Take a Moment to view a Video explaining Religious Opposition to Same Sex marriages

Minnesota For Marriage Releases New Minnesota Marriage Minute Video: “I have heard people talk about same-sex marriage interfering with ‘Religious liberty’ principles. What does that mean?”It means that our country was founded on the principle that people of faith are guaranteed to be able to live their beliefs, and that legalization of same-sex marriage affects that right in many profound ways. CLICK HERE to view the video. Please take the time to share it with all your friends, neighbors, family and colleagues. The Minnesota Marriage Minute is an ongoing dialogue with Minnesota voters hosted by veteran news anchor Kalley Yanta. The educational videos are designed to explore issues related to the marriage amendment. The videos are in a question and answer format and are released on a weekly basis.   The Marriage Minute series is a great resource for understanding the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment and equipping you to speak about the amendment. Please share this important educational resource with family members, friends and neighbors. It’s critically important that all our supporters be as informed as possible about the amendment, and this series of videos is a quick and easy way for you and your friends to learn about what is at stake in this election. CLICK HERE to view this week’s episode of Minnesota Marriage Minute and then share it with everyone you can!   Prepared and paid for by Minnesota for Marriage, 2355 Fairview Ave N, Box 301, Roseville, MN 55113, in support of the Minnesota Marriage Protection Amendment.

ABOUT MINNESOTA FOR MARRIAGE Minnesota for Marriage is a broad coalition of leaders, both inter-faith and people outside the religious community, who support the Minnesota Marriage Amendment and asked the Legislature to place it on the ballot. These leaders have assembled a campaign to ensure this amendment passes. http://www.MINNESOTAFORMARRIAGE.com

The Obama Lie that he is a Fiscal Conservative is like a claim Hitler Bragged being Jewish

Obama Doubles Down on Lies

About Spending and Debt

by John Hinderaker   at  PowerLine:

We have written several times about the Democrats’ claim that Barack Obama is somehow a fiscal conservative. The claim is doubly risible, in that 1) the Obama administration has run up spending and debt totals that dwarf those of any other presidency, and 2) Obama has never aspired to be a fiscal conservative, or to impose any sort of fiscal restraint. On the contrary, he has always pressed for as much spending and debt as he could wring out of Congress. His budgets are so ridiculous with respect to both spending and debt that in the last two years, not a single Congressman or Senator of either party has voted for them. So for Obama to now claim the mantle of a tightwad is one more sign of his campaign’s desperation.

Nevertheless, today, at a fundraiser in Baltimore, Obama returned to the theme that he is some kind of fiscal skinflint:

Spending under my administration has grown more slowly than under any president in 60 years. So this notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It’s just not true.

As we pointed out here, here and here, the Democrats’ claim relies mainly on attributing the first year of the Obama administration, FY 2009, to President Bush. This was, of course, the year of the “stimulus,” as well as a huge jump in discretionary spending. Since then, even though the stimulus has expired, spending has gone up even higher. These are the federal budget deficits for fiscal years 2005 through 2012 (2012 is estimated):

2005: 318,000,000,000
2006: 248,000,000,000
2007: 161,000,000,000

The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, one-third of the way through FY 2007.

2008: 459,000,000,000

Now we get to the Obama administration, which began one-third of the way through the 2009 fiscal year. The Democratic Congress did not pass a budget resolution until President Bush was gone and Obama had been sworn in. On top of the massive spending increase called for in that budget, the Democrats enacted the $800 billion “stimulus” bill; some, but not all, of that money was spent in FY 2009:

2009: 1,413,000,000,000
2010: 1,293,000,000,000
2011: 1,300,000,000,000
2012: 1,327,000,000,000

So Obama can disclaim responsibility for the largest (by far) budget deficits on record only if we assume that he has had nothing to do with events that have taken place subsequent to his inauguration. Which seems to be emerging as Obama’s broader campaign theme: Don’t blame me, I’m not the President. I am only a bystander!

At the same fundraiser today–does Obama do anything other than travel from one fundraiser to another?–he said:

You can pretty much put their campaign on a tweet and have some characters to spare. The challenge is because folks are still hurting right now, the other side feels that its enough for them to just sit back and say, “Things aren’t as good as they should be and it’s Obama’s fault.”

Hey, he’s only the President! The reality is that Obama has a record, and it is terrible. His record is so bad that he can’t run on it. Instead, he misrepresents his record and claims credit for virtues (e.g., fiscal conservatism) which, until now, he has never espoused. November can’t come soon enough.

James Carville May be of Foul Mouth and Mind, but he Knows Politics

…….and he’s been around a long time directing what is on his mind.

Dems to Obama: Voters don’t believe economy talk

 

by Byron York at the Examiner:

Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville have released a striking new report arguing in stark terms that some key voting groups now reject President Obama’s claim that the economy is improving — and may well reject Obama himself in November.

Democracy Corps, the political consulting group run by Greenberg and Carville, showed several Obama campaign commercials to focus groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  Several of the group members, who were “all independents or weak partisans and ticket-splitters” and included both Obama and McCain voters from 2008, became irritated when shown Obama ads touting economic improvement.  They don’t see that improvement in their own lives, the report says, and they don’t believe Obama when he claims things are better.

“The spots that simply talk about progress on the economy did not do well,” Greenberg and Carville write.  “The first offered a graphic depiction of job decline during the early months of the recession and job growth under President Obama. The second highlighted progress on jobs in the automobile industry. These ads did not win over most Obama voters….Half the participants in the groups had voted for Obama, but less than a quarter gave [the auto ad] a positive rating. The spot displaying the job growth graph did not fare much better: only about one-third (12 out of 34) gave this a positive rating.”

“It’s like how things are getting better?  Where?” asked one non-college-educated woman in Columbia, Ohio.  “I don’t see it.  Makes me mad.”  Even Obama’s oft-made claim that he saved the auto industry angered some.  “The auto industry spot, surprisingly, produces a lot of resentment,” Greenberg and Carville write.  “Women in particular did not see how it related to them, and even some men working outside manufacturing thought it left them out.”  As one woman in Ohio said: “Good job for the autoworkers, but where does that leave my grandchildren?”

After extensive interviews with the groups, Greenberg and Carville conclude that Obama’s current campaign message — that he inherited a terrible economy but that now things are getting better — is disastrously wrong.  “We will face an impossible headwind in November if we do not move to a new narrative,” Greenberg and Carville write, “one that contextualizes the recovery but, more importantly, focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class.”

“It is elites who are creating a conventional wisdom that an incumbent president must run on his economic performance — and therefore must convince voters that things are moving in the right direction,” Greenberg and Carville conclude.  “They are wrong, and that will fail.”

The saving grace for Democrats in all this, the two conclude, is that most of the voters don’t like Mitt Romney. “We are losing these voters on the economy, but holding on because Romney is vulnerable,” Greenberg and Carville write.  “Respondents immediately volunteer that Romney is rich, out of touch, and in the pocket for Wall Street and big finance. That was true before we introduced any information — reflecting the outside advertising on Bain that was airing at the time of the groups in Ohio.”  The group members particularly didn’t like the idea of Romney having money in offshore accounts and his embrace of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan.

But here is the painful bottom line for the White House: “Despite Romney’s clear weaknesses, when asked whether Romney or Obama would do a better job on the economy, more chose Romney,” Greenberg and Carville write.  “That is some measure of the challenge we face, since many have heard the president’s economic message.”

The consultants urge Obama to find a new economic message that appeals specifically to the stressed-out middle class.  And now, Obama aides are pointing to a speech the president is scheduled to give in Cleveland Thursday as an opportunity to “frame” the debate in a way advantageous to Democrats.  But as Romney aides see it, the unspoken message of the Greenberg-Carville report is that Obama’s only truly viable option is to step up negative attacks on Romney.

“It looked to me that they thought their most potent stuff was to go after Romney,” one Romney aide said Tuesday morning.  “It’s tough to discuss a vision for the future, when your three and a half years in office have been unsuccessful in turning around the economy.”

Atheism….No, Science is the Left’s New Religion

Science Demands Big Government!

by Dennis Prager….Radio Show Host

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The quotation of the week last week had to be that of Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces.

And he did so using, of all things, evolution.

Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on sugar, a pure carbohydrate?

“We have evolved,” the professor concluded his piece, “to need coercion.”

In order to understand both how silly and dangerous this comment is, one must first understand the role evolutionary explanations play in academic life — and in left-wing life generally. The left has always sought single, non-values based explanations for human behavior. It was originally economics. Man is homo economicus, the creature whose behavior can be explained by economics.

Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explain human behavior. Therefore, to cite a widespread example, poverty, not one’s moral value system, or lack of it, causes crime.

Recently, however, the economic explanation for human behavior has lost some of its appeal. Even many liberal professors and editorial writers have had to grapple with the “surprising” fact that violent crime has declined, not increased, in the current recession.

In the words of “Scientific American,” “Homo economicus is extinct.”

But the biggest reason for the declining popularity of economic man is that science has displaced economics — which is not widely regarded as a science — as the left’s real religion. Increasingly, therefore, something held to be indisputably scientific — evolution — is offered as the left’s explanation for virtually everything.

Evolution explains love, altruism, morality, economic behavior, God, religion, intelligence. Indeed, it explains everything but music. For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.

Now, along comes Professor Lieberman, not merely to use evolution to explain human behavior but to justify coercive left-wing social policy.

In other words, the left is not only progressive when it coerces citizens to act in ways the left deems appropriate but also science itself — through evolution — inexorably leads to government coercion on behalf of such policies.

Whereas until now, the democratic left has attempted to persuade humanity that left-wing policies are inherently progressive, this Harvard professor has gone a huge step further. Left-wing policies are scientifically based. This is exactly how the Soviet Communists defended their totalitarian system. Everything they advocated was “naoochni,”“scientific.”

To differ with the left is not only definitionally sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, and bigoted (SIXHIRB, as I have labeled it) — it is now against science itself.

Those who oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s law in the name of liberty are therefore missing the point. Not only does another left-wing god — health — demand government coercion, so does evolution itself. Those Americans who place liberty above other considerations and oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to ban large sodas might as well argue against the earth’s tilt because they don’t like winter.

That is the logical upshot of Professor Lieberman’s position.

But there is an even more foolish and dangerous upshot to “we have evolved to need coercion.”

If we take this claim seriously and use evolution to guide social policy, little that is truly decent will survive. Is there anything less prescribed by evolution than, let us say, hospices? Professor Lieberman writes that humans have evolved into cooperating with one another. But he cannot deny that the basic evolutionary proposition is survival of the fittest. How, then, can an evolutionary perspective demand the expending of energy and resources to take care of those who are dying? And if evolution demands the survival of the species, wouldn’t evolution call for other “coercion” — against abortion, for example?

Which all proves that what the professor really means to say — and more and more college graduates will be taught — is this: “We have evolved to vote Democrat.”

Republicans feel better about Romney!

 

GOP Mood Toward Romney’s Fall Prospects Brightens

By Brian Bakst – June 11, 2012

 

ROSEMONT, Ill. (AP) – Republicans riding high from a string of breaks in their favor are increasingly optimistic about Mitt Romney’s chances to claim the White House in November, even among conservatives who had qualms about making him the party’s nominee.

The bullish take is reflected in interviews with party strategists and activists, including people who supported Romney rivals during the primary season. Mood matters because it can fuel fundraising and volunteer hustle. But some of those GOP players stress that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has little room for error if he expects to topple an incumbent president.

The chest-thumping follows a GOP victory in last week’s Wisconsin recall election that saved Gov. Scott Walker’s job. The race galvanized Republicans who saw it as an early 2012 referendum on conservative fiscal principles in an election that was likely to hinge on the shape of the economy.

Even Rick Santorum, who spent a primary season casting doubt on Romney’s ability to succeed in a general election, says things are looking up for Romney.

“I can tell you, I feel a little bit better about that election since what happened on Tuesday up in Wisconsin,” Santorum said Friday at a Conservative Political Action Conference in Chicago.

Some Republican voters concede they aren’t as passionate about electing Romney as they are about booting Democratic President Barack Obama from the Oval Office.

“He’s obviously it, and he’s what is left,” FBI agent David Hirtz, an active member of his central Illinois tea party, said of Romney. “Anybody is better than Obama.”

In mid-May, a USA Today/Gallup poll found 81 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents predicting an Obama victory. Among Republicans, 68 percent thought Romney will win — about the same percentage of faith GOP voters placed in 2008 nominee John McCain at this point in his campaign.

But that was before the closely watched Wisconsin recall, the release of key campaign finance figures and the latest figures on job growth raised concerns about a slowing economic recovery, which gave Romney more fodder to pound Obama’s stewardship.

Romney and his Republican allies pulled down more money than Obama and aligned Democratic Party committees in May, a notable shift in the money chase. The $76 million haul was a big jump up from what Romney and the GOP had raised the month before, and it was comfortably above the $60 million gathered by the combined Obama team.

A conservative base that was deeply splintered during the Republican primaries has coalesced around Romney even faster than some in the party were expecting.

That’s the case with Bobbi Jo Rohrberg, a 36-year-old teacher and conservative blogger from southwestern Iowa who backed Santorum at the state’s leadoff caucuses in January. She was worried a Romney nomination would look too much like McCain’s fateful run.

Rohrberg said Romney initially struck her as someone who was “not going to have a lot of bite, not going to show the teeth, going to be very likeable and agreeable to go along and get along, which isn’t going to get you anywhere if you are going to win.”

But she said those concerns faded after Romney blasted Obama outside failed California solar energy company Solyndra, which received federal stimulus loans, and his recent efforts to brand the president as incapable of guiding the economy.

Virginia Procuniar, who plans to contribute money to Romney after initially holding back, said her confidence in his chances comes from seeing Obama have to play defense more regularly.

“Obama is his (own) worst enemy. As he gets more in a corner and more on the defensive, he’s making gaffes that are ticking people off,” said Procuniar, who at 65 recently retired from the insurance company in Chicago.

On Friday, Obama exposed himself to GOP ridicule for an ill-cast appraisal that the “the private sector is doing fine.” He later clarified that he meant there was “good momentum” lately, but the earlier remark had already become GOP ad material. Romney released a Web ad Sunday slamming Obama for the remark by contrasting it with eight people who tell how they’ve struggled despite the recovering economy.

For the GOP, the climb to victory remains steep. Several states that Obama won four years ago would have to flip for Romney to reach the required 270 electoral votes.

“Let’s be honest about it, at the presidential level, the Democrats took the Republicans out behind the woodshed a little bit in 2008. By the sheer number of electoral votes Barack Obama won last time, clearly we have our work cut out for us,” said Gregg Keller, executive director of the American Conservative Union. “It’s a tough map for us and no one should think this is going to be a walk in the park. It’s going to be a tough race. But Republicans and conservatives believe this is an eminently winnable race.”

The conservative gathering just outside Chicago — where Obama’s political operation is based — focused attention on a Midwest region that could prove pivotal.

To the west, Iowa will be one of the most hotly contested states. Republicans have overtaken Democrats in Iowa voter party registration, the first time in six years they’ve had that pre-election advantage.

To the east, an Obama repeat in Indiana is viewed as unlikely and Ohio with its 18 electoral votes will be in play as usual. Republicans see a chance to apply pressure in Wisconsin and Michigan, too.

Illinois, the state that first sent Obama to the U.S. Senate, is hardly fertile territory for Romney. But conservative activists like Robert Baker of Princeton, Ill., said his local tea party group is already planning weekend canvass trips across the border in Iowa and Wisconsin, much like they did ahead of last week’s recall. The Wisconsin win put a taste in their mouths, Baker said.

“We’ve demonstrated we can mobilize,” the retired math teacher said. “We’ll be pounding the pavement and handing out literature.”

 

Unlike Obama, Mitt Does Seem a Good Guy……Unlike Obama, Mitt Does have a Faith

Barack Hussein Obama is noted for his disingenuousness, his deviousness, his duplicity, his deceit and dishonesty, but above all by his divisiveness and sells himself as Black.

Mitt Romney is Mormon and has earne a lot of money.

The following article is:

It’s Mormon In America

by David Frum   at   Daily Beast:

 Romney’s religion just might be his greatest asset.

Voters are likely to know two things about Mitt Romney: that he’s rich and that he’s a Mormon. At the same time, more than one fifth of Americans tell pollsters they won’t vote for a Mormon for president. Yet if Americans understood Mormonism a little better, they might begin to think of Romney’s faith as a feature, not a bug, in the Romney candidacy. If anything, Romney’s religion may be the best offset to the isolation from ordinary people imposed by his wealth.

It was Romney’s faith that sent him knocking on doors as a missionary—even as his governor father campaigned for the presidency of the United States. It was Romney’s position as a Mormon lay leader that had him sitting at kitchen tables doing family budgets during weekends away from Bain Capital. It was Romney’s faith that led him and his sons to do chores together at home while his colleagues in the firm were buying themselves ostentatious toys.

Maybe the most isolating thing about being rich in today’s America is the feeling of entitlement. Not since the 19th century have the wealthiest expressed so much certainty that they deserve what they have, even as their fellow citizens have less and less.

To be a Mormon, on the other hand, is to feel perpetually uncertain of your place in America. It’s been a long time since the U.S. government waged war on the Mormons of the Utah Territory. Still, even today, Mormons are America’s most mockable minority. It’s hard to imagine a Broadway musical satirizing Jews, blacks, or gays. There is no Napoleon Dynamite about American Muslims.

 This uncertainty about Mormonism’s status in America no doubt contributes to the ferocious work ethic typical of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons are taught to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause,” in the words of Mormon scripture. Stephen Mansfield, the (non-Mormon) author of The Mormonizing of America, explains: “Mormons believe they are in life to pass tests set for them.” The passage of repeated tests leads to self-improvement, ultimately to the point of perfection. In the words of early Mormon leader Lorenzo Snow: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.” From the point of view of Christian orthodoxy, that idea may be unsettling; as a spur to effort, it’s unrivaled.

Like their Calvinist forebears, Mormons are inclined to interpret economic success as an indicator of divine approval, a fulfillment of the Book of Mormon’s promise that the faithful will “prosper in the land.” This prosperity gospel may explain some of Romney’s defiant pride in his material success. Yet Romney’s attitude toward money seems also to have been shaped by the LDS church’s emphatic hostility to conspicuous consumption and lavish display.

According to his biographers Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, Romney was horrified when one of his Bain partners purchased himself a private plane. Yes, Romney bought a $55,000 car elevator. But for every story of a rich man’s extravagance, there are many more of Romney’s frugality: patched gloves, dented cars, and $25 haircuts.

If Romney’s attitude toward money is influenced by his church, so is his outlook on how money should be used to help those in need. Mitt and Ann Romney have donated millions to the LDS church, a substantial portion of which has gone to its own internal welfare state for members in need. Unlike government aid, those who receive LDS welfare are expected to “give back”; they contributed almost 900,000 person-days in 2011. Here may originate some of Romney’s skepticism about federal welfare programs.

Of course voters may also want to weigh some of Mormonism’s more worrisome features. Just as 19th-century Mormons found themselves in profound conflict with the United States over the issue of polygamy, so could the theologically grounded commitment of today’s LDS church to one-man-one-woman marriage place its members on a collision course with the 21st-century American mainstream, which increasingly accepts same-sex marriage.

And then there is the uniquely problematic character of Mormon scripture, which makes claims about people, events, and even whole civilizations for which there is no external evidence at all. Many Mormons maintain their faith by insisting that the best evidence of ultimate truth is found in a personal feeling that one’s beliefs are correct. As a businessman, Mitt Romney was a brutally realistic analyst. But on the most important questions in his life, he may have closed his mind to unwelcome facts.

Yet, all told, the influence of Mormonism on Mitt Romney’s attitude and outlook is far more positive than negative—and far more positive than millions of anti-Mormon voters seem to understand.

David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor.