MERE HEALING

Gay Rights Agenda Is Shutting Down Debate on Homosexuality, Says Author

From The Christian Post comes this no-brainer:

Both Brown and Mahoney believe their struggles are symptomatic of efforts by gay rights advocates and supporters to shut down the debate on homosexuality.

"It as if those who came out of the closet fighting for what they said was equality and tolerance want to put us in the closet who take respectful difference," Brown remarked.

Amazon.com: The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure

Curtis Silver throws down the gauntlet with Amazon.com:

The Kindle e-book titled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure crosses the line of free speech, spits in our face and then crosses back over the line. Everything that is happening here, with the existence and sale of this book is protected by free speech - unless a crime has been committed by the author. That is yet to be proven.

Read the whole thing.

via www.amazon.com

Obama slates 3rd vacation since oil spill.

“I’m not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people in the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.” -- President Obama

Meanwhile, Obama finalized plans this week for his third vacation since the Gulf oil spill and explosion back on April 20, 2010...

... 81 Days ago.

 

Well, at least he'll be well-rested.

For future reference.

“[Elena] Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years, and it’s not just that the nominee has not been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which I think a real legal understanding occurs. Her actions [as Dean at Harvard] punished the military, and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas. Ms. Kagan has associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to re-define the meaning of words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies and agendas.” – Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions

Yes, tired of all this and more.

From Robert A Hall:

I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor;" of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers;" of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery;" of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois. I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

Read the whole thing.

Jesus H Christ (as in Hussein)

Leftist poster boy Barack Hussein Obama has an amazing new title to add to his already colorful resume.

...Rashad Hussain, America’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to “protect” Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam.”

But wait... there's more.

... Hussain has now revealed that the U.S. will officially support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. "The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe," said Hussain.

If you'd like a little more perspective on Rashad Hussain, his recent speech before a Muslim Brotherhood front group speaks for itself.

Because Arabic nations <smirk>honor all religions<\smirk>. And because the alleged president of the United States is now fully dedicated to imposing sharia law on Europe.

Introducing: The iLied

From Draw for Truth comes this newest innovation in technology: the Special Extended President Obama Edition.

BHO surrenders US territory to Mexican gangs

Well, I guess when it comes right down to it, After all, giving the country away is certainly easier than defending US sovereignty and pissing off Mexican Presidente Felipe Calderon.

About 3,500 acres of southern Arizona have been closed off to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The closed off area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Fox News that violence against law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens has increased in the past four months, forcing officers on an 80 mile stretch of Arizona land north of the Mexico border off-limits to Americans.

The refuge had been adversely affected by the increase in drug smugglers, illegal activity and surveillance, which made it dangerous for Americans to visit.

"The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent," said refuge manager Mitch Ellis.

Let the long, slow slide continue.

 

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu: Quite frankly I’m telling you as a sheriff that we don’t control that part of the county. My county is larger than the state of Connecticut and we need support from the federal government. It’s their job to secure the border and they haven’t done it. In fact President Obama suspended the construction of the fence.

Indeed.

It's official: BHO is in way over his head.

Heh. Sad but true.

John Deering

Creators Syndicate

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Michael Ramirez

Creators Syndicate

When a picture has the last word.

Steve Breen, San Diego Union-Tribune

Used with permission.

Thanks, Steve!

Heh.

Steve Kelley, New Orleans Times-Picayune

Used with permission.

Thanks, Steve!

What's wrong with this picture?

Ed Driscoll points to the unbelievable plan by BHO to fund Palestinian terrorists in Gaza... but then, why should we be surprised by this? Really.

The United States will contribute $400 million in development aid to the Palestinian territories and work with Israel to loosen its embargo on Gaza, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.Obama’s announcement came after White House talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The money will be used to build housing, schools, water and health care systems in both the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank and Gaza, which is ruled by the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.

Let me get this straight. Our economy has cratered. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent. The national debt is expected to exceed our gross national product by next year. And we’re giving $400,000,000 to our mortal enemies in Gaza?

$400,000,000 to the Hamas-led death cult allied with Iran and Syria? $400,000,000 to the people who celebrated the destruction of the twin towers? $400,000,000 to rain thousands more rockets upon Israeli women and children?

The Right, the Left and everyone in between needs to raise hell.

With all due respect, Mr. Driscoll, I'm really going to wait for that to happen. I wonder if we're just numb to it all by now.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Apparently not if you're a Democrat. Read on. 

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.
-- Ronald W. Reagan.

To underscore this profound observation is a rather revealing study on political leanings and economic literacy, conducted by Zogby and detailed over my first cup of coffee in today’s WSJ.

Zogby researchers considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. Respondents were also asked about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

Rather than focusing on whether respondents answered a question correctly, researchers instead looked at whether they answered incorrectly. A response was counted as incorrect only if it was obviously unenlightened.

In other words, nothing less than flatout guesswork gave each respondent a whopping 60% chance of getting a correct answer. A respondent really had to make an effort to screw this up. And this is where the plot thickens

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: “Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.” People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

And the results:

In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

Wait a second. Not an anomaly? No, and No again. Check out the totals for all eight questions:

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics.

I guess we need to decide which is worse: Democrats lying to us or lying to themselves. I'm torn.

100 Days of Change.

A little perspective...

Many so-called financial “experts” are comparing our present financial conditions to the Great Depression. And why shouldn’t they? With recent headlines like No Signs of Recovery in Jobs Report, Weak Retail and Price Data Dim Hopes of Quick Recovery, and countless others hourly bombarding the American people, it’s hard to keep any perspective beyond that of the media’s doom and gloom. One of the first things I learned in my Journalism 101 class many years ago is simply this: Bad news sells, and good news is no news at all. But I think if we could all take a deep breath or two and compare reality to truth, we might gain a little perspective on things.

One of the things I learned in my Freshman Econ class those same long years ago is that an economic depression is simply any economic downturn where real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declines by more than 10 percent. Applying this method, then the Great Depression of the 1930s can be easily be seen as two separate events: an incredibly severe depression lasting from August 1929 to March 1933 where real GDP declined by almost 33 percent, a period of recovery, then another less severe depression of 1937-38 where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent. The U.S. hasn’t had anything even close to a depression since the post-WWII period. The worst recession in the last 60 years was from November 1973 to March 1975, where real GDP fell by 4.9 percent.

In fact, since 1970 the GDP has only fallen more than one percent once, and that was in 1982 when it fell 1.9 percent. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the GDP decreased by only 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2008 – one-half of one percent. While the decrease in the fourth quarter of 2008 was significantly higher – 5.6 percent – the newspapers had a field day with headlines screaming, “U.S. GDP Shows Biggest Drop in 27 Years,” planting even more seeds of fear and doubt. As the media portray this decline as a harbinger of impending doom, I think it is only fair to remind everyone, as stated in the above paragraph, the GDP plummeted in the early 1930s by almost 33 percent.

In the four years from 1929 through 1933, about 10,000 out of the 25,000 banks in the United States disappeared (source: Business and Media Institute). Take. A. Breath. It’s not even close to anything like that today. Currently our nation supports approximately 8,400 banking institutions. The recently updated Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Failed Bank List shows a total of 75 bank closings between October 13, 2000 and April 10, 2009. But please keep in mind there was no FDIC during the Great Depression, so there were no federally insured deposits, which resulted in the chaotic and panic-driven run on the banks as depositors rushed to get their money out before the banks folded. Today, however, the FDIC guarantee is up to $250,000 per account. That means there will be no run on the banks as there was during the Great Depression.

The media have been relentless in their focus on home foreclosures. Mortgage foreclosure rates have risen. But the truth of this economic matter is that the buying frenzy between 2000 and 2005 caused home prices to more than double. But you don’t need me to remind you that incomes surely didn’t parallel this trend. At the same time, financial institutions made money more accessible to buyers by easing mortgage qualification regulations. And the simple truth is that careless lending practices can be blamed for many of the foreclosures we are seeing today. The mortgage foreclosure rate during the Great Depression was approximately 50 percent. In August of 2008, the national foreclosure rate was 4.4 percent. It may be a little higher now, but it’s not even close to what it was in the 1930s. The truth is that the U.S. has been long overdue for a major adjustment from the unsound lending practices of the last few decades. For example, illegal aliens and others who had no way to pay back their loans were receiving subprime home loans with government guarantees. That’s beyond bad business – it’s wrong… but when has ethics ever gotten in the way of business in America?

In fact, hang with me as we look a little closer at this development, because this is really the heart of the matter. A wide array of evidence has long pointed toward minorities accounting for a disproportionate number of the defaulted subprime mortgage losses that set off the economic crash. This would hardly be surprising since the government pushed hard to increase lending to minorities of marginal creditworthiness in the name of increasing minority homeownership. President Clinton, who said that he wanted his legacy to be that everyone in America would be able to afford a home, teamed up with leftist groups like BHO’s partners-in-crime at ACORN to push for more lending to minorities. According to the Federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database, minorities got half the subprime cash (for home purchases and refinancings) handed out in the boom years of 2004-2007.

Those were GWB years, but pay that no mind. There are many who suspect he was only looking to convert said minorities into loyal Republican voters. And of course some critics blame President Bush simply because he supported broadening homeownership. But President Bush’s goal was for people to own homes they could afford, not ones made accessible by reckless lenders who off-loaded their risk to Fannie and Freddie. The housing meltdown is largely a story of greed and irresponsibility made possible by government, i.e. congressional, privilege. The reality is if Democrats had granted the Bush administration the regulatory powers it sought, the housing crisis wouldn’t be nearly as severe and the economy as a whole would be better off.

For a little more perspective on things, consider this: It took Fannie and Freddie over three decades to acquire $2 trillion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Together, they held $2.1 trillion in 2000. By 2005, the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) held $4 trillion, up a spectacular 92 percent in just five years. By 2008, they’d grown another 24 percent, to nearly $5 trillion – and between them they held almost half of all American mortgages.

The more President Bush pushed for reform, the more paper Fannie and Freddie bought. Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute and Charles Calomiris of the Columbia Business School suggest $1 trillion of this debt was subprime and “liar loans,” almost all purchased between 2005 and 2007. This build-up in funny money made it possible for banks to lend recklessly on a substantial scale.

But I digress. From 1999 to 2006, mortgage dollars (prime and subprime) for home purchases loaned to Hispanics went up a whopping 691 percent and 397 percent for blacks (but only 218 percent for Asians and about 100 percent for whites). As fate would have it, a sizable majority of defaulted dollars lost are in just four heavily Hispanic states: California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. But I guess that’s a subject for another day.

As much fun as all this stuff is to write about, what we really need to consider is, What has all this led to?

Let’s start by considering this: The 1981-82 recession last lasted 16 months and was followed by an explosive recovery thanks largely to the Reagan tax cuts (even though they were slowly implemented). The current downturn, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, started in December 2007. Is the current recession ending? I don’t know. Haven’t got a clue. But now that we no longer have GWB to kick around, let’s take a quick look at where BHO is on things.

It will be his decision to forego deep and permanent new tax cuts, his decision to not extend the Bush tax cuts, his decision on how to spend the remaining $350 billion in TARP money, his decision to quasi-nationalize healthcare, his decision to push a cap-and-trade carbon emission program, and his decision to spend hundreds of billions on a “green” industrial policy. From all appearances, it even looks to be his decision to reunionize the American labor force, since he’s pretty much in the unions’ collective back pocket now.

If the White House was under the impression that what the capital markets need to recover was a full-out public relations exercise from Obama, Bernanke and Summers, as witnessed the other day, said White House was sadly mistaken. Case in point: After these leaders addressed the nation, the U.S.< equity market dropped over -1 percent. On a day that started badly, and then got worse, not even extensive pro-BHO TV coverage of the A-Team was able to turn things around.

Here’s the problem: The public is clamoring for an end to TARP and the bailout mania. That’s a key message coming from this week’s tea parties that have cropped up spontaneously around the country. This is evolving into a real grassroots uprising against rising taxes, TARP, and all the federal bailouts—and the trillions of dollars of deficits and debt being used for financing.

If BHO and his merry band of cohorts ignore this unrest, it will be a guaranteed one-term administration, which means it will do as much damage as it can in the next 3¹/₂ years. So the net widens. While commercial banks of all sizes are increasingly profitable and are willing and able to pay back their TARP money, the Treasury Department is now proposing to extend TARP funds to life-insurance companies, most of which are in absolutely no danger of failing. No one has proven that life-insurance companies constitute true systemic risk to the financial system. This is nothing but a financial mugging “bailout” and I use the term with a certain amount of creative license since none of these insurers has failed. And for those several that are in danger, I wonder if a simple bankruptcy proceeding might be more appropriate than additional taxpayer money.

It comes down to this: We are already on the hook for the banks, GM and Chrysler, and don’t forget we’re getting hosed for guaranteed government-backed GM warranties. And the banks themselves seem to be preparing to go to war against an administration that wants to maintain control over the big-bank sector to prevent the banks from paying off TARP. It’s as if BHO and Friends are saying, “Screw the taxpayers. We’re Democrats. This is about government control.”

Coming up next: What does all this mean for the faith-based nonprofit sector?

Cartoon by Steve Kelley, New Orleans Times-Picayune. 

Used with permission. 

Thanks, Steve!

Reality check.

TV writer, and journalist Charles Winecoff on The Awakening of a Dumb (Gay) American:

Bottom line: I have had to work very, very hard my whole life to accept myself as a gay man, and to be able to introduce myself freely as such and be proud of my relationship. No one did that for me. But a big plus was living in this crazy, over-the-top country that has changed so much just in my lifetime – and done such an incredible about-face after eight years of an unpopular President. What other country on earth is that flexible? What other country is that trusting?

Now, however, I often feel as if I’ve been shoved right back into the closet by the very people who go around espousing diversity and equal rights and compassion – fellow gay people and “sophisticated” urban friends who in fact can’t tolerate an idea that’s not out of the playbook. When a Muslim leader in Nigeria – or even scarier, in Canada – declares that gay people should be killed and their heads cut off, I’m sorry, but that offends me. And it also worries me because we have all seen these believers act on their hate.

Meanwhile, the affluent gay community in LA never makes a peep about hate speech if it comes from non-caucasians with funny Arabic names. The buff, mostly-white queers just continue doing what they do best: identify as victims and pretend it’s 1977 – protesting the harmless Mormon church, which never fights back, and boycotting campy Mexican restaurants to put other tax-paying minorities (including some gays) out of work. Meanwhile, a threat much bigger than Prop. 8 is growing fast.

My point is: I don’t think American gays fully comprehend that in many countries, such as Iran, gay people really don’t have any rights – not even to live. Just last September, a brave, 27-year-old student and gay rights activist, who helped organize safe houses for gay men in Baghdad and coordinated the Iraqi LGBT group, was gunned down at point blank range by Islamic militants – not by Christians or US soldiers. But by literal neo-Nazis.

Read the whole thing.

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- I tell you.

AP: Clinton acted on concerns of husband's donors

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State appointee Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband's foundation, an Associated Press review of her official correspondence found

The overlap of names on former President Bill Clinton's foundation donor list and business interests whose issues she championed raises new questions about potential ethics conflicts between her official actions and her husband's fundraising.

And then there's this from the Chicago Tribune:

Even before she offered the Senate Foreign Relations Committee her opening, she was told by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the committee's ranking Republican, that the former president's Clinton Foundation could represent a temptation for foreign governments and other overseas entities to try to influence U.S. policies.

"The only certain way to eliminate this risk going forward is for the Clinton Foundation to forswear foreign contributions," Lugar said, arguing that restrictions and guidelines worked out between the incoming Obama administration and the foundation should be tightened.

An existing agreement with Obama's transition team represents "a beginning, not an end" to controls on the foundation's activities, Lugar said.

I know Lugar means well, but my sense is that Clinton's vote will sail through unchallenged Thursday.

Nuts.

What's wrong with this picture?

Proposition 8 donor location maps for San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Orange County are now posted at EightMaps.com. Prop. 8, of course, was the proposition that amended the California Constitution to bar legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The people identified on these maps are the people who donated money to pass it. The map is built – presumably automatically – from the data reported by the California Secretary of State's office. If you click any of the pins on any map, you'll see the individual contributor's name, profession and amount given.) Please note that many of the listed contributions are $50 or below. I can’t help but suspect this sort of “technology” may well incline folks to be much more reluctant to donate money for – or against – controversial propositions, and will hopefully lead the government to re-evaluate mandating disclosure of such contributions, especially insignificant amounts.