Usurping God’s Glory With Lie Upon Lie

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Usurping God’s Glory With Lie Upon Lie

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Greetings in the Name of Him Who Is Truth!

When someone blatantly has something wrong, he should be corrected. Such is the case with the man who now occupies the Oval Office, who told an Islamic nation that the Islamic faith has done so much over the centuries to make “my country better.” The Oval Office Occupier (OOO) may well have been talking about the country where his stepfather adopted him and gave him citizenship, meaning Indonesia. America has no history of anything Islamic making it better. America was birthed and developed by Christians. In fact, one of the first acts of American war was against the Barbary Pirates-a group of radical Islamists terrorizing the high seas when Thomas Jefferson was President in 1801.

Moreover, even if the OOO was talking about Indonesia, he would be telling a lie. Most people on earth would say that a theo-socio-political system as Islam has not had a positive impact on any nation, even Indonesia. Death to those who disagree with the system, slavery to those who are overcome by the system, an extreme lack of human rights for women and children, honor killings, war, terrorism, poverty, hopelessness and crime are what Islam contributed throughout history to every nation it occupied and its legacy continues today, as Islamic nations are among the leaders in illegal drug trade, illegal weapons trade, human trafficking of women and children, and of course, terrorism.

A few weeks ago, there was a slight uproar when the Council on American Islamic Relations launched a campaign claiming Jesus Christ was a Muslim because He submitted to God. This attempt to even rewrite the history of Christianity and claim control over Christianity is what Islam does throughout the world. In Israel, Islam tries to lay claim to all the Jewish and Christian historic places-the TempleMount being the most glaring example. One of the first things a tourist learns when visiting Israel is that Israel was historically the crossroads of the continents. The trade routes all went through Israel, the prophetic land of God’s evangelism -Genesis 12:3 alive: “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

Something more subtle the OOO told the Turkey Parliament: “I know there are those who like to debate Turkey’s future. They see your country at the crossroads of continents, and touched by the currents of history. They know that this has been a place where civilizations meet, and different peoples mingle. . .Here is what they don’t understand: Turkey’s greatness lies in your ability to be at the center of things. This is not where East and West divide – it is where they come together.” The OOO is a usurper, trying to steal the Glory of God and place it upon the altar of Islam. But beware of the consequences for the entire nation for the Lord says in Isaiah 48:11, “I will not give my glory unto another.”

Have a Blessed and Powerful Day!
Bill Wilson
Word of Life Ministry
www.dailyjot.com

Obama’s Pentagon Cuts

Obama doesn’t know Bo, Jack, Diddley, or Bubkiss.  Not only is he the driving force in the destruction of our economic system, he is doing everything he can to destroy our military capability and ensure our removal from the world stage as a superpower.  The one and only thing the constitution provides the authority to tax for is national defense.  Yet defense is being sacrificed for vote-buying give away programs funded involuntarily with our money.  But we the sheeple have allowed our morals and ethics to be eroded, and our government to take so much of our freedom, that there may be no turning back.  America, it’s time to take back our country.

Obama’s Pentagon Cuts

by W. Thomas Smith Jr. (more by this author)

Posted 04/07/2009 ET
Updated 04/08/2009 ET

The unclassified version of the 2009 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) — the U.S. Defense Dept.’s four-year strategy planning exercise — has yet to be released. But an unprecedented gag order placed on those responsible for developing the QDR, combined with Monday’s proposed terminations of programs — like the Air Force’s newly operational air-superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor — has military experts concerned the writing may already be on the wall.

“I am appalled at the decisions just made by the secretary, as are other very senior Air Force general officers,” retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney (U.S. Air Force), told HUMAN EVENTS following U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ press conference yesterday.

Gates proposed delays and terminations of current and next-generation platforms and weapons systems programs, which included, among other particulars:

• cutting aircraft carriers from 11 to 10 and decreasing production of other surface combatants
• delaying amphibious ship programs
• halting the planned increase of ground-based interceptors in Alaska
• cancelling a second airborne laser (antimissile) aircraft
• terminating the ground-vehicle element of the Army’s Future Combat Systems (essentially killing the program)
• delaying production of a new presidential helicopter
• ending development of a new Air Force search and rescue helicopter
• canceling the development of a new bomber
• ending the C-17 transport aircraft, and
• stopping production of the F-22 at 187 fighters

Additionally, the secretary of defense vowed to “maximize the production” of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and up the purchase of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps’ F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from 14 to 30 in Fiscal Year 2010.

“But the F-35 cannot survive a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile, and the F-22 can,” says McInerney, a former assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force. “The question should be, why don’t we have a fly-off between the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter?”

McInerney adds, “He [Gates] is trying to make the Air Force a supporting service. He does not understand airpower.”

Among the concerns expressed — in the wake of yesterday’s proposed cuts before the QDR — is that the current crop of defense planners and policymakers may be suffering from shortsightedness. They may be dismissing potential strategic military threats to the U.S. as overblown. They may be capitulating to the “change” crowd in Washington. Or all of the above.

Asked if he was “walking into a buzzsaw,” Gates responded: “There’s no question a lot of these decisions will be controversial. My hope is that — as we have tried to do here in this building [the Pentagon] — the members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole.”

But Gates’ remarks in 2008 in which he said, “I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called ‘next war-it is,’” have fueled fears among many retired generals. And the QDR gag order (a non-disclosure agreement reportedly signed by defense officials stating they will not discuss the QDR) is certainly not alleviating any concerns.

“It’s the first time it [the agreement] has ever been done in history,” says McInerney. “If I was one of the chiefs, I would have said there is no way I’m signing anything.”

A general who spoke on condition of anonymity added, “[A] serious naiveté has begun to fester [in the Beltway],” and the White House and senior defense officials “want to shape the military the way they think it should be without debate. They don’t see Russia or China as a threat. And the idea that we should not focus on future potential conflicts — from guerrilla operations to even air or sea battles — is troubling.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely (U.S. Army), former deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Pacific, tells HUMAN EVENTS, “There is no overriding strategy, not only for the war against radical Islam — the planners don’t even know what to call it anymore — but no broad strategy for the Middle East and beyond. We do not seem to have senior people — particularly among the political appointees — who understand the threats against us, much less how to develop a strategy to meet those threats.”

McInerney says — based on information he and other retired general and flag officers are gleaning — whatever strategy is being planned seems to be too narrowly focused on ground-centric, irregular warfare operations and forces. Though, he adds, those forces are critically important in the 21st century, so are sea, air, and space forces which must never be neglected in the face of emerging and yet-unseen threats to national defense.

“Ground forces will not deter China from going into Taiwan,” says McInerney. “The Air Force and the Navy’s carrier strike groups have been fighting for 19 years. They are worn out. They need money.” The money, he argues, is desperately needed for recapitalization (also known as resetting — essentially putting a new engine in an old F-15) and modernization (replacing an F-15 with a brand-new F-22).

Retired Brig. Gen. Jim Cash (U.S. Air Force), former vice commander of the 7th Air Force, agrees.

“I think there is some shortsightedness,” Cash tells HUMAN EVENTS. “The Sec. Def. does not seem to realize that the major long term threat to this country may well come from Russia and China. The only way to negate that threat is through development and maintenance of a continuing strong deterrent. The F-22 will provide that deterrent by insuring command of the skies over the battlefield for the next 50 years. UAVs will not.”

Cash says U.S. Army and Marine forces have enjoyed air-superiority above their battlespaces “almost continually since the inception of air warfare” without which those ground forces could not survive.

Therein may lie one of the problems: America’s air and sea forces are indeed so dominant — the equipment and technology so superior to anything fielded by other nations, and the training of American airmen and sailors so effective — that much of America has grown to take that dominance for granted. “Our equipment and people are simply so good, they make warfighting look easy. But there is nothing easy about what we do,” Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, commanding general of U.S. Central Command’s Air Forces, told me back in 2007.

Peter Brookes, a former CIA operations officer who also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, tells HUMAN EVENTS, “The QDR needs to show a balanced force capable of dealing with a range of contingencies because the next war is not necessarily going to be like an Iraq or Afghanistan. It could be with Russia, China, even a conventional war with Iran or North Korea. And because of the lag time [from drawing board to fielding] of these weapons systems, we must be moving out smartly on next generation systems.”

As Brookes says, “You can build a second lieutenant in six weeks, but you can’t build a ship or a tank in that same time.” And the longer we postpone production of a new weapons system, the more expensive that system becomes.

But it’s not simply development lag time and increasing costs: America’s Defense-Industrial base cannot afford to atrophy. If production of ships, planes, and tanks is halted, it will be difficult — perhaps impossible — to reengineer and retool from “cold iron” quickly enough to defend the country in a 21st-century environment. “The world is far different today than it was in World War II,” says Brookes. Time is critical.

Maj. Gen. George B. Patrick III, former special assistant to the director of Air National Guard and chief of staff U.S. Air Force, believes that much of what we will see in the forthcoming QDR will reflect Gates’ belief that the focus should be on the near-term threat. “But some of our high-tech weaponry that has been broadly listed under this ‘next-war-it is’ heading, is very effective in the global war on terror,” Patrick tells HUMAN EVENTS. “And if we do not continue to leverage the technology that’s available to us, and if we don’t pursue the fifth-generation fighters and other systems, potential peer competitors will.”

Patrick adds, “In my opinion, the QDR over the years has become something of a budget drill, making the threat and the resources needed to address the threat match the reality of the projected budget. It should, however, be a true empirical analysis of what our threats are regardless of budget.”

Barack Obama’s 2010 baseline defense budget is $534 billion: Still, “$26 billion below four percent of GDP, according to the Senate analysis,” writes Rowan Scarborough. Four percent is what many analysts and experts believe we should be spending as a minimum on defense.

For perspective, the U.S. was spending a whopping 34.5 percent of GDP for Defense in World War II. We spent 11.7 at the height of the Korean War, nearly 10 percent at the height of the Vietnam War, six percent under President Reagan in 1986, and 4.6 percent in 1991, the year of Gulf War I.

“Four percent for baseline Defense budget is certainly not too much to ask,” says McInerney. “After all, we spent $787-billion on a stimulus package that gives $3-billion to ACORN.”

Mr. Smith is a contributor to Human Events. A former U.S. Marine rifle-squad leader and counterterrorism instructor, he writes about military/defense issues and has covered conflict in the Balkans, on the West Bank, in Iraq and Lebanon. He is the author of six books, and his articles appear in a variety of publications. E-mail him at marine1@uswriter.com.

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‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

Hillary only stuck with Bill because it kept her close to the seat of power, and by not throwing Bill to the wolves she held power over him.  She is a power hungry enabler just like her new boss.  She’ll throw him under the bus if given the opportunity.  In the meantime, she just runs around the world making America look like fools.  That may actually be true if you look at who we have elected as our representatives and to the highest office in the land.  The liberal plan for public education has finally come to fruition.

‘America’s Smartest Woman’ Is Making Us Look Stupid

by A.W.R. Hawkins (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET

Hillary Clinton is best remembered for blaming the accusations against her husband on a “vast right wing conspiracy” (until he was forced to admit that he was giving a different dog a bone) and blaming her 2008 Democrat primary losses on the anti-female sentiment in certain parts of our country. (No, not anti-female.  Just anti-beyotch.) But who is she going to blame for her disastrous debut as secretary of state?

Can we blame the president? No; his foreign policy experience is even less than hers. And, yes: her entire foreign policy experience was kissing the late Yasser Arafat’s wife on the lips and embarrassing her hubby on a China trip by making a plea for women’s rights to a group assembled by the Chicoms to listen politely to her. But I digress.

Now Hillary, long considered “America’s smartest woman” by people like Elton John and James Carville, is taking her blame game and her conditional loyalty to the world as our Secretary of State.

Her debut was a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, to whom she presented what was supposed to be a “reset” button, making light of Obama’s desire to make nice with the bad guys. The button, though, wasn’t labeled “reset.” Instead, due to the fine work by her staff, it had the Russian word for “overload” (like an electronic circuit) painted on it. So while it’s obvious that Hillary ain’t the Great Communicator, it gets worse.

Her recent trips to China and Mexico prove this point.

En route to China for her February 20-22 visit with Chinese leaders, Hillary wasted no time in criticizing others for problems the U.S. is facing with North Korea. She polished up the old refrain “it’s Bush’s fault” by intimating that North Korea has nukes because of the failed policies of former president George W. Bush.

Hillary believes Bush failed to keep North Korea within the parameters of an agreement they signed while Hillary’s husband was president. But gatewaypundit.com has duly noted that the “North Korean regime [has] violated the agreed framework almost from the time it was signed during the Clinton years.”

And what retribution did they face for this violation during the Clinton years? None.

Once Hillary landed in China, she went from blaming Bush to turning her back on core Democrat constituencies like Amnesty International and pro-Tibetan support groups, both of which are outraged over China’s violations of human rights. Instead of calling Chinese leaders out on their mistreatment of whole classes of humanity, Hillary said, “[E]fforts to press China on issues like Taiwan, Tibet and human rights ‘can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.’”

Hillary tried to clarify her reasoning by adding that there’s no use talking human rights with the Chinese because, “We pretty much know what they’re going to say.”

Since when is knowing what someone is “going to say” a valid reason for not doing what ought to be done?

In the German publication Spiegel, Günter Nooke, of the Christian Democratic Union Party, described the methods of America’s smartest woman as “very questionable.” He explained that the reason she really didn’t want to do anything to offend Chinese leaders was because her trip was part of a larger effort to seek “out fresh Chinese loans for the deeply-indebted American government.”

To put it succinctly, Hillary’s visit with Chinese leaders was conducted from a position of weakness. And such a mindset barred our inept secretary of state from standing up for Tibetans, the Taiwanese, or any other people group that China regularly assaults and threatens, for fear of financial loss.

Slate’s Annie Applebaum, a left leaning journalist, put it this way: “I…care quite a lot about what the new administration is going to do about human rights on the ground, and, to date, both Clinton and Obama have been utterly silent on that score.”

When Hillary traveled to Mexico last week, she further epitomized the sad state of our current administration by demonstrating that their refusal to call China on the carpet for obvious wrongs China had committed would not keep them from blaming America for wrongs that America had not committed.

Our smartest-woman-turned secretary of state told Mexico’s President Calderon that America had “a co-responsibility” for the violence currently overtaking Mexico: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians.” (It doesn’t matter that we KNOW  that the weapons that the liberals are speaking about were given to the MEXICAN GOVERNMENT by our government and then stolen from the Mexican government by drug cartels, or given to the drug cartels by sympathizers/moles within the military.  This is just a way to build uninformed sympathy for an illegitimate gun ban in this country.)

Isn’t anyone responsible for their own actions anymore? And wouldn’t it be more accurate to point out that Mexico’s violence is the result of the fact that they’re an anti-capitalist third world country with a population largely comprised of laborers whose own government robs them of the chance to better themselves?

Yet it just keeps getting worse. From Monterrey, Mexico, America’s smartest woman told Calderon: “[The] partnership that you have created…between the public and the private sector is a model that we and others will look towards.” I guess this means we, in America, would be better off by living like citizens of the third world instead of citizens of an industrialized one?

I fear that America’s smartest woman has yet to understand that she’s not just a first lady anymore: her words mean something now that she’s become secretary of state. And not only is she setting us up to pay financial reparations by taking “co-responsibility” for the crimes of another nation, she’s actually making America look internationally impotent by lacking the backbone to demand that the Chinese uphold human rights or the clarity of thought needed to see that Mexico’s political structure eliminates any possibility for paupers to go from rags to riches.

Hillary’s trips to China and Mexico, and the words she used while in each country, confirm that we’ve no longer an administration that’s proud of this country, its values, or its accomplishments. Gone for now are the days when America deals from a position of strength.

HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins has been published on topics including the U.S. Navy, Civil War battles, Vietnam War ideology, the Reagan Presidency, and the Rebirth of Conservatism, 1968-1988. More of his articles can be found at www.awrhawkins.com.

The Democrats AIG Bonus Scam

How is it that lying to congress is a federal offense, but congress lying to the American people is no problem at all? At the very least all of these clowns are guilty of impeachable offenses of lying to their employers (that’s US!). Actually, following the Democrat-set precedent of the Scooter Libby trial, they are guilty of criminal offenses that should land them all in jail. The Democrats lead by Obama are destroying truth, real justice, and personal responsibility in America. They, along with the Democrats posing as Republicans, all need to go to jail for their contributions to the destruction of America.

The Dems’ AIG Bonus Scam

by Fred J. Eckert (more by this author)
Posted 03/24/2009 ET
Updated 03/25/2009 ET

The Democratic Congress put on quite a show for us last week (and this week may top last).

In a memorable performance, they feigned surprise and shock that $165 million of taxpayers’ dollars were spent on bonuses for executives of the failed insurance giant AIG.

“If they don’t give the money back, we will put in place a new law that will allow us to tax these bonuses at a very high rate so that it is returned to its rightful owners — the taxpayers,” New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer fumed in a Senate speech. “So, to those of you getting these bonuses, be forewarned: you will not keep them.”

It was a scene reminiscent of the one in the movie Casablanca in which Captain Renault tells Rick he is closing down his saloon down because, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here” as a casino worker hands Renault a wad of money and says, “Your winnings, sir.”

Schumer knows perfectly well that this $165 million for AIG executive bonuses is something he voted for just a few weeks earlier.

The same is true of each of the other ten Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have joined Schumer in signing a letter making the same threat he announced in his floor remarks.

It’s a farce — a sham.

What’s going on here is that the news media finally got around to mentioning that this $165 million for bonuses is part of the more than $170 billion of taxpayer money that Congress and President Obama insisted must be awarded in haste to the failed insurance giant American International Group, Inc (AIG). The public, understandably, is really angry.

So the Democrats are terrified that the public might actually start figuring out what an incredibly incompetent job President Obama and the Congressional Democrats are doing.

What if average citizens begin asking themselves the sort of questions that the Democrats can depend on the mainstream media to cover for them by not asking? Questions such as,

• Why was Congress so reckless in writing the bailout legislation that it didn’t include limitations to preclude waste such as those big bonuses?
• Anyone who reads the news knows that the financial markets are truly global. When writing the legislation, Congress had to know that AIG would pass billions of U.S. tax dollars to foreign banks. Why didn’t Congress make that contingent on equal or greater contributions by foreign governments? Why are the French, the Germans and the British having their banks rescued by American taxpayers?
• What other questionable expenditures of taxpayers’ dollars are buried in the barrels of billions the Democrats are rush delivering to seemingly anyone who puts his hand out? Weren’t there better alternatives than simply giving away taxpayers’ billions to anyone and everyone who got into severe trouble by taking reckless risks? Why no public hearings on this?
• Was the main reason for such a great rush to avoid close scrutiny of where the money was going? How many so-called “stimulus” expenditures are really nothing but gigantic rewards to political allies?

What the Democrats decided is that they needed a stunt to divert attention away from their stunning incompetence.

So, last week, the House voted to “take back” those contractually obligated bonuses, and the Democratic leadership has promised that the Senate will do the same this week. This is not a comedy the Democrats are performing for us — it’s a tragedy.

Equally tragic is the blatant disrespect for the Constitution of the United States that is on display throughout these shenanigans. Article 6 of the Constitution requires that the President and Member of Congress swear to support the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution doesn’t require them to understand it or even to read it, but let’s give the driving force behind this sham, Chuck Schumer, the benefit of the doubt and presume he has read it. He is, after all, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a member of the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, and was a member of the Judiciary Committee when he served in the House.

Schumer knows better — and so should every member of Congress and the President. Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the Constitution prohibits what they are doing because it specifies that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” And what they are doing constitutes a bill of attainder.

As the Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution says, “In common law, bills of attainder were legislative acts that, without trial, condemned specifically designated persons or groups to death…,” but the Supreme Court — going back to a case in 1810 — reads the Constitutional bar to prevent legislative confiscation of property.

As James Madison explained in The Federalist Papers No. 44: “Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principle of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.”

Freedom from bills of attainder and ex post facto laws are the only individual rights which the Framers deemed so important as to insert in the original document protection against both federal and state infringement.

In 1965, in United States vs. Brown, the Supreme Court once again affirmed that the purpose of Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3 is to prohibit “legislative punishment, of any form or severity, of specifically designated persons or groups.”

The position of the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has been that this clause of the Constitution is deemed violated if 1) The legislation in question specifies a specific group; 2) It includes some form of punishment; and 3) It does not include a judicial trial.

One, two, three — guilty on each count. Which means that what’s coming next is that the Supreme Court will give thumbs down to their pathetic pretense. And then they will feign surprise and say they tried. Trying to con the American people into believing they have nothing to do with something the public is incensed about — that’s what this big charade is really all about.

This sham is an affront to the Constitution of the United States by the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States. They are violating the solemn oath they took to bear “true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution — and by doing this, they are guilty of neglecting to “well and faithfully discharge” the duties of their offices.

Many of them don’t know what they are doing.

Many of them know but don’t care.

That’s how bad things are in Washington right now.

It’s change, all right — an appalling change from what the Founders of the American Republic had in mind for governing this great country.

Fred J. Eckert is a former conservative Republican Congressman from New York and twice served as a US Ambassador under President Reagan, who called him �a good friend and valuable advisor.�