A & E–Anti Christian

October 11, 2013

'Duck Dynasty' Star: Name of Jesus Too Hot for Television
Posted by Staff

In today’s television world, anything goes. We’ve seen shows about everything from sewage treatment, meat slaughtering, trash collection, and prostitution houses. Yet for all the unvarnished look at life that “reality” shows bring to viewers, there is one thing that is apparently too hot for television: praying to Jesus.

According to Phil Robertson, star of A&E’s mega-hit series “Duck Dynasty,” the producers of the cable program deliberately removed his and other family members’ references to Jesus in prayer.

Robertson revealed the censorship in an interview with small Christian sporting magazine called Sports Spectrum over a year ago. He also revealed that the editors of the show would insert fake beeps in the audio tracks to make it look like Robertson and his family were using profanities when, in fact, they were not.

“These people [the viewers] thought there was some profanity when there was zero,” he disclosed.

3 Insane Laws Just Signed in California

Nicole Bailey | Oct 10, 2013

California Governor Jerry Brown has been on a signing spree, and the new laws are quite controversial. Some have pointed out that the Right's reaction has been "surprisingly muted" - but it might be that conservatives cannot decide where to begin on the shocking new legislation. Three of the most insane laws going into effect in California are:

1. Illegal Immigrants Can Drive Legally

Although its supporters have good intentions, the new law allowing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants is dangerous.

By passing the law in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at any level of government, California is blatantly challenging the U.S. Constitution. Under the full faith and credit clause, a citizen can take a Virginia state driver's license and drive through or even move to another state with no problem. California is indirectly forcing other states to accept illegal immigrants' driver's licenses.

In addition, because the document requirements would be less strict for illegal immigrants (by definition without secure documentation) this law poses a national security threat. The Federation for Immigration Reform has more on how this and similar laws can and have been abused by terrorists.

2. Non-Doctors Can Administer First-Trimester Abortions

Feminists are celebrating a law allowing nurses and midwives to administer first-trimester abortions as a major victory for expanding abortion access to low-income women and promoting first-trimester abortions more generally. (Advocates of the legislation argue that first-trimester abortions are "safer and more affordable." The life of an unborn human being must not factor into the calculation.)

3. Children Can Have More Than Two Parents of Any Gender Combination

The fact that a law passed that completely rejects the traditional family - even in California - is telling about American society. The rationale seems to follow an 'anything goes' mentality (emphasis mine):

The measure, authored by a Democratic state senator, was aimed at upgrading the law to reflect supposed modern changes in the family structure.

For instance, same-sex couples who use a member of the opposite sex to produce, would fall under this category.

Of course those who will be most affected by the legislation, children, will have no say in the matter until it is too late for their own upbringing.

As Rush Limbaugh said, "This is the kind of thing that we used to be mocked for saying could happen someday."

Obama To Catholic Troops During Shutdown: No Mass For You!

Posted by Daniel John Sobieski on October 9, 2013 at 6:06pm

The Shutdown: Federal closure threatens to bar priests not on active  duty from conducting services on military installations or from ministering on  base, and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.

The latest Obama shutdown shame is the news that, until it's over, none of  the families of those killed in Afghanistan can expect to receive the $100,000  death gratuity promised to reach them within 24 to 36 hours.

Grieving families also cannot expect the military to cover all the usual  costs of family travel to meet their loved ones at Dover Air Force Base where  they return home for burial in American-flag-draped coffins.

Catholic soldiers killed in battle might not even have a priest available to  give the last rites of their church as even the religious freedoms they fought  to protect are sacrificed by a petulant president who has the power to set  priorities with the stroke of an executive order pen but refuses to do so.

As the Daily Caller reports, the Rev. Ray Leonard, a Catholic priest who  serves a Georgia military base, was not allowed to celebrate Mass at the Naval  Submarine Base Kings Bay this weekend. "Shutdown: No Catholic service till  further notice," a sign posted on the chapel door said.

Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican, released the details of Leonard's  experience after meeting with the priest on Tuesday.

"My parishioners were upset," said Leonard, who is contracted with the  Defense Department to minister on the base. "They were angry and dismayed. They  couldn't believe that in America they'd be denied access to Mass by the  government."

Maybe in Stalin's Russia the government would shut down religious services,  but not here. Except it is happening here as priests and other religious  ministers under contract to the government — all willing to do it for free —  have been told by the Obama administration that they cannot set foot on  government property or they will be arrested.

20 Things You Never Want To Hear In Obama's America

John Hawkins | Oct 10, 2013

1) The Death Panel will now decide if your treatment is too expensive.

2) Yeah, right! There's a better chance Democrats would go after veterans or kids with cancer than do that!

3) We'll get to the bottom of this scandal in no time now that the Obama Administration is investigating itself!

4) Sure, it's dangerous being in this embassy, but the Obama Administration is handling security; so we have nothing to worry about.

5) Come on, you really think liberals are going to be offended by that?

6) As long as Lindsey Graham doesn't cave, Republicans have got this one in the bag!

7) So, I lost my job. No big deal! In this economy, I'll have a new one in no time!

8) That shouldn't be a problem as long as you can trust the government to do the right thing.

9) Guess what? Your company is unionizing!

10) The only way that could happen would be if Obama has been lying to us all along.

11) You really think the park service would be that vindictive?

12) As long as Obama doesn't behave like a bratty little child who's going to hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way, everything will work out fine.

13) Come on! The only way we could get in trouble for writing something like that would be if the government was reading our emails.

14) Even Obama wouldn't blame Bush for that, would he?

15) Good news! The Al-Qaeda rebels Obama backed in Syria won and took over the country! They're sending America a "special surprise" as a thank you for all of our support!

16) No, you couldn't have heard gunshots. We're in a gun-free zone!

17) There's no way anyone would call me a racist just because of that, is there?

18) We have to pass it so you can find out what's in it.

19) This crime is as good as solved now that Eric Holder is on the case!

20) The only way that check will stop coming is if the government goes bankrupt!

Democrats to America: We Own the Government!

Ann Coulter | Oct 09, 2013

In the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people.

Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates.

Contrary to Obama's promises, it turns out: You can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your insurance -- you can't even keep your job. In other words, it's a typical government program, but this one wrecks your health care.

Also, the president did raise taxes on the middle class in defiance of his well-worn campaign promise not to. Indeed, Obamacare is the largest tax hike in U.S. history.

Among the other changes effected by this law are:

-- Obamacare will allow insurers to charge 50 percent higher premiums for smokers, but prohibits insurers from increasing premiums for those with HIV/AIDS.

-- Nationally, Obamacare will increase men's individual insurance premiums by an average of 99 percent and women's by 62 percent. In North Carolina, for example, individual insurance premiums will triple for women and quadruple for men.

-- Health plans valued at $27,500 or more for a family of four will be taxed at a rate of 40 percent.

-- No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare.

-- A 62-year-old man earning $46,000 a year is entitled to a $7,836 government tax credit to buy health insurance. But if he earns an extra $22 in income, he loses the entire $7,836 credit. He will have more take-home pay by earning $46,000 than if he earns $55,000. (If he's lucky, he already works for one of the companies forced by Obamacare to reduce employees' hours!)

-- Merely to be eligible for millions of dollars in grants from the federal government under Obamacare, education and training programs are required to meet racial, ethnic, gender, linguistic and sexual orientation quotas. That's going to make health care MUCH better!

-- Obamacare is turning America into a part-time nation. According to a recent report by economist John Lott, 97 percent of all jobs added to the economy so far this year have been part-time jobs. Ninety-seven percent!

-- Obamacare is such a disaster that the people who wrote it refuse to live under it themselves. That's right, Congress won a waiver from Obamacare.

Responding to the people's will, House Republicans first voted to fund all of government -- except Obamacare. Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it.

Then the Republicans voted to fully fund the government, but merely delay the implementation of Obamacare for one year. Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it.

Finally, the Republicans voted to fully fund the government, but added a requirement that everyone live under Obamacare. No more special waivers for Congress and their staff, and no waivers for big business without the same waivers for individuals.

Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it. So as you can see, Republicans are the big holdup here.

A longtime Democratic operative, Karen Finney, explained the Democrats' intransigence on MSNBC to a delighted Joan Walsh (aka the most easily fooled person on TV) by comparing House Republicans to a teenager trying to borrow his mother's car. "No, I'm not negotiating!" Mother says. "It's MY CAR!"

This wasn't a stupid slip of the tongue that other Democrats quickly rejected. Finney had used the exact same metaphor to a panel of highly agreeable MSNBC guests the day before. (MSNBC books no other kind of guest.)

The left thinks the government is their car and the people's representatives are obstreperous teenagers trying to borrow the government. Which belongs to Democrats.

That's not how the Constitution views the House of Representatives. To the contrary, the House is considered most reflective of the people's will because its members are elected every two years.

As a matter of fact, the Republicans who mistakenly assume they have something to do with running the government represent most of the people who pay taxes to run it. So it's more like a teenager who is making the car payments, maintaining the car insurance and taking responsibility for registering the car being told: "It's not your car."

But the Democrats refuse to even negotiate. It's their government -- and if you Republicans think you're going out dressed like that, you've got another thing coming! Needless to say, they absolutely will not consider the Republicans' demand that Democrats merely live under Obamacare themselves.

Instead, Democrats say "the Koch brothers" are behind the effort to defund Obamacare.

They say Republicans are trying to "burn the whole house down" (Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz); "have lost their minds" (Sen. Harry Reid); are trying to negotiate "with a bomb strapped to their chest" (senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer); are "legislative arsonists" (Rep. Nancy Pelosi); and are engaging in "blatant extortion" (White House press secretary Jay Carney).

The MSNBC crowd calls Republicans "arsonists" every 15 minutes. They ought to check with fellow MSNBC host Al Sharpton. He knows his arsonists! In 1995, Sharpton whipped up a mob outside the Jewish-owned Freddy's Fashion Mart with an anti-Semitic speech. Sometime later, a member of the mob torched the store, killing seven Hispanic employees.

Every single Democrat in the country uses the exact same talking point: We "refuse to negotiate with a gun being held to our head."

Which means the Democrats will not negotiate at all -- not now, not ever. House Republicans have already passed three-dozen bills defunding, or otherwise modifying, Obamacare. Senate Democrats and liberal commentators had a good laugh at Republicans for passing them.

Now they're paying attention!

If you are in the minority of Americans not already unalterably opposed to Obamacare, keep in mind that the only reason the government is shut down right now is that Democrats refuse to fund the government if they are required to live under Obamacare.

That's how good it is!

Yoani Sanchez : The Prodigious Milligram

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Yoani-Sánchez

http://generacionyen.wordpress.com/

 

When I was in high school two of the many words used as insults shocked me. One of them was “self-sufficient.” Its stigma came from the mea culpa processes to join the Young Communists Union, where the candidates criticized themselves for not behaving — always — as part of a collective. Another pejorative terms was “conscious” or “aware,” which in that context referred to someone too intellectual, too devoted to books, too engaged in learning. The good students were labeled “super-conscious” and the natural leaders who emerged in each group also felt the taint of self-sufficiency. Better not to excel, not to overexert yourself… these disqualifiers seemed to warn us.

Worshiping individual mediocrity generates mediocre societies. Vilifying the talented and entrepreneurial hinders the development of a nation. Professional capital is not constructed only with titles, degrees and post-graduate degrees, but with the need that arises from a population that reveres knowledge. It is also imperative that intelligence is not something to be hidden, almost with embarrassment or shame. We are all potential scientists and discoverers, in need of an environment where our capabilities find respect. A country of scientists should be able to show off its laboratories and vaccines; but also ensure that ordinary people can patent their achievements and be rewarded — materially and spiritually — for their ingenuity.

There may be many university graduates in Cuba, but as long as these people do not find true social and legal recognition and salaries commensurate with their work, we can hardly call ourselves a nation of science. It’s sad that more statues are raised and more plazas dedicated to people who have wielded machetes or weapons, than to those who have saved lives with their microscopes and syringes. The prodigious milligram* of knowledge needs an environment where it can multiply. That fertile soil that carries the seed of education, the irrigation to imagine a better life through scientific discovery and the essential fertilizer of freedom.

* “An ant censured for the subtlety of its loads and its frequent distractions, found one morning, on straying once again from the road, a prodigious milligram. Without stopping to think about the consequences of the discovery, it took the milligram and put it on its back. Happily it discovered that it was the perfect load just for her. The ideal weight of that object gave her body a strange energy: like the weight of their wings on the bodies of birds.” (Taken from “The Prodigious Milligram,” Juan José Arreola, Complete Works, Mexico, Alfaguara, 1997)

** Thanks to Universal Thinking Forum for provoking this reflection … and much more.

Couple Told They Can't Go Home Until Gov't Shutdown Ends

An elderly Nevada couple is living at their ice cream shop after being told they can't go to their house until the federal government shutdown ends.

Joyce Spencer, 77, and her 80-year-old husband, Ralph, own their home, but it sits on federal property near Lake Mead.

She says a park ranger came by last week and told them they had 24 hours to vacate their home.

The park service says the couple can go to their home to retrieve belongings, but cannot stay overnight.

Seedco: Obamacare's Fraud-Stained Navigators

Michelle Malkin | Oct 02, 2013

Welcome to ObamaWreck! Americans nationwide spent Tuesday struggling with the much-hyped "Affordable Care Act" health insurance exchanges. Server meltdowns, error messages and security glitches plagued the federal and state government websites as open enrollment began. But when taxpayers discover exactly who will be navigating them through the bureaucratic maze, they may be glad they didn't get through.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and counselors, who are now propagandizing and recruiting Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges. As I warned in May, the Nanny State navigator corps is a serious threat to Americans' privacy. Background checks and training requirements are minimal to nonexistent. A history of fraud is no barrier to entry.

Case in point: the seedy nonprofit Seedco. This community-organizing group snagged lucrative multimillion-dollar navigator contracts in Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee and New York. The New York Post reports this week that the outfit "is partnering with dozens of agencies, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Food Bank for New York City and the Chinese American Planning Council, in each of (the Big Apple's) five boroughs." They'll have access to potential enrollees' income levels, birthdates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and intensely personal medical information.

Given the enormous responsibility to handle sensitive data in a careful, neutral manner, combined with the overwhelming pressure to boost Obamacare enrollments, you'd think the feds would only choose navigators with the most impeccable records. Yet, less than a year ago, Seedco agreed to settle a civil fraud lawsuit "for faking at least 1,400 of 6,500 job placements under a $22.2 million federally funded contract with the city."

Seedco's corrupt behavior went far beyond defrauding taxpayers through abuse of New York City programs, federal Labor Department funding and federal stimulus dollars. Seedco (which stands for "Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation") tried to destroy and defame whistleblowing official Bill Harper, who discovered and reported the rampant falsification of data.

First, Seedco denied the charges; next, they trashed Harper's reputation in the pages of The New York Times. Only after the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan brought suit did the organization acknowledge systemic, repeated wrongdoing. Seedco forked over a $1.7 million settlement in December 2012. Mere months later, they were racking up federal Obamacare navigator work.

The feds and Seedco assure us that new management is in place. They rearranged some deck chairs, created a new "compliance program" and hired an independent reviewer. But an ethos of by-any-means-necessary book-cooking and a culture of intimidating whistleblowers don't disappear overnight. Seedco shredded documents for three years to phony up their job placement statistics; city government overseers knew about it. The Nonprofit Quarterly noted that Seedco's fraud was "kind of breathtaking" in its "creativity and illegal audacity," including:

--"Taking credit for a job candidate's prior employment as job placements;

--Reporting job placements when the job candidates remained unemployed;

--Falsifying dates of job placements;

--Using other Seedco programs to collect information on clients in order to falsely report job placements; and

--Reporting job placements for people who were not Seedco clients and had not been placed in their jobs by Seedco."

The feds detailed how Seedco managers would instruct clerical workers to troll Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com for resumes and then "report the employment of individuals sourced from those downloaded resumes as job placements." Other employees exploited their relationships with businesses to "gather information from the businesses' current employees. Seedco then used that information to falsely report that employment as a job placement obtained for the candidate by Seedco, although the individuals had no prior relationship with Seedco and had not been recruited into the job by Seedco."

This entire government-nonprofit alliance rests on dragooning as many people as possible into government programs, including food stamps, CHIP (the federal Children's Health Insurance Program) and now Obamacare. One of Seedco's officials actually said the fraud case "made us a stronger organization." Yes, they actually sold their deliberate number-fudging as an asset instead of a liability. And four states swallowed the pitch whole. The spirit of fraud-stained ACORN and its Nanny State progeny lives.

So, buyers, beware: Obamacare security "glitches" are not just a bug. They're a feature.

White House Plays Politics With WWII Heroes

Carol Platt Liebau | Oct 01, 2013

 

Ah, shut-down politics. New White House petulance, same as the old White House petulance.

During the sequester, recall the ways the Obama administration explicitly tried to inflict maximum pain on the American people in order to "prove" that the relatively modest cuts to government spending were cataclysmic.

Today, the administration tried the same kind of scurrilous tricks -- but to their shame, they actually sought to punish elderly and disabled World War II veterans for the Democrats' intransigence and refusal to negotiate. As Guy mentioned below, World War II veterans who had come to Washington to visit the memorial to the war they fought ignored the barricades that had been erected by the administration for the duration of the shut-down.

But according to an exclusive at The Daily Caller, the Obama administration actually knew in advance that these veterans were going to be visiting the World War II memorial and refused to make any accommodation for them, despite a request from a congressman.

Keep in mind that these are old men, some of whom are in poor health. They were flown to DC by a non-profit, Honor Flight, to visit the memorial. Note also that, being an open-air memorial -- and as such generally accessible to the public 24/7 -- it requires more work (and hence greater expenditure of government money) to block it off than to leave it alone.

The entire episode is entirely emblematic of the Obama administration's faux frugality, political posturing, and contempt for Americans on so many levels.

Obama Prohibits Practice of Catholicism in US

Terry Jeffrey | Oct 02, 2013

Beginning now, with the opening of government-run health-insurance exchanges, President Barack Obama will be prohibiting American Catholics from practicing their faith in the way they live their daily lives.

This is an act of tyranny. Yet, many Americans in positions of public authority and influence have greeted it with silence and inaction.

I do not use the word tyranny lightly here. Obama is abusing his power as president to unilaterally impose on Catholics -- and millions of other Americans who share the Catholic moral view on certain matters -- a regulation that forces them to act against their moral convictions and the teachings of their faith.

He has declared war on their souls.

The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are intrinsically immoral and Catholics cannot be involved in them.

Last year, President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation, under Obamacare, requiring that almost all health care plans in the United States must provide coverage, without any fees or co-pay, for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

Obama was boasting about this regulation last week.

At no time has he offered to exempt from it those individual Americans whom he has put in the position of needing to choose between obeying his bureaucratic mandate and the teachings of their faith.

Since Obama's administration first issued this regulation, America's Catholic bishops have forcefully and unambiguously declared it an "unjust law."

"A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law," says the Catholic Catechism, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas. "Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence."

Yes, Obama's sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is "a kind of violence."

"If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience," says the Catholic Catechism. "In such a case, 'authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse.'"

Yes, Obama's sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is a "shameful abuse."

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, succinctly explained the evil of Obama's regulation in a letter he asked Catholic chaplains to read to U.S. troops attending Mass in January 2012.

Obama's regulation, Archbishop Broglio said, "strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith."

"It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle," the archbishop told the troops.

"We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law," he said.

Many other bishops said these exact words in letters to their own dioceses: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."

In June 2012, the U.S. Catholic bishops unanimously endorsed a statement declaring the regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" and "a violation of personal civil rights."

This year, when the Obama administration released a draft of the final version of the regulation, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent formal comments to HHS.

"In short," said the bishops, "the administration continues to propose: (a) an unjust and unlawful mandate," that offers "(b) no exemption or 'accommodation' at all for most stakeholders in the health insurance process, such as individual employees and for profit employers."

Last week, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore wrote a letter to all members of Congress.

"We are writing once again, as chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, on an increasingly grave concern to our Church and many others: Preserving religious freedom and the right of conscience for all who take part in our health care system," the bishops said.

"A particular threat is the administration's mandate for covering contraception, sterilization and related education and counseling as 'preventive services for enrollees and their minor daughters," said the bishops. "The mandate includes drugs and devices that can act against human life after fertilization, implicating our moral teaching on abortion as well as contraception."

"Nor should individual Catholics or others be told they cannot legally purchase or provide health coverage unless they violate their conscience," said the bishops.

The bishops have endorsed legislation -- the Health Care Conscience Rights Act -- that says no Obamacare regulation can force an employer, insurer or individual to buy or provide coverage for an item to which they have a moral or religious objection.

"As Congress considers a continuing resolution and debt ceiling bill in the days to come," the bishops said, "we reaffirm the vital importance of incorporating the policy of this bill into such 'must-pass' legislation."

The CR the House passed on Sunday did include language that would have created the conscience protection the bishops sought -- at least through Jan. 1, 2015. But when the Senate rejected that CR, the Republican leadership stripped the conscience-protection language from the version of the CR the House passed Monday.

Now neither party in either the House or Senate is seeking to protect the freedom of conscience from Obama's tyrannical regulation.

Starting now, on Obama's presumed unilateral authority, American Catholics will be prohibited from practicing their faith in the way they live their daily lives.