politics – Page 39 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

Obama’s 2013 Thanksgiving proclamation vs Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation.

THANKSGIVING DAY,

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Thanksgiving offers each of us the chance to count our many blessings the freedoms we enjoy, the time we spend with loved ones, the brave men and women who defend our Nation at home and abroad. This tradition reminds us that no matter what our background or beliefs, no matter who we are or who we love, at our core we are first and foremost Americans.

Our annual celebration has roots in centuries old colonial customs. When we gather around the table, we follow the example of the Pilgrims and Wampanoags, who shared the fruits of a successful harvest nearly 400 years ago. When we offer our thanks, we mirror those who set aside a day of prayer. And when we join with friends and neighbors to alleviate suffering and make our communities whole, we honor the spirit of President Abraham Lincoln, who called on his fellow citizens to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.”

Our country has always been home to Americans who recognize the importance of giving back.

Today, we honor all those serving our Nation far from home. We also thank the first responders and medical professionals who work through the holiday to keep us safe, and we acknowledge the volunteers who dedicate this day to those less fortunate.

This Thanksgiving Day, let us forge deeper connections with our loved ones. Let us extend our gratitude and our compassion.

And let us lift each other up and recognize, in the oldest spirit of this tradition, that we rise or fall as one Nation, under God.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 28, 2013, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage the people of the United States to join together whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place of fellowship for friends and neighbors and give thanks for all we have received in the past year, express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own, and share our bounty with others.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentysixth Day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty eighth.

BARACK OBAMA

This time Barack Obama quoted directly a part of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation that mentions the Almighty hand. Unfortunately the quote is hanging without reference to what the Almighty hand refers to. Unfortunately the Almighty hand has gotten a wider connotation in modern use. Sen. Orrin Hatch among many others has mentioned “the almighty hand of the federal government”. We get a hint that it must refer to God since he puts it in the last part of the proclamation One Nation, under God. When he recited the Gettysburg address just a few days earlier he omitted the two words “Under God”.

In Abraham Lincolns address on the other hand it is obvious that it is to God we give thanks, not neighbors friends, first responders etc. We should and must be thankful for that.

But first we must give thanks to God. That is what Thanksgiving is all about.

See his proclamation below.

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States
A Proclamation

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln

The “If You Like the insurance You Have, Keep It.” lie. A Limerick.

The official website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal/titlei/keepit still comes up ( as of Nov 10 2013, 4 P.M.) with this blatant lie:

It seems that the whole Obama presidency is built on lies.

What about all the people satisfied with their policy that just got their insurance canceled due to changes mandated by “The affordable healthcare act?”

How prevaricators get by

What’s said in the past, they deny.

So Obama lives lies.

Yet this truth still applies:

A lie is a lie is a lie.

The reduction in foodstamp benefits Nov 1 is due to Democrat laws passed in 2010.

Aug 10 2010 President Obama signed a bill that he said would save hundreds of thousands of teacher and other public workers from unemployment.

Obama signed the measure into law just hours after the House passed it in a special one-day session during what would normally be the lawmakers’ summer break.

The $26 billion bill would protect 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. Obama and Democrats said quick action was necessary before children return to classrooms minus teachers laid off because of budgetary crises in states that have been hard-hit by the recession.

Republicans called the bill a giveaway to teachers unions and an example of wasteful Washington spending.

The bill would be paid for partly by closing a tax loophole used by multinational corporations, but mainly by reducing food stamp benefits for the poor starting in 2013. It passed mainly along party lines by a vote of 247-161.

The time is now to pay the piper. The reported reason is the expiration of the stimulus program, but it is not that simple.

In August 2010, Congress passed and the President signed P.L. 111-226, which accelerated the sunset of the ARRA benefit increase to April 2014 and used the estimated savings for state fiscal relief through additional federal funding for school districts to maintain teachers’ jobs and maintaining a higher federal match for Medicaid costs. Four months later, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (P.L. 111-296), which reauthorized Child Nutrition programs, further accelerated the sunset date of ARRA to October 31, 2013, to offset the cost of the legislation. As a result, beginning on November 1, 2013, SNAP benefit levels will be based on the cost of the June 2013 TFP, which is lower than the ARRA levels.

Reconvening of Congress, their action quite speedy
To bail out the unions, they all are so greedy.
Harry, Nancy and Barack
Act together as a pack:
Take it from food stamps! Who cares ‘bout the needy?

Will the press even mention that the cuts are caused by Democrat actions in 2010?

Who is this unsung civil rights hero?

In December 2010 a police lieutenant’s son, Justin Collison, sucker punched a black homeless man named Sherman Ware outside a bar [in Sanford, Fla.] Although Ware suffered a concussion and there was video evidence of Collison’s attack, no action was taken against Collison, who is white, for nearly a month. Reuters reporter Daniel Trotta talked about the incident in his April 3 2013 analysis of the early days of the Trayvon Martin phenomenon, but he failed to tell the full story.

Upset at the lack of media attention the Ware case was getting, a young man and his wife, printed fliers demanding that the community hold accountable officers responsible for misconduct. They then passed fliers out to area churches. At a public meeting in January 2011, the young man took the floor and said, ‘I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white. It should not and cannot be enforced in the gray for those that are in the thin blue line.’ The meeting was recorded on video. As a result of the publicity, police chief Brian Tooley, whom he blasted for his ‘illegal cover-up and corruption,’ was forced to resign, and Collison was arrested. The couple headlined their fliers with a famous quote from Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

This young man was George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman worked with “the local NAACP and Natalie Jackson – who would become part of Team Trayvon – to seek justice for Ware, and they all betrayed him after the incident with Trayvon Martin, because it was in their best interest to pretend they didn’t know who he was.”

The story of Zimmerman’s crusade has largely gone unreported, through mainstream media indifference and the labeling of anyone who mentions it as “racist,” said Jack Cashill in his new book “If I had a son.”

“Robert Zimmerman tried to get out this story, but Natalie Jackson said that he was playing the ‘race card’ (calling Zimmerman a racist), and the mainstream media didn’t want to know this side of Zimmerman, because they had their narrative and they didn’t want any information to get out that contradicted it,” Cashill wrote.

“If the reader had any doubt that media bias was at the heart of the George Zimmerman trial, Jack Cashill’s powerful new book, ‘If I Had a Son,’ puts this misconception to rest. Armed with example after example of purposeful media falsifications, lies, and deceptions, Cashill explores how the black grievance industry (BGI) and the race-mongering mainstream media manufactured a narrative that Zimmerman was an over-vigilant cop wannabe who stalked Trayvon Martin to his untimely death. The real story is quite different: The teenage Martin had been suspended from school on multiple occasions, and had a recent preoccupation with guns—none of which was known to Zimmerman when their paths met.

The train-wreck that is Obama-care. A Song.

Train-wreck, train-wreck, I despair. Train-wrecked is Obama-care.

Website broke beyond repair. It is Obama-scare.

I’ll be lost without health-care, Go without I would not dare

My old plans don’t have a prayer, too good to be deemed fair.

Cost is more than doubled too. No, Sebelius, that won’t do.

But her attitude comes through: “I do not work for you”.

Crony-ism to the sky, Obama gave his reason why:

“No-one is more mad than I.” Wasn’t that a true reply?

Train-wreck, train-wreck, I despair. Train-wrecked is Obama-scare.

Common sense was never there. But Obama doesn’t care.

On mom Grizzly, Gorilla and crony capitalism. A Limerick.

There once is a gal from Wasilla;

Was said to be one imbecilla.

But she knows what is right.

When it comes to a fight

Mom Grizzly will stuff their gorilla.

What is Obama going to do in Sweden?

Obama is arriving in Arlanda with his entourage on Wednesday morning sometime. His total entourage is 500 to 700 people, all of which pay well to stay at first class accommodations like Grand Hotel.

After that there is a 26 mile trip in his limousine, “the beast” to Stockholm. The Swedes did not want any airport noise close to Stockholm, so they built the airport at a safe distance even from the exurbs.

He will visit (in no particular order)

The Swedish “moderate” Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and talk trade.

The Royal Technical Institute library and be shown some green energy initiatives.

The Grand Synagogue and honor the Swede Raoul Wallenberg, credited for saving over 10000 Jews in Hungary during WWII, was arrested and pined away in a Russian prison.

A dinner with the Prime Minister, maybe joined with his counterparts from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.

On Thursday morning he will pay homage to the King and Queen of Sweden at the Royal Castle before going to Russia. This is different from 4 years ago when he snubbed the King and Queen of Norway after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

Other than that I do not know why he has to go to Sweden instead of meeting with Putin and try to talk him out of providing more support for the Assad regime. After all he promised he would meet and negotiate with our enemies without preconditions.

After that, it is back to Arlanda and off to Russia and the G20 meeting.

He will not meet with Putin, but will meet with some gay activists in Russia. Priorities, priorities.

Here is the Obama entourage

The Obama Doctrine vs. the Palin Doctrine.

For a long time I have been trying to figure out what the “Obama doctrine” would look like. The Jerusalem Post’s Michael Wilner was grappling with the same thing and came up with a few snippets.

The Obama Doctrine: Right is might

“Some things are more important than partisan differences,” Obama said from the White House. “Now is the time to show the world that America keeps its commitments.”

Commenting briefly and unscripted from the White House on Friday, Obama repeatedly mentioned that the murderer of “innocent children” must not go unpunished.

“This is our first task— caring for our children. It’s our first job,” Obama said last December in Newtown, Connecticut, after the mass shooting of twenty school children. “If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.”

In the fifth year of his presidency, we now have a foreign policy doctrine from Obama: that principled decisions, driven by fundamental good and contrasted by stark and evident evil, serve to reinforce the core national security interests of the United States, even when crippled by practical difficulties.

“Right makes might,” he said Saturday on Syria, from the Rose Garden, “not the other way around.”

“Fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility,” Secretary John Kerry said from the State Department on Friday. “It is profoundly about who we are.”

Perhaps that, to Obama, is another core governing principle in American foreign policy: that partisanship should end at the water’s edge.

After moving warships and shouting threats, inaction could deliver a steep cost to American credibility around the world. The question Obama wants answered is whether America will adopt the Obama Doctrine: that right is might, and justifies the use of force.

This was the best possible viewpoint the reporter could muster regarding the Obama doctrine.

My take on the Obama doctrine is more: On the one hand…On the other hand.

On the one hand Obama will negotiate with all world leaders without preconditions

On the other hand he will not meet with Putin, goes to Sweden instead.

On the one hand action against Syria is of utmost urgency.

On the other hand there is no need to call in congress early. Take your time.

On the one hand the murderer of “innocent children” must not go unpunished.

On the other hand, if a baby survives an abortion attempt, it is o.k. to let the baby die if the original intent was to abort.

On the one hand, drone strikes are good, even if there are collateral deaths of innocent children.

On the other hand, guns are bad, since the wrong use of them could kill innocents.

On the one hand we will do no military action without the consent of U.N. or at least our allies.

On the other hand we must intervene without international buy-in.

I could go on with rich vs. poor, Muslims vs. Christians, white vs. black, etc. but I refrain.

This is my best take on the Obama doctrine.

Contrast this with the Palin doctrine: A five Point approach to Foreign Policy, presented by Governor Sarah Palin Aug. 27 in a speech at Colorado Christian University

First, we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period.

Second, if we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that, we use overwhelming force. We only send our troops into war with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. We do not stretch out our military with open-ended and ill-defined missions. Nation building is a nice idea in theory, but it is not the main purpose of our armed forces. We use our military to win wars.

And third, we must have clearly defined goals and objectives before sending troops into harm’s way. If you can’t explain the mission to the American people clearly and concisely, then our sons and daughters should not be sent into battle. Period.

Fourth, American soldiers must never be put under foreign command. We will fight side by side with our allies, but American soldiers must remain under the care and the command of American officers.

Fifth, sending in our armed forces should be the last resort. We don’t go looking for dragons to slay. However, we will encourage the forces of freedom around the world who are sincerely fighting for the empowerment of the individual. When it makes sense, when it’s appropriate, we will provide them with material support to help them win their own freedom.

Peregruzka? Russia triples the fee to ferry astronauts.

A trip down memory lane from Geneva March 2009.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administration’s vow to “press the reset button” on U.S.-Russia relations.

She handed a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift: a red button on a black base with a Russian word peregruzka printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton asked.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said.

Instead of “reset,” Lavrov said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

Clinton and Lavrov laughed.

“We won’t let you do that to us,” she said.

It doesn’t say ПЕРЕГРУЗКА on the button, it says PEREGRUZKA. The mistranslation is bad enough, but using Roman letters instead of Cyrillic? What was going on? Didn’t anyone realize they use a different alphabet over there? There are two possible explanations: Ignorance, or arrogance on the part of the Hillary Clinton State Department. I know Hillary Clinton has demonstrated plenty of both in statements such as: “What difference does it make?”

How has this reset worked out for us? Besides Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hezbollah, Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and many other countries where U.S. and Russia have opposing interests, and Poland where we plainly sold out the missile defense, we are in a pickle on another front:

Space exploration.

Since Obama made it NASA’s highest priority to promote the contributions of Islam to science and the scrapping of the space shuttle program with no replacements in sight we are totally dependent on Russia to ferry our astronaut scientists to and from the space station.

Russia is doing the rational thing: Tripling the fees from $22 million to $71 million to transport just one American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard its Soyuz spacecraft in 2016. –

Maybe Hillary really meant “Overcharge” instead of reset? Obama seems to love to give money to our adversaries instead of caring about our economy at home.

Filling out the wellness profile at Penn State.

In an effort to reduce health care costs, Penn State University, being self-insured have come up with a program where faculty and staff must complete and pass a wellness profile or face a $100/month increase in the employee portion of the health care costs.

Being somewhat frugal, and very loyal to PSU, a person I hold very dear went to do her duty and complete the profile. A woman at the desk takes the necessary information and then proceeds with her weight, height and the all-important waist measurement.

“Hmm, I see your Body mass index is 28 and with your waist you are borderline obese. I will have to enroll you in an exercise regimen.”

“I do not want to start exercising in my condition”

“Well then here is a list of dieting instructions”

“I am not going on a diet in my condition”

“well, there is no way I can qualify you for passing the wellness profile. I will have to refer you to the counselor”

Later at the counselor.

“Hmm, I see your Body mass index is 28 and with your waist you are borderline obese. I will have to enroll you in an exercise regimen.”

“I do not want to start exercising in my condition”

“Well then here is a list of diets you can choose from”

“I am not going on a diet in my condition. I am seven months pregnant!!”

“So you say, but at your age and BMI and waist measurement you are at significant higher risk for heart disease and other complications.”

“Can’t you see I am pregnant?”

“I only have my computer glasses on so I cannot verify your condition. Besides, it is not for me to determine. Come back in three months. Then we can see if the situation has changed. Have a good day!”

And this isn’t even Obamacare!