Independence Day Recast?

Have you seen the movie Independence Day? If you have then you would know that aliens have invaded our world.  There are aliens in the air and, you might agree, there are aliens on the ground in the form of the cast.

A blurb about the movie from the IMDb website:   “The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.

Man’s best weapon here may be to laugh off this farce.  I like sci-fi.  I think Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Robert Wise are some of the best in that genre.  But this movie is epic as pathetic slap-stick sci-fi.  Of course you can’t take it seriously.

Will Smith’s pre~Men~In~Black typecasting of silly No Fear bravado and Randy Quaid’s dad~is~crazy~but~somehow~his~zaniness~endears~us~to~him role adds fuel to this trash can fire. The role of President Thomas Whitemore is played by a stiff whose part would have better played better by a  teleprompter. Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson portrays an MIT educated-computer expert~chess playing~environmentalist~satellite tech~you~name~it~he’s~got~the~answer~for~you~kind~of~guy who ‘triangulates’ the four corners of this going-nowhere movie.

The movie’s special effects won an Academy Award and I’ll never know why. The effects are third-rate at best. (I thought Twister should have won that year).   The movie does, though, offer something for the political observer ~ a perfect realization of the Obama presidency.

The dark, foreboding and humongous space ship hovering over Washington D.C. is a perfect archetype of the Obama Administration.  Out of the bottom of the ominous alien craft come lethal rays: Obamacare taxes and immigration fiats.  Cities and people’s lives are instantly destroyed. America is under attack.

There is no reason given for why this is happening other than America is America and the aliens say that America must die. So it is that Eric Holder, an onerous chief alien, sits in the mother ship’s ivory tower directing America’s destruction with reserved glee.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it.”  At least for America as we have known it.

…The space ship is hovering….

Constance (the President’s Press Secretary):  “Now what do we do?

President Thomas Whitmore:  “Address the nation.  There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”

Constance: “Yeah, I’m one of ’em.”

Wow!  Someone save us from the dialog!   Thankfully the brave and ‘wacky’ heros played by Will Smith and Randy Quaid) come to America’s aid and help bring an end to this distraction of a movie.

Using viral computer ‘implants’ and sexy aircraft maneuvering the alien ‘death’ ship is decimated but only after hundreds of minor skirmishes with the pesky alien ‘gnats’ (the larva born in Obama’s ideological intransigence or perhaps in Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly movie).

The next time you watch this movie listen to the dialog.  It deserves a Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot of Mystery Science Theatre  over dubbing!

We can turn a movie off when the Hollywood kitsch gets to be too much or when the credits (and debits) finally roll.  But  we can’t turn off government when it makes no sense.  Except if you and I begin voting it out of our lives.

Do you want freedom from annihilation by Obamacare taxation?  How about “Fighting for our right to live ~ to exist” without own government’s tyranny, oppression and persecution? How about freedom from government’s intrusion of our privacy and its coercive mandates? Will the middle class now go quietly into the night now that it is being taxed into oblivion?

America’s Independence began when it resisted taxation without representation. Now we have representation that doesn’t represent our best interests and that mimics King George’s taxation edicts. Let’s throw off the shackles of tyranny and vaporize the black cloud of government that overshadows us wherever we go.  Vote Obama and the Dems out.

It is confirmed.  There is alien life out there.  They are living among us:  Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Holder, Napolitano, Durbin, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren

Fear and Loathing in America

I know, I know, I am polemical.  I polarize people with my words.  I piss people off because I am ever seeking to destroy pretense.  And yet at this juncture in my life I understand this irksome gift as a God-given trait that must be used.  This does not mean that I am perfect, of course, or exempt.  It does mean though that just like the prophets recorded in the Old Testament I cannot remain silent. I am will ever be forthright and forth telling…

 *****

Pervasive throughout our land is the avoidance of asking the hard questions.  We shun the real questions about life and death, about God, about good and evil, about the body and soul, about reason and revelation and about eternity and time. 

 Yesterday I happened to watch The Lord of the Rings (LTR):  The Return of the King.  Putting the above statement into LTR terms, we want to live peaceably in the shire with never having to venture out and deal with the Ring which has consequential power over us. We may say to ourselves, “Why destroy the ring when we can pretend it doesn’t exist? We may have doubts that all that the shire presents to us is all there is to life but we will ignore those doubts in order to avoid conflict and to live peaceably. We choose the immediate surroundings to avoid the dangerous quest that truth demands. We fear what it might take to make the journey.  We fear we will lose ourselves on the way and never return to the shire. We fear what it might take to fight the good fight.

 We fear conflict. Conflict is the evil we most want to avoid.  Our “dialectics” begin with opposites and end in synthesis.  We seek conflict resolution, bargaining, harmony and therapy, no-fault divorce, etc.  Because of this we find it easier to believe nothing of import so that we do not have to fear disagreement, ostracism or even death for what one believes. And because we do not believe in anything then we cannot be responsible for outcomes.

 To choose to believe nothing means that absolute truth is discharged from our lives.  Its voice is no longer heeded.  In fact its voice is now being drowned out.  The commotion that you hear daily is man’s raucous resistance to leaving the shire ~ his tweeting and texting of empty words, the ever streaming pop/rock music filling the void, the Surround sound of ubiquitous blaring entertainment.  It is as if men and women were walking around in the dark calling out to each other and never finding the light switch. They have chosen to stay in the purgatory of their fears.

 The avoidance of pain and conflict has become our primary goal in life.  This is seen in the young voter’s desire for Obamacare.  The health care reform is seen by them as in line with their “values”.  The reform is also seen as providing a sense of self-esteem in that it affirms the young voters wish to avoid pain and insecurity at all costs. On the surface Obamacare appears to provide security for themselves and for others while in truth it is a compromise of what is good and what is evil – the good being the desire for your well-being and the well-being of others and the evil which is the lie that Obama and the government will somehow provide self-esteem and security for you and others and do it with altruism. Remember, God has now been replaced by social science, social science based on rationalism and egalitarianism (think John Rawls, Laurence Tribe, etc.) all under the banner of “Social Justice.”  Rationalism’s,’ “Social Justice” trumps God every time.  Social science is now becoming the creator of society’s values, e.g., God is not to be talked about in public but homosexuality must be.  All of this in spite of the fact that rationalism without revelation could never create value. As Benedict XVI said in 1969:

“What is essential is that reason shut in on itself does not remain reasonable or rational, just as the state that aims at being perfect becomes tyrannical. Reason needs revelation in order to be able to be effective as reason.”

 The avoidance of truth with its inherent conflicts with other than the truth affects our relationships, our sexuality, our creativity, our culture. In place of absolute truth Americans, as mentioned, have latched on to “values.” And our new “value” system has a new way of talking:  “lifestyle”, “Be Yourself;” “Be original;” “Let go and be;”  diversity;” “I have my rights.” But now “rights” are no longer the natural inalienable God-given rights “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Now “rights” have morphed into feelings worn on our sleeve.  We demand that others accept what we feel and that others be open and tolerant. This is what we value above all else. Right and wrong (and love (read not sex)) no longer have a place in our psyche. “Values” – a synthesis of good and evil dominates our diseased culture. And when we ignore serious questions we create words with synthetic meanings to describe our lives.

 “Charisma” is one of those words often heard today. Charisma was once considered a God-given grace but has been used as cover for the “banality of evil” as Hannah Arendt, political philosopher, notes when talking about Hitler’s appeal.

  Allan Bloom, another political philosopher, notes in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind:  How Higher Education Has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, “Charisma both justifies leaders and excuses followers.  The very word gives a positive twist to rabble-rousing qualities and activities treated as negative in our constitutional tradition.  And it s vagueness makes it a tool for frauds and advertising men adept at manipulating images.” Consider that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both been called charismatic leaders.

 In the introduction to his book, Bloom writes about what he sees in the classrooms of higher education: 

“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of:  almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes that truth is relative….They are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality….They have been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society…The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance.  Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating.  Openness ~ and the relativism that makes it only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings ~ is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger.  The study of history and culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism.  The point (now) is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”  (emphasis mine)

  In a later chapter titled The German Connection, Bloom relates how Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Weber, Freud have influenced American thinking.  Americans, within a “pro-choice” democracy, have assimilated this German thinking sometimes turning it on its head.   Bloom writes, 

“…there is now an entirely new language of good and evil, originating in an attempt to get “beyond good and evil” and preventing us from talking with any conviction about good and evil anymore.  Even those who deplore our current moral condition do so in the very language that exemplifies that condition.”

“The new language is that of value relativism and it constitutes a change in our view of things moral and political as great as the one that took place when Christianity replaced Greek and Roman paganism.”

“Value relativism can be taken to be a great release from the perpetual tyranny of good and evil, with its cargo and shame and guilt, and the endless efforts that the pursuit of the one and the avoidance of the other enjoin. Intractable good and evil cause infinite distress – like war and sexual repression – which is almost instantly relieved when more flexible values are introduced.  One need not feel bad about or uncomfortable with oneself when just a little value adjustment is necessary.  And this longing to shuck off constraints and have one peaceful, happy world is the first of the affinities between our real American world and that of German philosophy in its most advanced form, given expression by the critics of the President’s speech.”

 Here Bloom is referring to the clamor arising when President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.”  When yet at another time Reagan said that the Soviets had “different values,” this statement was met “at worst with silence and frequently with approval,” thus revealing our loathing of absolutism in the former statement.

 At the beginning of the chapter Values, Bloom, relates, “We have come back to the point where we began (in the book), where values take the place of good and evil.” (emphasis mine)

And so like Gollum we place the utmost value on the ring of power, becoming blind to its tyranny over us. Along with the ring we call our values “My Precious.”  Under the yolk of temporal “values” and without facing the serious questions of life we lose ourselves, we lose the real.  We lose love, romance, culture, art ~ everything meaningful to us.

 Love or charity, a virtue which must be constantly worked at, is replaced with easy sex. Consider that in our culture sexual activity is not to be repressed or disciplined but rather it is to be given preeminent unrestrained “value.” Think Sandra Fluke and contraception. Think in-your-face homosexuality. Does America “confirm her soul in self-control” or not?

 Romance, apart from truth is portrayed in movie after movie as just a response to nihilism. Nowhere to be found is the expectation, the unrequited desire and the hoped-for revelation of real romance. Without absolutes there can be no true romance.

 We are a culture that seeks therapeutic counseling.  Yet modern psychology, the sworn enemy of shame and guilt, refuses to talk about good and evil and therefore offers nothing for the soul. Freudian psychology only brings the patient back to repressed sex.

 Modern art has nothing of consequence to offer. Consider the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

 Deafening music, pop or rock, pummels our ear drums daily evoking barbaric passions and depriving the soul of its senses.

 Tattoos deface our bodies so as to reveal our disdain for the discipline that purity of mind and body requires. Inking is given the (non-)value of counter-culture and rabble-rousing.

 Religion, wherein serious questions are faced, is being replaced by positive thinking as preached from the temples of TV.

 In view of the fact that our nation is becoming increasingly devoid  of absolutes and truth while at the same time becoming  increasingly laced with relativism and sliding scale “values” consider this:

 Jesus, the Son of the Living God, says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Free from what? Free from fear.  All fear:  the fear of the unknown, the fear of facing accountability, the fear of death, the fear of loss and personal suffering, the fear of evil.  Jesus’ perfect love casts out all fear. Because of this we can face the serious questions of life head-on knowing that He loves us, that He stands with us and that He has gone before us through the same difficult places. Seek Him and He will be found.

 Going back to the LTR analogy do you remember how Frodo and Sam and the rest rejoiced that the ring had been destroyed, that their arduous life and death journey had been accomplished? Their courage and resoluteness saved the shire, themselves and Middle Earth even while the others in the shire had no clue as to what was going on.  You and I are about to do the same.

Just, Fair and Equal: the Stooges of Progressivism

“Creating a world that is just, fair and equal.”  This Progressive mantra was recited again yesterday. I heard it during a television interview of two historians at a history writer’s convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The black historian’s words sounded so right, so full of righteous human endeavor but in reality his words were the sounds of empty utopian piety deficit of any moral context.

 A world that is just is a world where every man gives the other his due.  Yet government’s redistribution of wealth does the opposite. It takes away from the taxpayer what is due him, his earnings and property and gives to someone else that which is not due him. This confiscation and redistribution of personal property is for no other reason than to turn unequal incomes into equal outcomes.  This highway robbery is currently termed “social justice” by progressives today who were yesterday’s socialists. 

Here is Josef Stalin, a murderous dictator, talking about his desire to see socialism dominate the world (meaning you and me):

“…Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world …”

St.Thomas Aquinas in his On the Book of Job (8,1) said:

 “Justice is destroyed in twofold fashion:  by false prudence of the sage and by the violent act of the man who possess power.” 

 As we see our nation become increasingly secular we see its structure being pulled away from its Judeo-Christian cornerstone.  And in so doing we the ‘homeowners’ are becoming displaced and disordered much like furniture during a house relocation.  Without realizing it we are becoming objects devoid of human nature, becoming the un-created or the walking dead.  Removed from life’s foundation man is devoid of God-given inalienable rights as well. And with out individual inalienable rights there is only left to mankind the justification of totalitarian power, a totalitarian power that promises a “just, fair and equal world.” This secular utopian promise is not new to mankind:  Hitler and Stalin among others promoted such ‘worlds’.

 Justice can rightly be discussed only within a complete moral context that includes prudence, temperance, fortitude, charity and a host of other God-derived virtues.  To replace that moral context with a secular humanism is to presume that God did not create humans.  It presumes that God did not create man as a person, as a whole unto himself as a spiritual being that exists for itself and of itself and that wills its own proper perfection.  On these grounds secular humanism denies individual God-given inalienable rights in favor of the general ‘good.’ This denial is imposed on us today in our democracy by majority rule – voters enthralled by the secular humanism advocated by the main stream media, by our president and by Democrats in particular are voting to empty man of his individual nature through law and fiat.  They are doing so in the name of communal “social justice.” No one seems to notice except a few on the right.

 Because of human nature there will always be those in a small camp who think to themselves “every man for himself” and “screw the other guy so I can get ahead.”  And likewise, on the other hand, there will always be those who believe that each of us should give up our person, our property and our individualism for the good of the whole. Neither of these political philosophies should ever be put in power.  And yet with high-sounding, pious jingoism pumped out by the main stream media propaganda machine the left is now succeeding into promoting the latter.  We already know who the willing recepient is:   “a sucker is born every day.”

 As individuals each of us should act with justice toward our neighbor giving him his due.  What is his due?  My neighbor is due his inalienable God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I owe him truth.  I owe him the same love I give myself.  I owe him freedom from coercion. Beyond that the mantras of “social justice,” fairness and egalitarianism become the Godless mind control pumping the ever marching jackboots of rank and file humanism.  Once a sufficient numbers of useful idiots and stooges have succumbed to humanism’s opiate effect a sure and complete enslavement of our nation under a totalitarian regime will occur. Welcome to the world of the godless if Obama’s regime is re-elected in 2012.

 For a world to be “fair” someone in power has to determine what is fair.  Do you really want to use your vote for that kind of self-subjugation?  Certainly there is no Biblical a priori for demanding that life must be fair. Where does this understanding of the need for fairness come from?  Is there a philosophical argument for fairness?  A moral one?

My guess would be that much of the “fairness” allure comes from popular psychology and socialist rhetoric both which absolve people of personal responsibility and seeks to rectify a person’s losses and hardships by pointing blame at others.  Class warfare rhetoric is a prime example, as it defines others as being the reason for your lack.  More devastating to our culture and its preoccupation with fairness is our nation’s increasingly secular nature, a secular nature of envy and jealousy actively promoted by president Obama in his many “fair share” speeches.  Obama is a secularist wolf in Soros’ bought sheep’s clothing.

  A world that is “equal” is a world that removes difference for the sake of bringing every one down to the same low common denominator and nothing more.  Imagine our government choosing your husband or wife, your doctor, your food, your home and your words based on what is thought to be equal for everyone. Equal-outcome based thinking destroys incentive, destroys each man’s uniqueness, his God-given differences, his inalienable rights and eats away at civic life-like a flesh-eating disease feeding on its host. 

According to Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Soul’s of Today’s Students in the chapter entitled Values “Egalitarianism is conformism…Egalitarianism is founded on reason, which denies creativity”

 Imagine a world where there is no creativity and no aspirations only sameness.  Imagine being a citizen of North Korea.

Without moral-based justice as an inoculation against greed and envy people would constantly be looking at others to compare themselves with their neighbor. Forget contentment in a world that is egalitarian.

 Finally both fairness and egalitarianism, as laws enacted via secular humanist congressmen and presidents voted for, remove individual moral choice (justice) along with charity, fortitude and temperance from life. If the government does your thinking and makes your choices for you then you as an individual are absolved from any moral duty whatsoever.  What than is the purpose of the individual?  Without you the state becomes the all-powerful meat grinder and you along with everyone else become the human sausage extruded into the casings of humanism. Digest that if you will.

“A government big enough to give you everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have….” President Gerald Ford

Joseph and the One Percent

You should know that jealousy and envy disguised as “fairness” and “equality” play important roles in a liberal’s political drama.

 Remember the Bible story of Joseph and the coat.  Joseph’s eleven brothers, assuming that Joseph was their father’s favorite son, became extremely jealous when Joseph received a beautiful coat as a gift from his father.  So jealous were they in fact that they plotted to kill Joseph.  But after much hand wringing and intervention by the oldest brother they sold Joseph into slavery.  This was deemed a more humane solution.

 The brothers in order to deflect their guilt gave their father a bloodied garment as proof of their ‘sincere’ lie that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.  The brothers then considered their “problem” to be out of sight and out of mind.  What mattered most to them was to maintain status quo – everybody was to remain equal.

 From a mature point of view the brothers should not have been jealous. Joseph’s father Jacob had every right to give the coat to whomever he wanted.  But the brothers grumbled and cried foul amongst themselves as do liberals today whenever there is a perceived breach of societal equity.

 Today’s popular psychology helps feed the popular jealousy by reverse thinking.  Instead of providing a positive unselfish viewpoint Freudian based psychology points the finger back at dad the authority figure:  “you feel that you didn’t get your fair share of love from your father.” “Your father treated your brother with more love and affection. “Your father should have given you more.  He should have been fair with you so let’s help you figure out how to get your fair share.” This nonsense is played out day after day in the liberal media and by president Obama with “fair share” rhetoric. 

 These liberal folks will tell you as they have been counseled that life has not given you your fair share so you must demand fairness: “Look at your life.  Do you have what he has?  No?” “Then demand it.” “Demand your right to healthcare. Demand your right to force the 1% to pay higher taxes. Demand your right to live off another person’s property.” This type of debilitating psychology streams from media outlets day and night promoting jealousy, envy and unrest in the people who hear it.

 Co-opted, high-sounding and sanctimonious words hide the real motivation behind the left’s policies:  jealousy and envy hiding in the wings waiting for the chance to ‘correct’ the unfairness.

 Consider this assessment of the Left’s use of innocuous language to achieve their ‘righteous’ ends. Here is Thomas Sowell, economist :

 “The left has a whole vocabulary devoted to depicting people who do not meet the standards as people who have been denied “access.” Whether it is academic standards, job qualifications or credit requirements, those who do not measure up are said to have been deprived of “opportunity,” “rights” or “social justice.”

 The word games of the left – from the mantra of “diversity” to the pieties of “compassion” – are not just games.  They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.

 “Rights,” for example have become an all purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a “right” to whatever the left wants to give them by taking from others.

 For centuries, rights were exemptions from government power, as in the Bill of Rights.  Now the left has redefined rights as things that can demanded from the taxpayers, or from private employers or others, on behalf of people who accept no mutual obligations, even for common decency.”

 Joseph was one of twelve brothers.  He was 1/12th or 8.333 % of the whole.  8.333% had something the 91.667 % didn’t have.  Rounding off, the 92% were envious of the 8% so the 92% decided to bring the 8% down to zero, thus making things fair in their eyes. Removing Joseph from the picture also meant that their inheritance was now larger, divided only eleven ways instead of twelve.  Because of envy and jealousy the 92% proceeded to sell the 8% into slavery and bondage, though murder was considered.  Think about that before you vote for Obama and the Democrats. Think about that when you hear them demanding that the 1% should dish out their shovel ready wealth for your benefit.

 Being your brother’s keeper is so much more than keeping him around and keeping him in his place by only giving him his “fair share.”  It is dealing justly with him by giving him what is due him.  So if a man has been given a gift or has a talent bless him and do not curse him.  If a man receives more than you be thankful to God for what you do have and for his gain. But,  if you by jealousy and envy, in order to make yourself feel better about yourself, your situation and the world at large, confiscate another man’s property,  if you subjugate his person and sell him into slavery or if, when envy has matured into its final state you seek to murder the man better off than you then know that his blood will cry out for justice. Know that God will avenge those treated unjustly.

A Return to Failure is Not a Step Forward

 Three and a half years into Obama’s presidency it would be naïveté and simplemindedness to blame George Bush for the economy’s problems.  During his term as president Obama, the Amateur, has taken all the wrong actions or no actions at all when action was called for.  His reign of malignant incompetency has passed the onerous Dodd-Frank act and Obamacare legislation further crippling our nation. And, Obama has surrounded himself with incompetent and partisan people who promote racial strife, class warfare and division – a second civil war has been forced onto our nation.

Obama is a president who is proud of the fact that more people of this nation are on welfare and receiving food stamps than at any time in our nation’s history.  He encourages dependence on government  Yet, one would think that an American president would work to produce the opposite effect – more people able to care for themselves.  Instead, Obama’s incompetence and his top down government policies are forcing our nation into indentured servitude fit for his plantation.  Obama and the government will become your taskmasters.  As once free people of a great nation you become slaves beholden to the whims of the masters. A political civil war must be fought to oust the slave market creators – Obama and the Dems.

If you voted for Obama in 2008 here are only some of the overall economic effects of his Hope and Change administration.  These are economic facts and they do not convey the pain, the suffering and the lost hope that millions of the unemployed feel:

From the post “The Great Obama Welfare State:”

 Much has changed in America since Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009.  In less than 1,000 days as chief executive of the U.S., President Obama’s failed policies and initiatives have resulted in a dizzying array of dismal economic statistics.  As it stands now, Obama appears headed toward an economic legacy that may very well surpass Jimmy Carter in its level of failure.

Government dependence, which is defined as the percentage of persons receiving one or more federal benefit payments, is at a staggering 47%, its highest level in American history, while 21 million households are reliant on food stamps. 

According to the August employment report from the Department of Labor, the nation’s unemployment rate remained at 9.1% with a total of zero jobs added to the economy during the month.  Among demographic groups, Latinos had an unemployment rate of 11.3%, while African-Americans posted a rate of 16.7%.  For blacks, that represents the highest unemployment rate for this group since 1984 and a rate more than double that of whites (8%).

When Obama took office in January 2009, the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 7.8%, a rate higher than the historic norm, yet far below the current rate, and above any rate during the Bush administration.  Since June 2009, six months into Obama’s term, the nation’s unemployment rate has been at or above 9% during 25 of 27 consecutive months.

The economic numbers are especially poor for the demographic groups that most supported Barack Obama at the polling booth in November 2008.

Take Wayne County, Michigan, for example, where President Obama made a Labor Day economic speech.  This county, which includes the city of Detroit, voted for Obama at a rate of 74% in 2008.  It has been estimated that Detroit’s “Real Unemployment Rate” might be upwards of 45%, and Michigan remains the state with the dubious honor of having the highest unemployment rate.

 …

These woeful economic figures have come during a time in which we have experienced the most government involvement in the economy since the days of FDR and government spending without parallel in our nation’s history.

The list of taxpayer-paid government bailouts and government spending under the Obama administration is seemingly endless and has resulted in our national debt now above $14.7 trillion.

President Obama has thrown billions upon billions of dollars at the U.S. economy with nothing to show for it.  His so-called stimulus policies have been, in fact, contractionary and his presidency stands to be remembered as nothing short of an economic failure. (emphasis mine)

 Can anyone in their right mind believe that any of the above is good?  Can anyone in their right mind vote for Obama and Democrats again?

In November vote for anyone but Obama and you will go Forward. End the growth of failure now.

No Way But Up

What’s at the core of America’s problems today? Is it partisan politics or is there a greater rift in the American people?

 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian during his commencement address delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978, gave us his diagnosis.  His speech is a stinging indictment of the West –  its materialism, its enabling of the abuse of individual freedom, its self-serving inbred media and its disavowal of its spiritual roots:

 However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. … State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.

 And…

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.” (emphasis mine)

And…

“It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”

Take a look at what drives you and perhaps you will see why America is no longer a nation under God, no longer a nation of civil courage, of moral decency.  Perhaps you will see why people would vote for a president who uses class warfare rhetoric to promote the sands of material security as foundational to life and not the rock of spiritual fortitude.

When You Wish Upon Obama…

you enter the Disneyland-like fantasy world of smoke and mirrors, the amusement park of progressives.  It is there that …

…you live under Chicago style politics instead of the U.S. Constitution.

…you receive Eric Holder – Black Panther style justice which is no justice.

…your liberty is traded for political hype: “Hope and Change’: “Yes, We Can”.

 …the extreme Left receives all manner of special interest goodies. The resulting financial shortfall will be devastating (see Greece, Spain, Portugal, California).  Our children and grandchildren will receive the enormous debt burden.

…the government becomes a monopoly, a monopoly that cannot and will not be broken down. Because of this the competition of the free market system, a system that works to lower consumer cost and to ensure better quality products and customer service will vanish from the scene. You will have to take what the government gives you or go to a black market.

…under Obamacare you have health coverage (you are fined for not having it) but not health care. You will have bought the lie.

…whatever health care you do receive will be meted out by bureaucrats (czars) who will tell how much, when and what kind of health care you will receive. They will also decide who lives and who dies, who benefits and who goes without.

…you are free when Obama says you are free.

…you will have your “fair share” when you understand that running from and resisting the Tax Man is impossible and you surrender. You then become enslaved and live on Obama’s Progressive plantation.

…the only good energy policy is the energy policy that financially powers the Obama candidacy and his progressive agenda.

…America will become a subset of the European Union. (BHO wants to eventually become the potentate of the world.)

…democracy will become meaningless because you will have ceded your liberty to a small group of people who you will be told have your best interest at heart. Your vote will mean nothing. Czars and bureaucrats will replace your representatives.

…a top down government will break the back of the states and in the process also destroy individual liberty. All of this for the sake of controlling costs, controlling your money and controlling you the citizen.

….Christians will be persecuted. The main stream media (powered by Obama’s political and secular colonialism) will openly attack Christianity as not being inclusive enough, as being too extreme. All this and more while homosexuals will be allowed to teach your children their moral values in the public schools.

…absolute moral truth will be replaced with the increasingly vogue secular religions of fairness, egalitarianism, environmentalism and political correctness. These ersatz religions are based on relativism and humanism. These ersatz religions will become the state religions and be reinforced by those who are in power using the main stream media.

…your voice will be silenced (i.e., the fairness doctrine) by the Obama regime if you disagree with his message. And, if you believe that the fairness doctrine will only neutralize conservatives, you are in complete denial. Totalitarians always direct the conversation. Controlling the message, the ideology and indoctrination are central to controlling the citizen on the plantation. See North Korea. See China. See Stalin’s Russia. See…

…your voice will be silenced in deference to a few well-connected intellectual elites who will be exalted within their “ivory tower” college professorships. Your “worker bee voice” will be not be heard.  Instead, your life will become ‘handled’ by these self-promoting social-scientists who receive their power from above.

…America will be divided into those worship the Obamic Vision and those who do not. The race card will be used extensively to promote a divided nation. And, more and more people will claim minority status so as to indemnify themselves against “hate speech”.  Class warfare rhetoric will be used to conflate fairness with an unjust confiscation of property

…your whole purpose in life under Obama will be to become a complacent useful idiot, no more, no less. Through taxation you will be required to buy into the BHO lottery: “Hand me your money and your liberty and we will take care of the rest. Yes, we can.”

…the subsequent rioting in the streets that will occur because of all of the above will be quashed by use of the totalitarian forces put into power by you the voter.

When you wish upon Obama you get the president and the government you deserve.

*****

Course correction needed.

Imagine 2012

Imagine no Obama

It’s easy if you vote

No hell to live in

No debt to dash your hope

Imagine all the voters

Living with certainty…

 

Imagine no nanny state

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing but free markets

With fairness though and through

Imagine all the people

Working for their means…

 

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope today you’ll join us

And help us vote out the One.

 

Imagine no recession

I wonder if you can

No slump, no desperation

A real “Yes, we can.”

Imagine all the people

Giving charitably…

 

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope today you’ll join us

And help us vote out the One.

***

It’s important to know Obama’s vision of the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6QOscKvUjU

What’s the Unitarian?

It is little wonder that the well-known ‘angry’ atheist Richard Dawkins wrote the anti-thesim book The God Delusion.  It is easily understandable especially after one reads the interview (excerpted and linked below) between a Unitarian Minister Marilyn Sewell and another anti-theist atheist the former Christopher Hitchens (Hitch).

 As evident from the interview, Marilyn Sewell, a minister, is utterly delusional in her understanding of God and Christianity.  And it is blatantly obvious that Hitch has a better understanding of Christianity than this Unitarian minister.

 Apparently from her bio Sewell has studied theology but I contend it is not Biblical theology.  Her questions and remarks as interviewer reveal her embrace of syncretism – a diversity of false beliefs and humanism blended with the truth of Christianity. Unitarian could be another term for syncretism.

 From her eponymous blog we are told that liberal believer and retired minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland Marilyn Sewell is a former teacher and psychotherapist.  She has authored numerous books. Over a period of 17 years Sewell helped grow Portland’s downtown Unitarian congregation into one of the largest in the United States. At this point I must say that the fact that this woman and the Unitarian Church are misleading many is of serious concern to me. I must contend for the truth of Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 It troubles my spirit greatly when people like this liberal Unitarian minister use the name of Jesus Christ to preach “another gospel” and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her message is a mish-mash of new age religion, liberal theology, social justice and cheap grace.  The ultimate message becomes half lie half truth:  “It’s not what you believe but how you live.” Ergo an embrace of diverse beliefs and social justice activism are at the forefront of Unitarian creeds.  As you’ll read, for Sewell just like the Episcopalian minister ghost in C.S. Lewis’, “The Great Divorce” all is metaphor, and therefore, cannot be taken seriously

 The deity of Christ, His death on the cross, His atonement for sins, judgement, heaven and hell, all are dismissed as being metaphorical, as not relevant to present human need and too exclusive a message to preach and teach.   Clearly this is syncretistic thinking and delusional with regard to the truth.  And because of its soft, socially acceptable version of theology the tentacles of Unitarian tenets are quickly creeping into evangelical churches across the nation.

 As a follower of Christ I am posting this information expressly to note the deception hidden in Sewell’s misguided words.  I have no problem talking about this interview in no uncertain terms. From the public record it can be noted that Sewell is a social activist and polemicist as was Hitch. They are/were each able to dish out pious platitudes at will and certainly, as their backgrounds would support, are/were able to hold their own in conversations regarding issues of faith and God.  So here goes.

 The interview took place prior to Christopher Hitchen’s January 5th, 2010 appearance as part of the Literary Arts’ Portland art and lecture series at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.  Hitch was political columnist for Vanity Fair, Slate, and other magazines, and known for his frequent contributions on the political TV circuit.  Hitchens’ pointed attacks against all religion has earned him regular debates across the country, often with the very fundamentalist believers his book, “God is Not Great”, attacks. Sewell, the interviewer, though, knows nothing about the fundamentals of Christianity. It would seem that Hitch is in a joust with Jello.

 Here are excerpts from that interview,  linked here

 Marilyn Sewell: In the book you write that, at age nine, you experienced the ignorance of your scripture teacher Mrs. Watts and, then later at 12, your headmaster tried to justify religion as a comfort when facing death. It seems you were an intuitive atheist. But did you ever try religion again?

Christopher Hitchens: I belong to what is a significant minority of human beings: Those who are-as Pascal puts it in his Pensées, his great apology for Christianity-“so made that they cannot believe.” As many as 10 percent of is just never can bring themselves to take religion seriously. And since people often defend religion as natural to humans (which I wouldn’t say it wasn’t, by the way), the corollary holds too: there must be respect for those who simply can’t bring themselves to find meaning in phrases like “the Holy Spirit.”

Well, could it be that some people are “so made” for faith. and you are so made for the intellectual life?

I don’t have whatever it takes to say things like “the grace of God.” All that’s white noise to me, not because I’m an intellectual. For many people, it’s gibberish. Likewise, the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy. As so far the most highly evolved of the primates, we do seem in the majority to have a tendency to worship, and to look for patterns that lead to supernatural conclusions. Whereas, I think that there is no supernatural dimension whatever. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition.

The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Let me go someplace else. When I was in seminary I was particularly drawn to the work of theologian Paul Tillich. He shocked people by describing the traditional God-as you might as a matter of fact-as, “an invincible tyrant.” For Tillich, God is “the ground of being.” It’s his response to, say, Freud’s belief that religion is mere wish-fulfillment and comes from the humans’ fear of death. What do you think of Tillich’s concept of God?”

I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning-at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.

Well, probably not, because I agree with almost everything that you say. But I still consider myself a Christian and a person of faith.

Do you mind if I ask you a question? Faith in what? Faith in the resurrection?

The way I believe in the resurrection is I believe that one can go from a death in this life, in the sense of being dead to the world and dead to other people, and can be resurrected to new life. When I preach about Easter and the resurrection, it’s in a metaphorical sense.

I hate to say it-we’ve hardly been introduced-but maybe you are simply living on the inheritance of a monstrous fraud that was preached to millions of people as the literal truth-as you put it, “the ground of being.”

Times change and, you know, people’s beliefs change. I don’t believe that you have to be fundamentalist and literalist to be a Christian. You do: You’re something of a fundamentalist, actually.

Well, I’m sorry, fundamentalist simply means those who think that the Bible is a serious book and should be taken seriously.

If you would like for me to talk a little bit about what I believe . . .

Well I would actually.

I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place, let me just say that. I certainly don’t think that God is an old man in the sky, I don’t believe that God intervenes to give me goodies if I ask for them.

You don’t believe he’s an interventionist of any kind?

I’m kind of an agnostic on that one. God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because-and this is a very practical thing for me-I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself, I call God, but it’s a metaphor. That God is an emptiness out of which everything comes. Perhaps I would say ” reality” or “what is” because we’re trying to describe the infinite with language of the finite. My faith is that I put all that I am and all that I have on the line for that which I do not know.

Fine. But I think that’s a slight waste of what could honestly be in your case a very valuable time. I don’t want you to go away with the impression that I’m just a vulgar materialist. I do know that humans are also so made even though we are an evolved species whose closest cousins are chimpanzees. I know it’s not enough for us to eat and so forth. We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we’re going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, “the transcendent” or “the numinous” or even “the ecstatic” that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

Could you talk about these two words that you just used, “transcendent” and “numinous”? Those are two words are favorites of mine.

Well, this would probably be very embarrassing, if you knew me. I can’t compose or play music; I’m not that fortunate. But I can write and I can talk and sometimes when I’m doing either of these things I realize that I’ve written a sentence or uttered a thought that I didn’t absolutely know I had in me… until I saw it on the page or heard myself say it. It was a sense that it wasn’t all done by hand.

A gift?

But, to me, that’s the nearest I’m going to get to being an artist, which is the occupation I’d most like to have and the one, at last, I’m the most denied. But I, think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there’s more to life than just matter. But I think it’s very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.

You know, I think that that might be a religious impulse that you’re talking about there.

Well, it’s absolutely not. It’s a human one. It’s part of the melancholy that we have in which we know that happiness is fleeting, and we know that life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us. But we know that our life is essentially tragic as well. I’m absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, “Well, ah. Why didn’t you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind.” I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.

You write, “Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and the soul.” You use the word “soul” there as metaphor. What is a soul for you?

It’s what you might call “the x-factor”-I don’t have a satisfactory term for it-it’s what I mean by the element of us that isn’t entirely materialistic: the numinous, the transcendent, the innocence of children (even though we know from Freud that childhood isn’t as innocent as all that), the existence of love (which is, likewise, unquantifiable but that anyone would be a fool who said it wasn’t a powerful force), and so forth. I don’t think the soul is immortal, or at least not immortal in individuals, but it may be immortal as an aspect of the human personality because when I talk about what literature nourishes, it would be silly of me or reductionist to say that it nourishes the brain.

I wouldn’t argue with you about the immortality of the soul. Were I back in a church again, I would love to have you in my church because you’re so eloquent and I believe that some of your impulses-and, excuse me for saying so-are religious in the way I am religious. You may call it something else, but we agree in a lot of our thinking.

I’m touched that you say, as some people have also said to me, that I’ve missed my vocation. But I actually don’t think that I have. I would not be able to be this way if I was wearing robes or claiming authority that was other than human. that’s a distinction that matters to me very much.

You have your role and it’s a valuable one, so thank you for what you give to us.

Well, thank you for asking. It’s very good of you to be my hostess.

[end of interview]

 Note above that after Sewell’s reference to theologian Paul Tillich’s take on God as “an invincible tyrant” and after mentioning Freud’s dismissive take on faith (also well-known to Hitch), she wants to hear from Hitch about Tillich’s concept of God.  Listen closely to Hitch’s response:

I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning-at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.

 Wow!  The money line: “If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.”

 Even Hitch knows that this woman is way off the mark in her ‘theology’.  In this case Hitch doesn’t drop famous names from history like Sewell.  Hitch cuts to the quick with the truth of the Gospel as he knows it.  He quotes from Scripture:  “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (I Cor. 15:19). 

 Hitch has known Christianity from standing outside looking in while.  He does not like Christianity’s authority and the abuse of that authority (as I do not).

 Sewell, on the other hand, knows the hodge-podge Unitarian philosophy from inside out.  She knows all of its labyrinthine pathways leading to the utopian fields of humanism, new age philosophy and God is love-ism. The irony:  Unitarian ‘theology’ clearly advocates the contention of atheists that religion is about wish-fulfillment and fear of the unknown.

Here is Marilyn’s take on the conversation from her blog:

“The man is brilliant, but not wise; clever, but not deep; and a fundamentalist, in regard to religion, rejecting any form of liberal Christianity as bogus religion, not to be respected

Hitchens clearly has never studied theology, (This is rich.  See my comments above) and most of the comments he made concerning the Bible, Jesus, salvation, etc., were shockingly naïve (Hitch’s knowledge of Christianity trumped yours, Marilyn).  Where he has something to offer, of course, is his critique of religion and society, and all of the horrors and nonsense done in the name of religion, which I have no argument with.  It’s not exactly news that the Inquisition was a bad thing.  And that Catholic priests shouldn’t abuse altar boys.  And (his particular nemesis) jihadists shouldn’t blow up innocent civilians. 

Hitchens is the ultimate intellectual “bad boy.”  He performs.  He “debates.”  He entertains. All of which he does very well.   But this should not be confused with thoughtful discourse. “(I agree with this last paragraph of Marilyn’s)

 I would certainly argue from the details of the interview that Hitch knows Christianity well enough to be convicted by its message – but he rejects it outright.  Sewell, on the other hand, doesn’t know the truths of Christianity and appears to only embrace the parts of the Gospel that fit with the Unitarian belief in humanism – a theology of a coddling, benevolent and indulgent God who accepts you no matter what.

 Gospel truth convicts people of their sin and their separation from God whereas the tepid mollycoddling theology of Unitarianism destroys lives with its abandonment of truth and its good intentions. And as we all have heard, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or, hell is full of good wishes and desires.  In the end Truth matters.

Are you seeking the truth?

 To find the truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ read the four gospel accounts that record the life and death of Jesus Christ:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  These historical eye-witness accounts are not metaphors as liberal theologians (Sewell, Elaine Pagels and others) would have us accept.

 Follow the Truth wherever it leads you and it will eventually lead you to Jesus Christ.  He is The Way, The Truth and the Life. I have been on the road of truth with Jesus for many years now.  I know Him and he knows me. 

 Truth and Love go hand-in-hand or not at all.

Running On Empty

No, I am not talking about Obama’s campaign war chest.  The “class warrior” who recently made a jab at Mitt Romney with a silver spoon reference regularly charges “regular folks $1000 for a handshake at fundraisers” (see the Sunday April 22, 2012 Chicago Tribune column by John Kass linked in blue below). Class warfare depends on the treasure of the rich in so many ways!

 From Kass’s Sunday Trib column, Obama Ladles Up Hot Bowls of Class Warfare:

And, Obama is of the people, so please forget that presidential media guru David Axelrod just dropped $1.7 million on a gorgeous Chicago condo.

In America, only snobs and fools look down upon someone born poor.  It’s un-American.  But if your father’s poverty isn’t your fault, then, why should your father’s wealth be a sin?

The opportunity to seek wealth is why our people (Kass is Greek) came here, why they left their villages overseas to ride in steerage, seasick, eating black bread and spooning out the stew with wooden spoons, just on the chance that their grandchildren might hold a silver spoon someday…

Romney, of course, took great umbrage at Obama’s silver spoon crack, saying it was aimed at his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, a former president of American Motors.

“The president likes to attack fellow Americans,” said Romney on Fox News.  “He’s always looking for a scapegoat, particularly (those who) have been successful like my dad, and I’m not going to rise to that.”

I find both of them flawed.  Romney as the ring bearer for all that’s wrong with the corporatist Republican smothering of the conservative spirit, Obama as the keeper of the federal leviathan, feeding it as it grows larger, squeezing the life out of entrepreneurship.”

 There are two kinds of politicians:  those without personal wealth, and those with personal wealth.  Those with money don’t need politics to make more.  Those without money need friends as they climb the ladder of public service.”

Michelle Obama had such friends…

And the President had such friends.  One is named Tony Rezko.  He’s rotting in a federal prison, although it was Rezko and his wife who put together the strange deal that helped Barack and Michelle buy their dream house in Kenwood that they never seem to visit anymore.

In prison, Tony Rezko doesn’t use a silver spoon.  He uses a plastic fork.”

 Obama, via his constant “fair share” campaign speeches, relates opportunity directly to having money and not to liberty and self-determination.  How strange and how short-sighted this is. 

What Obama is really telling inner-city people is that they are not going to make it, they will not have opportunity until and unless they other people’s money in their pockets. This is “in your face” class warfare, blatant materialism and an obvious trashing of the human spirit.

Underlying Johnny-one-note-Obama’s fair share speeches is the same inane logic of the Left:  if someone has more that means that there must be less for you. But, life is not a zero-sum proposition.  Everyone can benefit from hard work and self-determination and not just those who already have done so and have earned money. 

It is those on the Left who spend all of their time trying to slice the current pie into exactly equal “fair share” pieces.  It is those on the Right who want to make a bigger pie so that everyone can have a big slice of it and can eat it in peace, free from the tyranny of big government.

 Obama’s implied message:  Forget contentment, you must have what others have or you are missing out, otherwise your treasure chest is empty.

 Now with White House silverware in hand, Obama spoons out the parasite-laden bread pudding of class warfare to those standing in the food lines willing to pay a $1000.00 a plate. He lectures to those anxious for any crumbs that may fall from the table of the Dear Leader and to those of the liberal media anxiously waiting another feeding frenzy.

I ask God for my daily bread and He provides.