“I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet…”

Isn’t it nice how many churches have contemporary worship services? For many this is the only worship service. For more conservative and mainline churches this refers to the music and singing portion of the service. The idea being that there are electric instruments, often with drums or some sort of percussion as well as a keyboard or other type of amplified piano. Throw in a flute or two, maybe a violin and occasionally another instrument that might be available and you have the picture that greets the worshippers as they look toward the front of the sanctuary.

A pleasant smiling leader, entreats the weekly churchgoers as they straggle in through the first 10 or 15 minutes. The entreaty is to stand up and worship. The hope is that this will translate into “stand up and sing”. Often a word or two of encouragement and a scripture passage and the church is worshipping and praising. Depending on where you are you may see a hand or arm extended towards heaven. You may see many. It may even be the exception to NOT see people worshipping with outstretched hands.

You may have observed the above and may attend a church that offers contemporary praise and worship. As the music starts you see women’s hips start swaying, even the more reluctant worshippers will start small or more prominent shifting of weight on their feet and movements in time with the music. Some can be seen tapping their thighs in time with the music and even clapping hands as the song might permit or the leader require.

Is this weekly experience in the 21^st century what John had in mind on that “Lord’s Day” on the Patmos island resort? Does the above scene actually describe worshipping “in the spirit”? I think it is safe to say that John’s “Revelation” on that Lord’s Day centuries ago was not what he had expected or was it any ordinary day. But I get the sense that being in the spirit was. I personally doubt it had anything to do with music or singing, that took him there or opened the door to heaven for him to be in the spirit. And I will also confess that I suspect that my description of the above scenes of contemporary praise and worship that play out across the US and world are not forays into “the spirit” at all.

My observation and my sense is that what we see played out is a counterfeit of what John referred to. It is typical of us humans to accept the easy to attain while lying tantalizing close, or maybe just a little further away, is true worship and truly entering into the spirit. What a shame to accept the easily accessible, accept an emotional thrill, and say, “Wasn’t that great worship!”

I often come back to my understanding of the story of Plato’s cave. There were people who lived their entire lives in a cave with their backs to the entrance while they were permanently attached to chairs that forced them to only look at the wall in front of them. As they looked they could see the shadows projected on the walls created by the sun shining in the cave from over their shoulders. Of course they had never seen the sun, nor did they know that there was a cave entrance. They probably had a sense that there was more to life than the images on the wall in front of them, but what else could they do?

One day one of them escaped and went outside and reality sunk in. They were looking at shadows! He returned and regaled them with stories of what reality and truth was. They were looking at shadows. You can write your own ending to this story. It may not be exactly what Plato had in mind or how his story went but you get the picture.

How often do we settle for shadows when the real thing, the substance, is waiting to be discovered and experienced. As one who has ventured out of the cave and seen and experienced more than the shadows, I can attest that the Sunday morning praise and worship services are shadows of the real thing. We are emoting and experiencing an emotionally uplifting time and are content to be satisfied with this. This can be orchestrated and fits nicely into our culture’s preoccupation with organization and time. We must be done by 12 noon (or whatever the people are expecting). Rather than being in the spirit I think of it as being “in the soul,” or “soulish,” if you allow me to paint a tripartite image of who we are as body, soul and spirit.

I do not believe that stirring up our emotions opens up the spirit world or ushers us into His presence. Conversely, I do believe that by entering into the spirit the emotions follow and true worship happens. It is hard work, spiritually hard! Much of the Christian life is often hard work, but if one looks at scripture one can see that this is true. These true “in-the-spirit” worship experiences often follow periods of fasting, intense prayer, or other spiritual disciplines. In my experience it follows times of group prayer when we are through with our laundry list of prayers and move to more of a listening and adoring phase of prayer. Suddenly the veil is lifted and we are in His presence! All we see is Him and all we can say is WOW! In reality He has opened our eyes, the spirit of our eyes and hearts can now see and know Him in a way we couldn’t a few minutes before. Have you seen this? If not you are still in the cave.

I believe this is directly tied to the spiritual warfare that is part of our current world system. The demonic armies are arrayed and armed and trained to prevent God’s will from being done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus’ prayer, and hopefully ours, is to pray like this: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

So should we accept the shallow, the tantalizing simple or hold out for the real thing? I could say more. I probably should. What do you think? Once one has tasted true worship. Once one has tasted the world to come, the world that exists just beyond our senses, the world that was revealed to Elisha’s servant, “Don't be afraid!" Elisha told him. "For there are more on our side than on theirs!" Then Elisha prayed, "O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!" The LORD opened the young man's eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire,” how can we be content with less? I can’t!

Should not our prayer and expectation be to have our eyes opened so that we are truly in the spirit on the Lord’s Day, as well as at other times when we are seeking Him, and Him alone? Why do we settle for the easily accessible, but leave the true gift just out of our grasp?

Revelation 1:9-11 (NLT) I, John, am your brother and your partner in suffering and in God's Kingdom and in the patient endurance to which Jesus calls us. I was exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the word of God and for my testimony about Jesus. It was the Lord's Day, and I was worshiping in the Spirit. Suddenly, I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet blast. It said, "Write in a book everything you see, and send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea."

- I Am Rudy -

Twilight Chic - Not

The hardest thing about parenting, if I may be trite, is just saying “NO” to nonsense. I’m not sure what it was like when I was a kid or my parents were kids, but I’m seeing more and more parents who really don’t seem to stop and think about what they allow their kids to do or see. After all who wants to be considered out of touch, unfair, “But Dad all my friends can …!”

So, when I heard about the Twilight series and that surreptitiously someone I love, someone under my watch and care, had a friend who had read and loved the book, with parental consent and encouragement I must add, I was concerned but also willing to learn a new lesson. Maybe what on the surface seemed to be evil incarnate disguised as an angel of light was actually worthwhile reading. So I did what I have always done. I got the book from the library.

So what is the issue. The issue is this. Evil is real. Evil is tangible. Evil is out to get my kids. And demons are real. The Devil is real. And he and they are subtle, more subtle and with more years of experience than all of us combined. We are no match and our kids surely aren’t. How else can you explain the fascination with body piercing?! Defacing one’s beautiful skin with unalterable permanent tattoos??!! Some experimenting of childhood needs to be allowed to learn life’s lessons. But sometimes we grab our kids before they put their hand in the fire or jump. This book and series is one such instance where parental interdiction is necessary. Harry Potter is another. Maybe I feel this way because I’ve experienced the spirit world and have seen and been attacked by the demonic. I’ve felt and experienced the tangible evil. Maybe I’m so naïve as to believe I’d like to protect my children from this. The huckster, the corrupt, entice with sweet entreaties. The wise see through these and say no. I’ve said no. I hope my kids learn the same.

Here is an interesting adult look at Twilight Chic. I found this on NRO. Click on the title to this post for the full article. It is well written and insightful. But, in the meantime, I’ll quote the final paragraph. The author believes that writing about evil is fine, as long as it is clear that evil is evil. I believe that line should be clear and inviolable. This is why CS Lewis and Stephen Lawhead and even Milton set the standard. But when evil is presented in a way as to be acceptable and the community at large is the villain I wonder where we are going next.

While many parents are fine with having their youngsters read the Twilight series and watch the accompanying movies, I think there might be some merit in recent fare like the horrifically bloody (and financially less successful) Thirty Days of Night, in which vampires descend on a remote town in Alaska once they know daylight won’t return for a month. These creatures devour throats with viciousness, and the few townspeople who survive are saved only by the voluntary self-sacrifice of their leader. On the surface, Twilight might be more suitable for preteens, but maybe they could use reminding that creatures that prey on communities don’t often make cool boyfriends. Because there are monsters, Virginia, and sometimes they just need killing.

And a quote from someone else who knew something about this subject,
“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no wonder that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. In the end they will get the punishment their wicked deeds deserve.”

In need of bankruptcy?

You can imagine, or at least assume, I am against all of the proposed and so-called bailouts. Below Paul Jacob says it so well, I decided to share it with you.

- Rudy –

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Looking for something to be thankful for? How about the fact that you are not too big to fail?

There are advantages to not being rich, or all that important. The rules don’t bend for you. That means you have a good chance of keeping your dignity, maintaining your self-responsibility. You may end up broke, but you can at least maintain your sense of place in the universe.

Pity, then, all the insiders. “Too big to fail” or “too important to go bust” means always having to say they’re sorry, but never actually being sorry. Because they’ve been bailed out.

Some day cultural historians are going to look back on this time, and judge the actual effects (as opposed to the predicted effects, by folks like me) of the Too Big To Fail doctrine. What will it do to all those egalitarians who line up so regularly to vote Democratic? They have such faith in “everybody’s equal” (or “should be made so”), but their politicians keep proving that some people are more equal than others.

And they do it every time.

The Olde Guarde Republicans, those Main Street folks who vote for the Wall Street bankers and wheelers and dealers . . . well, they’ve always believed that some people are more important than others. They support their brand of corruption (as opposed to the Democrats’) simply to maintain that fantasied order, their vision of the Great Chain of Being that places their ilk ineluctably on top.

But until future historians make up their mind about the Era of Bailouts, what can we say?

Well, perhaps The Carpenters put it best: “We’ve only just begun.”

Seeing an opportunity for “free money,” a number of bit players in the current crisis have horned in on the action. Shall we call it “No Nabob Left Behind”? Once you open the floodgates, why not let the states of New York and New Jersey, for example, get “special treatment”?

And then, just when you thought it could not get any more absurd, enter the Big Three automakers.

Hey: if the federal government is handing out money to banks, why not hand out money to failing auto companies?

I could list a long series of reasons. But consider, instead, the sage words of one congressional skeptic, Rep. Jeff Flake:

My own view is that, if there was ever an industry in need of bankruptcy, it’s the auto industry. It’s the only way they can renegotiate their union contracts and make other changes to be competitive. They might not make it out of bankruptcy, but they certainly can’t survive long term on their own without entering it.

Bracing words. Repeat them: “If there was ever an industry in need of bankruptcy, it’s the auto industry.”

I wish I’d said this myself. “In need of bankruptcy” is not exactly our current era’s marching cry, but perhaps it should be. Bankruptcy is about failure. Understandably, no one wants to fail, and no one wants to praise a process that is “about failure.” But that’s why it’s needed. Bankruptcy is a recognition of failure.

We should not be so afraid of failure that we cannot identify it when it happens, or call it by name.

So take a step back. Take a breath. And then recognize a basic truth: If the Big Three cannot survive the current market climate, then they have failed.

Formal bankruptcy recognizes their failure. And would allow them to “move on.”

And think, for a moment, about those pitiable CEOs and CFOs and COOs. Under a receivership, they don’t get their bonuses, like in our bailed-out mortgage and banking industry. Instead, they are more likely to receive the blessings of responsibility: pink slips.

All contracts get put on hold, many are voided. The business’s receivers take control, and all claims upon the assets of the company get sorted out.

And, inevitably, the failed company’s assets go to new owners.

Some of the Big Three’s divisions are extraordinarily profitable. They get sold or auctioned off to the highest bidders, who then run them (it is hoped) at a profit.

Some of those divisions have been so badly run for so long a time that it would be better to let them die a peaceful death. We don’t weep for Studebaker, today; why weep for just another SUV line?

It would be great if some new owners and managers would take up the promising Volt project from Chevy. There is probably a big future in electric cars. I bet there are investors who would be willing to take it up after receivership.

Or, GM could sell off the line now, staving off bankruptcy.

Or, better yet, GM could sell off other lines, and invest in electric vehicles, where there’s likely a big future.

Unfortunately, before GM, or Ford, or — what’s the third one, again? Iacocca’s once-bailed-out dinosaur? — Chrysler can move forward, they each face a speed bump the size of the Rocky Mountains: the unions.

Representative Flake is right: Getting out from under union contracts is almost a necessity. America’s automobile industry won’t recover as long as it remains weakened by union leechcraft. It’s a wonder that these companies have survived as long as they have, considering how unreasonable union demands have been, and how life-draining union benefits have been to those companies.

And that gets to the heart of why things look so bleak right now. Do we have any reason to believe that president-elect Obama has the insight or the courage to take on the unions? Indeed, he and the congressional Democrats will be sorely tempted to throw billions at Detroit rather than confront one of the more sordid skeletons in their closet: America’s pro-union laws. In fact, our laws may soon be further rigged in favor of unions.

The Democratic Party has played the toady to “organized labor” at least since FDR’s time, and organized labor has played one of the most pernicious political roles, with devastating influence on American policy and culture. The teachers’ unions have consistently held back K-12 schooling in America, and they prevent, at every possible turn, the best attempts to improve education. America’s unions also helped cartelize — and then ruin — the industrial sector. Think steel. Think rust belt. Understand why America is as “post-Industrial” as it is.

Big Three automakers are remnants of the ancien régime, of old school American can-do-it-ness. They’ve been hurting for decades now, struggling to keep up with modern demands.

And now they claim to need government funding.

What to do? Why not fire them all? Fire every CEO, CFO, COO. And fire every worker. And then hire needed workers back at market wages.

Yes, they need bankruptcy . . . because America needs to move on.

But with the party beholden to unions now in control, this is about as likely as . . . financial sanity under the Republicans.

Both parties believe that some enterprises are “too big to fail.” And because of this, they may imperil the biggest enterprise of all: the United States of America itself.

Biden's Brain Scan

Again and again we see the impact of the media’s love fest for Obama. This of course leads to coverage that extols his virtues, and avoids his problems. Of the former there are few. If any. Of the latter there are hoards.

Emmett Tyrell does a nice job with some of the latest issues, though here of Biden. Here it is for your reading enjoyment.

- I Am Rudy -


Emmett TyrrellThursday, October 23, 2008

WASHINGTON -- So intense have the Republicans' suspicions of their Democratic rivals become in the last weeks of this presidential race that they now are accusing the delightful Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, of withholding the results of his brain scans from his recently released medical records. Their charge is false. The results of those brain scans are spread across several pages of the senator's records for all to see. Admittedly, those pages appear to be blank, but what did the Republicans expect? Have they not been listening to the great man's solemnities on the campaign trail?

In an interview with his fellow airhead CBS' Katie Couric late in September, the senior senator from Delaware expressed his firm belief that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president of the United States in 1929 and that in that illusory year, FDR had at his command a large and apparently receptive television audience. Ha, ha, ha -- and the mainstream moron media insist that Sen. Biden's opponent, Gov. Sarah Palin, "stumbled" when she was interviewed by CBS' cutie. Stumble Gov. Palin might have, but Sen. Biden fell head over heels, and he has continued to do so.

There have been his repeated bold intimations that while flying over Afghanistan in a helicopter he was forced down by enemy fire. Actually, the threat was from inclement weather. Or savor this: Despite being caught years ago plagiarizing a British Labour leader's public recollections of life in the Welsh coal mines, Sen. Biden again has rather incautiously recalled being a coal miner himself. His recollection is in error. Most deliciously, this month he yawped: "The No. 1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs, J-O-B-S, jobs." Possibly the senator's handlers have told him to avoid four-letter words on the campaign trail. At any rate, for those of us who enjoy a laugh, Sen. Biden's campaign has been a picnic.
Now he apparently is collaborating with the McCain-Palin campaign in stressing Sen. Barack H. Obama's inexperience. "We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," Sen. Biden warned, referring to his running mate, Sen. Obama, the least experienced presidential nominee in more than 100 years. Oh, wait. I forgot Wendell Willkie, "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," who ran against FDR, the television pioneer.

That the gaffable Sen. Biden has not become the laughingstock of this campaign is astonishing. Equally astonishing is the fact that Sen. Obama's inexperience -- though there have been a few beautiful gaffes from him, too -- has not become an issue. Instead, the members of the media and their fellow Democrats have made a vexed issue out of the perfectly normal -- albeit abnormally charming -- Gov. Palin. The claim is that she lacks the experience to be president. So, too, does the Prophet Obama.

The media's coverage of this election has been the shoddiest I ever have seen. The country has been walloped by a financial crisis almost wholly created by the Democrats' relaxation of mortgage lending to low- and moderate-income borrowers. It is a matter of record that the Republican nominee attempted to tighten those regulations. The Democrats' intrusion into the markets began in 1977, with their vaunted Community Reinvestment Act, which encouraged bank loans to low- and moderate-income families. In 1995, the law was expanded, leading to an 80 percent increase in such loans.

Along with this, beginning in 1992, Congress imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase what we now know as subprime mortgages -- that is to say, risky mortgages. In 1996, the Clinton administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development, enthralled as ever to the Democrats' urge for social engineering, ordered Fannie and Freddie to assist home purchases by low-income earners seeking homes in higher-income neighborhoods -- more subprime mortgages! HUD expanded this project in 2000. Also in 1996, HUD began targeting the number of such mortgages, requiring that 12 percent of Fannie's and Freddie's mortgages assist low-income home purchasers in higher-income neighborhoods. In 2000, the number was increased to 20 percent.

The consequence of all the Democrats' meddling with real estate markets and with established regulations was that these subprime mortgages were secreted into bundles of mortgage packages and sold all over the world. Now we see a crisis, and magically it is blamed on Sen. McCain's party. The answer is to elect Sen. Obama and his lovable sidekick to the White House. Yet, as readers of this column read last week, the chairwoman of Sen. Obama's finance committee, Penny Pritzker, gutted her own bank with subprime loans and has had to pay $460 million in penalties. Moreover, Wall Street abounds with Obama supporters who prospered on these subprime dealings.

What? What is this? Change the subject to Sarah Palin -- you betcha!

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Tribal Politics

Much is being made of Colin Powell’s support for Obama. It is truly enigmatic, as well as a betrayal of those who launched him into the international limelight as well as his friend of 25 years John McCain. But as it has been said, blood is thicker than water. And though no one seems to be allowed to talk about race, and surprisingly ALL presidential candidates this year belong to one race, ethnic background or another (DUH!), no one is allowed to mention that Obama is Black. No one is allowed to mention that he probably studied the Koran as a child. No one is allowed to mention his father or bring up questions about his past. And no one is allowed to mention the obvious love affair that the media has with him and the close link that this has with him being the first Black presidential candidate EVER!

Enough said because Pat Buchanan says it quite well in his searing editorial.

ENJOY!

- I AM RUDY -

Tribal Politics

Patrick J. Buchanan

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Was race a factor in the decision of Colin Powell to repudiate his party's nominee and friend of 25 years, Sen. John McCain, two weeks before Election Day, and to endorse Barack Obama?

Gen. Powell does not deny it, contending only that race was not the only or decisive factor. "If I had only that fact in mind," he told Tom Brokaw, "I could have done this six, eight, ten months ago."

Yet, in hailing Barack as a "transformational figure" whose election would "electrify our country ... (and) the world," Powell seems to testify to the centrality of Barack's ethnicity to his decision.

For what else is there about this freshman senator, who has no significant legislative accomplishment, to transform our politics and to electrify the world, other than the fact that he would be the nation's first African-American president?

Powell's endorsement follows that of another African-American icon, Congressman John Lewis of Selma Bridge fame, who switched allegiance from Hillary to Barack, while Clinton still had a fighting chance to win.
When Lewis deserted her in February, he, too, claimed a Road-to-Damascus experience, to have seen a transformational figure:
"Something's happening in America, something some of us did not see coming ... Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary. ... It's a movement. It's a spiritual event."

Lewis' desertion, however, was not unrelated to a primary challenge in his Atlanta district and angry constituent demands to know why he was not backing the first black with a real chance at winning the White House.

Powell was under no such pressure. Hence, what he did, and why, are subjects of media and political speculation.

Understandably, Powell is being hailed by the Obama media as a profile in courage. Equally understandably, his endorsement of Obama is said by Republicans to smack of ingratitude, opportunism, and even vindictiveness toward a party to which he owes his fame and career.
Here was a man who was rendered extraordinary honors by three Republican presidents. Reagan raised him from Army colonel to national security adviser, the first African-American in the post. George H. W. Bush named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs, over hundreds of more senior officers. George W. Bush made him the first African-American secretary of state.

While he may have gotten well with the capital elite with this decision, Powell has wounded his party's nominee at a point of maximum vulnerability, a friend who supported him on the war, and agreed with Powell on the need for a larger invasion force. And Powell has embraced a liberal Democrat who owes his nomination to his fierce opposition to the war Powell sold the nation, a war Obama calls the worst blunder in U.S. history and a manifestation of a lack of judgment by those, like Colin Powell, who launched it.

Joe Biden, who voted to authorize the war, now calls his vote a mistake. Yet, Powell endorses him, too, while repudiating a McCain-Palin ticket that continues to defend his war.

And the scatter-gun attack Powell launched on the GOP ticket -- hitting McCain for fumbling the financial crisis, choosing Sarah Palin, pressing Barack's association with William Ayers, and not defending Obama's Christianity -- suggests a man with scores to settle with the party of George W. Bush.

Yet, what kind of Republican can Powell be when he professes deep concern that McCain might choose Supreme Court justices like John Roberts and Sam Alito? Every Republican in the Senate voted for Roberts. All but one voted for Alito.

Does Colin Powell have a problem with Antonin Scalia? Is the general a Ruth Bader Ginsberg Republican?

There is speculation Powell feels badly used by the neocons who cherry-picked and hyped the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction he presented at the U.N., and that he harbors a distrust of the neocons now reassembling around McCain.

If so, he surely has a case, and should have made it.

But in the last analysis, one comes back to the forbidden issue of ethnicity. For example, would Powell have endorsed Hillary, had she won the nomination? After all, her views on Iraq -- having supported the war and never apologized -- are even closer to Powell's than Obama's.

The issue cannot be avoided.

After all, we are in a year where Obama defeated the wife of "our first black president," Bill Clinton, 90-10 in the black wards of Philly, and African-Americans, in one poll, are going 94-1 for Barack. And a Republican ticket that is hammering Barack on his ties to William Ayers fears to bring up his far closer ties to the Afro-racist anti-American Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Organizing a fundraiser last year for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, an Hispanic Democrat, Lionel Sosa of San Antonio, a political strategist for Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, said, "Blood runs thicker than politics."

Mr. Sosa is perhaps more candid about his motives than folks in D.C.

The Coming Backlash

Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, October 17, 2008

As Americans render what Catholics call temporal judgment on George Bush, are they aware of the radical course correction they are about to make?

This center-right country is about to vastly strengthen a liberal Congress whose approval rating is 10 percent and implant in Washington a regime further to the left than any in U.S. history. Consider.

As of today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat, anticipates gains of 15-30 seats. Sen. Harry Reid, whose partisanship grates even on many in his own party, may see his caucus expand to a filibuster-proof majority where he can ignore Republican dissent.

Headed for the White House is the most left-wing member of the Senate, according to the National Journal. To the vice president's mansion is headed Joe Biden, third most liberal as ranked by the National Journal, ahead of No. 4, Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders.

What will this mean to America? An administration that is either at war with its base or at war with the nation.

America may desperately desire to close the book on the Bush presidency. Yet there is, as of now, no hard evidence it has embraced Obama, his ideology, or agenda. Indeed, his campaign testifies, by its policy shifts, that it is fully aware the nation is still resisting the idea of an Obama presidency.

In the later primaries, even as a panicked media were demanding that Hillary drop out of the race, she consistently routed Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania and crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky.

By April and May, the Democratic Party was manifesting all the symptoms of buyer's remorse over how it had voted in January and February.

Obama's convention put him eight points up. But, as soon as America heard Sarah Palin in St. Paul, the Republicans shot up 10 points and seemed headed for victory.

What brought about the Obama-Biden resurgence was nothing Obama and Biden did, but the mid-September crash of Fannie, Freddie, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the stock market, where $4 trillion was wiped out, the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that enraged Middle America -- and John McCain's classically inept handling of the crisis.

In short, Obama has still not closed the sale. Every time America takes a second look at him, it has second thoughts, and backs away.

Even after the media have mocked and pilloried Palin and ceded Obama and Biden victory in all four debates, the nation, according to Gallup, is slowly moving back toward the Republican ticket.

Moreover, Obama knows Middle America harbors deep suspicions of him. Thus, he has jettisoned the rhetoric about the "fierce urgency of now," and "We are the people we've been waiting for," even as he has jettisoned position after position to make himself acceptable.

His "flip-flops" testify most convincingly to the fact that Obama knows that where he comes from is far outside the American mainstream. For what are flip-flops other than concessions that a position is untenable and must be abandoned?

Flip-flopping reveals the prime meridian of presidential politics. If an analyst will collate all the positions to which all the candidates move, he will find himself close to the true center of national politics.

Thus, though he is the nominee of a party that is in thrall to the environmental movement, Obama has signaled conditional support for offshore drilling and pumping out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

While holding to his pledge for a pullout of combat brigades from Iraq in 16 months, he has talked of "refining" his position and of a residual U.S. force to train the Iraqi Army and deal with Al Qaeda.

On Afghanistan, he has called for 10,000 more troops and U.S. strikes in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, even without prior notice or the permission of the Pakistani government.

Since securing the nomination, Obama has adopted the Scalia position on the death penalty for child rape and the right to keep a handgun in the home. He voted to give the telecoms immunity from prosecution for colluding in Bush wiretaps. This onetime sympathizer of the Palestinians now does a passable imitation of Ariel Sharon.

No Democrat has ever come out of the far left of his party to win the presidency. McGovern, the furthest left, stayed true to his convictions and lost 49 states.

Obama has chosen another course. Though he comes out of the McGovern-Jesse Jackson left, he has shed past positions like support for partial birth abortion as fast as he has shed past associations, from William Ayers to ACORN, from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to his fellow parishioners at Trinity United.

One question remains: Will a President Obama, with his party in absolute control of both Houses, revert to the politics and policies of the Left that brought him the nomination, or resist his ex-comrades' demands that he seize the hour and impose the agenda ACORN, Ayers, Jesse, and Wright have long dreamed of?

Whichever way he decides, he will be at war with them, or at war with us. If Barack wins, a backlash is coming.



Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Negrophilia afflicts U.S. Exclusive: Erik Rush diagnoses white disorder that sees Barack Obama incapable of corruption

The following post, written by a black man is quite insightful. His words seem to resonate with people who are willing to think and question the media’s headlong rush (no pun intended) into negrophilia. This is not a word I’ve ever used nor have I invented it. Read on and let me know what you think.

- I Am Rudy -

By Erik Rush - from WorldNetDaily

Racism: 1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race 2: racial prejudice or discrimination

– Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2008

Yes, America is a racist nation – but not in the way Democrat presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and his cohorts Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Otis Moss III and James Meeks would have us believe. Many of those whites who will cast votes for Obama on Nov. 4 are suffering from negrophilia, an inordinate affinity for blacks (as opposed to antipathy toward them).

For a few decades now, we've been subjected to the message from the news and entertainment media, liberal politicians and activists that people of color are somehow more noble, benevolent and inherently less corruptible than whites. Of course, this assessment is patent nonsense as well as irrational; there are innumerable examples of blacks (and others counted as minorities in America) engaging in monstrous behavior, particularly in the Third World. Nevertheless, these erroneous beliefs have apparently been adopted by millions of white Americans. They're prepared to elect a dangerous fraud president of the United States for largely one reason: Casting a vote for a black man will make them feel good.

Within the paradigm of the fallacy cited, any questionable, nefarious or otherwise antisocial behavior on the part of blacks is put down to legitimate frustration or dysfunction that can usually be traced to having been oppressed by whites somewhere along the way. If blacks in some African nation are dedicatedly hacking each other to pieces with machetes by the hundreds of thousands or necklacing one another, somehow it's the fault of white people. Completely understandable.

(Column continues below)

In America, minority activists and politicians seize upon any and every flimsy opportunity to play the race card. Everything from bad attitudes to urban poverty to heinous criminal activity on the part of blacks has been put down to their past treatment. Even in an environment that produces one sibling who's an honor student and another who's a spree killer, there'll be a defense attorney arguing that slavery or segregation prompted the behavior.

As if that's not racism.

Inasmuch as the saga of blacks in America is something of a "Rocky" story, it is easy to see how the uniquely American spirit of justice was exploited by the left to compromise pragmatism and the collective intellect. The inequities suffered by blacks in past years were indeed atrocious; who but the mean-spirited, bigoted or self-loathing individuals of color would criticize or condemn a black person for their resentments or "cultural idiosyncrasies"?

When Rev. Jeremiah Wright's tirades from the pulpit were publicized, I had occasion to hear whites take the position that his attitude was "understandable" given what he'd likely endured as a black man coming of age in pre-civil rights movement America. For some reason, it didn't matter that Wright's early life was almost what one might consider privileged, all things considered. No, no, no – he's black; he's suffered; he has the right to be a shmuck.

As if that's not racism. Yet, leave it to uninformed, white liberal Democrats to argue the point with a black man.

Consequently, it stands to reason that much of the unwarranted whimsy generated by and surrounding candidate Obama is a result of this syndrome of negrophilia – which may well have some clinical pathology of which I am not yet aware.

Obama was unquestioningly accepted as packaged – someone who was sincere, forthright and amiable in every way. The fact that he doesn't have the ghetto-jabbering syntax of a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton most assuredly did not hurt him. It simply hasn't occurred to whites (or blacks for that matter) that Obama could even approach being the monster a white man has the potential of being. This has been reinforced by a media propaganda campaign the likes of which this nation has never seen. Indeed, if he becomes president, it will have been the press that picked him.

The questionable associations and activities Obama has and in which he has engaged, that alternative media sources have been citing over the past 18 months, are in the dozens. All of these – including his close alliance with ACORN, an organization that has been found criminally liable for instances of voter fraud for far-left (Democrat) candidates and causes – have been ignored, avoided or denied by the establishment press.

Throughout the campaign, despite his claim that he would not make race an issue and doing so anyway, and his opponent refusing to make race an issue, every criticism of Obama has been met with accusations of racism.

That in itself provides one of the best arguments for cries of "racism" going.

The Candidates In Fairyland

I am torn. I really dislike and distrust Obama. The unknowns about him are enough to put fear into the heart of any freedom loving American. This would be something that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could agree on. And there were few agreements when they were alive and politically active. Character issues, his slight of hand, his lies, lack of experience, did I say character issues, or lack of, his past and probable current anti-American allegiances, all point to someone who should never have made it as far as he has. Let alone to be elected POTUS! INCREDIBLE!! What blindness on the side of his supporters!!!!!

But alas! Who do we have as an option? John McCain is a man of great strength of character. He is someone who has been in the public eye long enough that we know who he is, with all of his peccadilloes. He is a true freedom loving American! He would be a POTUS that we could trust to do the right thing for the USA and our freedom. His choice of Sara as his VEEP is insightful and comforting. BUT. And this is a big but. Though not as bad as Obama when it comes to spending and taxing policies, he is far from conservative, far from the spending cutting, federal program cutting, free market POTUS that we need.

So I’m wondering if we might be better off without him in the White House for four years. Wait, if we are still around, and in 2012 have a (more or true) conservative choice to vote for. The pendulum would be swinging back after 4 years of total liberal leadership. That is an understatement, I believe!!!

Anyway, to illustrate my concern, Steve Chapman has written an illuminating editorial today. Check it out.

- I Am Rudy -

Steve Chapman
Sunday, October 12, 2008

When it comes to taxes, this election presents a clear choice. On one side you have a Democrat who proposes to raise taxes. On the other, you have a Republican who proposes to raise taxes.

I know, I know, John McCain says he wants to do just the opposite. In the second presidential debate, he opened by declaring, "We have to keep Americans' taxes low. All Americans' taxes low. Let's not raise taxes on anybody today."

That's a big part of his appeal both to ordinary voters -- and to the 100 economists who signed a letter warning of the dire consequences of electing Barack Obama. Combined with his trade policies, they said, Obama's tax plan would "reduce economic growth and decrease the number of jobs in America."

But McCain's commitment to keeping taxes down is an illusion. Why? Because as soon as he had finished urging low taxes, he said he wants the Treasury to buy up bad mortgages and provide homeowners with new ones that they can afford. "Is it expensive?" he asked. "Yes."

No kidding. His campaign said his mortgage plan would cost $300 billion, though Chris Mayer, a real estate professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post that's an understatement: "There's over $400 billion in negative equity sitting around the country right now and $300 billion is not going to come close to the magnitude of solving the problem."

McCain would have us think -- and he may even believe -- that you can increase spending by $300 billion and not raise taxes. That's like assuming that if you smoke two packs of cigarettes and don't wake up the next morning with lung cancer, you can do it every day at no risk to your health.

Reality stipulates that every government outlay has to be paid for. When the government enlarges spending by $300 billion, it can do one of three things. It can cut $300 billion in other spending. It can raise taxes by $300 billion. Or it can borrow money at interest, which adds yet more spending.

The last is what McCain wants to do. But he refuses to admit as much, or to acknowledge what it means. In the debate, he asked mournfully, "Do you know that we've laid a $10 trillion debt on these young Americans who are here with us tonight, $500 billion of it we owe to China?" His mortgage plan, though, would mean an even bigger debt -- and we can only hope the Chinese will keep lending us the funds to cover it.

If McCain raises overall spending, he can't avoid higher taxes. He can only delay them. Delayed tax increases have the same effect that those economists attribute to prompt ones: slower economic growth and fewer jobs.

The same criticisms, however, apply to Obama. His proposals would cost some $293 billion a year, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation -- compared to $92 billion a year for McCain. (And that doesn't include the cost of the financial sector bailout measures.)

Like McCain, he chooses not to pay for all of it. Compared to current policies, the Tax Policy Center says Obama would boost revenue by an average of just $60 billion per year. So of his new spending, only one-fifth would be financed with new revenue.

The Obama campaign says he would pay for some of his ventures by cutting existing programs. But he hasn't disclosed how. More than half of his budget cuts are "unspecified" -- another way of saying they are 1) imaginary or 2) not happening. Under Obama, the overall burden of government would grow. So would the national debt.

One of the most illuminating parts of the debate came when someone asked the candidates what sacrifices they would ask of Americans. McCain said that he would assess every federal program and "eliminate those that aren't working." Not that he could name one.

Obama was no more helpful. He encouraged Americans to conserve energy. Both of them vowed to take on ballooning entitlements, and both declined to explain how.

"They don't make any of the tough choices," despairs Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Not even close."

For all their differences, Obama and McCain agree on one central policy: to go on living in Fiscal Fairyland. It will be nice while it lasts.

Do You Know the Real Barack Obama?

By Carol Platt Liebau on townhall.com Monday, October 06, 2008

As the 2008 presidential campaign hurtles into its final days, John McCain confronts a choice: He can either start telling the public about the real Barack Obama, or he can lose.

For much of his career, McCain has been a media darling. He could count on the press to carry his water as long as he was a “maverick” Republican, driving more conservative members of his party crazy. But as he surely knows by now, when it comes to Barack Obama and the press, all bets are off. In covering Obama, the press has adopted a “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy designed to boost the least-vetted, least-known candidate ever to seek the presidency. It isn’t by accident that the media has denied all less-than-glowing stories about Obama the kind of consistent, sustained coverage that allows them to penetrate public consciousness.

If McCain is going to have a chance at winning, he must make sure that the public becomes thoroughly acquainted with the real Barack Obama – the most radical presidential nominee ever. And because the press evidently intends to abdicate its responsibility to acquaint voters with the less-popular parts of Obama’s record, he’ll have to rely on paid advertising to do it.

For starters, McCain should consider running a series of “Did You Know” ads about Barack Obama. He should ask voters, “Did you know that:

Barack Obama has multiple ties to those responsible for the present economic crisis?:

Franklin Raines, the immediate past CEO of Fannie Mae – who has collected a $90 million golden parachute while driving Fannie into the ground – has advised Obama on housing issues.

Jim Johnson, yet another former Fannie Mae CEO, resigned from Obama’s vice presidential search team when it was revealed he had received a sweetheart home mortgage deal.

Despite serving in the Senate for only four years, Obama himself has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac largesse in the entire Congress, ahead even of former presidential candidate John Kerry, who’s spent two decades in the Senate?

Obama’s long-time political ally, radical group ACORN, played a key role in pressuring banks to offer loans to those who were unlikely to be able to pay them back. ACORN has taken credit for pressuring banks to accept undocumented income as a basis for offering loans, for offering loans without using credit scores, and for making 100% financed loans available to low-income people.

There is more, of course. Do voters know:

That, in apparent defiance of federal election law, the Obama campaign refuses to identify individual donors who have provided almost half the funds for his campaign, including obvious fakes like “Mr. Good Will” and “Mr. Doodad Pro”? And that 11,500 donations to his campaign – totaling almost $34 million – may have come from overseas? Or that two Palestinians living in a Hamas-controlled refugee camp spent $31,300 in Obama’s online store? Who are all these people, and why won’t the Obama campaign obey the law and identify them?

That Jeremiah Wright wasn’t Obama’s first radical mentor? As a young man in Hawaii, Obama had a quasi-filial relationship with radical Frank Marshall Davis – an avowed member of the Communist Party of the USA. In fact, in his memoirs, Obama concedes that he attended “socialist conferences” and encountered Marxist literature. (Now imagine the outcry if a Republican presidential candidate had such ties to a Nazi).

That the People's Weekly World – the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the USA – has rhapsodized about Obama’s presidential campaign, calling it a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term"? (Think about how the press would react if a fascist newspaper heaped such praise on McCain.)

That Obama has routinely tried to intimidate his critics into silence? His political organization spearheaded a massive campaign against a Chicago radio show that invited one of his critics to appear – even after being asked (and refusing) to send a representative to balance the program, hosted by a non-partisan University of Chicago psychology professor. Worse, his campaign sought to chill free speech by establishing a “truth squad” of Missouri prosecutors and sheriffs, which threatened a “vigorous response” to any ad presenting information about Obama that they deemed to be “inaccurate.” And there are other examples.

That even as America struggles to “bail out” our own struggling economy, Obama backs a global bailout? His Global Poverty Initiative would assess $2500 per taxpayer, according to Investor’s Business Daily, to fund a global war on poverty administered by the UN and its agencies.

That despite touting his academic credentials as a rationale for initiating a campaign for president just two years after leaving the Illinois state legislature, Obama refuses to release either his college or his law school transcripts – just as he sought to keep records of his working relationship with former terrorist Bill Ayers on The Annenberg Challenge (a left-wing educational foundation) safely under wraps? What is it that he doesn’t want voters to know?

Repeatedly, we’ve heard the media denounce the “rumors” about Barack Obama that are, supposedly, circulated on the internet exclusively by the bigoted and the ignorant. But Americans sense that there is more to Barack Obama than they’ve been told. Having witnessed the media’s own bias and favoritism, they’ve come to suspect – reasonably – that even if any of the rumors were true, the press might choose to conceal them until the election is safely over. What’s more, they wonder: What else is the press not telling us?

Certainly, it would be terribly wrong for John McCain to traffic in rumors. But he doesn’t need to. The truth is more than enough. There are facts that the American people deserve to know – and which the press isn’t telling them. By filling in the gaps that the media has left unmentioned, John McCain isn’t just doing himself a service. He’s doing journalists’ job for them, and allowing Americans to make an informed decision when they head to the polls next month.

So for the record here are BIDEN-THE-PLAIGERER's lies:

To be honest even if Biden didn't lie, my support of MCCAIN/PALIN boils down to character, substance, core positions and complete distrust of Obama and disagreement with his philosophy and proposals (if you can ever figure out what they really are) and his history of FAR LEFT ULTRA LIBERAL ACTIVISM not to mention his lack of credentials to even be VEEP! Obama/Biden is such a threat to our liberties, future and who we are as to strike fear in my heart. This fear is somewhat balanced by the Hope that my home is not of this world, but I’m living here now and in this once great country.

- I Am Rudy _

So for the record here are BIDEN-THE-PLAIGERER's lies:

Joe Biden's 14 Lies - Michael Goldfarb

1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.

2. AHMADINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.

3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”

4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.

5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.

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6. ALTERNATIVE ENERGY VOTES: According to FactCheck.org, Biden is exaggerating and overstating John McCain’s record voting for alternative energy when he says he voted against it 23 times.

7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Biden falsely said McCain will raise taxes on people's health insurance coverage -- they get a tax credit to offset any tax hike. Independent fact checkers have confirmed this attack is false

8. OIL TAXES: Biden falsely said Palin supported a windfall profits tax in Alaska -- she reformed the state tax and revenue system, it's not a windfall profits tax.

9. AFGHANISTAN / GEN. MCKIERNAN COMMENTS: Biden said that top military commander in Iraq said the principles of the surge could not be applied to Afghanistan, but the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force Gen. David D. McKiernan said that there were principles of the surge strategy, including working with tribes, that could be applied in Afghanistan.

10. REGULATION: Biden falsely said McCain weakened regulation -- he actually called for more regulation on Fannie and Freddie.

11. IRAQ: When Joe Biden lied when he said that John McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq”, because Joe Biden shared the same vote to authorize the war and differed on the surge strategy where they John McCain has been proven right.

12. TAX INCREASES: Biden said Americans earning less than $250,000 wouldn’t see higher taxes, but the Obama-Biden tax plan would raise taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more.

13. BAILOUT: Biden said the economic rescue legislation matches the four principles that Obama laid out, but in reality it doesn’t meet two of the four principles that Obama outlined on Sept. 19, which were that it include an emergency economic stimulus package, and that it be part of “part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20.”

14. REAGAN TAX RATES: Biden is wrong in saying that under Obama, Americans won't pay any more in taxes then they did under Reagan.