The Right Lane update 3.28.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Why Are Blacks So Easily Duped by Charismatic Black Male Leaders?  Watch

Listen to two Black politically-active people discuss the background and the issues. Very informative.

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Dr. Ben Carson Dismantles Touré's Race-Baiting Smear Campaign  Watch

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Obama moves to 'shame' Congress into approving gun control package

President Obama moved Thursday to put the muscle of the White House and his network of supporters behind a gun control package tracking toward the Senate floor, calling on voters to pressure Congress into backing it as the proposal runs into resistance on Capitol Hill. The president, in a set of brief remarks from the White House Thursday surrounded by the mothers of shooting victims, raised concern that the shock from the Newtown elementary school shooting could soon fade. "Less than 100 days ago that happened. ... Shame on us if we've forgotten," Obama said. "I haven't forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we've forgotten."  Amid signals from Washington that the Senate bill could be losing momentum and high-dollar ad campaigns on both sides, the president was there to deliver a message to wavering lawmakers. "Don't get squishy," he said.  Obama, accusing opponents of drumming up "fear," urged supporters to call members of Congress and pressure them into backing the package. Republican Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, ripped the president for the remarks, suggesting he was exploiting the Newtown tragedy.  "The proposals the president is calling for Congress to pass would primarily serve to reduce the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding citizens while having little or no effect on violent crime," Lee said in a statement. "It is deeply unfortunate that he continues to use the tragedy at Newtown as a backdrop for pushing legislation that would have done nothing to prevent that horrible crime."  Lee said he and his conservative colleagues plan to ensure that any of the firearms proposals require a 60-vote threshold in order to proceed. This could be a high hurdle for the Senate to clear. 

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Resurrection Day 2013

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors." --George Washington

In observance of Good Friday and in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we take leave from the rigors of analyzing the week's news, policy and opinion in order to focus on an eternal message. To our readers of faiths other than Christianity, we welcome you to read on, and we hope that this edition serves to deepen your understanding of our faith -- the faith of so many of our Founders. To all of our readers, we wish God's blessing and peace upon you and your families.

The Good News

"Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead." --John 20:1-9

"While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.'" --Luke 24:4-6

He is not here, but has risen.

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64% Think Too Many Are Dependent on Government Aid

Americans continue to believe that too many of their fellow citizens are financially dependent on the government, but they’re less critical of programs to help the poor. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% of American Adults think there are too many Americans dependent on the government for financial aid. Only eight percent (8%) believe not enough Americans are dependent on this aid, while 17% feel the level of dependency is about right. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

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55% Want Government to Deport Those Who Overstay Their Visas

An estimated 40% to 45% of the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States are people who entered the country on legal visas and then stayed on after those visas expired. Most voters think the government should send those people home, but the Political Class disagrees. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the federal government should find these illegal immigrants and make them go home. Only 22% oppose such a policy, while just as many (23%) are not sure.

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School Bans The Word ‘Easter’ From Egg Hunt

“We compromised by allowing teachers to use other different kinds of shapes besides eggs in the classroom to put those questions in the students will be answering.” Davenport says Madison City Schools have no policy in place regarding observance of religious holidays. Elementary school teachers in Madison are allowed to choose the two parties they wish their respective classes to participate in each year. The egg hunt and quiz bowl will go on, just without any mention of the word “Easter”.

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AP Pretends Sequestration Is Hurting Consumer Confidence by Mark Horne

We have been warned over and over again that sequestration would be really bad for the economy.  The Associated Press began a recent article declaring that, in fact, sequestration had severely hurt consumer confidence: “Americans are less confident in the economy than they were last month as massive government spending cuts have stoked economic uncertainty.” So I was expecting a story that would show how consumers were saying that these “massive” reductions in planned increased spending (amounting to less than three percent) were causing them concern. “The Conference Board, a New York-based private research group, said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index fell in March to 59.7 from a revised reading of 68 in February and the 68.7 that analysts polled by research firm FactSet expected. Confidence is still far off from the 90 reading that indicates a healthy economy. The index is closely watched by economists because it makes a monthly gauge of how Americans are feeling about their jobs, incomes and other bread-and-butter issues. That’s important because consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Anxiety about $85 billion in across-the-board government spending cuts that took effect March 1 caused the decline in the index, the group said. The spending reductions, which were triggered after Congress and the White House failed to resolve a budget impasse, have “created uncertainty regarding the economic outlook,” Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s director of economic indicators, said in a statement.” There is no indication in the story that the conference board actually asked about what consumer thought about the spending cuts. No evidence is offered at all that the spending cuts are the reason that consumers named for their reduction in confidence about the economy. The Conference Board, as far as I can tell from the story, just declared it is the cause.

News stories are written with the expectation that many readers will never bother beyond the first few paragraphs. After declaring that consumer confidence has plummeted because of the alleged “spending cuts,” the story more or less casts doubts on what it has just declared as fact:

“Congress and the Obama administration reached a deal on Jan. 1 to prevent income taxes from rising on most Americans. But they allowed a temporary cut in Social Security taxes to expire. For a worker earning $50,000 a year, take-home pay will shrink by about $1,000. That has a more direct impact on most Americans than the government spending reductions, noted Scott Brown, chief economist at investment firm Raymond James. The March drop in the confidence index “likely reflects the impact of higher gasoline prices as well as the higher payroll tax,” Brown said. Although the payroll tax increase kicked in three months ago, its effect may just now be sinking in for some people, he suggested.”

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Justices poised to strike down entire healthcare law By David G. Savage

Picking up where they left off Tuesday, the conservatives said they thought a decision striking down the law's controversial individual mandate to purchase health insurance means the whole statute should fall with it. The court’s conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional. "One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto," said Justice Antonin Scalia. Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an "extreme proposition" to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down. Meanwhile, the court's liberal justices argued for restraint. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court should do a "salvage job," not undertake a “wrecking operation." But she looked to be out-voted. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they shared the view of Scalia and Kennedy that the law should stand or fall in total. Along with Justice Clarence Thomas, they would have a majority to strike down the entire statute as unconstitutional. An Obama administration lawyer, urging caution, said it would be "extraordinary" for the court to throw out the entire law. About 2.5 million young people under age 26 are on their parents' insurance now because of the new law. If it were struck down entirely, "2.5 million of them would be thrown off the insurance rolls," said Edwin Kneedler. The administration indicated it was prepared to accept a ruling that some of the insurance reforms should fall if the mandate were struck down. For example, insurers would not be required to sell coverage to people with preexisting conditions. But Kneedler, a deputy solicitor general, said the court should go no further. But the court's conservatives said the law was passed as a package and must fall as a package. The justices are scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon to debate the law's Medicaid expansion.

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Sebelius: Yep, ObamaCare is raising insurance costs  By: John Hayward
A watershed moment in the ongoing disaster of ObamaCare, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally admits that health insurance premiums are rising because of the President’s health insurance takeover, per the Wall Street Journal:

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage.

The secretary’s remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous. She noted that the law requires plans to provide better benefits and treat all customers equally regardless of their medical claims.

“These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she said. “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”

Ms. Sebelius added that those customers currently pay more for their health care if their plans have high out-of-pocket costs, high deductibles or exclude particular types of coverage, such as mental health treatment. She also said that some men and younger customers could see their rates increase while women and older customers could see their rates drop because the law restricts insurers’ ability to set rates based on age and gender.

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CDC: 110,197,000 Venereal Infections in U.S.; Nation Creating New STIs Faster Than New Jobs or College Grads By Terence P. Jeffrey

According to new data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 19.7 million new venereal infections in the United States in 2008, bringing the total number of existing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S. at that time to 110,197,000. The 19.7 million new STIs in 2008 vastly outpaced the new jobs and college graduates created in the United States that year or any other year on record, according to government data. The competition was not close. The STI study referenced by the CDC estimated that 50 percent of the new infections in 2008 occurred among people in the 15-to-24 age bracket. In fact, of the 19,738,800 total new STIs in the United States in 2008, 9,782,650 were among Americans in the 15-to-24 age bracket. By contrast, there were 1,524,092 bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in the 2007-2008 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That means the total number of new STIs in 2008 outpaced the total number of new bachelor’s degrees by nearly 13 to 1, and the number of new STIs among Americans in the 15-to-24 age bracket outnumbered new bachelor’s degrees by more than 6 to 1. While the CDC estimates that there were 19.7 million new STIs in the United States in 2008, data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the total number of people employed in the country actually declined by 2.9 million during that year. The CDC said the new venereal infections contracted each year cost the nation about $16 billion. [so as the media, TV and movies promote casual sex we are not seeing the effects.  Of course the left don't like facts and will react in anger if we make any correlations!]

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The Uninformed Voter-Ignorance Runs Deep and Wide by Ralph Barker

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance -Laurence J. Peter

Don’t believe for a second that the ignorance of others doesn’t threaten your well being. Your future is in their hands. The growing mass of ignorant voters has become an invisible majority that elects leaders who will keep them, and you, on the plantation. They simply don’t know any better. By default, they are useful idiots who pose an imminent danger for us all. Laurence Peter’s quotation above is so true. How do you fight ignorance? How do you win over a person who has no knowledge of the issue you discuss, but is willing to almost kill you over it? This is a very common occurrence when talking politics or religion. Emotion rules! Logic is not allowed!

In America today, ignorance abounds. Ignorance is like a dew of obliviousness that blankets our land. It’s so pervasive it smothers those who actually know what is going on in the world.

Many times, armed with facts and logic, I have engaged someone over an issue. The result has often been to be rebuffed and attacked with hostile emotion backed by nothing but ignorance. Apparently, people who fit this description are now the majority of voters. This is terribly sad and incredibly dangerous to America’s future. I hate to appeal to dead men, but what would Jefferson, Franklin, and Hancock think? There is a big difference between stupid and ignorance, too. It is possible to fix ignorance, but it is difficult to do. You can’t fix stupid. Therefore, it's not a good use of time or effort trying to capture the stupid vote.

We have to use our resources to convert the ignorant. This is an uphill battle with the current state of public education, media propaganda, and a stable full of lying politicians (yes there are some great exceptions, but few). How do we, the little people, overcome such massive obstacles?

Benjamin Franklin said, “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.” He’s right and we are currently paying a big price for what now is the norm among too many voters. They don’t know the issues. They are uninformed, but ready to vote for their man or woman for all the wrong reasons. I honestly don’t care whether President Obama is black or not, but millions do and they voted for him for no other reason.

Let me share just a couple of examples of the ignorance that roams our land. Recently, Jimmy Kimmel did a street interview segment on his television show called “The confusing question of the day.” His objective was to see what the average American knew about the sequester issue. You can watch the video of the interviews here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gXOV_XWJck. I guess in the name of full disclosure I should mention these interviewees are from California. Oh well! What starts there comes to your hometown soon. The result of the interviews was that no one knew what sequester was but had definite opinions on it. The question was phrased thusly: “What do you think about Obama pardoning the sequester and sending it to Portugal?” After I watched this, I wanted to turn off the lights and hide. These are American adults that are free to roam and reproduce. Please send the Zombies at least I can shoot them! I guess I can. Is that legal?

A National Geographic survey conducted in 2005 revealed: …Displaying even greater ignorance, when asked to find ten U.S. states on the map, only 89 percent could find Texas and California and only 51 percent could locate New York. When asked to locate sixteen countries on a world map, these geographic ‘wide-awakes’ could only find seven of the sixteen. Twenty nine percent couldn’t find the diminutive PACIFIC OCEAN! Eleven percent couldn’t even find their own country, the UNITED STATES on the world map! These kids will soon receive the right to vote. That should scare the hell out of you. The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.” I might be in trouble. I can’t name but one Simpson. Does OJ count?

On August 26, 2010, the Examiner.com reported, By far the greatest threat to U.S. national security is the willful unapologetic ignorance of the average American citizen. The average American tends to not care about everything that does not affect them directly. It is a worldwide recognizable trait that all other people of the world seem to know except Americans. There is another segment of our population that displays another form of ignorance that adds to the problem. The Christian community is infested with several dynamics that contribute to the demise of our country.

First, a very large group of Christians from many denominations are obsessed with the end times. Prophecy-oriented preachers and writers like Tim Lahaye and Hal Lindsey have earned tens of millions of dollars raising the “end times” alarm. The result of this has been to paralyze a large part of the Christian voting block.  This is true because some are convinced Jesus’ return is imminent so why get involved. Some are convinced that politics is dirty so they shouldn’t vote. And others are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good. Combined, these dropouts give elections to the bad guys. I won’t even explore the fact that millions of Christians vote for the bad guys. Go figure that one out.

Finally, when you discover what Americans don’t know about the U.S. Constitution, including those in Congress, it’s depressing. Constitutional studies are rarely taught in schools anymore except in passing. Yet, in some cases, teachers spend up to three weeks teaching Sharia law! God help us.  So, what’s the answer to all of this? Again, it is education, but the powers that be in this country including the NEA, our politicians, and liberal groups are against it. If people understood the issues it would threaten those in power. They rely on our ignorance. I seem to return to the same point over time. God is in control. We get what we deserve. God can save us if He will. The state won’t. The state can’t. Two powerful thoughts from the Scriptures:

Hosea 4:6: My people perish for a lack of knowledge
Proverbs 9:11: But through knowledge the righteous will be delivered

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"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism." --James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

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