Paul Cooper
Paul Cooper is a husband and father above all else. With a wife and 2 daughters he could use a dog, but sadly he only owns a cat – a female cat no less. Paul is also a pastor, blogger, and business owner. Find him on Twitter.
Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society
On Friday’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, on a segment called “Nut Roots Conservatismâ€, guest host Ana Marie Cox called for censorship of blogs like NewsRealblog.com and WorldNetDaily (which is her focus). She addresses the topic while interviewing the New York Times book reviewer Sam Tanenhaus of all people (not sure why he is considered an authority on this topic – our own David Swindle would have been happy to go on the show.) Cox and Tanenhaus both are ready to call all moderate Republicans to silence and “reign in†conservative blogs.
See a video of the exchange at MSNBC’s website here.
The focus of the interview is suggesting that conservative blogs are promoting “conspiracy theories†like the Obama birthers. Cox and Tanenhaus draw a comparison to the 1960s when William F. Buckley Jr. effectively wrote the John Birch Society out of the conservative movement by denouncing them as crank conspiracists. Cox and Tanenhaus claim that there’s no one in the Conservative Movement doing this today. This is a complete lie. “Mainstream,” “moderate” conservatives have denounced the Birther Conspiracy. David Horowitz, NewsReal, Mike Huckabee, and Ann Coulter have all dismissed the notion that President Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen.
The Right has been cleaning its house but has the Left? At no point do Cox and Tanenhaus address all the recent revelations of Green Job Czar Van Jones’ support of conspiracy theories like the American government planning 9-11. Their discussion seems laughable that when calls are being made for Van Jones to be removed from his position for his support of dangerous conspiracy theories – they decide to focus on Conservatives trying to silence fringe blogs (that hold no government authority) for their “conspiracy theoriesâ€.
Perhaps Cox and Tanenhaus should work at checking the Left’s conspiracists before they attack the Right for not allegedly checking their own. It’s not NewsReal Sunday but a particular scripture comes to mind:
3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
NewsReal Sunday: Is Ted Kennedy Spending the Afterlife Concerned About Our Health Care?
It was so thoughtful for much of the news media to use the death of Ted Kennedy to promote Obamacare.  Nothing is more respectful to the dead than to use the end of their life as propaganda to push for leftist policies. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad that cable news shows spent the middle part of this week talking about the life and death of Ted Kennedy and then segueing into saying the best way to honor him is to do whatever it takes to serve up government-run healthcare.
Not surprisingly, the worst perpetrator of this exploitation of the dead came from Keith Olbermann. On Wednesday, August 26, he devoted about five minutes to looking back on Kennedy’s life and then spent much of the rest of the show using the senator’s death to promote Obama and Pelosi’s health care reform. He talked about how Obama “promised Ted†that he would pass the reform before the year was out.
Olbermann questioned Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (the only openly socialist US Senator) asking him if Kennedy’s death could be used to convince all those darned Blue Dog Democrats to get on board. Sanders thought it was a great idea, and that ultimately all Democrats would come through and pass the health care legislation with no need of Republicans.
I guess all the Democrats who are actually questioning the value of Obama’s health care plans will now be given guilt trips about what Teddy would want. Olbermann went so far as to say that everyone alive in America today has a healthier body because of the legislation Kennedy has helped pass. Huh? Are you telling me if it wasn’t for Ted I might have diabetes, gingivitis, or mesotheleoma right now? And if I would simply shut up and follow the hopes of the now-deceased, my health care would give me a six-pack abs and help me live to 120?
There’s a spiritual question to all this too. Is Ted Kennedy really spending the afterlife wishing we would all accept Obamacare? That is what many would lead us to believe. But what do you spend your time doing in the afterlife? The Bible offers insight to this question.
The scriptures tell us that we will end up in either Heaven or Hell when we die.  In Luke 16 we are told of a rich man who went to Hell. He only had two wishes, and neither of them had to do with government policies. His main wish was for relief – even just the relief of a drop of water on his tongue. His second wish is that someone from Heaven would go tell his family about how horrible Hell was. That’s it – nothing about telling Blue Dog Congressmen how to vote.
What about Heaven? Heaven is a place where we will see God and then want to worship and serve Him. As one poet wrote:
In heaven we’ll see our Savior
And like Him we will be;
We’ll praise Him and we’ll serve Him
For all eternity!
Again, nothing about spending your time in the presence of God wishing that a 1,000-plus-page piece of legislation would be passed into law.
I am not Ted Kennedy’s judge, and I have no clue as to what exactly he is doing in the afterlife. However, I think we can be pretty certain he no longer cares at all what is going on with Obamacare. Senator Kennedy did many things that were good and many things that were bad (he was a major abortion advocate for example). Regardless, we do not honor the man by using him for propaganda. Let’s let the man rest in peace.
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The favorite tactic of Obamacare advocates is to simply call their opponents names. We’ve heard, for instance, that we’re racists, bigots, anti-American, and much worse. One of the more popular things to call us is “liars.” Any problem we see in the government plan, they respond with a thundering and profound: “Liar, Liar pants on fire.â€
While people like Nancy Pelosi and Robert Gibbs are transparent, name-calling hacks, President Obama loves to use their tactic himself, but in more nuanced ways. In an August 19 webcast put together by leftist religious organizations, Obama declared that abortion most certainly would not be paid for by the government under health care reform. His opponents, he charged, were engaging in “distortion.” ”You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion,” said Obama. “Not true. These are all fabrications….”
The President really makes calling someone a liar almost sound nice. However, his followers, including those in the media, have taken on his charge. They depict anyone who says abortion will be covered in the new health care plan as a dirty, low-down prevaricator. Chris Matthews especially likes to talk about the so-called “lies” of the right. But he almost changed his mind last week on Hardball.
On the August 18th episode of his program, Matthews exclaimed confidently to NBC journalist Chuck Todd: “No federal dollars for abortion.â€Â Todd then began to explain why pro-lifers say otherwise. And for a minute Matthews almost became a journalist again. He responded by calling the pro-life argument “a fair leap [of logic],†based on the fact that government would subsidize private insurance for poor people – and that private insurance will pay for abortion; therefore government will be funding abortions. But before he fell off the Obama express, Mr. Todd made sure he got back on:
MATTHEWS: … and that insurance covers abortion—so you‘re saying these plans would do that.
TODD: Well, no, I‘m just saying that is the argument that…
MATTHEWS: Well, will these plans—will these plans cover abortion the government’s subsidizing?
TODD:Â Not a single independent fact checker has been able to prove that…
And then Matthews remembered how deeply he loves Obama, and he moved off the subject and began talking about death panels.
So are pro-lifers lying? Will the government not cover abortions? There is one sure-fire way to guarantee that it won’t: Pass a law to make sure of it!
Richard Land, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council for Southern Baptists, made the point clearly in a recent interview with Baptist Press:
There’s a very simple way to solve this dilemma — that is to support language that specifically excludes abortion. Pro-life Democrats, in alliance with pro-life Republicans in the House, have tried repeatedly to get such abortion-exclusionary language into the various bills that are in the Congress, and they have been rebuffed every time.
If, as the President alleges, abortion is not to be considered a covered procedure in any government option, what’s the problem with specifically saying so by excluding it in the legislative language? I would encourage President Obama to pick up the phone and call his party’s leaders in the House and tell them to drop their opposition to specifically excluding abortion as a covered procedure in any proposed legislation.
Until President Obama does just that, he and his cronies are the only ones who deserve to be called liars.
This past week two of the most oft-used names among the talking heads of cable news shows were Congressman Barney Frank and Jesus Christ. I’m sure this is the first time Barney and Jesus have been mentioned on the same television show: Barney Frank for fighting back against his constituents who are angry about the prospect of government-run healthcare, and Jesus Christ because suddenly leftists want to use Jesus’ name to justify laws they think are moral obligations.
On Wednesday and Thursday Congressman Frank was featured on every show from Sean Hannity to Rachel Maddow and everyone in between. Of course he was vilified by those on the right and was made a conquering hero by those on the left for finally standing up to those “racist, Nazi, anti-American” people who are so bold as to ask questions about the cost of health-care. Keith Olbermann (when discussing Frank) went so far as to say on his “Worst Person in the World” segment Wednesday night, that if you compare Obama to socialist regimes of the past, then that makes you a supporter of Nazism and Hitler – oh yeah, and an anti-Semite. I’m not sure how to follow that logic.
Jesus was also all the talk on Ed Schultz, Bill O’Reilly, and Greta Van Sustern’s shows – among others. Why? Well, Wednesday President Obama did a conference call with 140,000 mostly left-leaning clergy (I was not invited). He reportedly was making a case that health care is a moral right that government must provide. He even jumped on the terminology of Rick Warren (made famous with his 40 Days of Purpose) by calling for “40 Days of Health Reform.†This conference call had many in the cable news media asking: What would Jesus do with health care reform?
Barney Frank and Jesus shared even more than just one-hour news-show time slots this week, though. They shared competing views on the role of government. When Congressman Frank was told at his town hall meeting that the government was bankrupting the country and will finish the job with health care reform, he had an interesting response. He claimed that we would have no financial problems in the world if we wouldn’t have sent our military into Iraq in 2003. His suggestion (and what I believe most on the left would agree with) is that if we would stop spending government money on defending our country with this war on terror, we could buy everyone their own doctor. He is basically arguing that government should stop focusing on defending us from frightening enemies and instead start dishing out free enemas.
Now what would Jesus say? Well, as a Christian I believe that all of Scripture is the word of God. God reveals Himself through Scripture. Jesus didn’t talk a lot about government, but there are a few key passages elsewhere in the New Testament about government. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 tells us that what we should want from “kings and all those in authority†is security “that we may live peaceful and quiet lives.â€Â Romans 13:1-7 says the reason we pay taxes and respect authority is because the job of government is to “bear the sword†and protect us from wrongdoers. In other words, while Jesus and the New Testament never once mention that the government’s job is to provide health care, the New Testament specifically declares that the job of our government is to protect us from terror.
When it comes down to the role of government, do we really want to start asking: What would Barney do?
