ATTACHED: Oil and water – Senate and House health care bills – Oct 16 2009
The healthcare reform bill has passed the House and must now make it through the Senate before it can move on to Obama’s desk. As of mid-October, 49% of likely voters nationwide felt that passing no health care reform bill this year would be better than passing the plan currently working its way through Congress. Only 39% disagreed. 57% were opposed to any plan that included a single-payer system. Only 32% favor such a system.

But that single-payer system (government-run health-insurance plan) is the treasured baby of the ultra left that currently dominates the Democratic Party and the most powerful Democrats in Congress. The prospect of having that and tax-payer funded abortions foisted on us are the reason I have been feeling so bummed. But …

ATTACHED: Lieberman NO on Reid plan – Nov 24 2009
A former Democratic vice presidential nominee, now an independent, Senator Joe Lieberman is one of the 60 votes Democrats will need to force a final vote on health legislation. He absolutely opposes any health-care overhaul that includes a public option which the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won’t vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included. So, good news. And when combined with the following, possibly even great news.

ATTACHED: HillBuzz talks about Burris and healthcare – Nov 23 2009
The HillBuzz Boys are big supporters of Senator Burris, the black fellow who was appointed to the Senate by disgraced Gov. Blagojevich to fill Obama’s seat. Burris is leading the cause FOR public option, but Hillbuzz thinks it’s his way of killing the disastrous reform bill altogether AND damaging the White House to boot. Read it. It’s only 3 pages and very interesting.

——————–
SOURCE:

49% Say No Health Care Reform Better Than Current Plan – October 23, 2009
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/october_2009/49_say_no_health_care_reform_better_than_current_plan

HAPPY THANKSGIVING
2 Chron. 7:14 in God’s Word, He states, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

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To be sure, no one has ever accused Sarah Palin, a defeated vice presidential candidate, of creating her reputation thusly. One has to wonder, then, why her book, Going Rogue, would merit a fact check by no fewer than eleven Associated Press reporters when neither the AP nor any other mainstream outlet has spent a moment vetting the books of the “author in chief,” as President Barack Obama was anointed in a November GQ article, “Barack Obama’s Work in Progress,” by Tom Draper.

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/200911/barack-obama-writing-books-writer-robert-draper?printable=true

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/11/the-road-to-bali.html

In an observant piece, the Road to Bali, blogger Tom Maguire addresses the implicit media balance. He does so by calling attention to just one relevant question that the media might have profitably asked our president: did you take new bride Michelle to Bali with you in 1993?

In the course of asking that question, not terribly significant in and of itself, Maguire sheds light on a more substantive question: why have the media paid so little attention to how Barack Obama came to write the book that would make his reputation, his acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.

As source, Maguire turns to Draper, who has spent time with Michelle and Barack and written the most detailed account to date of the genesis of Dreams. Blinded by Obama’s light, however, Draper fails to see the gaping holes in how own story line.

As Draper tells the story, a February 1990 New York Times article telling how Harvard has elected Obama president of the Harvard Law Review attracted the attention of a young agent named Jane Dystel. Draper implies that Obama’s “irresistible” writing skills netted him the position, which is not at all true.

In fact, the election was a popularity contest held in racially charged environment. The culturally ambiguous Obama won on his race-healing talents, not on his literary ones. He would contribute only one leaden, unsigned case note to the HLR and has not written another legal article since.

According to Draper, on November 28, 1990, Poseidon Press, a Simon & Schuster imprint, issued “a six-figure contract” to Obama for a book tentatively titled Journeys in Black and White. In his recent book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of An American Marriage, Christopher Andersen specifies the amount at $150,000.

In the hope of recruiting Obama, the University of Chicago Law School offered him an office in the law school to use for finishing the book, and there he spent 1991 and 1992. Nearly two years passed, and Obama could not produce. “I just can’t get it down on paper,” Draper quotes an Obama confession to confidante Valerie Jarrett in 1992. “I’d much rather hang out with Michelle than focus on this.”

Although Draper would never say so, this represented a failure of character as much it did a failure of talent. Obama had pocketed $75,000 of that advance and promised in return a manuscript by June 15, 1992. He had more than eighteen months to complete a memoir, the easiest of all genres. It required minimal research, no footnotes, and a narrative that needed not be factual as long as it was plausible.

As a point of comparison, I was offered a contract in April 2005 to write a memoir with a deadline of September 1, 2005. In other words, I had four months to do what Obama could not do in eighteen. To complicate matters mine was to be a story of growing up in the age of Muhammad Ali. So, in addition to writing, I read roughly 30-40 books on boxing and related subjects during that period and watched scores of fight films and documentaries.

I set as a goal a thousand words a day, and I made the September 1 deadline. It would have helped a lot if I had ever learned to type, but to me missing the deadline was unthinkable if for no other reason that I, like Obama, had signed a contract and accepted an advance. Although Sucker Punch was my fourth published book, I can assure you that my advance was considerably less than that of the untested Obama.

In any case, the June 15, 1992 deadline came and went without a manuscript from Obama. As Draper blithely notes, Obama had other things on his mind, namely his impending October 3rd marriage to Michelle. On October 20, 1992, according to Draper, Poseidon terminated Obama’s contract.

Andersen adds a detail that mythmaker Draper chooses to omit. Obama feared that Simon & Schuster would demand the $75,000 already advanced. Writes Andersen, “But when Barack informed them that he had spent the money—and that he and his wife were still chipping away at their massive student loan debt—the publisher agreed not to press the issue.” In other words, Obama asked for and received an undeserved bailout. A pattern was developing here.

The tenacious agent Jane Dystel managed to find another publisher, Times Books, and secured a smaller advance, $40,000.Draper tells us that Obama used the advance “to fulfill his outstanding financial obligation to Poseidon.” Andersen’s take sounds more credible.

“Now he’s got to produce,” writes Draper. “But how?” Although the sanctuary at the University of Chicago and a previous retreat to a friend’s Wisconsin farm had done no good, Obama hit upon the idea of going to Bali to unblock. (For Sucker Punch, I went to my cabin on Lake Erie).

As blogger Maguire notes, the pre-election myth, advanced by the New York Times and others, is that Michelle accompanied him. Wrote the Times on May 18, 2008, Obama “eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife, Michelle.”

A more recent and less romantic version, advanced by Draper and by the Times as well, is that Obama went by himself. “For a month,” writes Draper, “he is a lone figure pacing on the white sand and hammering on his laptop. . . . “

Andersen describes the Obamas as “drowning in debt” during this period. How either Barack or Michelle could have afforded to go to Bali during this period, for one month or three, remains something of a mystery. Mysterious too is how the media could leave unresolved such glaring contradictions in the biography of the world’s most famous man.

Maguire highlights still another hole in the Draper narrative. Incredibly, in a 5,000-word article on Obama’s development as a writer, Draper says nothing about what happened between early 1993 when Obama returned from Bali to June 1995 when Dreams was published. Draper leaves the impression that the month-long Bali high was just what Obama needed to fire his synapses.

Andersen is much more credible here. As he tells it, Bali proved no more helpful than any other retreat. At the urging of Michelle, the “hopelessly blocked” Obama finally turned to “friend and Hyde Park neighbor” Bill Ayers to help him.

Andersen’s details are specific. The Obamas were convinced of “Ayers’s proven abilities as a writer.” Barack particularly liked the novelistic style of To Teach, a 1993 book by Ayers. The key sentence in Andersen’s account is the one that follows: “[The Obama family] oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers.”

Adds Andersen, “Thanks to help from veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Book.” Based on my own research, I would argue that Ayers actually wrote the book’s best sections. Obama’s published efforts before Dreams show not a wisp of the skill on display in Dreams. Not surprisingly, Draper overlooks those early efforts.

With his man crush trumping his critical insights, Draper chooses not to relate the fate of plucky agent Dystel. That story was hard to miss. The proudly liberal but seriously disgusted publisher Peter Osnos went public three years ago. According to Osnos, Obama dumped his devoted long time agent after Dreams took off and then signed a seven-figure deal with Crown, using only a by-the-hour attorney.

Obama pulled off the deal after his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate but before being sworn in as Senator, this way to avoid the disclosure and reporting requirements applicable to members of Congress. Osnos publicly scolded Obama for his “ruthlessness” and “his questionable judgment about using public service as a personal payday.”

But that was in 2006, when Obama was mere mortal. Today, Obama is a literary god, however false, and challenging the gods is apparently above the AP’s pay grade.

©Jack Cashill
AmericanThinker.com – November 18, 2009

Editor’s note: For a more complete account of this phenomenon, read Jack Cashill’s amazing new book, “Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture.

Though we as a family don’t “celebrate” Halloween, we are looking forward to a night of family fun, food and friends. The stew is in the Crock Pot, Ghost Busters is ready for a Premier viewing with the kids and the slumber party guest has a pillow waiting for her head.

Turning the clock back seems to usher in the Holiday Season with earlier bedtimes, the scent of fall flavored candles and the desire to turn the oven on and bake, putting a smile on one’s face and creating anticipation for the first slice of pumpkin pie , eaten with family and friends, tonight perhaps, and then again for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But the commercialism that this time of year brings, beginning with Halloween lights of orange and black, to Christmas lights of green and red, for many is the catalyst of the holiday season, wholly lacking in meaning and purpose.

What if we could truly turn the clock back and bring back a better time in America? What would that look like? In my mind, I picture a Norman Rockwell image and the idyllic scenes of the American family spending a holly, jolly Christmas together, with the focus on family and Christ and not on the walls of Walmart decked with superfluous fluff. But what would make for a picture perfect America and how could we turn back the clock per se to attain it?

Politics will not bring back the best of what Pumpkin Pie represents in America. The first Thanksgiving gave thanks to God for His Bounty and His Provision. Politicians have never provided Pumpkin Pie. Today, I set aside time to ponder turning back the clock, pumpkin pie and a time with my family that reflects a yearning for moments gone by when America cherished what was lasting and good and understood that all Pumpkin Pie comes from God in heaven.

I originally wrote this last year, but in case you missed or forgot it, here it is again on the eve of this “All Hallows’ Eve”:

It’s almost Halloween, the time of year for scary costumes, ghost stories, horror movies, haunted houses, and the like. So, why do many people enjoy being scared (at least in controlled situations)? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons.

First, mentally and physiologically, fear is similar to exhilaration and excitement. The chemicals that go coursing through our brains and bodies when we’re scared are largely the same ones that are released when we get extremely excited about positive things, like winning a big prize. It’s “thrilling” to be scared. Interestingly, people generally seem to enjoy less-extreme thrill sensations as they get older, which probably explains why the lines outside of horror movies and haunted houses are populated predominantly with teenagers.

Another reason people like to be scared may be that “surviving” a scare gives us a powerful feeling. Exposing ourselves to the things that scare us and living to tell about it gives us the sense that we’ve mastered or conquered our fears. For some people, this requires a situation in which the threat is real, like skydiving, while for others, it can be achieved in a situation in which the threat is merely imagined, like a scary movie.

I think for some, playing flesh-eating zombies or blood-sucking vampires on Halloween is a form of exploring and exerting control over the “dark sides” of their personalities, what Carl Jung called our “shadows.” (It’s kind of like the morbid fascination that many people have with trying to understand serial killers and how a human being can be consciously, deliberately evil.)

For most though, I think the costume element of Halloween just gives them a chance to “try on” different identities or show sides of themselves that they don’t usually show, and people generally enjoy that. Think about it – haven’t you seen people get “crazier” at Halloween costume parties than they do on other occasions? There’s something “freeing” about the opportunity to attribute one’s behavior to a character for an evening. (It’s kind of like how some people drink a little, act ridiculous, and later blame their behavior on drunkenness when they weren’t even drunk, but I’ll go into that next time Spring Break rolls around!)

Personally, I’m not a big believer in the whole ghost thing, but as a kid, I always thought it would be fun to spend Halloween night in a place that’s “really haunted” (or at least purported to be). So, Saturday night, I’ll be hosting a small party and spending the night in a hotel room famous for reports of ghostly phenomena. This actually will be the third time I’ve done it, and even though nothing paranormal happened the first two times (surprise, surprise), my friends and I had fun with it, so Saturday night’s the latest sequel and if anything strange occurs, I’ll let you know.

Happy Halloween!

Note: Doctrinal deviations from the true Christian message within the church have been prophesied, though the origin of the prophecy is not specified (1 Tim 4:1-2); cf Acts 20:29-30: “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them.”
=================================

(New International Version)
1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.
3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.
4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,
5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
===============================

(New King James Version)
1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,
2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,
3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
===============================

(New American Standard Bible)
1 But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,
2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,
3 men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.
4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude;
5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.
===============================

(The Message)
1-5 The Spirit makes it clear that as time goes on, some are going to give up on the faith and chase after demonic illusions put forth by professional liars. These liars have lied so well and for so long that they’ve lost their capacity for truth. They will tell you not to get married. They’ll tell you not to eat this or that food – perfectly good food God created to be eaten heartily and with thanksgiving by believers who know better! Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks. Nothing is to be sneered at and thrown out. God’s Word and our prayers make every item in creation holy.
===============================
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Read on to see how we are encouraged to conduct ourselves – 1 Timothy 4: 7, 12, 16.
===============================
(New American Bible)
7 Avoid profane and silly myths. Train yourself for devotion,
12 Let no one have contempt for your youth, but set an example for those who believe, in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.
16 Attend to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in both tasks, for by doing so you will save both yourself and those who listen to you.
=================================
(New International Version)
6 If you point these things out to the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, brought up in the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.
7 Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.
12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
16 Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
===============================
(New King James Version)
7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.
12 Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
16 Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.
===============================
(New American Standard Bible)
7 But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness;
12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.
16 Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.
===============================
(The Message)
7 Stay clear of silly stories that get dressed up as religion. Exercise daily in God — no spiritual flabbiness, please!
12 And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity.
16 Keep a firm grasp on both your character and your teaching. Don’t be diverted. Just keep at it. Both you and those who hear you will experience salvation.
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NOTE: The New American Bible is online @ http://www.usccb.org/nab/index.shtml.

The other versions are online @ http://www.biblegateway.com/
2 Chron. 7:14 in God’s Word, He states, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”