The Great Leap Forward -Get ready! Soon the posters will hit the billboards. Best seen in an exhibition and not along American highways or in our schools.
The Anchoress worries about mandatory volunteerism. Our “Good Sister”
should worry.
Category Archives: Political
Links Home & Abroad
Just got back from Nebraska so I’m playing catch up with a link-go-round:
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Michelle Malkin ponders the whereabouts and future of Obama’s auntie Zeituni Onyango while the Boston Globe muses:
…”The case is unusual in American history because it’s a relative of the president involved in immigration matters,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies. “It really does present the White House with an opportunity or a minefield. If they follow through on a decision that she should go home, that would actually raise the president’s credibility enormously on immigration enforcement.”
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Should hometown America be alarmed? The Beacon of Light, Bryn T. Jones writes:
I read a disturbing story that showed advancement of the “well funded” civilian security force that candidate Barak Obama promised, and President Obama appears to deliver. The bill is passing under the guise of “volunteer” work, but would be mandatory. The bill stipulates that middle-school children would be required 50 hours per year, high schoolers 100 hours per year, and so on through college. The program included uniforms that the children will wear. I ask, why not ad a spiffy arm band with, perhaps the Obama emblem for good measure. This program will also enlist adults on up to seniors. They will go to camps, which are re-named campuses in order to be trained, or re-educated as the case may be.
This bill has been touted as some form of commemoration of 9/11, a day of volunteer work to commemorate the tragedy of that day.
Someone needs to remind Barak Obama and the Socialists, I mean Democrats, that this is America, the land of the FREE. We do not serve our State. The government is of the people, by the people and for the people. In other words, the government WORKS FOR US.
Where does this end? It ends with our country being policed from within by radicals subscribing to a charismatic leader and following along, lock-step, controlled by mindblock ideology.
Parade Magazine had the Top Ten Dictators listed. Interestingly, many of them have programs identical to what Obama proposes. I suppose, allowing a few years, Parade might be able to add Barak Obama to the list.
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The pronouncement of bishops usually have a kernel of obedience imbedded in it somewhere. The Notre Dame invitation of President Obama to speak at commencement veers to the Left and beyond.
Bishop Olmstead will have none of it reports Amy Welborn and American Papist and Pontifications report the displeasure:
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More British ankst across the Pond as both Obie and Gordon Brown do battle with their financial gurus:
An elegant symmetry is developing between the plight of Gordon Brown and the situation of Barack Obama, in their respective struggles to keep their bankrupt economies afloat. In both cases a deep rift has developed between these saviours of the world and the men who should be their principal lieutenants in the work of salvation.
Of Gordon Brown, England’s Prime Minister, Gerald Werner says:
“He is definitely up there with the Great Charlatan in the Most Destructive Influence on Britain Stakes.”
Making Biased Media Irrelevant? – A Dream Coming True
There is good news here and hope. (Not Obama’s kind but real hope.) Since Daniel Hannan made his speech to European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown , tens of thousands world wide respond. Newspapers passe?
“When I woke up this morning, my phone was clogged with texts, my email inbox with messages. Overnight, the YouTube clip of my remarks had attracted over 36,000 hits. By today, it was the most watched video in Britain.
How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what’s news.”
Standing Up to the Rulers
The Anchoress reaches across the cyber-pond to find this gem. This voice of the people is Daniel Hannan undressing Parliament. The Anchoress thanks Gerald Werner as do I. Werner says:
“For anyone who has ever dreamed of being able to tell our rulers, to their faces, precisely what we think of them, Daniel Hannan’s recently posted video of himself doing exactly that to Gordon Brown in the European Parliament is compulsive viewing.”
Political Melodrama – A Greek Tragedy American-style
Thomas Sowell fed up with theatrics:
No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership. Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages.
“Moving Our Country from Democracy to Despotism,”
A call to action delivered by Cardinal Francis George:
As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government’s part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism. Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God–that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion–including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.”
Full text follows:
“Hello. I am Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I’d like to take a moment to speak about two principles or ideas that have been basic to life in our country: religious liberty and the freedom of personal conscience.
On Friday afternoon, February 27, the Obama Administration placed on a federal website the news that it intends to remove a conscience protection rule for the Department of Health and Human Services. That rule is one part of the range of legal protections for health care workers–for doctors, nurses and others–who have objections in conscience to being involved in abortion and other killing procedures that are against how they live their faith I God.
As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government’s part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism. Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God–that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion–including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.
Conscientious objection against many actions is a part of our life. We have a conscientious objection against war for those who cannot fight, even though it’s good to defend your country. We have a conscientious objection for doctors against being involved in administering the death penalty. Why shouldn’t our government and our legal system permit conscientious objection to a morally bad action, the killing of babies in their mother’s womb? People understand what really happens in an abortion and in related procedures–a living member of the human family is killed–that’s what it’s all about–and no one should be forced by the government to act as though he or she were blind to this reality.
I ask you please to let the government know that you want conscience protections to remain strongly in place. In particular, let the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington know that you stand for the protection of conscience, especially now for those who provide the health care services so necessary for a good society. Thank you and God bless you.”
acertainslantoflight writing in Catholics in the Public Square reports the meeting of President Obama with Cardinal Francis George. “The statement from the USCCB said: “The meeting was private. Cardinal George and President Obama discussed the Catholic Church in the United States and its relation to the new administration. The meeting lasted approximately 30 minutes.”
Private, yes, but one can guess that Obama’s attack on conscience issues in health related fields had to be in mind and mouth. The meeting followed by one day Cardinal George’s warnings of emerging “depotism” with the removal of conscience protection.
EWTN report here
Be Holy! 