Dennis Prager Examines the Complaint of a Methodist Marxist “Minister”

A Christian Minister Opposes ‘God Bless America’
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
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If you were a Christian minister who was given the opportunity to write an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, what subject would you choose? War and peace? The decline in faith among America’s young people? The increasingly empty pews in mainstream Protestant churches? The ethical decline in society? Or any of myriad other morally and religiously troubling issues?
Well, not if you were a Methodist minister named James P. Marsh, Jr.

For this man of the cloth, the issue troubling him so much that he had to write about in the Washington Post was … people standing and singing “God Bless America” at Washington National baseball games.

If you want to know how far much of mainline Christianity has declined, Pastor Marsh’s column would be a fine place to begin.

Think back to any time in American history. It is hard to imagine that a Christian minister would have any reaction to his fellow Americans standing and singing “God Bless America” other than unalloyed delight.

But that was when mainline Christian ministers believed in Christianity, sought to bring fellow Americans to God, celebrated America and hoped that God would bestow His blessings on this country.

Or to put it another way, that was before many mainstream Christians embraced another religion — leftism, the most dynamic religion of the last hundred years.

Leftism has influenced Western societies far more deeply than Christianity has since the beginning of the twentieth century. And leftism has influenced far more Christians (and Jews) than Christianity (or Judaism) has influenced leftists.

It is difficult to detect a single Christian idea or belief among the reasons the minister gives for not standing for God Bless America. All his reasons are leftist boilerplate. Had he been identified as an official of the ACLU or a professor in some social science department, no reader would have been surprised.

1. “I sit to stand for my religious beliefs.”

Presumably the minister’s “religious beliefs” are Christian. But how exactly does standing to sing “God Bless America” violate Christian beliefs? He doesn’t tell us. One would think that a Christian minister would be thoroughly delighted that tens of thousands of his fellow Americans were singing “God Bless America.”

2. “Being pressured to stand at a baseball game for a song that’s essentially a prayer seems, well, un-American. It feels like being pushed into the river for a baptism I didn’t choose.”

Only a true-believing leftist would label people standing and singing “God Bless America” as “un-American.”

3. “It’s an empty ritual, and one that I don’t think holds much theological water.”

Tens of thousands of Americans of all races and backgrounds standing and singing “God Bless America” is an empty ritual? And why doesn’t asking God to bless America “hold much theological water?” What is more theologically sound than asking God to bless America (or Canada, or the UK, or Costa Rica, or Portugal or any other free country)?

4. “I’m reminded of the admonition not to pray just to be seen by others.”

Who is James Marsh to judge 30,000 people’s motivations? And besides, when I stand at Los Angeles Kings hockey games when they honor a member of the armed forces, I do so in large measure precisely because I do want others, especially my son and other young people, to see me do so.

5. “When we ask for blessings to be bestowed only on ‘us,’ we are in danger of seeing ourselves as set apart from the world. “

Who but a leftist could read “God Bless America” as “God Bless only America?”

6. “Why do we all too frequently seek to invoke rituals that undermine our common bonds?”

Most of us think that this ritual strengthens our common bonds. Perhaps the pastor is unaware that the song was written by Irving Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant.

7. “What does the good secular humanist do during this song?”

The good secular humanist stands and sings “God Bless America.” Even most liberals stand and heartily sing this song at baseball games. It takes someone who is not only left-wing but foolish to protest against doing so.

8. “We have the right to sit down when everyone else stands up.”

True. And the rest of us have a right express contempt for your decision and for your using Christianity to defend it.

Comment: One of the most significant reasons Christianity as an institution is disappearing from American life at a time when Americans need it most, is the preponderance of mental lightweight Marxists within the National Council of Churches communities, preaching the unChristianity held so dearly by Methodist James Marsh.

Feminism has buried Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans in the dustbins of yesterday’s hasbeens. Stage one thinking prevails. Peace signs flourish. Pets are worshipped. Males flock from these verbal sewing circles leaving lonely ladies and the angry in the flock. The James Marshes are welcomed and found popular.

The Orwellian Obama is Making America Orwellian

OBAMA’S ORWELLIAN LEGACY

by Justin Walker at realclearpolitics

Is America moving toward the Big Brother dystopia envisioned by George Orwell in some of his most famous novels?

That question has been on many minds in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of phone records and Internet data. The ACLU, for one, called these programs “beyond Orwellian” in a statement released last week. The ACLU’s response is characteristically feverish, but in at least one respect, the organization is right: We are indeed approaching an Orwellian world.

Given the safeguards in place against abuse, the surveillance programs are not the problem. Although Americans are right to jealously guard their liberty and to display a healthy degree of suspicion about government programs of this scale, suspicion should not obscure two truths. First, the evidence released thus far suggests that the programs are necessary and effective in disrupting, dismantling, and defeating terrorist networks that so often rely upon phone and Internet communications. Second, the Constitution’s checks and balances are at work in the oversight of these programs.

The phone monitoring component does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s calls without a court order. PRISM — the program that collects emails, videos, and other data from major Internet companies — is limited to foreign targets and does not include U.S. citizens. These programs have been supervised by all three branches of government; Congress has approved them and is regularly briefed, and federal judges continue to scrutinize requests for targeting of specific terror suspects.

But the fact that these operations are operating under the rule of law is not the end of the story. For if we are not approaching the totalitarian nightmare of a novel like “1984,” the revelations provide a stunning example of how President Obama has come to resemble a character in Orwell’s other dystopian parable, “Animal Farm.”

That 1945 novella tells of a farm revolution led by pigs, who drive out their oppressive human master, only to move into his house, don his clothes, and wield his brutal whip to subjugate the other animals. At the story’s conclusion, the pigs’ victims gaze in on their new masters drinking and playing cards with half a dozen farmers. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

To anyone comparing the conduct of Barack Obama with that of George W. Bush, the sense of confusion should feel familiar. America’s 44th president ran against almost all of Bush’s national security policies. But once power was in his hands, he began to embrace them as avidly as the pigs wielded their whips.

Senator Obama had voted against renewal of the Patriot Act in 2005 because he said it allowed the government “to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document — through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made.” But in 2011, President Obama signed the renewal of the same law and defended its roving wiretaps and searches of business records as vital to America’s counterterrorism efforts.

Presidential candidate Obama ran against the very ethos of Bush’s national security program, saying it put forward “a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” But just last week in California, President Obama told Americans they “have to make some choices as a society” because “you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”

The real effect of the NSA stories is to cement a narrative about Obama that will likely become part of his legacy: the liberal senator and constitutional law professor who, like the pigs in “Animal Farm,” metamorphosed into what he had so notoriously opposed. Guantanamo remains open. Drones still rain down on Pakistan, Yemen, and anywhere else the president sees fit. Leaks are prosecuted vigorously and reporters are investigated to uncover their sources. And now, the president is affirming the surveillance practices he once mused could be unconstitutional. In light of these actions alone, it seems that Barack Obama has learned that George W. Bush got a lot of things right.

The point of noting the president’s porcine transformation is not to criticize his current policies, but rather to serve as an instructive example for future White House aspirants: The responsibilities of power are difficult to reconcile with lazy criticism that is so easy to dispense from the sidelines. As long as he fails to recognize the debt that he, and the nation, owe to his predecessor, he will be practicing a vice that Orwell was a master of depicting: hypocrisy.

Dustin Walker is the editor of RealClearDefense.

Comment: Considerably more Orwellian in Obamaling society is the nation’s one party press, educational, entertainment, and even religious industries, none of them concerned regarding there own bigotry, its power, and what controlled thinking and believing has done to the nation and the nation’s individuals.

No Obamalings Seem to Know Anything in Obama Scandals

THE RISE OF THE FOURTH BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT

by Jonathan Turley at the Washington Post:

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

Read further: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rise-of-the-fourth-branch-of-government/2013/05/24/c7faaad0-c2ed-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html

Bob Schieffer, old and often dense, Is very disturbed at What he Sees in Obama’s Washington

Pages issuing Obamacare are seven plus feet high and unreadable……that didn’t seem to disturb CBS Obama talking point man, Bob Schieffer at CBS……The nearly universal mass obedience and homage paid to Barack Hussein Obama by CBS and nearly all others in newsprint and television, didn’t seem to phase the old man. Bob Schieffer is a Party man at a Party News Organization doing what Party People do…..Help Party friends.

Mr. Schieffer claims being disturbed by ObamaScandals, but apparently never paid too much attention to the president’s habit of scheming and avoiding truthtelling for the past five years.

It has been good for Schieffer and Charlie Rose television business for the past five years spewing out goodness and love toward Obama the Great, despite the Great’s unearning of it on all fronts except the president’s artistry of conning with big tongue.

Biddies Schieffer and Rose will not be listing an Obama success or two for the nation as its president either on the home or foreign front, for there have been none. Stalemate is the best he has achieved from his eternal bull-speaking and pomp, and for this they will continue to adore this nation’s first black president for it would be racist not to……..or would it?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/16/schieffer_on_scandals_its_very_very_disturbing_what_were_seeing.html

Stunning News: The New Yorker Writes Obama’s Benghazi Coverup WELL!

I have never enjoyed reading a magazine as much as the New Yorker during and throughout thirty years or so of my married life. Eventually it became just another piece of Lefty wording on Lefty topics of concern…..losing its cunning for outstanding topics, sense of humor, and remarkable ability of writing pithy, informative, reliably honest reviews of events and people, mostly those in politics.

Even though “New York” the magazine was my and my wife’s kind of American magazine for good American reading, good humor, and much dependable information.

Our America was a far less ugly America then……and I and my wife were Democrats.

I was shocked when I came across its recent article on the Benghazi coverup. The mainstream Obama press has poo-pooed the crisis, spending much energy protecting their Marxist Lord Fauntleroy in the Oval Office.

The following article from the New Yorker is titled, SPINNING BENGHAZI:

It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.
This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.

Click below for New York Times article: BENGHAZI E-MAILS PUT WHITE HOUSE ON DEFENSIVE

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/us/politics/benghazi-e-mails-put-white-house-on-the-defensive.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

THE Obamaling Values Message: Vote Democrat for Better Screwing Rights

By: John Hayward at Red State

Hyper-sexualized, asexual America

The FDA wants 15-year-old girls to get morning-after birth-control drugs over the counter, without the knowledge or consent of either parents or doctors. President Obama says he approves of this decision. But birth-control activists say it doesn’t go far enough. They want the requirement for teenage purchasers to show photo ID dropped, and they’d really like to see 11-year-old girls getting these pills.

Behind this drive to shower the Tiger Beat set with birth control supplies lies the conviction that young kids are sexy beasts whose urges cannot be controlled or suppressed. Fifteen, thirteen, eleven years old… they’re all swingers now, and nothing can be done to slow them down. All we can do is provide kids with the supplies necessary to cut down on sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. The religious hangups and moral standards of parents cannot be allowed to interfere with the wisdom of the State in this matter.

(The ability of previous generations to set higher standards is an inscrutable mystery, which today’s birth control activists would rather not discuss. It’s also considered very bad form to point out that the sex partners of those young teenage girls might be considerably older than fifteen, and grateful for easy access to contraceptives that support their “lifestyle.”)

This all seems a bit inconsistent with the philosophy of socialized medicine, in which the behavior of citizens must be controlled to reduce health care costs. Individual health is supposedly a matter of public concern, because unhealthy behavior comes at the expense of the general public. The fit are unfairly expected to pay the freight for the fat. With this in mind, why is the same State that tinkers with restaurant menus, and takes other steps to either warn citizens away from unhealthy meal options or forbid them outright, so intent on facilitating a profoundly unhealthy lifestyle for children?

The answer can be found in the Left’s drive to hunt down and destroy all that remains of traditional sexual morality, because it’s a barrier to the proper relationship they envision between citizens and the State. The result is a hyper-sexualized but asexual world, in which the differences between men and women have been eliminated. This is a huge undertaking, so it’s important to get cracking when citizens are still young and impressionable.

The traditional understanding of sexual relations emphasizes the profound differences between men and women. They are not in any sense interchangeable. They have a unique need for one another, and different needs from society. The union of men and women is not seen as exclusively serving to produce and raise children, but child-rearing is exceedingly difficult without married men and women working together.

It seems like a laughable understatement to observe that pregnancy is one of the greatest differences between men and women. Technology and culture have alleviated most of the other life-shaping distinctions between the sexes. Male strength, for example, is obviously meaningful in professional sports or military endeavors, but it’s no longer a prerequisite for general career success or survival. Nevertheless, pregnancy remains the unique burden of women. That doesn’t mean it should be the unique responsibility of women.

This is the fundamental truth behind traditional sexual customs, which no amount of feminist social engineering has ever been able to erase. Pregnancy is the responsibility of both partners. It takes two people to make a baby, but only one of them has to carry it to term. The male partner in this endeavor often decides to walk away, leaving the woman alone to face childbirth and all that follows. Irresponsible men clearly see this as an attractive option.

The past half-century has seen a vast project, financed with gigantic amounts of public money, to make it a socially acceptable option. The power of society to shape individual behavior is enormous. Across a population of millions, widely-understood social expectations result in tectonic shifts of behavior. Not everyone cares what society thinks of their behavior, of course, but a lot of people do.

The traditional understanding of sex as an activity that binds men and women together, giving them different responsibilities toward each other, is very conducive to healthy social development and personal independence. The latter might seem counter-intuitive at first – the whole point of the “sexual revolution” was to give people sex without consequence so they could be more independent, right? – but consider the independence an intact family grants to its children as they enter the adult world. The emotional and financial support such a family offers its children is invaluable. Families are the gateway out of poverty; study after study has found no government program able to match an intact family’s ability to steer kids away from crime, drugs, and other dead ends. Families that stick together also have a better chance of avoiding dependency on government programs.

It is foolish to accept the Left’s insistence that we trade that sort of independence for a world in which we enjoy unlimited sexual license, beginning at a very young age, but every other aspect of our lives is controlled by the State. Distracting the public from poor governance with bread and circuses is a very old tactic, is it not? American culture today is filled with sexual distractions, including ongoing efforts to sexualize increasingly young children. Innocent childhood is erased, to the profit of certain industries, and the detriment of the family.

And even as childhood is cut down, adolescence is extended into our twenties and thirties. That’s how to reconcile the apparent contradiction between 26-year-olds officially treated as “children” by ObamaCare, and the drive to make morning-after birth control pills as readily available as candy to girls of fifteen (and younger!) The Left wants to mutate children into teenagers it can pry away from their families as quickly as possible, then keep them dependent and easily-manipulated adolescents for as long as it can. An “adolescence” beginning as soon as girls can have sex, lasting until they’re finished paying off their student loans, would be just about perfect.

Killing off the family requires erasing the distinctions between men and women… and that’s easier to do if you get started when they’re boys and girls. The effort to wipe out the consequences of sex, and the natural understanding of how those consequences are different for the male and female partners, continues. When every man, woman, boy, and girl has the sexual appetites and morality of Sean Connery-era James Bond, the last barriers of family separating American citizens from the benevolent State will have been removed.

Unlike old-fashioned moms and dads, the State won’t hassle kids about restraining their sexual desires – have fun, do whatever turns you on, and if a little “accident” happens to slip past the equipment dispensed at school, just nip on down to the corner drugstore for a fix! Hopefully soon you won’t even have to bring your photo ID, so it won’t really matter how old you are.

When the kids grow up, they’ll discover all the ways the State does plan to hassle them, but if all goes according to plan, the coming generation will be too weak to resist.

Charles Krauthammer at his VERY Best…..Analyzing the “LOFTY” Barack Hussein

There are countless numbers of folks who write about ‘news’ of the day……but few are read beyond a first sentence or two. Most are lefty hacks, university graduates who do what lefties are ‘borne’ to do….smear, degrade, attack those who do not worship the lefty’s god, Marxism.

And then there are the thinkers who not only think deeply and freely about life and life’s moods, but know how to use words to decorate their messages to fit accurately the character and nature of political boors, cronies, crooks, phonies, or heroes alike with knife or rose as the day might require.

Charles Krauthammer seems to know Barack Hussein oObama’s character and category very well.

He writes the following in today’s Washington Post:

“Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.

And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.

Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements — e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds— for a country already drowning in debt.

To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.

Well, that story — excuse me, narrative — lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone.

It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did.

Taken by surprise, Obama cried wolf, predicting the end of everything we hold dear if the sequester was not stopped. It wasn’t. Nothing happened.

Highly embarrassed, and determined to indeed make (bad) things happen, the White House refused Republican offers to give it more discretion in making cuts. Bureaucrats were instructed to inflict maximum pain from minimal cuts, as revealed by one memo from the Agriculture Department demanding agency cuts that the public would feel.

Things began with the near-comical cancellation of White House tours and ended with not-so-comical airline delays. Obama thought furious passengers would blame the GOP. But isn’t the executive branch in charge of these agencies? Who thinks that a government spending $3.6 trillion a year can’t cut 2 percent without furloughing air-traffic controllers?

Looking not just incompetent at managing budgets but cynical for deliberately injuring the public welfare, the administration relented. Congress quickly passed a bill giving Obama reallocation authority to restore air traffic control. Having previously threatened to veto any such bill, Obama caved. He signed.

Not exactly Appomattox, but coming immediately after Obama’s spectacular defeat on gun control, it marked an administration that had lost its “juice,” to paraphrase a charming question at the president’s Tuesday news conference.

For Obama, gun control was a political disaster. He invested capital. He went on a multi-city tour. He paraded grieving relatives. And got nothing. An assault-weapons ban — a similar measure had passed the Congress 20 years ago — lost 60 to 40in a Senate where Democrats control 55 seats. Obama failed even to get mere background checks.

All this while appearing passive, if not helpless, on the world stage. On Syria, Obama is nervously trying to erase the WMD red line he had so publicly established. On Benghazi, he stonewalled accusations that State Department officials wishing to testify are being blocked.

He is even taking heat for the Boston bombings. Every day brings another revelation of signals missed beforehand. And his post-bombing pledge to hunt down those responsible was mocked by the scandalous Mirandizing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, gratuitously shutting down information from the one person who knows more than anyone about possible still-existent explosives, associates, trainers, future plans, etc.

Now, the screw will undoubtedly turn again. If immigration reform passes, Obama will be hailed as the comeback kid, and a new “Obama rising” narrative proclaimed.

This will overlook the fact that immigration reform has little to do with Obama and everything to do with GOP panic about the Hispanic vote. In fact, Obama has been asked by congressional negotiators to stay away, so polarizing a figure has he become.

Nonetheless, whatever happens, the screw will surely turn again, if only because of media boredom. But that’s the one constant of Washington political life: There are no straight-line graphs. We live from inflection point to inflection point.

And we’ve just experienced one. From king of the world to dead in the water in six months. Quite a ride.”

Robt Griffen III: Americans “Held Hostage by the Tyranny of PC”

Leftism has been the New Religion in our America for fifty years……and now even embraces Marxism in the White House. This State Religion, the only one allowed in town and country, university and home, has managed to govern the language to manipulate mind and body using thought and speech control called political correctness.

The purpose is political…..to rid the nation of its Christian past and all of the nicities that accompanied it….and to destroy the ability of the citizen to think and speak creatively, freely, truthfully ghr.

from CBS News: AMERICANS HELD HOSTAGE BY TYRANNY OF PC

Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III took to Twitter on Tuesday to complain about the “tyranny of political correctness” he believes is holding American culture “hostage.”

“In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness,” the NFL player wrote on his official Twitter account. He followed up the post with a definition of the word, writing: “Tyranny- ‘a condition imposed by some outside agency or force<living under the tyranny of the clock’ or political correctness…”

The Twitter commentary comes as some are pushing the NFL to change the Redskins team name due to the racial implications of the Native American moniker. Additionally, NBA player Jason Collins garnered an abundance of media attention in the past week after coming out as the first openly gay player on a major, professional American sports team.

Griffin’s post incited numerous politically-tinged criticisms.

“Tyranny? Do we share a common reality?” one person tweeted back to RGIII. “Loyalty to local racist named team fading…fading,” wrote another.

The Redskins quarterback and 2011 Heisman Trophy winner responded to the backlash on Tuesday evening, writing, “If we speak..we say it the wrong way If we do not speak we are cowards….”

Related: D.C. Councilmember: Call Them ‘RedTails’

Robert Merry: THE DEGRADED CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER

THE DEGRADED CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER….by Robert W. Merry at the National Interest:

On the list of the many factors contributing to official Washington’s dysfunction these days, no one would put the degradation of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner near the top. But, as a reflection of what’s wrong with Washington, it deserves serious attention. I speak as a journalist who attended his first White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 1975. That’s thirty-eight years ago, but who’s counting? Neither am I counting how many I’ve attended, but I think it’s probably thirty-four.

It was exciting back in 1975, at least for me, though there was only one Hollywood type in attendance. That was Danny Thomas, the actor and television personality, who provided the talent for the evening. He bombed. But it wasn’t important because the dinner had nothing to do with Hollywood. The next year Chevy Chase did the honors. He climbed atop a ladder and promptly fell off, landing on the floor in a heap. This was supposed to be a kind of impersonation of President Gerald Ford, who was thought to have a tendency toward clumsiness, though he had probably the most impressive athletic background of any president in decades. Ford got the last laugh. “Mr. Chase,” he said, “you are a very funny suburb.”

Such musings are prompted by the media coverage of Saturday’s edition of the annual dinner, held as always in the Washington Hilton ballroom. And it’s clear that there has been no letup in the growing celebrity titillation and lessening attention to the ways of Washington that now characterize these annual spring spectacles.

Indeed, as the Washington Post’s Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger point out, the dinner itself is almost an afterthought during a four-day weekend social spree that has become “a binge of Hollywood celebrity stalking, high-end gate crashing, late-night cocktail schmoozing, shoulder-straining swag hauls”—all clustered around a dinner that has become a televised faux pageant of hype and pomposity.

Tom Brokaw, the former NBC anchor and one of the leading journalistic lights of his generation, had enough of all this a year ago when he saw denizens of official Washington ardently clustering around Lindsay Lohan, the Hollywood actress whose difficulties with alcohol and the law have been widely reported. Brokaw suggested on NBC’s Meet the Press that the annual dinner spectacle “separates the press from the people that they’re supposed to serve, symbolically.” He elaborated: “What kind of image do we present to the rest of the country? Are we doing their business, or are we just a group of narcissists who are mostly interested in elevating our own profiles?” He said it looked more like the latter than the former.

Brokaw has a point, but to understand the true nature of this transformation it’s necessary to remember what these dinners were like in the old days. They were family affairs in which the media and their sources came together for a rare kind of collective socializing in as private a setting as would be possible with some two thousand celebrants. You didn’t come to see celebrities from that Los Angeles enclave noted for preening and self-absorption. You came to get to know your sources a little better and perhaps enhance your ability to work them later for information—information you adjudged important to your readers or viewers. It was all about the Washington experience.

As a journalist, your social aim was to snag a guest who outshone, in prominence and stature, the guests of your colleagues in the highly competitive guest sweepstakes. Everyone was looking to see how you did. Once, during my days as a Wall Street Journal reporter in the early 1980s, a colleague on the paper chided me for inviting Delaware Senator Joe Biden, whom my colleague considered less than a stellar catch. Later, after Biden gained stature as a Senate committee chairman, my colleague allowed as how he had misjudged the man in his younger days. I haven’t asked him what he thinks of the man now that he is vice president.

This anecdote illustrates the extent to which the dinners of old were socially competitive and reflective of a kind of political and journalistic pecking order. As a journalist, you knew where you stood based on the significance of your guest—for example, a nationally known committee chairman or a freshman House member from Iowa? As a politician, your stature was reflected in your host—for example, Time magazine (when Time was among the journalistic aristocrats, not like today) or the Columbus Dispatch?

But nobody gave a thought to what kind of statement this could make to the country at large. These were strictly internal-Washington events designed to foster good relations between government officials and the journalists who covered them. It was inconceivable that anyone would transgress the general culture of the dinners as a way of cadging attention.

Then in 1987 a young reporter for the Baltimore Sun hit upon the idea of inviting an attractive, young White House secretary who had been getting attention as a central figure in the gathering Iran-Contra scandal. The reporter was Michael Kelly, who went on to an illustrious career as writer and editor for such publications as the New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, National Journal and The Atlantic. (He died covering the Iraq War in 2003.) The secretary was Fawn Hall, assistant to White House aide Oliver North and noteworthy for her ability to shred official documents with impressive dispatch.

On the Friday before the 1987 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Michael Kelly was a journalistic nobody in Washington; the Monday after, he was known to all as the clever young man with the wit to leverage the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to get his name around. And it so happened that around that same time C-SPAN decided to begin covering the dinner speeches on national television.

The two things together set into motion a process that continues to our day of turning an internal, official family event into a nationally televised celeb binge replete with Hollywood actors ogling prominent politicians and the politicians lowering themselves to do likewise to Hollywood actors. A red carpet is thrown down at the limousine entrance of the Hilton, and a rope line is set up. Citizens crowd in to cheer and swoon and snap photos.

Brokaw is right to wonder what this says to the American people, not only about the media people who allow themselves to get pulled into this maelstrom of public preening but also the politicians who, as custodians of the American government, might want to elevate themselves at least above the image of Hollywood luminaries and their famous brand of narcissism. But it’s also worth pondering what has been lost as these events, with all their appearance of bacchanalian zeal, have gone video and viral, pushing into oblivion the original purpose and ethos of those staid, authentic White House Correspondents’ Dinners of old.

Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His most recent book is Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.

So You Still Don’t Think Muslim-Tender Obama is a Marxist?

The following is a series of quotes from the chief Bolshevik himself, Vladimir Ulyanov, the world’s most infamous Marxist god, revolutionary, and politician. Check those you think are in close agreement with Barack Hussein Obama of Muslim father and hate- America mother background.

Which of these Ulyanov tenets does Islamic sympathyzer Obama most reverently exploit or administer?

Most followers of Vladimir Ulyanov’s Marxism were called Leninists, after Nikolai Lenin.

A LIE TOLD OFTEN ENOUGH BECOMES THE TRUTH. Mr. Obama uses truth only when it adheres to his political agenda. Those not adhering to the agenda are enemies to smear.

THE PRESS SHOULD BE NOT ONLY A COLLECTIVE PROPAGANDIST AND A COLLECTIVE AGITATOR, BUT ALSO A COLLECTIVE ORGANIZER OF THE MASSES. The American press is in Obama’s pocket, yet not quite yet State owned.

ONE MAN WITH A GUN CAN CONTROL 100 WITHOUT A GUN. Obama policy agrees with this Marxist rule, demanding that only his obedient troops carry weapons.

GIVE US A CHILD FOR EIGHT YEARS AND IT WILL BE A BOLSHEVIK FOREVER. Obamaling propagandists run American education kindergarten through post graduate school.

THE BEST WAY TO DESTROY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS TO DEBAUCH THE CURRENCY. Leading from behind Obama has practiced this primary Marxist policy of economic sabotage from the beginning of his term.

THERE ARE NO MORALS IN POLITICS. THERE IS ONLY EXPEDIENCE. A SCOUNDREL MAY BE OF USE TO US JUST BECAUSE HE IS A SCOUNDREL. Mr. Obama is esceptionally skilled at deceit and dishonesty. It is practiced nearly everytime he opens his mouth. His lies go un- challenged by his in-his-pocket press.

OUR SOCIALIST PROGRAM NECESSARILY INCLUDES THE PROPOGANDA OF ATHEISM. Obama’s dad was Muslim, his mother a Marxist whose own parents, one a banker, hated the country that gave them comfort. Obamamouth makes no utterance of sincerity and devotion for anything Deistic…..His only passion toward things religious is centered on the advancement of Islam and the censoring of all words beyond praise for Islam’s advancement.

THE GOAL OF SOCIALISM IS COMMUNISM. Obama avoids any mention of such nouns….He deceitfully masks “Change we have been waiting for” as his message without using further identifying vocabulary, a trick of Marxists not yet possessing full power.

CRIME IS A PRODUCT OF SOCIAL SUCCESS. This statement is as if Barack Hussein Obama first uttered it. His stated limit for this criminality of income is $3,000,000 per annum, which keeps his dollar police and spies away from his own wealth…..some of it coming from criminality itself…..his Chicago home, for instance.

POLITICS BEGINS WHERE THE MASSES ARE. Big Brother Barack campaigns on national television daily. It is true that his obedient public pays no attention to his preachings. They cheer anyway. Over 55% of them don’t pay any federal income tax as it is. Moreover, 46,000,000 of them are on foodstamps….both groups already paid for Obamaling voters.

Now, which of the Lenin statements above DOESN’T Barack Hussein Obama practice regularly politically and in governance?

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THIS FOREIGNER TO AMERICA ISN’T A MARXIST? Your morning newspaper? Chris Matthews at MSNBC? How about NBC, CBS, PBS, or ABC? Your children’s grade school, high school, or university teacher in the social sciences? Your standard up-to-date gay-thumping Episcopalian or Israel-hating Presbyterian Synod? Bill O’Reilly?

Charles Krauthammer knows he is a Marxist, but even my hero, Charles Krauthammer can’t quite get the word off his lips.

Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim at least in policy and romance….and a Leninist…. a Marxist, as such a person is better known in today’s English speaking world.

This con-artist politician and his advisors know Marxism is a bed dream leading to an inhuman catastrophe, but no matter……they have gathered together the tribes to win them elections so Amerian can experience change “We’ve been waiting for.”

Has it ever occurred to you why foreigner Obama can only offer deceit, outright dishonesty, and smear in his politics? He has nothing to sell favorable to honest, hard working, and devoted Americans. Being ugly is his only sales pitch as long as his public doesn’t begin to think.

Who among his tribes of hate and disorder already paid off by Obama-Marxist government largesse, do you think will begin to think and wander to something more truthfull, more decent, more traditional American?…….union thugs? militant gays and lesbians? Owners of America’s Marxist press? Hollywood sluts and druggies? Graduates of racist Black Studies, Women’s Stukdies, Latino Studies prgrams? Feminists anywhere and blacks of the urban black plantation culture everywhere?

What do you think Obana’s handouts of food stamps to 46,000,000 recipients was intended to do besides secure Obamaling votes forever?

Obama is not only a Marxist, he is a liar and a jackass…..both required for Marxist membership and success……If you don’t believe this Truth from History, please reread Lenin’s tenets of Marxism.