TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Only hours after President Obama’s national speech on being responsible with money, Congress is already pushing their $410 billion omnibus spending bill loaded with pork! The bill’s 8,570 “disclosed earmarks” will cost another $7.7 billion! Here are some of the absolutely necessary projects:

$900,000 to fight flies in Nebraska

$400,000 to combat bullying in Montana

$200,000 for tattoo removals in California

$4.5 million for the Center for  Grape Genetics

What happened to a new era of financial discipline?

By: Marcia Segelstein

Most people probably don’t picture kids when they think about who’s viewing pornography. But according to statistics cited by the non-profit advocacy organization Enough Is Enough, the largest group of viewers of Internet pornography is children between the ages of 12 and 17. And there’s more. The average age of first exposure to Internet pornography is 11. 88% of 15- to 17-year-olds have had multiple exposures to hardcore pornography. 90% of children between the ages of 8 and 16 with Internet access have viewed pornographic websites, sometimes inadvertently in the course of looking up information for homework.

Scary stuff. Especially scary because the pornography available at the click of a mouse today makes the pornography of a generation ago look positively innocent. Dr. Jill Manning, a therapist who specializes in issues related to pornography and whose patients include many teenagers, describes Internet pornography today as deviant, vile, and graphic. Picture rape and torture – to name but two – portrayed positively. Now imagine children watching such material.

Dr. Manning is the author of What’s the Big Deal About Pornography: A Guide for the Internet Generation. Beyond the moral concerns most parents would have about their children viewing pornography, there are serious risks for kids who do, according to Dr. Manning. One is that young people are introduced to sexuality in a way that is completely disconnected from relationships to other human beings, and completely disconnected from spirituality. “When a young person is being immersed in pornography they are getting expert teaching in how to objectify human beings, how to strip human beings of their feelings, personalities and needs. That’s a very dangerous road to be walking down.”

Most of Dr. Manning’s patients come from Christian homes, and she believes many Christian parents need a wake-up call when it comes to this issue. In her experience, they are sometimes too trusting of kids, and naïve about the intensely graphic and deviant nature of material accessible via the Internet.

“I know that most Christian parents desire to create a home that’s a safe haven from the world and evil influences,” Dr. Manning told me. She thinks most parents would probably be shocked to learn that approximately 80 percent of hardcore pornography viewing by young people happens in the home. “On the one hand that’s very troubling, but on the other hand it can give us some hope, because it provides leverage. If we can get a handle on that in the home, we can make a tremendous impact for good on our young people.”

Dr. Manning believes parents should have open and frank conversations with their children about the subject of pornography, in the same way they discuss the dangers of alcohol and drugs. She told me about a client of hers, a grown man, struggling with same-sex attraction.  His first sexual experience was with homosexual pornography – at the age of 9. By the time his parents sat down with him to talk about sex, he was 13 years old and already had years of exposure. She’s had clients who first encountered pornography at the age of 5 or 6. “Teaching healthy sexuality is one of the best protections and ways to arm our children. Then when they encounter the lies pornography tells them, they have a powerful reference point. They’ll be able to de-code it and say that’s absurd.” She believes young people should be told why parents disapprove of pornography, and why they believe it’s harmful.

In addition to Dr. Manning’s book, there are many resources available to parents interested in protecting their kids from online pornography. Enough is Enough provides extensive information for parents on its website, including its recently launched program “Internet Safety 101.” This new teaching series for parents brings together under one heading the expert advice, tools, and resources Enough is Enough has been compiling over the last decade.

While there’s no question that setting guidelines and putting safety measures in place are critically important, parents should keep in mind that sometimes children are introduced to pornography outside the home, away from those safety measures. Filters and other protections may not be in place at friends’ houses, hence the importance of arming kids with information.

Based on her experience as a therapist, Manning told me that many teens turn to the Internet for sexual information. Perhaps they hear a word or a term they’re curious about, so they go online to check it out. Unfortunately, they often end up at pornographic websites where they’re not only exposed to explicit and degrading images, but any actual information they absorb is completely distorted.

There are many documented risk factors associated with adolescents viewing pornography. In fact, Dr. Manning testified before a Senate subcommittee on the topic of “Pornography’s Impact on Marriage and the Family.” Here are some of the risks she listed for adolescents who have been exposed to pornography:

• Lasting negative or traumatic emotional responses

• Earlier onset of first sexual intercourse

• The belief that superior sexual satisfaction is attainable without having affection for one’s partner

• The belief that being married or having a family are unattractive prospects

• Increased risk for developing sexual compulsions and addictive behavior

• Increased risk of exposure to incorrect information and overestimating the prevalence of less-common practices (e.g., group sex, bestiality, or sadomasochistic activity)

Sadly, pornography is a threat parents simply cannot ignore. The potential risks for children are too great and the chances of children being exposed to it far too high. If any further motivation is needed, read one last, chilling thing Dr. Manning shared with me:

“I believe pornography is the most successfully marketed attack on our divine nature as human beings that has ever existed. There has never been anything so calculated and widespread and effective at reaching so many people at such a young age.”

Visit Marcia Segelstein’s blog — she values your comments and ideas!

Reuters reports this morning …

Expanding energy exploration and production to U.S. offshore areas that were off limits until recently could result in more than a trillion dollar government windfall and millions of new jobs, a report said on Monday.

Oil and natural gas development in newly opened offshore areas will generate $1.7 trillion in federal tax revenue and almost $600 million in state and local taxes throughout the life span of the new fields, according to the study conducted by the American Energy Alliance.

The increased offshore energy production would also support 1.2 million jobs annually.

“Those benefits would be realized without any increase in direct government spending,” the report said. “Rather, increased OCS output would refill national, state, and local government coffers – currently depleted by real estate and credit crises – with additional government outlays.”

The Democrats continue to hold our oil and natural gas hostage from drilling which in turn continues to hold America hostage to self-sufficiency from South America and the Middle East.

Bloomberg has this story, “Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor” …

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site …”

Surprise … surprise!

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks. “We need earmark reform,” Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, MS. “And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

Then came the un“Stimulus Bill” a spending bill of pork and earmarks with very little stimulus but a lot of pet Democrat projects. Obama didn’t go line by line like he said …virtually nobody did! The vast majority didn’t even read the bill that was scared through Congress.

Now President Barack Obama and Congress prepare to unveil another spending bill on top of this recent 1.3 trillion of taxpayers’ money spent. A $410 billion Omnibus spending bill that’s riddled with thousands of earmarks is on its way, despite Obama’s calls for restraint. I guess he meant restraint for the taxpayers but all-out spending for the government.

This new bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks – loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress – were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.

So while Obama was slamming earmarks on the campaign trail, his House and Senate members have been hypocritically slapping them into spending bills … the “Stimulus” Bill and now the Omnibus Bill … followed by who knows?

“It will be a little embarrassing for the president if he signs a bill with that many earmarks on it,” said Stan Collender, a veteran Washington budget analyst.

I tend to disagree as I really don’t think he cares especially in light of many of the decisions he has already determined.

The public has no chance to challenge questionable spending, but too often powerful interests who know how to work the system get favorite measures inserted.

For instance, Congressional Quarterly reported recently that more than 100 House members got earmarks for clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) who heads the powerful defense spending subcommittee. The CQ Politics analysis said that in the 2009 defense spending bill, which Congress approved last year, PMA clients got about $300 million.

The CQ study came after reports that the FBI is investigating the possibility of illegal campaign contributions by PMA to Murtha and other lawmakers. A Murtha spokesman said earlier this month that the FBI probe has nothing to do with Murtha. A PMA spokesman declined to comment on the probe.

Earmarks cause a loss of voter confidence in the whole political picture because they reek of deception.

These are the facts … you decide.

1.) Fannie May and Freddie Mac – two financial institutions created by the government to make more money available for home mortgages.

2.) Jimmy Carter who signed the Community Reinvestment Act – a law requiring that mortgages must be given to minorities who lacked “credit worthiness” (i.e., a proven ability to repay the loan).  This law was opposed by most all banks but championed and coerced into being by guess who? – ACORN.

3.) Bill Clinton further increased the federal money available for these “sub-prime” mortgages and also lowered the standards for obtaining these mortgages.  Coincidently, Clinton’s point man on this was Franklin Delano Raines, Director of Office of Management & Budget, who left Fannie Mae to serve in Clinton’s administration and returned to Fannie Mae as its CEO in Clinton’s last year in office.  (Remember the name, Franklin Delano Raines, in case Obama tries to slip him into a financial position.)

4.) In 2003 when George W. Bush was president new regulators found that Fannie & Freddie executives overstated their profits by nearly $11 billion to pump up their bonuses.  Bush proposed sweeping regulatory changes; the Senate Democrats killed Bush’s reform plan.  At that time, the House Financial Services Committee Chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA), emphatically stated that Fannie & Freddie ‘were not facing any kind of financial crisis.” (he’s already infamous).

5.) Senator John McCain, in 2005, sponsored a Fannie & Freddie reform bill.  At the time, McCain warned that if “Congress does not act – the  housing market and overall economy” is in peril.  Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said McCain was just trying to impede the Fannie & Freddie mission.  McCain’s bill was defeated.

In 2008 John McCain’s concern and predictions came true.  The housing market collapsed and the economy went into a downward spiral and continues …

6.) There appears to be a definitive history of Democrats seeking to accomplish their social agenda and increasing their base – through manipulation of our financial institutions.

P.S. – Obama’s newly named White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, was on the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac when the SEC accused it of deceiving its shareholders about its profits.  No conflict of interest here!

A group with pedophilia ties may be too extreme for the United Nations but not for the Obama State Department.  In a fiery debate this week, the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council voted 8-6 to deny official non-governmental (NGO) status to a radical gay advocacy group from Brazil which supports sex with children. The committee that reviews NGO applicants includes several major member nations, including the U.S., which voted in favor of Brazil’s Association of Gays, Lesbians and Transgenders.

While Christians and conservatives may find it outrageous that the Obama administration is unconcerned with pedophilia, we are not surprised. After all, this is the same White House that has nominated a liberal extremist like David Ogden to the nation’s second-highest justice post. Ogden, whose Senate vote was delayed after thousands of calls and emails, represented purveyors of hard-core pornography in court, including those who did not want to take the trouble to verify that their “actors” weren’t underage.

In the past week, three of President Obama’s current most objectionable nominees had confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate:

David Ogden – Nominated to the high-ranking post of Deputy Attorney General of the United States. As a private attorney, Ogden worked for the ACLU and filed a brief in the landmark abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey that denied the existence of adverse mental health effects of abortion on women. Ogden has also been one of the nation’s most prominent porn defense attorneys, representing not only Playboy and Penthouse, but also PHE, Inc., the largest distributor of hardcore pornography in the United States.

Thomas Perrelli – He is Obama’s nominee for Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department. Perrelli won media attention as the attorney for Michael Schiavo, the Florida man who defeated Terri Schiavo’s family in their desperate attempt to keep her from being brutally starved and dehydrated to death at Michael’s insistence. Terri Schiavo collapsed under mysterious circumstances and was denied rehabilitation after funds won in a court settlement were allegedly diverted by Michael Schiavo for other uses.

Elena Kagan – She is well-credentialed as the dean of Harvard Law School and Obama’s choice for Solicitor General, a post so powerful its occupant is often called the “10^th Supreme Court justice. The outlandish thing is Kagan has never argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, but she and other law school officials sued to overturn the Solomon amendment, that had been adopted by Congress to ensure that law schools could not use homosexual rights rules to deny U.S. Armed Forces recruiters access to law school campuses.

The U.S. Senate will vote soon on these key appointments that will determine U.S. legal policy for years to come. These appointments will champion abortion on demand, legalized obscenity, special rights for homosexuals, and euthanasia. Votes may occur in the next 72 hours – please contact your two U.S. senators today and tell them that these nominees should not go forward.

A little control over the media would be a good thing, according to California Attorney General Jerry Brown. Brown came out in favor of the Fairness Doctrine while appearing on the Michael Savage radio show this past Friday night.

The Fairness Doctrine would require and enforce radio stations carrying conservative talk show hosts to give equal time to dissenting liberal commentators. In essence, the left-wing Democrats and President Barack Obama are relying on the Fairness Doctrine to be a great hindrance to conservative talk radio, and work towards driving conservative talk radio off the air.

Conservatives are in the minority in the media, and many in Brown’s Democratic Party would like to see the conservative talk show hosts taken off the air via the Fairness Doctrine. Brown stated the current situation of having talk radio dominated by conservatives allows for “one-sided presentations.” Hmm, I wonder who would benefit from that, with no voice to bring the left to task? … taking away our freedom of speech to silence any dissenting voices from the socialist doctrine. I’m sure the left wouldn’t be one-sided!

Former President Bill Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Debby Stabenow have all called for the re-establishment of the doctrine. All three want conservative voices constrained in the media. This would allow them a one-sided party propaganda machine … even though they have close to that currently.

Brown said, “I think we need a robust range of opinions on the air.” He added that “a little state control wouldn’t hurt anybody” and said that anyone who would warn against the doctrine was “paranoid.”

Really? I wouldn’t say those against the Fairness Doctrine are “paranoid,” I would say they are “realists” about exactly how this anti-free speech doctrine will affect the freedom of our country with a one-sided voice from the left. What Brown meant was a fixed playing field so the outcome of the game would be in favor of the left.

The big picture of this Fairness Doctrine is aimed at silencing conservative voices … taking away freedom of speech.

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.” – President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear” … until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An brazen executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. This followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Then, Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent. Isn’t one too much though?

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As once observed in Washington, the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal, but what’s legal. The unfortunate thing is things can be legal and not ethical at the same time. What made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years. He had been getting $1 million per year from a law firm … but he’s not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don’t get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal’s private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he had come to Washington to upend.

Yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the “stimulus” package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat moguls of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections. It’s not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus – and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven interests and views that Obama said he came to Washington to abolish.

Not only did Obama say what he wanted to abolish but also that he wanted to create something new – a new politics where the prosperous pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the “fierce urgency of now” changed those goals, if they were real in the first place. This new age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington.

After Obama’s miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its trance. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that this president told better than anyone. This awakening took all of two and a half weeks!