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November 14th, 2013

BACHMANN AND SCALIA ARE “THE SAME KIND OF IDIOT”

Bill Maher had plenty of material to work with on “Real Time” last week considering the fact that both Rep. Michele Bachmann and Justice Antonin Scalia publicly addressed their concerns about the end  days and the devil (respectively) in the same week. Maher does not hesitate to ridicule such idiotic nonsense as shown in the following video. He clearly thinks he is much more intelligent than they are.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) — Did Justice Antonin Scalia have to announce his belief in a literal Satan less than a month before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument on government-led prayer? Yes, he probably did.

Someone asked him.

In a semi-playful interview in New York magazine conducted by Jennifer Senior, Scalia expounds on his judicial philosophy — including his lonely 1988 dissent in a case upholding the Independent Counsel Act — but public interest in his comments focused on his belief in the devil, heaven and hell, and on his remarks about popular culture.

Scalia, 77 and a devout Roman Catholic, has been on the Supreme Court for 27 years. He’s known for his bluntness, and his lack of concern about how people react to it.

He also has a political tin ear. In 2009 Scalia and Vice President Dick Cheney spent part of a week duck hunting at a private camp in southern Louisiana — just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president’s case involving lawsuits over secrecy and his handling of the administration’s energy task force.

In the New York magazine interview, Scalia said he believes in heaven.

As for H-E-double hockey sticks: “It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it,” Scalia said. “That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other. But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? Of course not!”

At one point, Scalia leans in and whispers, “I even believe in the devil.”

Asked to elaborate, Scalia said, “Yeah, he’s a real person … that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that,” rejecting a suggestion that many Catholics do not.

But he adds, “You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore. … It’s because he’s smart. …

“What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.”

The justice tells Senior he’s in the “mainstream.”

“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so … removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the devil! Most of mankind has believed in the devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the devil.”

Scalia’s right. One of the more recent surveys, a 2007 Gallup poll, shows belief in the devil rising, with a huge majority saying Satan is real.

Only 55 percent of the U.S. public believed in the reality of the devil in 1990. By 2007 that figure had risen to 70 percent, not many fewer than the 86 percent who said they believe in God.

Gallup News Service said the results are based on telephone interviews “with a randomly selected national sample of 1,003 adults, age 18 and older, conducted May 10-13, 2007.” The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

Nevertheless, a 2008 speech by former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., caused a stir when it surfaced during the 2012 presidential election. Santorum, like Scalia the son of an Italian immigrant father, told a Catholic college audience in Florida that Satan was targeting American institutions, especially its colleges and the realm of politics.

The Catholic Church “has always held that the devil is real, not a mythical personification of evil,” Catholic.com said.

“The church’s teaching on the subject is clear from its liturgy. At baptism, those to be baptized are called upon to reject Satan, his works, and his empty promises. The church provides an official rite of exorcism, which presupposes, of course, the existence of Satan.”

 

Maher was quite right in saying that Scalia and Bachmann are the same kind of idiot. But they are not part of  a lunatic fringe. They are mainstream and there are millions just like them – people who think the world did not make itself, that there is a God, that God came to earth as Jesus Christ and taught us how to live. (Indeed Bill O’Reilly just wrote a book, Killing Jesus, which he says is not a religion book but a history book.) Is there any doubt that our country was less coarse, less violent, and more moral in previous generations when Christianity held sway? Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family recently stated that we are “absolutely awash in evil.” We do our nation no favor when we soft-pedal our Christianity and fail to appreciate its need and effect on our culture.

The Tea Party stands for fiscal responsibility, a constitutionally limited government, and a free market, which is all well and good. If you look deeper into Tea Party patriots you find that many of them are also pro-life, believe in God, and appreciate their country’s Christian roots in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Yet they are wary of taking a stand on the so-called “social” issues like homosexual marriage and abortion  fearing it will be off-putting. If you love the good, the true and the beautiful, if you think there is a God who has given us guidelines for living, I say to the Tea Party and true Christians of every stripe stand now with Scalia and Bachmann and their ilk. There are millions of Catholics like Scalia and millions of Christians like Bachmann, good and honorable people, first class American citizens.  We need to stand strong and unapologetic about our Christianity.

 

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The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Lo, here it is!” or “There!” for behold the kingdom is God is in the midst of you.  — Luke 17:20-21

 

March 23rd, 2012

TEA PARTY DEAD? HARDLY!

8000 to 10,000 are reported to have rallied in Washington DC to protest the unconstitutionality of  Obamacare (HHS mandate)  as three hearings were taking place at the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Below is a video from last week promoting the gathering.  I think it’s safe to say the Tea Party has not died, or even weakened.

Tea Party Patriot Jenny Beth Martin on PolitiChicks urges attendance at activities in Washington DC starting Saturday, March 24, on The Road To Repeal of the HHS Mandate (aka Obamacare.)

Starting Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an unprecedented six hours of arguments over three days on the constitutionality of the controversial and massive health-reform initiative known as the Affordable Care Act.

The law — the first national legislative effort to rein in health-care costs — aims to extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans through an expansion of Medicaid and a provision that people buy health insurance starting in 2014 or face a penalty. Read more.

October 22nd, 2011

NOT THAT DIFFERENT?

The Left likes to claim that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and other Occupiers are not that different from the Teapartiers. I hold that they are quite different.

1. The Teapartiers assemble for a day and depart. They leave the grounds cleaner than before. The Occupiers arrive with tents and baggage and Occupy. They stay and won’t go home.

2. The Teapartiers are interested in upholding constitutional law. The Occupiers don’t seem to like America or our laws. They talk revolution. If there is a particular law they want to change, we don’t hear about it.

3. Groups like the young Nazis, Communists, Socialists and Atheists seem to fit right in with the Occupiers. They are made welcome. They would never consider joining the Teapartiers.

4. This is the defining difference: The Teapartiers on the whole believe in God. The Occupiers on the whole do not.

 

BUT – A comment from Mary Rose suggests that there may be common ground.

> This is a open letter to OWS from FedUpUSA, one of the original Tea
> Parties:
>
> We support you in exercising your First Amendment Right. We are
> outraged that any peaceful demonstrator would be assaulted or abused
> by any authorities.
>
> If you are protesting because there are no jobs— We stand with
> you.
> We are for a free economy and recognize that what we have now is NOT
> a free economy; it is not capitalism – what we have is a fascist
> state or crony-capitalism. There is nothing free about doing
> business with Countries that manipulate their currencies to attract
> cheap labor. We agree that these jobs need to come back to America.
>
> If you are protesting because no one has gone to jail— We stand
> with you.
> Regardless of what is being said from the white house and media, we
> know that there are many in the financial district and the banks
> that have committed fraud and outright theft and we too want to see
> them prosecuted. We support: STOP THE LOOTING; START
> PROSECUTING.
> If you are protesting because everything costs more— We stand with
> you.
> We see prices rise in our food, gas, clothes yet our wages have
> stayed the same or have decreased. The Federal Reserve has bailed
> everyone out but us and not only are we going to have to pay for
> that, those bailouts make the price of everything else go up because
> it devalues our currency. We support monetary reform.
>
> If you are protesting because you are tired of our bought and paid
> for government on both sides— We stand with you.
> We are also against the banks and big corporations buying our
> politicians and writing laws that favor their special interests. We
> understand that our economy is broken BECAUSE of this and that all
> of our other issues will never be addressed as long as the financial
> elite control OUR government.
>
> We understand that these issues cross party lines and ideologies and
> effect each and every one of us. We also understand that these
> issues will never get fixed as long as we continue to let the media,
> the elite, and members of the government separate us by our
> differing ideologies.
>
> Only Together, can we Implement Change
> It is time, We Americans, put our ideologies in our back pocket and
> not let them separate us so that we can work together for this ONE
> COMMON GOAL: to get the special interest money and elite out of OUR
> Government and return it to US— the people.
>
> As long as the banks, largest corporations, and wealthy elite
> control our government, we will never have a representative republic
> and laws will continue to be passed that only benefit the few 1% at
> the expense of us 99%!
>
> Demand that NOT ONE MORE LAW gets passed until they pass:
>
> Lobby reform:
> It is a Federal Offense punishable by a minimum 5 years in prison
> to:
> Lobby any member of the US Congress outside of the district you
> live, work, or own a business.
> Lobby a member of congress while they are physically outside the
> district they represent.
>
> Campaign Reform:
> It is a Federal Offense punishable by a minimum 5 years in prison
> to:
> For any one person, corporation, enterprise, group, union or the
> like, to donate more than $2,000 to any one candidate during one
> campaign period.
> For any member of the media to deny equal access to competing
> candidates.
> These two laws will cut the control the Financial elite have on our
> government by leveling the playing field. You will have just as big
> as a voice with your representative as the big box retailer that
> resides in your town. Simply, it will end the Crony-Capitalism that
> is strangling our economy.
>
> I encourage all my fellow Tea Partiers to join Occupy Wall Street
> protesters in their non-violent, peaceful protests and together
> demand that the Government be returned to the people. After all,
> this is precisely what the Tea Party was intended to be before it
> was taken over and marginalized by the establishment politicians.
> FedUpUSA.org
> STOP THE LOOTING; START PROSECUTING
>
>

~~~

I am the good shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know me.  — John 10:14

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