The Speech Obama Failed to Deliver

By Ben Stein on 8.27.12 @ 6:11AM

A return to L.A. coincides with a growing sense of doom.

Friday
I keep thinking about our man, Barack Obama, and especially about his promises in 2008. There have been many Presidents. But has any President ever had a wider gulf between what he promised he would do and what he actually did or did not do?
What if, at his momentous moment at Grant Park in Chicago on the night of his win, he had said this speech:
"Now, friends, thank you for electing me. To tell you the truth, I am a good speaker as long as I have a prompter in front of me. But I have absolutely no clue at all as to how to get us out of this recession. None at all. I will, however, spend the money of the people who pay taxes to give out a lot of money to people who are either union members or do not pay taxes. I will spend a trillion dollars in a year and I have no idea of what, if any good it will do.
"I'll also get my captive Congress, led by the most pitifully weak Speaker ever, and a man who gives the word 'party hack' a bad name, to pass a health care bill that will dramatically raise taxes, cut Medicare payments, cram patients into doctors' offices, create complete chaos -- and I will do it in the dead of night without even showing the Republicans what's in the bill. I won't show anyone else either! That's the gag! We'll be passing a bill that will cost trillions and NO ONE will know what's in it! NOT EVEN ME!!!! "They didn't call me 'Good time Barry' at Punahou for nothing!
"Plus, you know how we have only one reliable ally in the whole world, and that's Israel, probably the most militarily significant power after us, Russia, and China? Yes, the Israel that's the only democracy in the Middle East, where Arabs have more rights than they do in any Arab country? We're going to take that country's premier and HUMILIATE the SOB right outside my office, make him cool his heels like a job seeker at a union hall and then I'll tell him what a loser he is!
"That's how I'll show my Jewish friends what I think about Israel.
"Then, Britain? That 'special relationship' country? I'll humiliate them, too. I think I'll just hug the Queen like she's my Mom. Then when they give me a magnificent gift, I'll give them a CD of my speeches -- in a plastic box.
"And the deficit? I'll double it in three and a half years. With nothing to show for it.
"Plus, if we find Osama bin Laden, I think I'll have the SEALs take all of the risks and then I'll go on TV and pretend I did it all myself.
"Plus, did you see about those thugs who threatened anyone who didn't vote for me at some polling place somewhere? I am not going to prosecute them at all. Not one bit. Not even for a second! What are friends for?
"Well, anyway, it's late, so let's PARTAY HEARTAY!"
He didn't give that speech. Too bad.

Christians victims of rising 'hostility' from gov't and secular groups, report says

Published August 24, 2012

| FoxNews.com

 

A new report by the Family Research Council and the Liberty Institute claims that there's been a rising pattern of hostility toward Christians in America over the past decade.

The 140-page "Survey of Religious Hostility in America," prepared by the Liberty Institute and the Family Research Council, highlighted more than 600 examples illustrating what it characterized as religious animosity shown by judges, government bureaucrats, schools and secular groups. From ObamaCare mandates that force religious entities to pay for contraception, to children being punished for uttering prayers in school, the report's findings shocked even those who commissioned it.

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“It’s a conflict of world views," Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, told FoxNews.com. "These groups want people to check their faith at the door of the public square.”

Among the examples listed in the survey:

• Matthew Reynolds, valedictorian for HLV Junior-Senior High School in Victor, Iowa, was told he had to give a 'secular' speech after he wished to attribute his success to his faith in Jesus Christ during his graduation speech.
• A cross was removed from a veterans' memorial in San Diego, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that the memorial was unconstitutional.
• .Dr. Frank Turek, a Cisco employee, was fired for expressing his views on traditional marriage in his book, even though he never voiced his religious opinions at work.
• Samantha Schulz, 8, was barred from singing "Kum Ba Yah" at a Boys and Girls Club in Port Charlotte, Fla., because the song included the words "Oh, Lord."
• Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital, was forced to participate in a late-term abortion against her religious convictions, and was threatened with job termination and loss of license.

The goal of the report is to raise awareness of these incidents to promote the appointment of judges "who are sensitive to the Constitution," said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Plano, Texas-based Liberty Institute. The report was presented in Tampa just ahead of next week's Republican National Convention.

According to Shackelford, the hostility can lead to violence, as in the case of the Aug.15 shooting at the Family Research Council headquarters, in which a gunman allegedly said he disagreed with the group's beliefs before shooting an employee in the arm. He also cited the Aug. 5 shooting deaths of six people at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee.

"It's way beyond anything we had imagined," Shackelford told FoxNews.com."It's so much more prolific than it's ever been before."

One critic said the report is guilty of blurring the line between attacking religion and upholding the Constitution. A.J. Johnson, development director of American Atheists, Inc., said no one condones hate crimes such as the FRC shooting. But many other examples cited are simply cases in which advocates called for the separation of church and state," Johnson said.

"The Family Research Council distorts court cases upholding the First Amendment as examples of "religious hostility," she said. "In reality, they are imposing their beliefs onto others and claiming to be victims of religious persecution when they do not get unique Christian privilege."

But Perkins said the secular nation that groups like Johnson's seek was never envisioned by the Founding Fathers, and will not come to be.

THE DEATH OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
If you went to a country and you found that fifty percent of the citizens of that country committed suicide, you would say that that is a very sick country and does not have a very good hope for survival. That is Western Civilization, because the fundamental building block of all societies is families. Families are the fundamental citizens of every society. And divorce is the suicide of a family. When the body and the soul separate, the body dies. When the mother and the father separate, the family dies. So a fifty percent divorce rate, which is what we have in North America, means a fifty percent suicide rate. That's a very, very serious symptom.

“wherever religious freedom is lacking, people lack the most meaningful freedom of all, since it is through faith that men and women expresses their deepest decision about the ultimate meaning of their lives”.

Judas made a huge blunder the day in which he sold Christ for 30 denarii, but he made an even bigger one when he thought that his sin was too great to be forgiven. No sin is too big: any wretchedness, however great, can always be enclosed in infinite mercy.”

The first written catechism of the Catholic Church, known as the Didache, and dated somewhere in the first century A.D., begins with a sentence of great clarity. It should be memorized: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways.”

In leading up to the First Crusade, there were more than 400 years of unrelenting brutal Moslem attacks on Christian lands.