starts a fight with you.

No one picks fights with big athletic men unless they are bigger more athletic men or the potential victim is known to be unwilling or afraid to fight. Then all bets are off.

American has the capability to trounce any other country on earth yet under President Obama we can't get any hostile foreign country to do what we want.  Obama couldn't reach an agreement with Iraq on legal protection for our troops so that now, without a minimal US presence to provide support to the Iraqi military and police terrorism in Iraq, essentially eliminated under President Bush, is once again a booming business.  Due to Obama's incompetence Iraq may end up worse than it was, in terms of being a threat to the US, when we liberated it thereby essentially wasting the lives of all the Americans who died there.

Is it surprising after things like that and Obama's infamous bowing apology tour where he lauded Islam and said how bad the US is that Syria paid no heed to Obama's red lines?  In a world where terrorists can kill a US ambassador and the Secretary of State says "what difference does it make now" what self respecting mass murdering dictator is going to lose sleep over a threat uttered by the school yard coward?

Any country that fails to show resolve is doomed to have to fight; just ask the British about Czechoslovakia.

Profiling Trayvon

It's clear from the evidence that Zimmerman only profiled Trayvon based on Trayvons actions; loitering in the rain, wearing a hoodie etc.

But people still insist that Zimmeram profiled Trayvon on race while ignoring that Trayvon told the "ear witness" that Trayvon was profiling Zimmerman based on Zimmermans perceived race.

But this all misses the point. Trayvon was a drug user and, quite likely, a petty thief. If a profile showed him to be a crook it would be right.

The liberal ruckus about all this is really liberals saying that they like crooks and that honest people shouldn't be able to defend themselves by noticing which people are, to use the vernacular, sketch.

Remember that it was Jesse Jackson who said

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm
- See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” - See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” - See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpufv

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” - See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” - See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

"There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

The vast majority of Blacks are honest.  Only about 6.6% of Black men 18 and older are incarcerated. Which means 93.4% of Black men are honest; not a bad record. The problem is that only .9% of white men 18 and older are incarcerated.  That means that a randomly selected Black man 18 or older is 7 times more likely to be a crook than a white man 18 or older.

Profiling in dangerous situations is a wise thing to do--few people want to gamble with their lives. Profiling job applicants when there is more time to assess the individual safely is not as wise since as we've seen above the vast majority of Blacks are honest people.

“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” - See more at: http://theracecardproject.com/jesse-jackson-fears-black-youths-racism-2/#sthash.w3cxqW8S.dpuf

The Syria conundrum

Right now we have a brutal dictator, who happens to respect the rights of religious minorities, squaring off with a rebellion was started by Muslims who were not religious fanatics but which has, to some level or other, been co-opted by Islamofascists.

The choice is not too appealing.  Siding with the government, as the Russians have, would be supporting a ruthless tyrant who's shown no compunction about murdering Syrians who don't like him. On the other hand the extremist elements of the rebellion are already killing Christians.

The situation is far worse than in Egypt in that the Mubark government was not actually murdering large numbers of Egyptians.

In Syria the choice is between a Muslim Brotherhood like organization and a murdering dictator.  And it's Obama's fault.

A year or more ago the rebels were dominated by Muslims who weren't extremists. By waiting so long to make a decision Obama allowed the corruption of the rebellion by Muslim fanatics which in turn presents the US with two unappealing choices.

The US needs to find some way to get rid of Assad while ensuring that the moderate Muslims take over Syria. Given Obama's support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt it's unclear if the US even realizes that the Muslim extremists in the Syrian rebellion are a problem.

Why liberals love a bad economy

My American Thinker article

The real child molestation scandal

Because the media hate the Catholic Church when a tiny fraction of Catholic priests did horrible things the media started on a decade plus long tirade against the Church.  Instead of covering the full extent of sexual abuse of children in America the liberal media concentrated all their attention on only a tiny portion of the problem.

While the media should have reported on the problems in the Church their attacks have, in general, only been against the Church and not against the much larger problem in public schools; student abuse in public schools could be greater than 100 times that in the Church. Similarly the rate of child sexual abuse in the general population is 2.5 to 5 times higher than for Catholic priests.

Once again a single case of sexually abusing a teen—few of the victims were prepubescent children-- by a Catholic priest is too many but the media, and liberals, fixation on Catholic priests is due to bias not a real concern about child abuse. 

If the media and liberals really cared about abused children they would have been closely covering the much greater problems in public schools, where offending teachers are still routinely shuffled from school to school, with at least as much vigor as they covered the problems in the Church.

The recent decision by the Obama administration to allow girls as young as 11 to get the “morning after” pill over the counter without any sort of parental notification is a sign that liberals really don’t mind the sexual abuse of children. Any girl that young who gets pregnant has been raped. To allow them to use the morning after pill without notifying either the police or the children’s parents allows the rapists to cover their tracks.  In addition the younger a girl is the more likely her rapist is an older man rather than a young boy.

We know that liberals historically have apparently had no problem with helping child rapists get away with their crimes.  Planned Parenthood was caught on tape helping underage girls get abortions without reporting the statutory rapes to the police.  Yet even in the face of such video evidence the media has said nothing.

When the North American Man Boy Love Association(NAMBLA) used to march in the yearly San Francisco Gay Pride parades nothing was said by the media.  Does this mean that gays are all child molesters?  Of course not but if liberals were really interested in ending child abuse they’d be highlighting the problem in the gay community and working to make people aware of the issue. Instead there is silence.

By helping child molesters get away with their crimes, by making it easy for young girls who think they are in “love” to cover up their sexual activity without their parents’ knowledge, the Obama administration is the source of todays real molestation scandal. While the rate of complaints against priests has plummeted the Obama administration is helping molesters continue to exploit children.  Similarly by not calling Planned Parenthood out on its covering up of statutory rapes the liberal establishment is effectively siding with child molesters.

The Catholic Church has taken huge steps to reduce the misuse of children by priests as it should have. The media coverage helped make that happen which shows that shining a light on this horrible problem can have a real and very positive. But now that the rate of abuse reports against priests is approaching zero the real problem in our society is in the public schools and among the general population. 

If the media and liberals really oppose child molestation they should use the same aggressive tactics they used to help the Church end its crisis to help end the much larger problem of sexual abuse in the public schools and the general population.

The new child molestation scandal is that the media and liberals in general seem to have no problem helping molesters get away with their rapes or in not shining a light on the significant problem of sexual abuse of children in America outside of the Catholic Church.

Feel free to follow tom on Twitter