Question for Nobel Appease Prize winner

By Joseph Farah

I have a question for Barack Obama, the Nobel Appease Prize winner, and the man who told us during last year's presidential campaign that troops needed to be redeployed from Iraq to the "real" front in the war on terrorism – Afghanistan.

In case your memory fails you, here's what he said in July 2008:

• "In fact – as should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. (John) McCain – the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. That's why the second goal of my new strategy will be taking the fight to al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

• "It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan."

• "… as president, I will make the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win."

• "We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region. And we must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

So what happened between then and now?

Well, Obama got his wish. He became president. He is now fully in command. He can divert any resources he wishes from Iraq to Afghanistan. He got to appoint a new commander for the Afghan campaign, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. And what did Gen. McChrystal advise?

He told Obama he needs "more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region" – exactly the prescription Obama was calling for more than a year ago during the campaign.

And what has been Obama's reaction?

He's shocked!

He can't believe it.

He is mulling it over.

Mulling it over?

Isn't this exactly what Obama said he wanted to do more than a year ago?

What has changed since then and now – other than the fact that Obama actually has the power to do what he advocated doing in July 2008?

Maybe it's that Nobel Appease Prize?

I don't know.

My guess is that it's a lot easier being an armchair general when you don't have the power to send men and women to risk their lives.

Maybe Obama really thought he could negotiate with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Maybe he thought they would lay down their arms when he took office.

But reality is setting in.

Nine months after taking office, Obama has not greatly reduced U.S. forces in Iraq and he has only modestly increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now he seems to resist doing what he pledged to do and what the general he placed in charge of the battlefield says must be done.

I guess it was a lot easier second-guessing President Bush and Sen. McCain than it is expanding a war that is unpopular with his base – and his own friends in Congress.

Suddenly, it seems, Barack Obama's knees are getting wobbly.

Some questions for the White House:

How soon can we expect that decision now?

Will you be replacing your general and looking for a military recommendation you like better?

Are you waiting to send in the "don't ask, don't tell" brigade?

Will you be taking military command of the battlefield yourself?

Or will you be changing your mind – yet again?

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Fattening the Nanny State

by Steve Chapman

Obese people and public-health scolds have one thing in common: a compulsion to keep behaving in a way that does not produce helpful results. The obese tend to keep eating too much and exercising too little regardless of what others say. Disciples of maternal government persist in meddling in individual choices whether it works or not.

One of the pet campaigns of the second group, ostensibly on behalf of the first one, is forcing restaurants to provide accessible nutritional information about their offerings. In 2008, the city of New York passed a law mandating calorie data on fast-foot menus and menu boards, on the assumption that better knowledge would make for healthier eating.

"Presenting nutrition information on restaurant menus empowers consumers and influences food choices," the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene promised. Let people know that a McDonald's Angus Deluxe is larded with enough calories to sustain a family of four for a month, the thinking went, and they'll gravitate to something more slimming.

But the early evidence suggests that people don't choose high-calorie fast foods because they don't know any better. They choose them because they like them, and they don't really care if others disapprove.

That's the implication of a new study in the journal Health Affairs conducted by researchers at New York University and Yale University. They asked questions of and collected receipts from customers at McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC outlets in the city before and after the law took effect, and did the same in Newark, N.J., which has no such law.

The impact of the ordinance didn't quite fulfill those fond expectations. To start with, only about half of the fast-food customers in New York said they noticed all this helpful information, and only a quarter of the patrons in this group said it made any difference in their choices.

Even those who said the data affected their decisions were fooling themselves. Before the law was implemented, the average customer in New York bought items containing 825 calories. Afterward, the figure was 846. In Newark, during the same time period, the typical patron went from 823 calories to 826.

In neither place did diners cut back on saturated fat, sodium or sugar. The labeling law was the moral equivalent of the Chicago Olympics bid -- lots of hype to little effect.

How to explain this outcome? "New York City health officials said that because the study was conducted immediately after the law took effect, it might not have captured changes in people's behavior that have taken hold more gradually," reported The New York Times.

Nice try. The authors of the study considered that possibility and gave it little credence. "Consumers in our sample reported frequenting fast-food restaurants approximately five times per week," they noted, "which indicates that they likely had repeated experiences with calorie labels before our follow-up data collection."

Moreover, said the report, "It is not clear whether continued extensive exposure beyond a month would have made consumers more or less likely to respond to labels." Maybe the information would sink in over time. Or maybe customers who noticed at first would soon tune it out.

But it's not hard to find likely reasons for the failure of this approach. One is that the sort of people who make a habit of eating at Burger King generally don't put a high priority on a sound diet. Giving them nutritional information is a bit like recruiting for Greenpeace at a rifle range -- a doomed enterprise. The people who are most likely to act on fast-food nutritional information are the ones least likely to encounter it, because they're packing a lunch or eating at home.

Rebecca Krukowski, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, says another factor may be at work -- what might be called the coals-to-Newcastle problem. "Oftentimes, when people are interested, they already have the information," she told me. "Maybe they've already been through a weight-control program and become well-educated about nutrition and have become pretty good at estimating calories."

So the menu labels tell them little they didn't already know. Meanwhile, it seems, the people who lack the needed information generally prefer to ignore it when it's foisted on them.

Architects of intrusive policies, like those at the New York health department, may wonder how on earth someone could be given valuable information and not use it to make better decisions. But we could ask the same thing about them.

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Celebrity Justice in a Just Society

by Ken Connor

"The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes." 
-Lady Marguerite Blessington

Cynics say the term "celebrity justice" is an oxymoron.  They point to the cases of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson as examples; but most recently they point to Roman Polanski as the reason for their cynicism.  However, after 30 years of evading justice, the notorious director—indicted in 1977 for drugging, raping, and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl—may finally be required give an account for his actions. 

In the meantime, Hollywood's crème de la crème (which, ironically, had gathered in Switzerland to present him with a lifetime achievement award) has come to Polanski's defense.  This elite group—which apparently finds nothing criminal or perverse about Polanski's behavior—has acted as an apologist for Polanski, and attempted to use its celebrity influence to prevent his extradition to the United States. 

This case is a classic example of a gross double standard of justice at work between the average citizen and the rich, powerful, and famous.  Polanski's supporters are, in effect, arguing that he should receive a free pass because of his brilliance and talent.  Swiss filmmaker Otto Weisser's comment says it all:

"I am ashamed to be Swiss, that the Swiss is doing such a thing to brilliant fantastic genius, that millions and millions of people love his work....  He's a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago. What a shame for Switzerland."

Nevermind that what Roman Polanski did was morally repugnant (not to mention illegal).  Nevermind the fact that he is a man who has exhibited no qualms about taking advantage of young, impressionable girls.  As far as the artistic community is concerned, Polanski's brilliance as a filmmaker trumps his responsibilities as a member of the human race and immunizes him from the need for accountability before the law.  Using this same train of logic one can only assume that if Polanski were a mere pedestrian filmmaker, his fellow artists might be less willing to give him a pass.

This same warped mindset has infiltrated other parts of our society—a society increasingly obsessed with the antics and peccadilloes of the rich and famous.  Consequently, securing justice in situations involving criminal accusations against giants of the entertainment industry is often difficult.  So too in the political arena, where elected officials at every level of government routinely engage in reckless conduct with an arrogance possessed only by those convinced that they are above the law.

Imagine the consequences for the average Joe if he admitted to engaging in sexual relations at the workplace with a variety of female subordinates.  He would be fired on the spot.  What if he were exposed for tax evasion?  Jail time and heavy fines, no doubt.  And finally, what if our average Joe were indicted for drugging a 13-year-old girl and performing lewd sex acts upon her semi-conscious body?  If convicted, he could count on a stiff jail sentence followed by a conspicuous spot on the national database of sex offenders, no job prospects, and little chance of regaining respectable standing in the community.

For celebrities like David Letterman, Charles Rangel, or Roman Polanski, however, none of these consequences appear to apply.  Letterman's primary worry in the aftermath of his on-air confession seems to be with his ratings—which, by the way, have skyrocketed.  Charles Rangel continues to preside over the appropriation of our tax dollars as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Roman Polanski receives a lifetime achievement award for excellence in filmmaking.

Exempting the rich and famous from the need to conform to the moral norms and prevailing laws of society makes a mockery of the principle of justice.  As history has demonstrated, a just society cannot exist if the rule of law is not applied equally to all.  Roman Polanski may be a brilliant filmmaker.  His work may be admired the world over.  He may be an inspiration to his peers.  But none of this vitiates his obligations under the law.

Polanski should be extradited to the United States and made to answer for his actions.  As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied.  Thankfully, after more than three decades of thumbing his nose at the Lady Justice, for Mr. Polanski the chickens are finally coming home to roost.

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Sharia trumps Yale's free speech

by Diana West

Anyone See a TREND Here?

Michigan:Muslim Mob Surrounds and Attacks Christians~Video Detroit mosque leader killed in FBI raid FBI arrests two Chicago men for Danish terror plot House Republicans accuse Muslim group of trying to plant spies... Sharia trumps Yale's free speech

Last week's column was about something that doesn't exist -- a multi-level strategy to combat the advance of sharia (Islamic law) across the West.

The strategy doesn't exist because there's little understanding that the entrenchment of sharia in the Western zone poses a threat to liberty in the Western zone.

This understanding doesn't exist because the critique of sharia (a legal system best described as sacralized totalitarianism) required to devise a defensive anti-sharia strategy, is not considered possible.

Why not? The main obstacle is, well, the advance of sharia across the West. In other words, we cannot criticize the spread of sharia simply because sharia, or its influence, has spread. Thus, from Norway to New Haven, from BBC to Fox News, the reflex reaction to critical commentary -- even a newspaper page of political cartoons -- is to follow Islamic law and stop it (or try), or just shut up.

That's certainly what Yale University has done, as events beginning in August demonstrate. That's when news broke that Yale and Yale University Press were omitting the Danish Mohammed cartoons (and other Mohammed imagery) from a forthcoming book expressly about the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

This sudden act of censorship, Yale said, was due to fear of Muslim outrage over the Mohammed cartoons again turning into Muslim violence. (Roger Kimball, Stanley Kramer and I have laid out evidence that Yale's censorship was also due to fear of alienating Muslim donors.) This violence, along with general Muslim outrage, has its roots in Islamic legal prohibitions of life imagery, criticism of Mohammed and sarcasm about Islamic law -- all outlawed by the standard Al Ahzar University-approved sharia manual, Reliance of the Traveller, and all tools for the political cartoonist moved to comment on the connection between Mohammed and jihad violence. And why not? Indeed, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most influential Islamic cleric in the world, calls Mohammed "an epitome for religious warriors."

The publication of the Danish cartoons forced the question: What is more important to the West -- freedom of speech, or Islamic law masquerading as something Orwellianly known as community harmony?

With its censorship of the Mohammed imagery, Yale chose sharia. But that wasn't all. Wearing my hat as vice president of the International Free Press Society (IFPS), I asked Yale's Steven Smith, master of Branford College, one of Yale's 12 residential colleges, if he would be interested in hosting Kurt Westergaard, the most famous of the Danish cartoonists, at a "master's tea" for students. The IFPS was then finalizing Westergaard's U.S. tour long-planned to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the publication of the cartoons on Sept. 30.

Smith agreed and held the event on Oct. 1. And Yale, it seems, will never be the same.

Of course, Yale was already "never the same," something the Westergaard visit further confirmed. If the Western reaction to the Danish Mohammed cartoons exposed the humiliating bargain the West had already made with Islam, trading away freedom of the press in exchange for "community harmony," the Yale reaction to Westergaard's visit following its censorship of the Mohammed cartoons exposed the rotten fruit at the core of American academia: namely, the politically correct drive to censor material "offensive" to multiculturalism mated to the sharia-correct drive to censor material "offensive" to Islam.

Even now, institutional consternation at Yale over Westergaard continues. In the pages of the Yale Daily News, ire is directed at Westergaard's Yale host, Steven Smith, simply for having issued the invitation, as attested by letters from University Chaplain Sharon Kugler and "coordinator of Muslim Life for the University" Omer Bajwa, and even Smith's fellow Yale masters, Davenport College's Richard Schottenfeld and Tanina Rostain. At a panel this week sponsored by the Chaplain's Office and the Yale Muslim Student Association, several Yale professors discussed "what made the cartoons offensive ... and how the West's response heightened tension." (Given the West's near-universal capitulation, I'd like to have heard that last bit.)

The lesson here? Free speech about Islam at Yale is a liability: something to censor, oppose, even remove physically, as symbolized by the administration's decision to bus students to the edge of campus to attend Westergaard's talk. Campus security -- bomb-sniffing dogs, two SWAT teams -- was so extreme it stood as a reproach to critics of Islam, and perhaps as justification for Yale's decision to censor the cartoons in the first place.

Having shrouded free speech in the Islamic veil, Yale stands exposed.

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Why Obama Should Decline the 'Prize'

by Kevin McCullough

If President Obama wishes to be seen as a serious world leader, he should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. Doing so would be, in fact, the most honorable thing for him to do.

A very simple expression of gratitude for being considered would be appropriate. And a courageous footnote of honesty, by simply stating that because he had been in office for only twelve days at the time of the nomination, he had done nothing to deserve it, and that he would not feel at ease accepting the prize, would be refreshing.

It would be a bold, courageous, and indeed masterful move. It would underscore the humility he claims to seek for America to have on the world stage, and it would tell his critics that he is not as entirely one dimensional as their mountains of evidence have begun to suggest. It would be one significant way to take a step towards a serious approach to leadership that, to speak quite frankly, America can ill afford to wait for a moment longer.

He has already expressed his honest observation that he is not worthy of the prize. Partisan, even rancorous, Democrats have scoffed at the idea that he should be compared to Dr. King and FDR. Even NPR's own Juan Williams exclaimed it's utter foolishness. These observations, all from the political left, are true.

In addition to making a statement about his nation's humility, and an even more significant one about his own, it would do something else favorable for the President. Declining the prize would wipe clean the slate of public perception that he is a man who is more concerned about his image than of the substance of his office.

It is my sense that at present the American people, many of whom supported President Obama, are growing weary with the "carnival dog barker" element of his administration. To be inundated with coverage of a most self indulgent speech on behalf of the humiliation of a failed Olympic bid, as opposed to being focused on how our fighting men and women are losing their morale from lack of a clear battle plan is, on balance, not something the American people wish to see. You do realize that of the roughly 800 lives we've lost in Afghanistan over eight years, that 57 of them have come in the forty days the military's request for additional troops has gathered dust on his desk. In accepting the award, another trip to a Scandinavian nation is now in the works.

And the need for the President's attention goes far beyond the crucial matter in Afghanistan. Just in the last week, the Health Care bill in the Senate has had public funding for abortion reinserted into the legislation. And on the Congressional side of that debate, Minority Leader John Boehner is attempting to point out that since passage, the House version has had 75 alterations to the bill. Many are questioning the legality of these "technical" changes.

In the last week, it has also been discovered that Kevin Jennings, President Obama's safe schools czar has been linked to NAMBLA, and to one of its iconic personalities Henry Hay. Never a more disgusting and revolting group of individuals has ever existed that posed a threat to the welfare of children, yet President Obama has put one of their supporters in direct contact with millions of school children.

President Obama had promised in his controversial appearance at Notre Dame University, that his administration would honor the "conscience rights" of health care workers, never forcing them to administer care, or medicines that violate their own sense of right and wrong. But while the President is in between the jets from Copenhagen and Oslo, and shooting hoops with party members, his administration is breaking that promise even this minute.

The President's supporters, particularly the vile trolls on conservative web-sites, and the vindictive ones on social networks, have spent the last few days attempting to defend the "accomplishment" of President Obama in winning the Nobel Prize. In post after post, saying repeatedly, "he deserves it because he's taken a 180 degree turn from the Bush administration."

Yet informed people on the left know this is not the case either. American forces are still in the green zone in Iraq. We are still at war with terrorists. Gitmo still houses animals who cannot be placed elsewhere, and that facility will miss its latest rescheduled deadline to be closed.

The Nobel committee specifically cited the President's speech to the university students in Cairo as one of the compelling factors that swayed their vote.

Yet in that speech, President Obama claimed the values of Islam and America were one and the same, and the last time I checked, we Americans do not take kindly to being told that we must subjugate our women, and we certainly do not find "honor" in murdering those in our family who embarrass us.

President Obama is getting used by the international elitists who have hatred in their heart for an America that is both strong and good. He is getting played like a puppy who is having a treat given him for sitting still long enough.

In awarding Obama, the Nobel committee permanently sealed its fate as an absurd laughingstock, but this time they've made the President of the United States, and by extension our entire nation, the punch-line.

If President Obama brings peace to the middle east, or establishes free societies where neighbors in Afghanistan and Iraq live in harmonious community with one another then he should accept this award at a later date. But everyone on the planet knows that 12 days in he had done zippo to earn it or the $1.4 million he would most likely give to ACORN by way of prize money.

No Mr. President, if you wished to demonstrate greatness instead of pettiness, if you wished to demonstrate seriousness instead of being scoffed at, and if you wished to demonstrate your own commitment to making the world better, and not merely talking about doing so, your solution would be simple.

Give it back!

Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of "'Xtreme' Radio and columnist based in New York. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com.

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Tribal exceptionalism

by Paul Jacob

Roman Polanski and Barack Obama: One is a rapist and the other a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Could any two men be more different? And yet they are similarly blessed — with a certain kind of attention.

The moist eyeballs and loud applause come from their respective supporters . . . two groups not all that dissimilar. And the manner ofthat attention says a whole lot about what it means to be human.

Through a Special Lens
The story was big newslast week. Filmmaker Polanski trekked to Switzerland to accept anaward, but was waylaid at the airport, nabbed for a crime to which he had pled guilty decades earlier. He had fled the U.S. before sentencing and been on the lam for 30 years. In the interim he had made a number of movies, some quite renowned.

But the rape charge was still there, and a recent documentary about the case had spurred the interest of his California prosecutors. They decided that his freedom in Europe was a slap in the face, a bad example. So they went after him.

That was merely interesting. What followed was fascinating.Hollywood folk from Ms. Debra Winger and Mr. Woody Allen to the great Harvey Weinstein were appalled that an important artist would be hounded so. A petition of protest made the rounds. Whoopi Goldberg went so far as to say that the charge to which Polanski pled guilty wasn’t “rape rape.”

True, sorta. He pled guilty to having sexual relations with a minor.Yes, there is a difference between forcible sexual relations and such relations declared unlawful because of age differences. But this is not the case upon which to hang the extremely dubious case against statutory rape laws. The court documents in the Polanski rape case show that what the man actually did was “rape rape,” to useWhoopi-ese. Polanski plied a 13-year-old girl with drugs and alcohol and continued his course even after she told him “no.”

I am pretty sure neither feminism nor common sense has undergone a major transformation, downgrading rape from crime to “no-no” on the grounds that “no” doesn’t always mean “no.”

Thankfully, the Hollywood response was not univocal. Chris Rock expressed incredulity over those who defended a director just because he had made good films.“Even Johnny Cochran don’t have the nerve to go ‘Did you see OJ play against New England?’”

But the typical Hollywood response does show us something. It shows us that a bunch of oh-so-correct eco-feminist proud-to-be-liberal celebs can make an exception . . . for one of their own.

You Have Got To Be Kidding
I wonder who was more surprised at the Norwegians’ Nobel Peace Prize announcement, President Barack Obama or every other intelligent person on the planet.

Obama himself expressed shock. But some people weren’t all that surprised. They couldn’t be, you see. They were just so gushed up with love and pride and the “yes, we can” spirit.

That Obama hasn’t actually done anything to deserve this award — all he’s done is make a bunch of speeches convincing people that yes-oh-dear-me-yes, he was for peace — is painfully obvious. He wouldn’t be the first recipient unworthy to press his soles into the footsteps of the first Peace Prize winner, Frédéric Passy.

The line of prize winners do not uniformly line up as men of peace or good will. Kissinger? Arafat?? Woodrow Wilson???

One needn’t plumb the depths of the Scandinavian soul to figure outwhy Barack Obama was chosen. Surely it’s nothing other than that theNorwegians are just so darned relieved to have that cracker Bush out ofoffice, and giddy to have a like-minded Euro-socialist ally as leader of the free world.

Silly, yes. Idiotic. But so was the Hollywood defense of Polanski.

It’s just proof of man’s tribal nature. The oh-so-cosmopolitan social democrats may think they have evolved beyond a barbaricin-group thinky mindset, but they would be wrong. In their very acts of defining who’s in the group — which deviant to hold their noses and defend (Polanski) and which exemplar to fard up to godhood (Obama) —they show themselves unable to demonstrate a truly civilized dedication to principle.

Rule of law? Not for Polanski.

Award on merit? Not for Obama.

As with the Republicans during the Bush years — when principles went out the window because the Big Spenders and obvious enemies of freedom were said to be “basically good guys,” and “ours” — fellow feeling and social identity overshadow all else.

Luckily, it looks like Polanski’s going to prison. And the NobelPeace Prize? It doesn’t really matter; it doesn’t mean much of anything. Not any more. 

Paul Jacob is President of Citizens in Charge. His daily Common Sense commentary appears on the Web, via e-mail, and on radio stations across America.

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Money and Celebrity the New Substitute for Justice in America

By Michael Bresciani

Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell? Perhaps this question would have made a better title for this article but why scare readers away with what may only be construed as preachers pious platitudes.

America is busy with economic problems, the war in Afghanistan and healthcare issues, whose got time for questions of morality or theological issues? Apparently no one! While all the current issues are worthy of our attention isn’t it odd that we tend to dismiss the very issue that we ultimately ignore at the price of our own peril?

The CBS News Crimesider reported on October 5, 2009 that Roman Polanski the accused child rapist agreed to pay to make it go away. “15 years after he fled the United States, film director — and child rapist — Roman Polanski agreed to pay his sexual assault victim $500,000 to settle a lawsuit, according to court documents.”

Whether offered by the accused or extracted by civil proceedings we may be getting all too accustomed to the idea that money is a good substitute for justice. We know what O.J. had to pay and the huge sums Michael Jackson coughed up are now public record but do we actually accept this as reasonable payment for behavior or crimes that the common man would be asked to pay for with his own skin?

Now it is not just money but the weight of celebrity that is being leveraged to get the courts to stop the usual slow grinding of the wheels of justice. Celebrities who have weighed in for Polanski are the same ones who would have little mercy if the accused were a protestant minister, a catholic priest or a conservative senator or congressmen. Hollywood and leftism go hand in hand as in ‘how could they get away with what they have shown us lately from the land of filmdom if they weren’t liberals?’ Apples don’t grow on the Sycamore.

All liberals don’t agree with the few Hollywood celebs that have stood up for Polanski and as the backlash grows against those who have, it is not that all liberals speak for Hollywood but rather can we afford to forget that it is more often than not that Hollywood speaks for the liberals. Some liberals are chiming in against giving Polanski a pass but is it because they actually have a conscience or is it the close proximity of the 2010 elections? You decide.

So what is the ‘issue we ignore at our own peril?’ What is it that we tend to label as ‘preachers pious platitudes?’ In fact it is that reminder in both scripture and history that when a nation begins to disregard the precious life of its own offspring it is in the throws and last gasps of its very existence.

If 50 million abortions weren’t enough, as if trafficking in children weren’t enough, as if the disappearance of 50,000 children a year in America weren’t enough, as if exposing kindergarteners to the aspects of the gay life weren’t enough, will we now add the lessening of the punishment to child rapists to the pot? Have we crossed the line from just flirting with God’s judgment to outright asking for it? According to scripture we have.

Prior to ancient Israel’s final fall which resulted in their being banished to all of the nations to be endlessly persecuted and hated (Diaspora) they literally went in circles. They would start with complete adherence to God’s laws and statutes and in time would submit to the religions, cultures and practices of the surrounding nations until they were chastised  (usually by warfare, pestilence, diseases and captivity) when they had enough they, would cry out to God again. He would send those prophets, judges and rulers that would deliver them. But they would only start around again in the vicious cycle.

Some things appeared in their national behavior each and every time they fell to the low end of the cycle. They always succumbed to the same sins but somehow managed to forget their past as a generation or two passed into history. The acceptance of sodomy, idolatry, licentiousness and child abuse were always at the heart of their fall.

Their child abuse went as far as it could go when coupled with aligning themselves to the idolatries of the surrounding nations. They sunk so far as to offer their children to be burned in the fires lit to honor the ancient idols of the god Moloch. While they sought the favor of idols made of wood and stone, the living God who bore them from the womb grew disgusted.

“Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem: but he did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord, like David his father: For he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, and made also molten images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. (2 Chr 28: 1-3)

The King Ahaz did it and the people joined him in the burning of their own children. But Israel still managed to do it again until they were finally kicked out of their homeland for a period of nearly 2,500 years and would not become a free and independent nation again until 1948.

Among the many sins of mankind child abuse stands in a class by itself. In the scriptures it marks the final phase of a rift between God and any particular nation. Is America approaching this critical point with its abortions, child abductions and abuse and the coddling of child rapists?

We can discuss the stimulus package and the healthcare bill until we are unable to speak but to ignore these warnings of scripture will surely be our worst nightmare. This is my pious platitude of which I am not the least bit ashamed.

Pondering the use of ‘Is leftism rising to the defense of evil even as it sinks to the depths of hell’ as the alternate title for this piece takes on a whole new meaning when it is known that the very place where the Israelites offered their children to be burned was later referred to as hell by Jesus Christ. In fact it is the term used to this day.

The place where the children were offered, a vast open area to the south of Jerusalem where refuse was dumped and where fires and worms were always festering became known as Gehenna. Christ made allusions to this former place of severe child abuse when he warned of a place of eternal torment now commonly known only as hell.

Can we afford to ignore the lives of our own offspring and resort to the perverting of justice whether in the acceptance of Roe v. Wade or the subverting of justice for child rapists? Are we willing to gamble the future of this great nation against the idea that we can? God help us to see that this is a fool’s gamble because even to win would be losing.

http://www.americanprophet.org is the place for news, articles, movie and book reviews and other insights for life. Rev Bresciani is a columnist for online and print publications and has over three million readers and counting.

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The Meaning of Change

By Thomas E. Brewton

Candidate Obama charmed inexperienced, poorly educated youth and disaffected elders with promises of an undefined abstraction called change.  That change, we now can see, was to be forcible imposition of Obama’s true religion, secular socialism.

Change that candidate Obama promised turns out to be restructuring society to achieve social justice, which in the socialist lexicon is egalitarian redistribution of income and wealth.  That means higher taxes, tight regulation of all sectors of the economy, and further enervation of a population increasingly dependent upon the political state for its sustenance. 

The president’s pattern of industry czars and heavy new regulations, along with government financing and partial government ownership of major private companies is reminiscent of Mussolini’s Fascist State Corporatism in the 1920s and 30s, as well as of Hitler’s tight regulation of German industry after 1933.  In neither case did these dictators seize full ownership of private industry, which liberal-progressives tell us is the definition of socialism.  Instead, Mussolini and Hitler followed the prescription of socialism’s early theorists: regulation alone is sufficient to impose socialist statism.

Elite councils of people like David Axelrod, a Chicago socialist agitator who formulates the president’s views, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who were leaders of Weatherman assassins, and San Francisco socialist Nancy Pelosi will decide what is best for you and me.  As the president said with regard to people who question his programs, they should shut up and get out of the way.

More threatening to the survival of the United States is Obama’s continual diminishment of American political, economic, and military stature as a step toward world government, a sort of international egalitarianism.  If the United States is impoverished by high taxes and socialistic regulation, and other nations become equally so, a world government will be at hand.  Hypothetically war will cease to exist as an instrument of national policy.  All of us will live harmoniously while scrounging for crumbs that remain from the former period of capitalistic plenty.

The president’s proposed National Socialist healthcare program is an example on the domestic stage.  Obama offered several different rationalizations for partial socialization and extensive restructuring of our medical care system, all of them shown to be false or of doubtful effect.  If the president’s aim had been only to provide medical insurance for the 15% of American citizens who allegedly lack it, there were far less costly and less intrusive ways to do so. 

Choosing instead government takeover of most of the medical care industry makes clear that his vision of change, in consonance with the Democrat/Socialist Party platform of the past five decades, is British and Canadian style socialized medicine.

The same sort of thinking is apparent in the president’s nationalizing two of the Big Three automakers, as well as in his partial nationalization of the major banks.  His czars, with the guidance of Congressmen like Representative Barney Frank, are regulating executive compensation, the types of loans that banks can or must make, facilities locations, and the sorts of automobiles that Government Motors will be permitted to make.  And, in the automakers’ case, the president disregarded priority rights of bondholders in order to give substantial control of company assets to those quintessential exemplars of socialism, the labor unions.

On the foreign policy front, the president’s faith in pagan worship of Al Gore’s global-warming myth will grind industry to a halt, eliminate millions of jobs, and reduce all Western nations to poverty levels equal to those of the lowest tier of economically emerging nations.  To a vicious degree, propositions supported by Obama will impose egalitarianism here and abroad.

The president has toured the world, kowtowing to Muslim dictators and to socialist strong men like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers.  His obsequious pleas to Iran have been met with insulting counter demands.  He is now proposing to make meaningless the sacrifice of our armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq by premature withdrawals and curtailment of military support.  This cowering self-denigration of the United States before the world’s forces of evil is again in consonance with the aboriginal doctrine of socialism, supported by the Nobel Peace Prize committee in socialist Norway.

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