TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY ENDANGERS AMERICA

Posted by straight shooter on April 9, 2009 under General, Political, Terrorism

President Barack Obama is making some dangerous choices in rejecting the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush administration and backing down from confronting North Korea over its threatening missile program. This weakness in foreign policy will embolden America’s enemies.

As well, the effort to treat terrorism as a criminal justice problem – rather than an act of war – will only bog the country down in pursuit of enemy combatants.

“Dick Cheney is clearly right in saying that, between the court decisions about terrorists and the administration actions, the United States is running greater risks of getting attacked than we were under President Bush,” Gingrich said.

Pointing to what he described as a “vivid demonstration of weakness in foreign policy” the former House speaker Gingrich said Obama’s actions, including his proposal for a resumption of nuclear arms limitation talks, reflect “a dangerous fantasy that runs an enormous risk.

The embarrassing denial of the United States appeal to the United Nations Security Council is a vivid demonstration of this weakness. This is resembles the Carter administration’s weakness in foreign policy.

Emboldened by this a North Korean envoy threatened retaliation if the United Nations imposed further sanctions for the missile launch, warning the U.N. Security Council that it would take “strong steps” if the 15-nation body took any action in response to Pyongyang’s launch of a long-range rocket, Reuters reported.

North Korea is a totally irresponsible dictatorship run by a person who is clearly out of touch with reality. They are responsible for the deaths of several million people because of its totalitarian rule, how much longer should such a regime be tolerated?

Under Kim Jong-Il this dictatorship has been so bad it has starved the people and the average North Korean today is several inches shorter than a generation ago. If we do nothing they are going to continue building nuclear weapons and missiles. If they are this aggressive when they are weak what do you think they will be like as the get stronger?

The United States should have shot down the North Korean missile, while making it very clear that any missile launched with a trajectory in the direction of the United States will be met with an overwhelming counter-attack.

The Obama administration is rapidly undermining the U.S. missile defense system while imagining a fantasy world of trust and cooperation. Ronald Reagan believed we had to have a missile defense system to stop any country from breaking free and blackmailing other countries. Then there were only five nuclear powers: the Soviet Union, China, France, Britain, and the United States. Now we have North Korean, Iranian and Pakistani nuclear developments.

Obama is in a world where Hamas is firing missiles every day into Israel, Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the North Koreans are firing missiles, and he has some wonderful fantasy idea that talking to everybody is all that is required.

That is why it is very dangerous to have a fantasy foreign policy, just like refusing to say we have a war on terror … instead they are just manmade disasters.

I’m not comforted with the thought that 9/11 was a “manmade disaster” when it was a “terrorist attack.”

Get real Obama …

CAP-AND-TRADE . . . HUGE TAX FOR AMERICANS !

Posted by straight shooter on April 9, 2009 under Economy, General, Political, Political Terrorism

This “energy tax” will be devastating to all Americans. Estimates have cap-and-trade adding more than $3,000 a year to every American’s bill for gasoline and energy.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, it would mean the doubling of monthly energy bills, whether it’s natural gas or electricity. In more than half of America that’s a huge deal, because in October there is no choice – you have to turn your heat on and that heat will stay on usually through the month of April.

It is also a reduction in the American standard of living due to the potential for job loss in our country. Businessmen are savvy and preemptive and they are looking at what President Obama wants to do with this new tax on energy. Because that’s what this is, a tax on the right to use and consume energy – as if energy didn’t cost enough already.

You might as well call this the ‘China and India Stimulus Plan’ because China and India have said, they were not going to have any part of a cap-and-trade system. So that means American jobs will leave and go overseas fleeing the United States for other countries..

The only way the cap-and-trade plan can be stopped is if the American people rise up and say “NO!”

Senator Harry Reid plans that by the end of August the cap-and-trade bill go through. That gives you, the American people, a little time. These are very real implications – not just for businessmen, not just for a few Americans, but 100% of Americans will be impacted by this new tax on energy.

If you procrastinate now it will cost you …

WARREN BLAZES DOWN THE WIDE ROAD !

Posted by straight shooter on April 9, 2009 under General, Political, Social Concerns, Theological Concerns

Rick Warren disavows support for Proposition 8

Monday night on CNN’s Larry King Live, Rick Warren apologized for his support of Prop. 8, California’s voter-approved marriage protection amendment, saying he has “never been and never will be” an “anti-gay or anti-gay marriage activist.” “During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement, never — never once even gave an endorsement in the two years Prop. 8 was going,” Warren claimed.

California mega-church pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren says he apologized to his homosexual friends for making comments in support of California’s Proposition 8, and now claims he “never once even gave an endorsement” of the marriage amendment.

His words now make him a liar considering just two weeks before the November 4 Prop. 8 vote, Warren issued a clear endorsement of the marriage amendment while speaking to church members. “We support Proposition 8 – and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8,” he said.

The following is a complete transcript of Warren’s comments just weeks before the Prop. 8 election:

“The election’s coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you’re praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.


“Now let me say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8 — and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear.


“This is one thing, friends, that all politicians tend to agree on. Both Barack Obama and John McCain, I flat-out asked both of them: what is your definition of marriage? And they both said the same thing – it is the traditional, historic, universal definition of marriage: one man and one woman, for life. And every culture for 5,000 years, and every religion for 5,000 years, has said the definition of marriage is between one man and a woman.


“Now here’s an interesting thing. There are about two percent of Americans [who] are homosexual or gay/lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population determine to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years.


“This is not even just a Christian issue — it’s a humanitarian and human issue that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love, and procreation.


“So I urge you to support Proposition 8, and pass that word on. I’m going to be sending out a note to pastors on what I believe about this. But everybody knows what I believe about it. They heard me at the Civil Forum when I asked both Obama and McCain on their views.”

During a CNN interview on Monday, Warren expressed regret for backing Prop. 8. “There were a number of things that were put out. I wrote to all my gay friends – the leaders that I knew – and actually apologized to them. That never got out,” he admitted.

Additionally, Pastor Warren said he did not want to comment on or criticize the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision last week to legalize same-sex “marriage” because it was “not his agenda.”

Bryan Fischer with the Idaho Values Alliance says Warren is abdicating his biblical role as a pastor. “For Pastor Warren to say that shoring up marriage is not something that’s on his agenda is just something that’s hard to believe for somebody who believes the Bible is our rule for faith and practice,” Fischer notes.

Dr. Jim Garlow, the senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, helped spearhead the Prop. 8 effort in California. Garlow admits he is confused and troubled by Pastor Warren’s decision to apologize for supporting Prop. 8.

“Historically when institutions and individuals back away from convictional biblical truth, it is driven primarily by one single factor — and that is the respectability of other people. In other words, much more caring about what other people think about them than what God thinks about them,” he concludes.

Which is it really most important Warren … becoming more Christ-like or angering the gay community? Calling them and apologizing for standing up for God’s truths and principles seems to have won. You have lost all credibility as you revealed what is most important to you … what the gay community thinks rather than what the Bible says? Stick with the word of God … you can still love homosexuals in a biblical context without approving of their lifestyle.

By the way, drop your “Pastor” title … you have lost the privilege to be called “Pastor.”

We are not yet even three months into the new Obama administration and here is his record on abortion.

Pro-Abortion Presidential Record – 2009

  • January 5, 2009 – Obama picks pro-abortion Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as the chairman of the Democratic Party.
  • January 6, 2009 – Obama chooses Thomas Perrelli, the lawyer who represented Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife, as the third highest attorney in the Justice Department.
  • January 22, 2009 – Releases statement restating support for Roe v. Wade decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions and has resulted in at least 50 million abortions since 1973.
  • January 23, 2009 – Forces taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. Decison to overturn Mexico City Policy sends part of $457 million to pro-abortion organizations.
  • January 26, 2009 – Obama nominee for Deputy Secretary of State, James B. Steinberg, tells members of the Senate that taxpayers should be forced to fund abortions. Nominee erroneously says limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional.
  • January 29, 2009 – President Obama nominates pro-abortion David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General.
  • February 12, 2009 – Obama nominates pro-abortion Elena Kagan to serve as Solicitor General.
  • February 27, 2009 – Starts the process of overturning pro-life conscience protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.
  • February 28, 2009 – Barack Obama nominates pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.
  • March 5, 2009 – The Obama administration shut out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, made the invitation list as did other pro-abortion groups.
  • March 9, 2009 – President Barack Obama signed an executive order forcing taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research.
  • March 10, 2009 – Obama announces the creation of a new foreign policy position to focus on women’s issues. He names Melanne Verveer, an abortion advocate, to occupy the post.
  • March 10, 2009 – Reverses an executive order to press for more research into ways of obtaining embryonic stem cells without harming human life. The order Obama scrapped would have promoted new forms of stem cell research.
  • March 11, 2009 – Obama signed an executive order establishing a new agency within his administration known as the White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama’s director of public liaison at the White House, Tina Tchen, an abortion advocate, became director of it.
  • March 11, 2009 – Obama administration promotes an unlimited right to abortion at a United Nations meeting.
  • March 11, 2009 – Obama administration officials deny negative effects of abortion at United Nation’s meeting.
  • March 17, 2009 – President Barack Obama makes his first judicial appointment and names pro-abortion federal Judge David Hamilton to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is not a man who has any concern for the sanctity of life. He has done this in less than 3 months!! I hope those “Christians”? who voted for him wake up before the 2012 election and will not vote for him again. This is just one of the ways President Obama is working to destroy our country which he calls arrogant and that he thinks needs to apologize to the rest of the world.

If you want fight back against President Obama’s attack on the sanctity of life … only support pro-life candidates to combat this all out assault on our values!

THINK ABOUT IT…

Posted by straight shooter on March 31, 2009 under General, Political, War

A SINGLE NUKE COULD DESTROY AMERICA !

A sword hangs over our heads. It is a real threat that has been all but ignored.

On Feb. 3, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit also can drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than 45 minutes. Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States, given our retaliatory power.

A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim: In fact, one small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a byproduct of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the Earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.

This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.

Even as the new administration plans to spend trillions on economic bailouts, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the United States’ reluctance to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?

Fifty years ago, it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit also could have served as an ICBM. Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.

The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation . . . can now at last achieve that dream in a matter of minutes.

Those who claim that there is little to fear from Iran or North Korea because “at best” they will have only one or two nuclear weapons ignore the catastrophic level of threat we now face from just “a couple” of nuclear weapons.

Again: One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude – to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States – would create an EMP “overlay” that triggers a continent-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation, and communications infrastructure.

Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish. The impact has been likened to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina. Some studies estimate that 90% of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement, and medical infrastructures collapse.

We most likely would never recover from the blow.

Two things need to be done now and without delay:

1. Make clear in the strongest of terms that, if either Iran or North Korea launches a rocket on a trajectory headed toward the territory of the United States, we will shoot it down. The risk of not doing so is beyond acceptable. And if they construe this as an act of war, so be it, for they fired the first shot. The risk of sitting back for 30 minutes and praying it is not an EMP strike is beyond acceptable, beyond rational on our part.

2. Funding for EMP defense must be a top national priority. To downgrade or halt our missile defense program, which at last is becoming viable after 25 years of research, would be an action of criminal negligence.

Surely, with such a threat confronting us, a fair and open debate, with full public access and the setting aside of partisan politics, is in order. In the meantime, a policy must be stated today that we will indeed shoot down any missile aimed towards the United States that is fired by Iran or North Korea. America’s survival, your survival, and your family’s survival might very well depend on it.

THE ECONOMY IS ONLY THE SYMPTOM !

Posted by straight shooter on March 31, 2009 under Economy, General, Political

It’s the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, Stupid


In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated George Bush, by campaigning on political consultant Jim Carville’s theme: “It’s the economy, stupid.”


Here we are again – up to our necks in economic quicksand. Again, politicians, pollsters and pundits think we have a problem with the “economy.” And, of course, we do, and we need to work on it … but are we only treating the symptoms? Are we just trying to stitch up the patient without removing the tumors?


The economy is the symptom, not the disease. Unless we remove the moral and spiritual “tumors” that affect many in the White House, Senate, House, judiciary and right down to the citizenry, that sent us to the Emergency Room in the first place, we can expect neither a quick nor a lasting recovery … if any at all.


If the economy is the symptom, what is the disease? In January of 1984, President Reagan spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters Association in Washington, D.C. Here’s a portion of his speech:


“Government bureaucracies spend billions for problems related to drugs alcohol and disease. How much of that money could we save, how much better off might American’s be if all of us tried a little harder to live by the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? I have been told that since the beginning of civilization, millions and millions of laws have been written. I have even heard someone suggest, it was well over several billion laws. And yet, taken all together, all those millions and millions of laws have not improved on the Ten Commandments one bit.”


In a lot of ways, Ronald Reagan was right. By getting away from the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule we, as a nation, have been going into a downward spiral of selfishness and greed. Let’s accept responsibility for our quandary and repent so we can move on in the right direction. Right choices will bring back real freedom and stifle immorality, liberal philosophy, and socialistic endeavors.


I would like to hear more preaching on 2 Chronicles 7:14. I would like to hear more spiritual leaders speaking out against the underlying disease. I would like to see more Christians in the marketplace and the public square “out themselves” as believers and make a stand – even if it turns out to be a last stand. And I would like to see us get back to the moral and spiritual underpinnings that made this country so great.


God needs to be getting more glory. How? It’s the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, stupid 🙂

Carbon dioxide … which humans exhale … is now regarded as a public danger according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They are now planning for this exhaled gas from the air we breathe in to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, something the Act was not intended to do when it was enacted over 30 years ago.

Aggressive cap-and-trade measures are being debated on Capitol Hill and, if enacted, are rumored to rake in trillions of dollars for the federal government and raise the cost of living for Americans by thousands of dollars.

Dan Simmons, the director of state affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, calls cap-and-trade the largest backdoor tax in U.S. history. “In the budget it said $646 billion. They then are telling people on Capitol Hill that it is going to be $1.3 [trillion] to $1.9 trillion,” he points out. “That will make it the largest tax increase of all time of all American history and probably all world history.”

He says the problem with cap-and-trade is that it makes all people poorer today in order to tackle an alleged problem tomorrow. Ben Lieberman with The Heritage Foundation says cap-and-trade would usher in a permanent recession.

“We might never really have a full recovery if we have to live with these tremendous constraints on affordable energy use,” he adds, “so we would be talking about exactly the kind of thing that we are worried about now – job losses, high energy costs — these things being exacerbated and staying that way for years and years.”

Already happening in Obama’s spending spree packages !

A United Nations document on “climate change” has been distributed to a major environmental conclave  that envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, that will involve trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Read on … http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510937,00.html

It is March 31 and has the brutal winter finally come to an end in the Great Plains? With temperatures across North Dakota 5 to 10 degrees below normal all winter long. Massive snowfalls blanketing the Peace Garden State for months. Now, North Dakota is enduring an end-of-March blizzard. The people of Fargo are paying the price as the ice-jammed Red River is cresting more than 40 feet over normal flooding conditions.


So, I ask you, what is the cause of all the cold, the snow, and the ice? Global warming, of course!


According to Kate White, a civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “climate change caused by global warming likely is changing ice conditions and adding to the unpredictability” of ice jams along the Red River, so she said.


What? Let me see if I get this. A “near-record snowpack,” along with below-normal temperatures, has led to more ice, which is acting unpredictably because of global warming?

What am I not getting here? I’ll tell you what I am getting – more proof that apocalyptic visions of global warming are driven by a particular worldview. Forget the facts … the politicians and warming-mongers are! Obama has bought into it. This is what he had to say: “I actually think the science around climate change is real. . . . If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota . . . that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.”


What part of record snow is the result of global warming?

Folks, what we have to take seriously here is the fact that our worldview determines how we see the world and how we live in the world. And we better have it correct. Despite the fact that the globe has been cooling since at least 2002, or that near-record cold and snow have plagued much of North America all year long, all the proponents of global warming can see is – well, global warming.


This is why its adherents in Congress and in the White House want curbs on greenhouse gases, potentially ruinous cap-and-trade policies, and curbs on oil exploration (at a time when we need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil). And if in the near future you start paying upwards of $5 a pound for ground beef, thank those in Congress who want to tax cow flatulence as a way to combat global warming.


As the New York Times relates, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson has called “climate change an ‘obsession’ – the primary article of faith for ‘a worldwide secular religion’ known as environmentalism.” Dyson accuses the adherents of this religion of “relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee … imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth.”


But the models aren’t holding true. This is why the global warming scientists need to examine their worldview … as do those who are being sucked into the hubbub … then they need to step out of the computer lab and take a walk. But they’d better bundle up first.


This doesn’t mean we don’t take care of the earth in a balanced way … but don’t worship it! … it really isn’t your mother.

Tomorrow will be April 1 … a good day for the global warming crowd.

HISTORY SPEAKS TO AMERICA’S CURRENT COURSE

Posted by straight shooter on March 14, 2009 under Economy, General, Political, Social Concerns

It seems like every day we’re hearing of another multi-billion dollar bailout. I believe it bears repeating what was said over 200 years ago about the fall of the Athenian Republic by Scots historian professor Alexander Tyler, circa 1787:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

There it is folks. A nation of fools will we be if knowing history, we simply repeat it. It is up to those who know the truth to take a stand if we are to see our nation spared from the consequences proven through all of history to be our fate if we continue on the current path. Tyler also taught:

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilization has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage.”

We are presently between the apathy and dependency stage.

At the very core of this entire issue is our collective trust in the King of the Universe. Remember, it was Ronald Reagan who taught us that, “if we ever cease to be one nation under God, we will be a nation gone under.”


That is the bottom line. No economic plan will save us from the bondage that befalls nations that turn their backs on God. This, too, is proven by history. It is my constant prayer that our nation will turn back to the God of our Fathers. Only then will there be real “hope” for a future for America.


It must begin with the people of God. Church leaders must get their heads out of the sand and rise up to the call or we will have to answer to our children, grandchildren, and … God … for the liberty lost, because of our complacency. God has always had a people, a faithful remnant willing to sacrifice for Kingdom interests … the message of salvation, people, truth, and righteousness.