Below is a chart from the American Petroleum Institute showing gasoline taxes acoss the country.
Oil companies produce a product. They employ people in the production of that product. What oil product does the government produce? It would be interesting to compare what the oil companies make on a gallon of gasoline versus what the government makes on a gallon of gas. 
The Lufkin News reported yesterday that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has been charged in an alleged billing scam. Charges were brought by Karen Reynolds, a former employee of a Lufkin clinic.
The article states:
The updated complaint, filed in October 2011, alleges that while Reynolds was employed as a health center assistant, she was instructed by the organization to maximize billing revenue when the government was fitting the bill through Medicaid and the Women’s Health Program.
She claims this was the procedure in all 12 Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast locations across Texas and Louisiana.
The suit alleges that, in addition to falsifying patient records, billing the government for unwarranted services and services not covered by Medicaid, Planned Parenthood tacked on services patient did not receive.
The case is set for trial in April 2013.
CBN News posted an article today about the cost of federal regulations.
The article reports:
Author Phil Kerpen looks at how such regulation is crippling the economy in his book titled Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ingnoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America.
How much do regulations cost?
“They found that each federal regulator destroys an average of 98 private sector jobs per year,” he said.
And each federal regulator wipes out about $6.2 million in economic output each year.
The bottom line:
“These busy bodies who are being paid with our tax dollars are spending all day long interfering in the private economy, and that has a very real, very negative cost associated with it,” Kerpen said.
The same study found cutting the budgets of the federal regulatory agencies just 10 percent would add about $150 billion to the gross domestic product every year.
And increase the creation of private jobs by 2.5 million or so a year.
We live in a representative republic. We are responsible for the government we have. If the government is not working, we have the responsibility to replace it. “Nuff said.
I heard about the death of Whitney Houston late Saturday. I haven’t written about it because it seemed very tragic and I didn’t know what I could say. I have been listening to Bill Bennett this morning and listening to his comments and the comments of people calling in. I still don’t know what to say, but I have a few observations.
Whitney Houston had a beautiful voice. Evidently in recent years, her drug use had taken a toll on that voice and she no longer had the range and clarity that she once had. (Getting older also affects your voice, so I suspect that might have been part of it). That must have been difficult to deal with.
It is tragic that she died so young. She was 48. We don’t know yet if drugs played a part in her death, although the speculation is that drug use (legal or illegal) was part of the problem.
My condolences go the her family. This is a tragedy. I hope everyone who uses drugs and thinks it is cool will take a long look at this and reconsider. There are many very talented performers who consider drug use one of the perks of the business. We have lost too many gifted people too soon over the years–Elvis, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, etc. Let’s hang on to the performers in this generation–let them be examples of living without drugs. Even though I don’t always appreciate the music of this generation, I would love to see those who produce and perform the music choose to be role models against drug use. If nothing else, that would give them longer careers!
ABC News posted a story yesterday about a statement made by White House chief of staff Jack Lew on CNN regarding President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal. Mr. Lew stated, “You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan supports. So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, [Majority Leader] Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.”
That statement is simply not true. Budgets require 51 votes for passage in the Senate. The other thing that needs to be mentioned here is that President Obama’s 2011 Budget was voted on in May and defeated 97-0. I don’t think the problem was the Republicans–the problem was the budget proposal!
The article reports the spin (and then continues the spin):
White House officials did not dispute that Lew misspoke. When asked about the discrepancy, a White House official said “the chief of staff was clearly referencing the general gridlock in Congress that makes accomplishing even the most basic tasks nearly impossible given the Senate Republicans’ insistence on blocking an up or down vote on nearly every issue.”
The issue highlights the difficulty the White House is having running against an obstructionist Congress when half of that Congress is controlled by Democrats, who obstruct things for their own reasons. In this case, political observers believe Reid is reluctant to have Democrats vote on a large budget full of deficits and tax increases that Republicans can use to run against them.
Although I commend Mr. Tapper on pointing out that what Mr. Lew said was not true, I disagree with him on the characterization of Congress as obstructionist. Not every bill that goes to Congress should be passed. How come Congress is only obstructionist when it stands in the way of what Democrats want to do?
CBS News is reporting today that Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over as head of Al Qaeda after Osama Bin Laden was killed, has released a videotaped statement asking Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprising against Assad’s “pernicious, cancerous regime.”
The article reports that a senior Iraqi security official told the Associated Press that Al Qaeda fighters have been flowing from Iraq into Syria.
It is interesting to me that Al Qaeda is supporting the overthrow of the regime. Assad has been a brutal dictator, but I do not think Al Qaeda would be supporting him unless they felt they could install the Muslim Brotherhood in his place (as they have done in Egypt). The danger here is to the non-Muslims who live in the country. For whatever reason, Assad was content to let Christians practice their faith in Syria. I seriously doubt that will continue if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda have the same goal–a worldwide caliphate. They just have different ideas on how to get there. In American the Muslim Brotherhood is working within the government and the legal system to win control (see Dallas News). The Muslim Brotherhood believes that violence is not useful until the government of the country it is taking over is ready to fall. Al Qaeda sees violence as the means to bring down a government. The end game is the same, but the method is different.
If the government of Syria falls, which I believe it will, the only safe place for Christians in the Middle East will be Israel. Isn’t that ironic?
I apologize for the length of this post, but I think the information here is important.
I watched Chris Wallace interview Jack Lew this morning on Fox News Sunday. I am posting a few quotes from the transcript. Questions were never answered directly, there was nothing but talking points, but please note where Mr. Lew says the government gets the authority to tell a company what they must sell and a consumer what he must buy. There is no way that can be constitutional. Here are some quotes:
WALLACE: Before we get to the president’s new budget and I promise we will, I want to clear up some lingering question about the president’s revised policy about providing health insurance coverage for birth control to the employees of religious institutions. The president now says that Catholic institutions don’t have to provide the coverage but the insurance companies do.
The question — where does the president get the power to tell a private company they have to offer a product and offer it for free?
LEW: Well, Chris, just to be clear — the president has the authority under the Affordable Care Act to have these kinds of rules take affect. And the issue with this being for free is quite an interesting one. If you look at the cost of providing health insurance, it actually doesn’t cost more to provide a plan with contraceptive coverage than it does without.
The discussion then continued as Mr. Wallace asked how the insurance companies could offer the coverage for free. What is not said directly is that it is cheaper to prevent a child from being born than to provide healthcare for that child. Have we reached the point as a society where that is a consideration?
The discussion continued:
WALLACE: But here’s my point and here’s the concern that some religious institutions have. The reason that you’re going to get these, quote, “savings” is because of avoided pregnancies from artificial birth control, which is the practice that these religious institutions find objectionable and, in fact, sinful in the first place.
LEW: But let’s just be clear: every woman has a right to access all forms of preventive health, including contraception. Religious institutions, churches, are not covered by this. So, they don’t have to provide.
Note that he is saying that every woman has a right to contraception. He is requiring church charities to allow their employees to take part in something that is against their doctrine and saying it is okay since they are not paying for it.
The discussion continued:
WALLACE: You say it’s consistent. The Catholic bishops are clearly not satisfied with it — if I may, sir. They have issued a statement that says that they view the decision by the president, the revision, with grave moral concern.
Let’s put up their statement on the screen.
“Today’s proposal involves needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion — government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions.”
And, sir, they call on Congress to block the president’s policy.
LEW: No, I think the president’s policy does not do that. It does not force an institution that has religious principle to offer or may for benefits they find objectionable. But it guarantees a woman’s right to access. We think that’s the right solution.
There are others who opposed women’s access to contraception. They have different views than we do. I’m not going to speak to the motives of any of the parties. But it’s quite significant that a range of Catholic organizations has embraced this.
We didn’t expect to get universal support of the bishops or all Catholics. I think that what we have here is a policy that reflects bringing together two very important principles in a way that’s true to the American tradition. And that’s what the president is trying to do.
There are others who want to have a clash over it. We want to bring these two principles together
He is admitting that the Obama Administration did not expect the Bishops to go along with the supposed compromise. The birth control controversy is a small taste of surprises to come from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Based on Mr. Lew’s statement, the act pretty much allows the government to do anything it wants to in regard to providing healthcare to Americans–whether it is constitutional or not!
Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the non-compromise offered by President Obama to the Catholic Church on birth control, abortion, etc.
The article states:
Catholic bishops said Friday night that they would not support the Obama administration’s proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers’ health plans.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had led opposition to the regulation, issued a statement saying that they didn’t believe their concerns were addressed by a new policy offered by President Barack Obama on Friday morning to allow religious employers who object to the use of birth control to turn over responsibility for covering it to insurance companies.
They are correct–the rules are not changed–the person supposedly paying for it is changed. In essence the question to the Catholic Church was, “If someone else pays for it, will you do it?” In other words, is this about money or principle?
The article concludes:
It isn’t clear what effect the bishops’ objections will have on the Catholic community, which had already been divided in its initial response to the proposal, and to the health-care law as a whole.
Several Catholic organizations praised the administration compromise after it was announced, including the hospitals group the Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities USA.
A Catholic friend of mine told me on Saturday that she was concerned that President Obama was dividing her Church in order to destroy it. I hope she is wrong;.
On Tuesday the New York Daily News posted a story about a website set up in 1997 to help Icelanders avoid incest. Think about it. Iceland is an absolutely beautiful place, but it is an island with a population of about 300,000. It would be very easy to date your cousin without knowing he/she was a relative.
The article states:
Enter Íslendingabók, or the Book of Icelanders, an online resource that tracks 1,200 years worth of genealogical data on the country’s inhabitants, according to the website.
All Icelanders have to do to prevent incest is type in their name and the name of a potential love interest — that is, provided they have an “Icelandic ID number,” since the database is restricted to citizens and legal residents.
What a fantastic idea. The website will also tell inquirers whether or not they are related to Icelandic celebrities.
My husband and I traveled to Iceland to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary a few years ago–it was warmer than Massachusetts in February! We stayed at the Blue Lagoon, one of the national treasures of the country. Iceland is an amazing place, and the people were absolutely wonderful. I hope to go there again.
Seals tell of killing ‘Bert’ Laden Upset by the official account, US Navy Seals commandos reveal the truth of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, nicknames and allPublished: 6 November 2011
Osama Bin Laden was killed within 90 seconds of the US Navy Seals landing in his compound and not after a protracted gun battle, according to the first account by the men who carried out the raid. The operation was so clinical that only 12 bullets were fired. The Seals have spoken out because they were angered at the version given by politicians, which they see as portraying them as cold-blooded murderers on a “kill mission”. They were also shocked that President Barack Obama announced Bin Laden’s death on television the same evening, rendering useless much of the intelligence they had seized. Chuck Pfarrer, a former commander of Seal Team 6, which conducted the operation, has interviewed many of those who took part for a book, Seal Target Geronimo, to be published in the US this week. The Seals’ own accounts differ from the White House version, which gave the impression that Bin Laden was killed at the end of the operation rather than in its opening seconds. Pfarrer insists Bin Laden would have been captured had he surrendered. “There isn’t a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it devalued the ‘intel’ and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to scurry to another bolt-hole,” said Pfarrer. “The men who did this and their valorous act deserve better. It’s a pretty shabby way to treat these guys.” The first hint of the mission came in January last year when the team’s commanding officer was called to a meeting at the headquarters of joint special operations command. The meeting was held in a soundproof bunker three storeys below ground with his boss, Admiral William McRaven, and a CIA officer. They told him a walled compound in Pakistan had been under surveillance for a couple of weeks. They were certain a high-value individual was inside and needed a plan to present to the president. It had to be someone important. “So is this Bert or Ernie?” he asked. The Seals’ nicknames for Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are a reference to two Muppets in Sesame Street, one tall and thin and the other short and fat. “We have a voice print,” said the CIA officer, “and we’re 60% or 70% certain it’s our guy.” McRaven added that a reconnaissance satellite had measured the target’s shadow. “Over 6ft tall.” When McRaven added they would use Ghost Hawk helicopters, the team leader had no doubt. “These are the most classified, sophisticated stealth helicopters ever developed,” said Pfarrer. “They are kept in locked hangars and fly so quiet we call it ‘whisper mode’.” Over the next couple of months a plan was hatched. A mock-up of the compound was built at Tall Pines, an army facility in a national forest somewhere in the eastern US. Four reconnaissance satellites were placed in orbit over the compound, sending back video and communications intercepts. A tall figure seen walking up and down was named “the Pacer”. Obama gave the go-ahead and Seal Team 6, known as the Jedi, was deployed to Afghanistan. The White House canceled plans to provide air cover using jet fighters, fearing this might endanger relations with Pakistan. Sending in the Ghost Hawks without air cover was considered too risky so the Seals had to use older Stealth Hawks. A Prowler electronic warfare aircraft from the carrier USS Carl Vinson was used to jam Pakistan’s radar and create decoy targets. Operation Neptune’s Spear was initially planned for April 30 but bad weather delayed it until May 1, a moonless night. The commandos flew on two Stealth Hawks, code named Razor 1 and 2, followed by two Chinooks five minutes behind, known as “Command Bird” and the “gun platform”. On board, each Seal was clad in body armour and night-vision goggles and equipped with laser targets, radios and sawn-off M4 rifles. They were expecting up to 30 people in the main house, including Bin Laden and three of his wives, two sons, Khalid and Hamza, his courier, Abu Ahmed al- Kuwaiti, four bodyguards and a number of children. At 56 minutes past midnight the compound came into sight and the code “;Palm Beach” signaled three minutes to landing. Razor 1 hovered above the main house, a three-storey building where Bin Laden lived on the top floor. Twelve Seals rappeled the 5ft-6ft down onto the roof and then jumped to a third-floor patio, where they kicked in the windows and entered. The first person the Seals encountered was a terrified woman, Bin Laden’s third wife, Khaira, who ran into the hall. Blinded by a searing white strobe light they shone at her, she stumbled back. A Seal grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the floor. Bin Laden’s bedroom was along a short hall. The door opened; he popped out and then slammed the door shut. “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,” radioed one Seal, meaning “eyes on target”. At the same time lights came on from the floor below and Bin Laden’s son Khalid came running up the stairs towards the Seals. He was shot dead. Two Seals kicked in Bin Laden’s door. The room, they later recalled, “smelt like old clothing, like a guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house”. Inside was the Al-Qaeda leader and his youngest wife, Amal, who was screaming as he pushed her in front of him. “No, no, don’t do this!” she shouted as her husband reached across the king-size bed for his AK-47 assault rifle. The Seals reacted instantly, firing in the same second. One round thudded into the mattress. The other, aimed at Bin Laden’s head, grazed Amal in the calf. As his hand reached for the gun, they each fired again: one shot hit his breastbone, the other his skull, killing him instantly and blowing out the back of his head. Meanwhile Razor 2 was heading for the guesthouse, a low, shoebox-like building, where Bin Laden’s courier, Kuwaiti, and his brother lived. As the helicopter neared, a door opened and two figures appeared, one waving an AK-47. This was Kuwaiti. In the moonless night he could see nothing and lifted his rifle, spraying bullets wildly. He did not see the Stealth Hawk. On board someone shouted, “Bust him!”, and a sniper fired two shots. Kuwaiti was killed, as was the person behind him, who turned out to be his wife. Also on board were a CIA agent, a Pakistani- American who would act as interpreter, and a sniffer dog called Karo, wearing dog body armor and goggles. Within two minutes the Seals from Razor 2 had cleared the guesthouse and removed the women and children. They then ran to the main house and entered from the ground floor, checking the rooms. One of Bin Laden’s bodyguards was waiting with his AK-47. The Seals shot him twice and he toppled over. Five minutes into the operation the command Chinook landed outside the compound, disgorging the commanding officer and more men. They blasted through the compound wall and rushed in. The commander made his way to the third floor, where Bin Laden’s body lay on the floor face up. Photographs were taken, and the commander called on his satellite phone to headquarters with the words: “Geronimo Echo KIA” — Bin Laden enemy killed in action. “This was the first time the White House knew he was dead and it was probably 20 minutes into the raid,” said Pfarrer. A sample of Bin Laden’s DNA was taken and the body was bagged. They kept his rifle. It is now mounted on the wall of their team room at their headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia, alongside photographs of a dozen colleagues killed in action in the past 20 years. At this point things started to go wrong. Razor 1 took off but the top secret “green unit” that controls the electronics failed. The aircraft went into a spin and crashed tail-first into the compound. The Seals were alarmed, thinking it had been shot down, and several rushed to the wreckage. The crew climbed out, shaken but unharmed. The commanding officer ordered them to destroy Razor 2, to remove the green unit, and to smash the avionics. They then laid explosive charges. They loaded Bin Laden’s body onto the Chinook along with the cache of intelligence in plastic bin bags and headed toward the USS Carl Vinson. As they flew off they blew up Razor 2. The whole operation had taken 38 minutes. The following morning White House officials announced that the helicopter had crashed as it arrived, forcing the Seals to abandon plans to enter from the roof. A photograph of the situation room showed a shocked Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, with her hand to her mouth. Why did they get it so wrong? What they were watching was live video but it was shot from 20,000ft by a drone circling overhead and relayed in real time to the White House and Leon Panetta, the CIA director, in Langley. The Seals were not wearing helmet cameras, and those watching in Washington had no idea what was happening inside the buildings.
“They don’t understand our terminology, so when someone said the ‘insertion helicopter’ has crashed, they assumed it meant on entry,” said Pfarrer. What infuriated the Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission. “I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’,” he said. “It’s a Beltway [Washington insider’s] ]fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”
I don’t usually go to the Wall Street Journal for sports reporting, but anything can happen. On Thursday Jason Gay at the Wall Street Journal worte an article defending Gisele Bündchen’s statements defending Tom Brady (actually she wasn’t defending him, she was just blaming everyone else, but that is beside the point).
Mr. Gay points concludes his article by saying:
The last thing I thought was this: Wow, Gisele Bündchen really loves Tom Brady. She loves him in the irrational way that people who are in love love each other. She loves him blind.
This is a comforting, uncynical thing. Maybe you’re married, maybe not—maybe you were married once—but one of the things you want in a union is that kind of unconditional, unrestrained, forget-everyone-else support. Everybody should be lucky to have a fierce advocate in their corner, and you should be a fierce advocate in their corner too. Leave the measured consideration and the caveats to the friends and the shrinks. You want your spouse to tell you it’s going to be OK. To defend you when nobody else will.
Even when it’s wrong. Even when it sounds like lashing out. Even when it’s the absolute incorrect thing to say. Because they’ve got your back. Because you’ve got theirs. Because that’s love.
I’m not saying she was right, I’m not saying she shouldn’t regret it. But the supermodel loves the quarterback.
The fairy tale is actually a fairy tale. It’s so unfair, but it’s also pretty sweet.
This really does put a whole new spin on the concept of ‘stand by your man.’ I live in Massachusetts, and although I think her comments were rather tacky, I think they are totally understandable under the circumstances. Massachusetts was a very subdued place on Monday. But at least we have a quarterback who has a wife who loves him.
It seems an obvious question, but is it? I borrowed the title from Eric Allen Bell. It was the title of the last piece he wrote for the Daily Kos. Mr. Bell’s story is told at Front Page Magazine.
Eric Allen Bell is a writer and a filmmaker. He went to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 2010 to follow the story of the people of the town protesting the building of a mosque in their town. As indicated by the fact that he wrote for the Daily Kos (until he was silenced for writing articles expressing his views on Islam), Mr. Bell is not a conservative Christian. He makes clear in his article that his awakening to the truth of Islamic government had nothing to do with religion.
Mr. Bell details some of his search for the truth about Islam in his article:
Over the coming months I watched as the Muslim Brotherhood gained political power in Egypt. I saw that cab driver’s worst fears come true as Coptic Christians were attacked by Islamic mobs. I saw Tunisia institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic Law. After Libya fell, the Transitional Council also instituted Islamic Law. The nuclear armed Islamic government of Pakistan arrested and punished those who cooperated with the United States in killing Osama Bin Laden. A woman under the Islamic government of Afghanistan faced execution for the crime of being raped. Similar news stories emerged from Iran. A man who typed “there is no god” as his Facebook status in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, was arrested for blasphemy.
Several Muslim men in England were arrested for handing out leaflets to Londoners demanding that homosexuals be executed by hanging for violating Islamic Law with their lifestyle.
Please read the entire article to hear to story of Mr. Bell’s change of heart toward Islamic governments. He asks the question, “Are you in favor of human rights?” to contrast the differences between freedom and life under Islam. That is the question all of us need to think about.
Yesterday’s Daily Caller posted an article and a video about the Occupy Protesters at the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC). Occupy Wall Street had said last week that they would be protesting CPAC, so the protesters were not unexpected.
However, the video is a bit of a surprise. One protester is asked whet he is protesting–he has no idea. Another protester explains that the local union offered him $60 to protest and since he has been out of work for a long time, he accepted the offer. He also has no idea what he is protesting–he simply needs the work!
There is nothing illegal about what the union is doing–protesters can be paid or unpaid. However, I have been to a few tax day protests by the Tea Party, and I can assure you that no one there was getting paid. I think it says something that the left has to pay its protesters (and that they have no idea what they are protesting) and the right protests for free and can articulate their cause (less government, lower taxes, and a return to the U.S. Constitution).
Investors.com posted an article yesterday stating that new data shows that the Himalayan ice caps are not melting and the polar ice caps are melting much more slowly than previously thought. Whoops!
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, is a joint project between NASA and Germany launched in 2002. The satellite sees everything from the highest peaks down to the mouths of glaciers.
According to the article:
Before the amazing GRACE data, teams of researchers had to measure ice loss at a few easily accessible glaciers and then extrapolate it to the 200,000 glaciers worldwide. Measuring mountain snow packs, glacier mass and the thickness of polar ice was an inexact science prone to overhyping by climate-change enthusiasts with an agenda.
Now we have the technology to get it right. The new technology reports:
The new study, the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers made possible by the use of satellite data, acknowledges some glacial melting at lower altitudes. But it also says that over the study period enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate — meaning no net loss of ice.
We need to limit air pollution. We need to keep our oceans and rivers clean. We need to do it in a way that respects people, industry, and wildlife. A little balance is in order.
On Thursday, Glenn Beck posted on The Blaze his interpretation of the song “American Pie” better known as “The Day The Music Died.” As someone who was twelve at the time of the notorious plane crash that took Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper, I had always assumed that the song was simply about that day. Glenn Beck has a deeper take on it.
Follow the link above and watch the two video clips of his interpretation. What he says makes perfect sense and explains all the odd references in the song. I still love the song, I just have a whole lot more appreciation of it after hearing Glenn Beck’s analysis!
Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com posted an article this morning about the Obama Administration’s non-compromise on the latest healthcare directive from Health and Human Services. Yes, I said non-compromise.
The Obama Administration’s definition of a compromise is to still require religious institutions to provide insurance covereage for procedures that violate their religious principles.
The article reports:
…a “compromise” that allows religious employers to opt out of paying for providing birth control to women, but will still be required to provide contraception. What this means is, insurance companies will pick up the tab for contraception, but religious employers are still required to provide contraception through insurance plans to their employees, despite the move being against religious beliefs.
This is all smoke and mirrors. Under the compromise, religious institutions are still required to ignore their basic beliefs and provide coverage, they just don’t have to pay for it. That is not a compromise. Also, why is the federal government requiring a religious organization to ignore their religious beliefs in order to comply with any law?
It’s easier for the government to blame the banks than to take responsibility for their own role in the housing meltdown. CNN Money posted an article today about the settlement reached with five of the largest home loan lenders.
The article reports:
Participating banks: The five mortgage servicers that are parties to the settlement — Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial — will pay a total of $5 billion to the states. Some of that money will go to foreclosed homeowners and the rest to the states.
Federal officials say negotiations are underway to expand the settlement to nine other major servicers, which would raise the overall value of the settlement to $30 billion.
I am not in any way connected to a bank (although I do use them), but this makes me totally furious. On September 28, 2008, Jeff Jacoby at Boston.com stated:
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and “redlining” because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.
The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.” Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms,Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac, encouraged this “subprime” lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.
I commend the effort to make home ownership available to more people; I object to putting pressue on banks to make bad loans. The fact that the government is now going after the banks they put at risk is the height of chutzpah. Going after the lenders they forced to make bad loans is simply another example of the anti-business attitude of the Obama Administration.
CNS News reported yesterday that Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) and 153 other House of Representative members sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking that she suspend a controversial rule that mandates that all insurance providers cover contraception for free.
This is the link to a copy of the letter with all the signatures, scalise.house.gov.
The letter begins:
“As pro-life Members of Congress, we are writing to voice our strong opposition to your final decision on the rule for mandatory contraceptive, sterilization, and abortifacients coverage in the individual and group health insurance market,” the February 6 letter said.
The letter concludes:
In your response to this letter, we request that you provide us specific details on the process followed in the reading and evaluating of the public comments submitted. Additionally, in light of the concerns mentioned, we respectfully request that you suspend the final rule until you can ensure that both employers and individuals are afforded their constitutionally protected conscience rights.”
The problem with conscience rights should not be a surprise to anyone who followed the debate on Obamacare. The surprise is that this ruling came in a year when President Obama is running for re-election. I don’t know if he didn’t understand the uproar it would cause or if he planned to use the mandate to energize his liberal base. Either way, I think it is encouraging that 154 Representatives of both political parties signed the letter.
The article at CNS News concludes:
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan said that the mandate would force people of faith to violate their consciences and the teachings of their church, violating their First Amendment rights.
“Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience,” Dolan said in a video message released Jan. 23.
“This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”
Obamacare is an assault on both the U. S. Constitution and American people of faith. Hopefully it will be struck down by the Supreme Court later this year. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is not an elected official, and this mandate was not passed by Congress. I think it is time to look at who is currently writing the laws in America.
That was the question Ronald Reagan asked in the 1980 presidential campaign. I think that somehow we have wandered back to that time. The only thing missing is the gas lines, and if war comes to the Middle East (which it will within the next year), we will have those gas lines again.
Yesterday Investors.com posted the following graph:
The article states:
The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.
The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”
Note the statement “other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”” The advantage of having charity locally controlled is that the local people know the people they are dealing with. The other problem with government charity is that the government has no incentive to downsize the number of people receiving charity–in fact, the opposite is the case. If I am a welfare administrator in charge of distributing money to fifty people and half of those people become self-sufficient, will I lose my job?
It is very easy to blame the rapid increase in dependency on the depth and length of the current recession, but the article points out that economic effects account for only one-fifth of the change in the index.
The article concludes:
Research seems to validate this connection. Various studies have shown that extending unemployment benefits can keep unemployment rates higher than they would otherwise have been.
Obama’s own former economic adviser, Larry Summers, noted in the 1999 Concise Encyclopedia of Economics that “government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment … by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work.”
That conclusion is called common sense!
Military.com is reporting:
The rules for Hostile Fire and Imminent Danger Pay have changed. Service members will now receive imminent danger pay only for days they actually spend in hazardous areas. This change went in effect on February 1, 2012.
A member of a uniformed service may be entitled to Hostile Fire and Imminent Danger pay at the rate of $225 for any month in which he/she was entitled to basic pay and in which he/she was:
Subject to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines;
On duty in an area in which he was in imminent danger of being exposed to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines and in which, during the period he was on duty in that area, other members of the uniformed services were subject to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines;
Killed, injured, or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of a hostile mine, or any other hostile action; or
On duty in a foreign area in which he was subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger on the basis of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism, or wartime conditions.
This is simply petty. Again, the Obama Administration is only cutting the budget in areas that impact the Defense Department and our military.
Borrowed from a friend on Facebook via MrConserative.com:
I think this explains it pretty well.
Today’s Los Angeles Times posted a story about the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. Proposition 8 is a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.
CNS News reports:
California’s Proposition 8 passed with 52 percent of the vote in 2008. It added a provision to the California State Constitution which states: “(O)nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
I am not a lawyer, and I don’t always understand how things work legally, but it seems to me that if Proposition 8 passed with a majority of votes, it should become law.
The Los Angeles Times reports the argument of those who oppose Proposition 8:
Instead, they simply held that Prop 8 was unconstitutional because it took away “rights” that had already existed in California for same-sex couples – including the ability of same-sex couples to adopt children, to raise children together, to become foster parents together and more.
“Because under California statutory law, same-sex couples had all the rights of opposite-sex couples, regardless of their marital status, all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the majority in the 2-1 decision.
“It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the state, or any other authorized party, an important right — the right to obtain and use the designation of ‘marriage’ to describe their relationship. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Reinhardt, citing the 1996 Romer v. Evans decision, said the California law violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that the Constitution does not allow for “laws of this sort.”
CNS News pointed out:
“This battle is far from over,” said Sears {Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund(ADF)} , who has advised clients in numerous state and federal court cases involving same-sex marriage challenges.
“Judge Reinhardt has been reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court more times than any other judge in American history,” he added.
Historically, the two-parent heterosexual family is the foundation of a healthy society. Why are we trying so hard to tear down the things that give us stability and provide a foundation for our society?
Breitbart.com reported yesterday that a California court will decide if amusement park animals are protected by the same constitutional rights as humans. Good grief–haven’t they got more important issues to look at?
The article reports:
The issue arises from a lawsuit filed by rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a San Diegocourt on behalf of five orcas named Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises.
The whales perform water acrobatics at the SeaWorld amusement parks in San Diego and in Orlando, Florida.
District Judge Jeffrey Miller heard arguments in the complaint Monday and reviewed the response from SeaWorld, which asked that the lawsuit be dismissed. His ruling is expected to come later.
Why are we taking up the Judge’s and the Court’s time with this nonsense?
The article further reports:
The complaint demands that the court “appoint a legal guardian to effectuate plaintiffs’ transfer from defendants’ facilities to a suitable habitat in accordance with each plaintiff’s individual needs and best interests.”
Why was this case not immediately thrown out of court?
The Daily Caller reports today on the victories yesterday by Rick Santorum in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and the non-binding primary in Missouri.
The article lists the numbers:
Returns from 83 percent of Minnesota’s precincts showed Santorum with 45 percent support, Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 27 percent and Romney — who won the state in his first try for the nomination four years ago — with 17 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich trailed with 11 percent.
It was closer in Colorado, where returns from all the precincts showed Santorum with 40 percent of the vote to 35 for Romney. Gingrich had 13, and Paul claimed 12 percent.
The results of yesterday’s caucuses are interesting for a variety of reasons. Santorum is the only ‘non-Romney’ who is still a viable candidate. He is not a perfect candidate (neither party has one of those), but it will be hard to find any significant ‘dirt’ on him. He is squeaky clean and although he has not always voted perfectly in line with the Tea Party, he is pretty close. But I think there is another reason for his success yesterday. When the Obama Administration declared war on the Catholic Church last week (courtesy of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius), I don’t think the President understood what the reaction of the Church and average Americans would be. Many non-churched Americans were offended by the ruling that Church organizations had to go against their religious convictions in providing healthcare services. Government (state) regulations have already driven the Catholic adoption services out of Massachusetts and several other states because of rulings that did not allow the agencies to follow their religious convictions. As abortion becomes less popular (as of May 2009 51% of Americans were pro-life and 42% were pro-choice), government funding of abortion (which is part of Obamacare) will be less popular. I think Rick Santorum has benefitted by Americans waking up and seeing what the Obama Administration is bringing us and deciding that he is the best candidate to undo the damage and stop what is happening.
Rick Santorum is not the perfect candidate (neither is anyone else), but he is consistent in what he believes and what you see is what you get. I find that refreshing. He has also avoided the nasty negative attacks that some of the other candidates have engaged in.
This year my husband and I will be doing the Parkinson’s Unity Walk in New York City in April. My husband’s brother and one of my nieces suffer from the disease. Please follow the link below to watch a video done by my niece and entered in the Neuro Film Festival.
If you would care to support Team Bettina in their efforts to fight Parkinson’s disease, please follow the link to the Parkinson’s Unity Walk and click on Mary Griswold. Thank you.
