Few pieces of legislation have as many devils in their details as this now-2,700 page monstrosity.
But let's focus on one example of Obamacare's future victims so that men, women and children can grasp what it means for them:
1. Obamacare could kill Santa Claus.
2. Pundits have long noted that Santa is among the most politically incorrect role models in our culture. He wears fur and exploits reindeer and elves. He threatens our global climate by operating a toy factory at the pristine but environmentally fragile North Pole.
3. Santa may be associated with the religious right and is judgmental — rewarding children not equally or by favoring minorities, but based on his subjective assessment of who has been “naughty” or “nice.”
It’s more than a bit ironic that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is threatening to work right up until Christmas to pass legislation that could allow federal dollars to pay for the deaths of untold numbers of unborn children.
In the days before Jesus Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem, another bureaucrat, King Herod, was responsible for what would be called the Massacre of the Innocents, after he ordered all male infants to be killed to prevent the prophesied King of the Jews from replacing him on the throne.
Thank God, indeed, that abortion was not legal when the angels visited Mary to announce the immaculate conception of the Son of God, who would not only be born but would conquer death so that every human being could spend eternity in paradise.
Thank God, also, that Herod’s scheme did not succeed in killing the Man who was born to save all of mankind, including the generations yet to be born.
For those who deny that the health-care bill crafted by Sen. Harry Reid -– or Herod Reid as it seems fitting to call him –- does not allow for taxpayer dollars to be used to pay for an abortion, let me quote here from page 120 of the more than 2,000 page document that is available for review.
Starr appears to be merely regurgitating unverified claims by anti-abortion activists -- as apparently lifted from another CNS article -- that the compromise agreed to by Sen. Ben Nelson, in some convoluted way, permits federal funding for abortion.
Remember that Starr is not a columnist -- she is a reporter. In any other news organization, a reporter who expressed such an extreme opinion would have been disciplined -- at the very least, barred from reporting on the subject -- but at CNS, such a vengeful opinion will probably earn Starr a raise. After all, it does fit in with her anti-abortion activism as expressed through baseless, unbalanced attacks on Planned Parenthood.
CNS purports to endeavor "to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." It's unclear how Starr or CNS believe smearing a politican as a baby-killer fulfills that goal.
When America was America, films like these were made in large quantities. Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Ingrid Bergman, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, Paul Muni, John Garfield, Hedy Lamarr, Gene Tierney, Taylor, Burton, Vivien Leigh, Laughton, James Mason, Marlene Dietrich — I derive succor from these people the way the folks on the left pop meds.
This is why I do what I do. Islamic law forbids representational art. It forbids music. With its laws allowing polygamy and wife-beating, it forbids love. And these are the kinds of laws they are trying to bring in to Europe and America today, right under our noses.
And so that is why I fight: for art, music, and love.
Death Threats STILL Piling Up in WND Poll Comment Thread Topic: WorldNetDaily
We detailed earlier today the death threats against President Obama by WorldNetDaily readers stacking up in a WND comment thread. Well, they're still piling up:
And, as an extra special bonus, racism!
UPDATE: A late-breaking threat ...
... and a late-breaking chunk of racism:
Mikaia, by the way, is a WND employee who serves as forum monitor. Nice to see that WND has no problem employing people who find racist humor funny.
Obama Death Threats Pile Up in WND Poll Comment Thread Topic: WorldNetDaily
Today's WorldNetDaily reader poll asks: "What would you like to give Obama for Christmas?" Unsurprisingly, the top three answers are birther-related, with one of them being, "A one-way ticket back to Kenya."
What is also arguably unsurprising are the death threats piling up in the comment thread:
And Joseph Farah wonders why people don't consider WND a legitimate news site...
UPDATE: This is not the first time that WND readers have felt moved to threaten Obama's life.
This Just In: MRC Still Hates Ted Kennedy Topic: Media Research Center
Ted Kennedy may have died months ago, but the Media Research Center's visceral hatred of the man will apparently burn for all eternity.
We've already documented how the MRC has repeatedly falsely portrayed an article about Kennedy as praise of him -- named it the MRC's quote of the year, in fact -- when, in context, it was criticism. Now, the MRC has demonstrated it plans to keep the flame of hatred for Ted Kennedy and obsession with Chappaquiddick alive in perpetuity by naming another Kennedy-related quote its quote of the year.
This year's winner is not a network or even a newspaper employee, but a blogger, Melissa Lafsky, who is described by the MRC as "Discover magazine deputy web editor... who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog," and whose post appeared at Huffington Post. Lafsky had the misfortune of running afoul of the MRC's Kennedy hate machine by writing upon Kennedy's death that "[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it."
The MRC's awards are supposedly for "the year's worst reporting." It's a bit of a stretch to treat a blog post by a non-journalist as "reporting." But that's how much the MRC hates Kennedy.
That's not all. A Dec. 20 NewsBusters post by MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham assails a Parade magazine article on Kennedy's widow for not hating the late "pro-abortion, pro-gay ultraliberal" senator as much as he does. And, of course, he has to add: "'Tell that to Mary Jo Kopechne' was not a sentence that appeared in the article."
Um, Tim? Teddy's dead. Has been for months. Get over it already.
Farah Still Wants You to Think WND Is A Legitimate News Organization Topic: WorldNetDaily
Poor Joseph Farah -- he still thinks his WorldNetDaily is a legitimate news organization.
Farah plays the victim yet again in his Dec. 19 column, complaining that WND was "the only legitimate news agency banned by the U.N. convention" in Copenhagen. He goes on to insist: "As a 30-year veteran of the American press, I caution you that this is a threat to all the free press and your free speech and rights to self-governance. This is how it begins. If the U.N. can get away with denying access to a well-established and popular news agency, accredited to cover both the White House and the Congress of the United States, it can deny anyone."
Farah's first problem is believing that WND is in any legitimate. How can a "news" organization that has published lieafterlie about President Obama and his administration be considered in any way legitimate?
His second problem is that little "Death to the U.N.!" thing, which he curiously fails to mention. And asbefore, he fails to explain why he's demanding press credentials from a group whose legitimacy he does not recognize and which he would like to see destroyed.
Which, of course, is yet another reason why WND cannot be considered legitimate. But Farah's too busy throwing a pity party for himself to notice.
WND Declares War on Army Major in Afghanistan Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's not often a right-wing organization declares war on an active-duty soldier serving in Afghanistan, but that's what WorldNetDaily has done in choosing to attack Maj. Brian L. Stuckert.
Why? Because because Maj. Stuckert has committed the offense of being conservatively incorrect.
In May 2008, Stuckert -- then a student at the Army Command's School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas -- wrote a 61-page monograph titled "Strategic Implications of American Millennialism." In it, Stuckert examines how millennialism, specifically dispensational pre-millennialism -- the branch of Christian eschatology that Jesus will return to take up Christians into heaven by means of a rapture immediately before a seven-year tribulation, then return to Earth to reign for a millennia -- has influenced American military policy. Stuckert supports his claims with copious footnotes and an extensive bibliography. From the abstract of Stuckert's monograph:
Military leaders, planners and strategists require greater understanding of American millennial thought. Millennialism shapes both American culture and U.S. government policy. While most Americans are influenced to some degree by the ideas of pre-millennialism, many are unaware of the philosophical or theological underpinnings. Military leaders charged with interpreting policy into strategy and acting on behalf of the nation on the international stage cannot afford to remain ignorant of the effects of pre-millennialism. Due to a general lack of awareness of millennialism and an uneasy reticence to discuss religious factors, understanding and analysis of our own policies and motives is often deficient. Additionally, the cultural imprint that derives from millennialism impairs our understanding of the words, actions and motives of other actors on the world stage. These factors can be problematic for any military leader or planner attempting to achieve U.S. Government policy objectives through strategy, operations and programs.
Stuckert concludes:
As demonstrated by American history, millennialism has predisposed us toward stark absolutes, overly simplified dichotomies and a preference for revolutionary or cataclysmic change as opposed to gradual processes. In other words, American strategists tend to rely too much on broad generalizations, often incorrectly cast in terms of ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and seek the fastest resolution to any conflict rather than the most thoughtful or patient one.
Not an especially controversial conclusion, is it? It is if you're WorldNetDaily. Here's how a Dec. 19 WND article by Bob Unruh spun this paper -- and thus declared war on an active-duty soldier:
A research paper written by a U.S. Army major for the School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., calls for Americans to lose the evangelical Christian belief of pre-millennialism because of the damage it does to the nation's foreign interests.
At no point does Stuckert, whom Unruh notes is "reportedly assigned in Afghanistan," demand that "Americans ... lose" belief in pre-millennialism -- he can't, given that Stuckert's monograph is directed at military strategists and not the American public at large. Nothing Unruh quotes out of the paper supports such a claim; indeed, the closest he comes is Stuckert's statement that "We must come to more fully understand the background of our thinking about the U.N., the E.U., the World Trade Organization, Russia, China and Israel. We must ask similar questions about natural events such as earthquakes or disease." That is clearly not the same thing as a demand that Americans abandon pre-millennialism, as Unruh claims.
Unruh waits until the eighth paragraph to quote thte head of the Fort Leavenworth program saying that Stuckert's monograph "was simply an 'academic paper' like works at any college across the nation, 'which is to say it reflects the author's own opinions.'"
Then, strangely, Unruh appears to give credence to Stuckert's conclusions by quoting a blogger's baseless and paranoid reaction to it:
Others were more blunt in their assessments of Stuckert's work. Blogger John McTernan, for example, called it "the most dangerous document to believers that I have ever read in my entire life."
"After reading this document, it is easy to see the next step would be to eliminate our Constitutional rights and herd us into concentration camps," he said.
"The last third is an interpretation of Bible belief on world events. This report blames all the world evils on believers! World peace would break out if it were not for Bible believers in America," he said.
[...]
McTernan said he had contacted Col. Stefan Banack, listed on the monograph as the director of the School of Advanced Military Studies, who defended the writing.
"The conversation was extremely heated between us, and he hid behind the freedom of speech to produce it. He refused to let me write an article to refute this attack on Bible believers. He refused to tell me what this study was used for and who within the military was sent copies. I believe that it represents an official military view of Bible believers as Col. Banack said there was no study or article refuting this one," McTernan said.
Unruh also writes of McTernan, possibly explaining how this came to WND's attention in the first place:
"While God is in control, I believe it's also naive to deny the … stage-setting events happening right before our eyes," he continued. "Read the many articles from WorldNetDaily (www.wnd.com) covering the EXTREME thinking of [President Obama's] core group of advisers."
Unmentioned, of course is the fact many of those articles on Obama's "core group of advisers" are false and misleading.
Other than quoting a ranting blogger and distorting what he wrote, Unruh offers no challenge to Stuckert's views.
Which raises the question: Why does WorldNetDaily hate our troops in Afghanistan? And why is it so afraid of an academic paper?
CNS Column Repeats Misleading Claims About Stolen Emails Topic: CNSNews.com
In a Dec. 18 CNSNews.com column, professional global warming skeptic Patrick Michaels asserts that the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit shows that climate scientists were "seriously manipulating the scientific literature that goes into the august IPCC scientific reports" and "blacklisting certain professional journals." He adds:
One series of these e-mails called out the journal Climate Research, which had the audacity to publish a paper surveying a voluminous scientific literature that didn't support Mann's claim that the last 50 years are the warmest in the past millennium. Along with the CRU head Phil Jones and other climate luminaries, they then cooked up the idea of boycotting any scientific journal that dared publish anything by a few notorious "skeptics," myself included.
Their pressure worked. Editors resigned or were fired. Many colleagues began to complain to me that their good papers were either being rejected outright or subject to outrageous reviews — papers that would have been published with little revision just a few years ago.
In fact, as Media Matters detailed, the Climate Research paper in question -- a 2003 paper by Soon and Baliunas, which was underwritten by $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute -- did have problems, and even the editors of the journal admitted that the paper's analysis was deeply flawed and should not have been published as written.
Further, regarding papers that emails by Penn State University scientist Michael Mann showed he expressed a desire to keep out consideration by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Michaels' viewthat Mann was successful in doing so is belied by the fact that at least some of those papers did make it into IPCC reports.
WND Selectively Edits Criticism of Attack on GLSEN's Book List Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 19 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is the latest in WND's war on Kevin Jennings, attacking a blog post by Martin Garnar, the chairman of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee. But as per WND style, Unruh omits exculpatory information in his attack.
First of all, Unruh portrays the blog post as "a defense of Kevin Jennings and the sexually explicit books recommended for children by the homosexual advocacy organization that Jennings started, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network." But in quoting much of the post, Unruh curiously omits one key paragraph:
Many organizations create and distribute recommended book lists as a means of advising either their members or the general public regarding the organizations’ opinions on the contents and suitability of certain books or other materials. In addition, many libraries develop and make available their own readers’ advisory book lists to assist users in locating information on topics of interest. Librarians and educators should be free to provide information about such reading lists to their communities, regardless of viewpoint.
Unruh's only not to this was quoting another ALA official as pointing out that the blog post is "specifically about the book list on the GLSEN website." But that came in the 25th paragraph of Unruh's article, well after he repeated cherry-picked excerpts from the offending books without providing the context in which they appear.
Also, as he has before, Unruh omitted the fact that GLSEN explicitly states that the recommended books "contain mature themes" and "We recommend that adults selecting books for youth review content for suitability."
NewsBusters: Calling Maddow Pretty A 'Unique Choice' Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 18 NewsBusters post by Scott Whitlock bashes Stephen King for liking thte show "Breaking Bad" for "examining the American dream: shiny and addictive on top, hollow at the core. And dark. Very dark." Whitlock then sneers: "Hasn’t King made millions of dollars off the "hollow" American dream?"
But then Whitlock adds: "In a unique choice, he also praised Rachel Maddow as 'insightful' and 'pretty in a no-nonsense way.'"
Why is a "unique choice" to call Maddow pretty? Alas, Whitlock fails to elaborate. But the commenters on Whitlock's post are more than happy to do so:
Based on his spectacles and assesment of Ms. Maddow it is also clear that he is myopic.
King's writing shows a taste that favors the macabre, and the guy hails from Maine. No surprise, then, that he thinks MadSow is pretty and leans to the Left.
Yes, she would fit perfectly into one of your novels.
I'm quite certain that Maddow's makeup selection...is patterned on Stephen King's Pennywise character from "It".
I find it odd that he thinks a man is "pretty in an on nonsense kind of way".
Can someone post a photo of Maddow next to one of King? I think it will be obvious why he thinks his clone is pretty.
Rachel Maddow looks a lot like a guy I knew in high school -- a good friend of mine, actually. She's not a bad-looking guy.
Is it OK for a reviewer to give away the ending of a movie if he doesn't like it?
That seems to be what Ted Baehr believes. And Baehr really, really does not like "Avatar," the new James Cameron movie. But Baehr's giving away the plot pales in comparison to the derision he heaps upon the movie.
In his Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily review, Baehr writes:
In the story, a group of nature-worshipping aliens triumph over the greedy, evil human corporations that want to destroy their planet. The aliens eventually send the humans back to a dying earth to die. How marvelous!
If you think this sounds as if Al Gore wrote the script for "Avatar," not James Cameron, you may be right. This theme of kill all the humans, especially the pro-American, capitalist humans, has long been an underlying message of the left-wing, environmentalist movement, beginning with Rachel Carson's hysterical plea to ban DDT, even though, to this day, there is no evidence that DDT is harmful to humans or the environment, and even though the use of DDT can save millions of human lives from the deadly disease of malaria.
Not only does Baehr give away the end of the movie, he's wrong about DDT. As we've previously noted, DDT has in fact been found to cause cancer, endocrine disruption, adversely affect the immune system; it also persists in the environment and affects the food chain. It is, however, more effective than other, more safe mosquito eradication treatments, so it's returning in a limited way in developing countries.
But never mind the factual errors; Baehr is off to the races since "Avatar" offends his delicate far-right senibilities:
For hundreds of years, the pagan, communist ideas expressed in this movie circulated among a threadbare group of outcasts with dirty fingernails and greasy hair, who shared their obtuse, occult ideas amongst themselves with manic, alienated glee. Now, James Cameron has made these insane views the major bulwark of a very spectacular movie, but the spectacle does not make these Neo-Marxist views any more coherent, rational or uplifting.
Baehr concludes: "What the people in the movie need to deliver them from their greed and the aliens in the movie need to deliver them from their severe group think is the loving salvation available only through the true God, Jesus Christ."
Baehr's problem is that he's not reviewing the movie that was made; he's complaining that Cameron didn't make the movie he wanted to see. That's not how reviewing works -- but Baehr is too busy cramming his bias down the throats of his readers to notice.
NewsBusters Ignores Full Story of Franken-Lieberman Dustup Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 18 NewsBusters post by Scott Whitlock complained that ABC's "Good Morning America" played video of "Senator Al Franken’s disrespectful snub of Joe Lieberman during a health care debate" by not granting him more than the alloted time to speak, but "never once mentioned what happened," which included John McCain coming "to the defense of [his] longtime friend."
But Whitlock doesn't mention that McCain wasn't telling the truth in his defense. Whitlock noted only McCain's statement that "I’ve been around for 20 some years, first time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks...I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen a member denied an extra minute or so, as the chair just did."
In fact, in a 2002 debate on giving President Bush the power to use force against Iraq, McCain objected to granting Democrats Mark Dayton and Robert Byrd more time to finish their remarks. He eventually acquiesed, then said "From now on, I will be adhering strictly to the rules" by holding speakers to their allotted time -- which is exactly what Franken was doing by not giving Lieberman more time.
Sometimes, when I'm daydreaming about what hell must be like, I envision a place where every day you wake up and have to go work for someone like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nasty sourpusses who think that their every whim should be immediately pandered to and who regard themselves as God, but with a bigger expense account, a larger staff and a better pension plan.
In short, Pelosi, Frank and Reid and their congressional cronies, could find true happiness working at a TV network, a movie studio or a theatrical agency. Perhaps you think I'm making this up, but I'm not. Liberal politicians are doing their best to shove Obamacare down our throats, pretending it's manna from heaven, but you may have noticed that they haven't the slightest intention of leaving their own medical care up to a lottery system. And can you really blame them? Do you think Pelosi wants a bunch of strangers deciding if she can get another dozen face lifts? You think Robert Byrd wants to leave it up to a death panel to determine if it's time to put the old Ku Kluxer on an ice floe?
You could call them hypocrites, but I call them Hollywood hopefuls. They'd fit right in. This is the town, after all, where people are still whining over the fact that a handful of mediocre actors and hack writers were blacklisted 60 years ago because they were, for the most part, unrepentant Communists whose allegiance was to the evil Soviet Union. But these same people think nothing of blacklisting writers and directors who have done nothing worse than made the fatal mistake of turning 50.
