Some Examples of Hypocrisy and Insanity

English: Shake Shack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the Do As I Say, Not As I Do Department: Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter came to Washington to give the keynote address at the National Soda Summit on Capitol Hill. He came with a message very similar to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: people are fat because they eat too much and drink too many sodas. Yet he cut the ribbon to the latest opening of a Shake Shack story on Wednesday.


http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washington-secrets/2012/06/philly-mayor-backs-soda-ban-dc-after-opening-shake-shack/702476


From the I Can't Believe I Heard That Department: Holder Claims Emails Using Words ‘Fast and Furious’ Don’t Refer to Operation Fast and Furious.


http://cnsnews.com/news/article/holder-claims-emails-using-words-fast-and-furious-don-t-refer-operation-fast-and


From the I'll Some of What She's Smoking Department - Nancy Pelosi claims the health law represents "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77160.html

Who is Mitt Romney?

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 11, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An excellent piece by Michael Haltman over at The Political Commentator.

Who is Mitt Romney? We Know Who He Is!

For one he's no Barack Obama!

The life and career of Mitt Romney is an open book with a traceable background that clearly runs from Point A to Point B with no unknown detours in-between.  

Barack Obama on-the-other-hand is certainly a well-crafted work, but one that could contain fiction, non-fiction or a combination of the two.

There are many twists and turns to the Obama story that start at the very beginning of the tale with little clarity being provided for some key holes in the canvas.

On-the-other-hand, who exactly is Mitt Romney?

I received this as an email and it describes a man who is very different than the current occupant of the White House!

Some interesting facts about Romney.



After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar, but never worked as an attorney.



As a venture-capitalist, Romney's first major business deal involved investing in a start-up office supply company with one store in Massachusetts.

That company, called Staples, now has over 2,000 stores and employs over 90,000 people.



Romney and his company Bain Capital (using what became known as the "Bain Way") would go on to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply, and many others.



Got your calculators handy? Let's recap.



Volunteer campaign worker for his dad's gubernatorial campaign 1 year.



Unpaid intern in Governor's office 8 years.



Mormon missionary in Paris 2 years.



Unpaid bishop and state president for his church 10 years.



Took no salary as president of the Salt Lake Olympics 3 years.



No salary as MA governor 4 years.



Gave his ENTIRE INHERITANCE to charity.



That's a grand total of 28 years of unpaid service to his country, his community and his church. 

Why? 

Because that's the kind of man Mitt Romney is.



And he'll show you his:



1) Un-doctored Birth Certificate!



2) College transcripts and grades!



3) Law degree!



4) Un-doctored Draft notice!



5) And un-doctored Social Security card. (And the state it's registered in)



When was the last time we elected a politician of this character, intellect, experience and integrity?

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The Problem With Snake-Handling: It's Not in the Bible

LAUREN POND / ASSOCIATED PRESS

By Bryan Fischer (originally posted at RenewAmerica).

Two days ago, the Washington Post published a lengthystory on snake-handling pastor Mack Wolford, who died Sunday night from, well, a snakebite he got in church.

Wolford cited Mark 16:17-18 as the source for his practice of handling rattlesnakes, water moccasins, copperheads and other venomous snakes. And Mark 16:18 does seem clear: "they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them."

There's only one problem: Mark 16:18 is not in the Bible.

The last 12 verses of Mark's gospel were added sometime after the original gospel began to circulate, likely to provide a supplement since Mark's account stops so abruptly in Mark 16:8. The reason for the abrupt end of Mark's original account is likely that the final leaf was somehow lost before it began to be copied.

According to eminent New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger, Mark 16:9-20 is missing from the two earliest and most authoritative manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis, and from ancient Syriac, Armenian and Georgian manuscripts.

Early church fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of these verses, and Jerome and early church historian Eusebius write that the passage was missing from almost all the Greek copies of Mark's gospel they had seen.

Many manuscripts that do contain this section have scribal notations to the effect that older Greek copies lacked it, and in other manuscripts there are scribal markings indicating, according to Metzger, that it is a "spurious addition."

There is considerable confusion in the ancient manuscripts that do include an ending to Mark's gospel. There are four different endings, an indicator that the origins of the ending are problematic at best.

In addition, the vocabulary and style of the Greek in vv. 9-20 are at variance with Mark's customary patterns. (The abrupt change in style is evident to anyone who is able to translate Mark's gospel from the Greek.)

Now the addition of vv. 9-20 was probably done as early as the first half of the second century, which is why it appears in many Greek manuscripts. But were it original, there is no plausible explanation why so many copyists, including the ones that created the oldest manuscripts we have, would have omitted it.

There is no need for a sinister explanation, either. The addition was probably made by someone who knew a form of Mark that ended abruptly in v. 8 and he wanted to supply to his patron with a conclusion that made clear reference to the resurrection.

Until Gutenberg, every copy of the New Testament had to be painstakingly copied by hand, meaning only the rich could afford their own copies of the Bible. A scribe naturally would want to give his benefactor a copy of the gospel which included the resurrection. There was likely no attempt to deceive, just to supplement, perhaps by excerpting the segment from another document in circulation at the time.

Accounts were already in existence in the second century of Christians being forced to drink poison by their persecutors and surviving, and perhaps the phrase about handling snakes is a garbled version of the account of Paul being bitten by a poisonous snake and surviving, as Luke records in Acts 28:3-6. It should be noted that Paul did not "pick up" the serpent. The snake came out of the wood pile and bit him in the hand.

Most contemporary translations of Mark's gospel set this section off in brackets to indicate that there are serious questions about its authenticity. For instance, the ESV sets the entire section off in double brackets with this notation: "Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9-20."

Metzger summarizes by saying that this section is "secondary," and "was added....by someone who wished to supply a more appropriate conclusion." Says Metzger, this section likely "was excerpted from another document, dating perhaps from the first half of the second century."

If Mack Wolford had been a better student of Scripture, he would be alive today. He watched his own father die of snake bite when he was 19, and his own death was gruesomely similar.

He'd also be alive today if he simply used common sense. According to the Post, he had been bitten numerous times by snakes in religious services, which should have raised questions in his mind about whether the words of Mark 16:18 did indeed come from the lips of Jesus.

There is no biblical justification for snake handling in the worship services of the Christian church. Those who do are basing the practice on a passage which has been added to the word of God and thus has no abiding authority.

Bottom line: snake handlers cannot point the finger at either Christ or Mark if something goes disastrously wrong. They have only themselves and their own folly to blame.


Bryan Fischer is the host of the daily 'Focal Point' radio talk program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association. 'Focal Point' airs live from 1-3 pm Central Time, and is also simulcast on the AFA Channel, which can be seen on the Sky Angel network.

The Same Sex Marriage Debate

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

This is an excellent piece by Marvin A. McMickle. It appeared in the City Newspaper. Dr. McMickle is president and Professor of Church Leadership at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.


Since President Obama expressed his support of same-gender marriage, there has been an intense reaction among many in our nation. This debate must run its course in our society, as all major advances in civil and human rights have done in the past. Consider such hotly debated national issues as the abolition of slavery, the right to vote for women and African Americans, the end of legalized racial segregation in public accommodations and institutions, the struggle for unions and collective bargaining, the passage and enforcement of child labor laws, the adoption of minimum wage laws and workplace safety.


Each of these issues was a matter that had to work its way through an often hotly contested national debate.


What I wish for is a debate where neither side distorts biblical faith in the process. We must be sure that the civil and human rights promised and safeguarded by the US Constitution are not confused with the religious rites and rituals that are practiced and performed by various religious communities across the country. No one is arguing or insisting that any clergy person of any religious tradition must perform a same-sex wedding if their conscience or their church policy does not support such an action. That is where the idea of a RITE or a church ritual comes in.


By the same token, people of a particular religious tradition cannot and should not expect that their interpretation of any particular verse in the Bible must be the way by which national public policy is shaped and determined. The United States is not a theocracy under which religious law takes precedence over laws passed by democratically elected legislative bodies.


What is amazing to behold is how many Americans are prepared to support any bill that would ban the use of Sharia or strict Islamic law in our society, but seem quite content to impose a very conservative understanding of Levitical law from 8th century BC Israel on believers and non-believers alike in modern American society.


This nation has known earlier times and struggles when selected verses of the Bible were used to support slavery, relegate women to second-class status, justify the genocidal treatment of Native Americans, and promote “American exceptionalism” and “manifest destiny.” We have eventually condemned the distortion and abuse of the Bible in those instances, and we must do so again today.


People of religious faith certainly have a voice in all discussions about public policy, but theirs is not the only voice. That is where the use of the word RIGHTS comes in, because it is the US Constitution and in this case the First Amendment and the establishment of religion clause and the Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection under the law for all citizens that are at stake. People of religious faith should not fear that they will be forced to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony if their conscience does not permit them to do so.


That being said, does our nation actually want to deny equal access to civil rights to some segment of our society that pays the same taxes, serves in the same military, worships in the same churches, lives in the same communities, sits and labors in the same workplaces, and belongs to the same family units as everyone else in this country simply because of their sexual orientation?


There are some cautions I would extend especially to my Christian neighbors and my clergy colleagues. First, you cannot take the verses in the Bible, like Leviticus 18:22 or Romans 1: 26-27 that seem to speak against homosexuality while ignoring the other prohibitions, sexual and otherwise, that appear within those same passages. How can people condemn homosexuality while continuing to engage in or remain silent about other behaviors against which the Bible speaks with equal passion? If the answer is that most of Leviticus deals with ancient practices and communal values that are no longer binding on modern society, then how is it that these verses on homosexuality manage to avoid a similar cultural critique?


If Romans 1 is the basis for the condemnation of homosexuality, then it must be remembered that that passage does not limit itself to same-sex behavior; it goes on to speak about malice, envy, greed, hatred, murder, strife, arrogance, slander, and disobeying parents. Why do we not hear the same outrage on these topics from those who are so outspoken over the single issue of same-sex marriage? Is it possible they can live with all of these other things going on around them, but they cannot abide homosexuality and same-sex marriage? Now it seems it is they who are leaving out or ignoring what the Bible has stated; the exact same charge so often leveled against those who seek to defend the civil rights of same-sex couples. They cannot have it both ways.


I fear there is more hypocrisy than honesty in this present discussion. Same-sex marriage is a major shift in how our society is structured. We need to have an extended, civil discussion about this matter. What has already been resolved as acceptable by many is still a matter that remains unresolved for others. Each side needs to respect and consider the point of view of the other without condemning to hell those who happen to hold differing views.


However, one thing must be kept clear; this is a matter of rights and not rites. This debate is about who we are and what we believe as Americans and not who we are and what we believe as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheist, and non-believers. Democratic government is always tricky business, but never more so than when some deeply cherished religious value seems to be involved.


Let the debate continue, but as it does I am suggesting that we in the various faith communities cannot pick which biblical verses we will consider and which ethical issues we will pursue while leaving many other verses and issues unaddressed and unresolved.


Finally, people need to be sure that their support of or disagreement with a presidential candidate should not stand on a single issue. This may obscure other key issues, like high unemployment, a depressed housing market, the continuation of the costs associated with the war against terrorism, staggering levels of student debt, and an unstable global economy, that face our country today. People need to consider which of the presidential candidates seems to them to be best able to effectively address these concerns.


Even if persons cannot support a candidate’s stance on same-sex marriage, they should remember that if they decide to stay home on Election Day because of that one issue, then they are “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

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• The Rainbow's Almost Complete: Some Closing Thoughts on the Gay Debate

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• Yes, gay marriage is a Civil Right

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• Same-Sex Marriage Makes A Lot Of Sense

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More Fun Than Solving America’s problems

 (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The following article is from Frank J. Fleming and appeared in The New York Post on May 14, 2012.


Let’s face it: We’re never going to deal with the serious problems in our county. The economy is still faltering, our debt seems insurmountable, gas prices are out of control and terrorists are still trying to blow us up with their underwear. But what issue is dominating the presidential race right now? Gay marriage.

Just a few weeks ago, the hot topic was some radio host calling a woman a “slut.”

I’ve noticed a few things about the problems we face. Each is a great threat to our way of life, every one must be handled right away, and every one is extremely boring.

I mean, most of these are the same problems we had back in the ’70s. No one solved them then, because they were distracted by the president being a bitten by a rabbit.

We’d love some fun new problems — “The polar ice caps are going to melt if we don’t change our light bulbs!” — but instead we’re stuck with these old stale ones. But, as soon as we try to sit down and focus on these imperative but dull issues, we hear that teenage Mitt Romney cut some guy’s hair, and we start spending all our time discussing that.

Maybe we’re no longer even capable of focusing on the real threats to our nation. After all, people used to have long attention spans for boring things like debt problems because all they had to distract themselves with were black-and-white movies with no CGI. Now that we have advanced technology and entertainment, we just can’t pay attention to the important things for long enough.

(I’m checking Twitter on my smartphone as I write this.)

It’s been building for some time. Based on news coverage, one of the biggest political events of my lifetime was when a vice president misspelled “potato.”
We can’t even leave it to the politicians to solve our problems, because they’re not any better. When President Obama took office, he saw the joblessness and faltering economy and decided he didn’t feel like dealing with that — instead, he started playing with his fun new health-care plan.

We all had a great time quarrelling about that one. It really took our minds off the skyrocketing unemployment.

Republicans are no help either. They keep repeating to themselves, “Just focus on the economy and jobs” — but then some social issue pops up, and they can’t help themselves.

If there is one thing the right and the left agree on this country, it’s that social issues are fun to pointlessly argue about. And we’ll always be able to argue about them, because they never get solved.

We might not mind dealing with our real problems if we could come up with fun solutions to them that involve explosions and kung-fu fighting. But there aren’t any. It’s all mind-numbing budget stuff; my eyes are glazing over just thinking about it.

Maybe we’ll just have to put Ritalin in the water to help us all focus. Because otherwise the only time our economy and the national debt will be interesting enough to hold our attention is when the country has collapsed. That will really grab everyone’s interest — you’ve seen how popular all those zombie-apocalypse shows and movies are.

I’ll bet when the government falls, the nation will divide into smaller regions ruled by warlords. I could totally be one of those. I have a shotgun, and I could make a scary-looking metal mask to wear all the time ...

Wait. What was I talking about? Did you hear Obama ate a dog?

Related articles

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The Ultimate Narcissist?

Posted by Erica Ritz at The Blaze


It was reported yesterday that the White House has “amended” the biography of nearly every U.S. president of the past century, adding a “Did you know?” section at the end where they tied former presidents’ accomplishments to those of president Obama.

At the bottom of Reagan’s biography, for instance, the White House tried to plug the “Buffett Rule.”  Did you know, it asks, that “In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.”

The Calvin Coolidge connection is no less far-fetched.  “On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).   President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc,” it explains.

While the adjustments don’t reach back as far as Woodrow Wilson, only a modest link to FDR is mentioned: “On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.  Today the Obama Administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.”

The move is drawing ridicule in conservative circles, even inspiring a Twitter hashtag, #ObamaInHistory, that started trending worldwide.

Here are some of the best we found:

@stevenfhayward: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And President Obama was there to say it was good. #obamainhistory

@huds_d: In Greek mythology, Narcissus gazed into a pond and saw Obama’s face #obamainhistory

@JohnSantorelli: Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492 and Obama was there to apologize and bow to the natives. #ObamaInHistory

@CuffyMeh: In 1803, Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase for $233 million in today’s dollars, which Obama spent while you read this. #ObamaInHistory

@EthanMyers007: 30,000 Americans died on the Oregon Trail due to lack of health insurance. #ObamaInHistory

@iowahawkblog: #Obamainhistory Washington could not tell a lie, Nixon could not tell the truth, Obama can’t tell the difference

@red_red_head: Obama assured Henry Ford the Volt would be a great idea, but Ford wasn’t sold on the idea of exploding vehicles. #ObamaInHistory

‏@AllanRofer: Prior presidencies are merely the canvas upon which Obama’s administration masterpiece is writ. #ObamaInHistory

@syruss: If you can’t have good history, why not rewrite [others'?] #ObamaInHistory

The Republican National Committee similarly summarized: “Obama in History — World Changing Events You Didn’t Know Obama Played A Part In.”

But White House defended its actions, saying: “No biographies have been altered…We simply added links at the bottom of each page to related whitehouse.gov content, which is a commonly used best practice to encourage people to browse more pages on a site.”

How can you add something, without altering the original?  And it’s clearly not just an effort to encourage people to “browse more pages.”

“Each one finds a way to tout an Obama administration policy or practice in the process,” Fox describes.

But this isn’t surprising to anyone who has followed presidential politics…After all, Barack knows that “we’re going to have to change our traditions, [and] our history.”

Related articles

• Obama In History (thepatriotperspective.wordpress.com)
• Unreal: White House Inserts Obama Into Previous Presidents' Official Biographies (cajunconservatism.wordpress.com)
• President Obama - Our narcissist in charge (republicmainstreet.wordpress.com)
• 'Who Controls The Past'... (thecampofthesaints.org)

The Man Who Would be Dictator

Cover via Amazon

Cross posted from Burt Prelutsky.

©2011 Burt Prelutsky. Comments?

HOW DO I HATE BARACK OBAMA? I might spin Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s immortal words and say, “Let me count the ways. I hate him to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” But even that doesn’t quite cover the contempt I have for this past and present community agitator.

Fifty long years after Martin Luther King suggested we judge a person by his character, this slug is still waging race warfare. While we are all well-aware that he is basing his entire re-election campaign on separating Americans and playing to wealth envy, religious differences and even engendering gender divisions, it is his insistence on stoking up racial hatred that makes him the archenemy of everything decent that America represents.

Only Obama would have made the openly racist Eric Holder his attorney general. Only Obama would have remained silent when Holder refused to indict the Black Panthers for voter intimidation. Only Obama would have said that Trayvon Martin reminded him of the son he never had.

On the other hand, only Obama would have remained silent when his cohorts, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, converged on Sanford, Florida, and incited the black mobs to demand George Zimmerman’s bloodied head on a platter. Only Obama would have prevented his Department of Justice from demanding that the Black Panthers be indicted for offering a bounty on young Mr. Zimmerman, dead or alive.

Only Barack Obama would encourage his re-election team to connect Mitt Romney to polygamy when it was Obama’s own Kenyan father who was still a married man when he tied the knot with Obama’s mother. Of course it soon turned out to be a slip-knot when the bigamist scurried back to Africa, leaving wife number two and child behind.

Only Barack Obama would encourage his re-election team to tar Romney for having conveyed the family dog on his car’s rooftop, which was not only safe, but provided the dog with all the wind in his face that every dog craves, when, by his own admission, young Obama had dined on dog. Which in certain civilized circles, is comparable to cannibalism.

According to his book, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, belonged to a brand of Islam that believed that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate. One can’t help wondering if in his dreams, Obama chases cats.

Although in 2008, Harry Reid boasted that Obama doesn’t speak like a black man and Joe Biden topped him by alerting us to the fact that Obama is clean, the silliest thing anyone ever thought to say about him is that he’s a genius. I’m not even alluding to his contention back in ‘08 that he had visited 57 states and only had one more to go, or his references to the Austrian language and the U.S. Marine Corpse. But I am suggesting that for a man who regards diplomacy as his strong suit, telling the presidents or prime ministers of Denmark, Norway, the Philippines, Ireland and Holland, that their little nations all “punch above their weight,” indicates that he has either let his membership in the Cliché of the Month Club lapse or that he has hired a very lazy relative to be his speechwriter.

Lest anyone think those gaffes are the exception to the rule, Obama has also announced on 11 different occasions that the United States has no stronger ally than Australia, Poland, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, South Korea, Israel, Holland, France, Italy and Japan. Frankly, I think he is showing undiplomatic favoritism to Holland and Denmark by telling the world that they are not only our strongest allies, but that they also punch above their weight.

Would someone who is even slightly brilliant tell 11 different countries that they are his very favorite? Does he really think that these countries don’t talk to each other, even if it’s not in Austrian? Doesn’t it even occur to Mr. Tact that Germany and France are always on the verge of a major spat without anyone’s needlessly provoking a cat fight? Doesn’t he realize that a young woman who carried on the way he does would be referred to as the town slut?

Finally, as if any additional evidence were required to prove that Obama is only the smartest man in the room when he’s standing in a very small closet, during his highly trumpeted visit to the Summit of the Americas, he tried to show himself on the side of Argentina when he referred to the Falkland Islands as the Malvinas. That happens to be the Argentine name for the British crown colony they have long coveted, and over which Margaret Thatcher, with Ronald Reagan’s blessing, went to war.

This is the same Argentina that recently showed its dedication to democratic ideals by nationalizing the nation’s largest oil company and banning foreign books.

But, as is his wont, Obama displayed his vaunted brilliance by calling them the Maldives, which is an actual group of islands, but one that’s located in the Indian Ocean, not the Atlantic, and is nowhere near Argentina.

So, at one fell swoop, Obama not only stabbed the Brits in the back, but made America an even bigger laughing stock than the horny Secret Service agents had done by turning Hotel El Caribe into the most infamous brothel in the world.

As if it’s not bad enough that we are constantly told that Obama’s IQ is too high to be accurately measured, his wife recently told a crowd in Nashville, Tennessee: “This president has brought us out of the darkness and into the light.”

If one is to believe certain eyewitness reports, as the collection plate was being passed among the Obama faithful, the blind could suddenly see, the lame got up and tap-danced and the dead all registered as Democrats.

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