No Religious Freedoms for Businesses?

In a recent Op-Ed, Mr. Leonard Pitts, Jr. tried to make the case that violating someone’s 1st Amendment rights is the same as the idea that one’s personal liberty ends where the next person’s begins.

Let me also use a quote to make my point. “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” A direct quote correctly attributed to President Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Henry L. Pierce, April, 1859. In this letter, he was declining an invitation to speak at an event in Boston, honoring Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Lincoln explained that Jefferson gave us, as a nation, a great gift which was the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of their Creator. He said that Jefferson, “had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
Hobby Lobby

That is precisely what those who propose that Hobby Lobby and other businesses forgo their 1st Amendment right to freedom of religion due to the onerous regulations of the Affordable Care Act are asking.

Mr. Pitts says that the “crazy part” is that under the ACA, those businesses can just opt out of offering their employees any insurance at all. So in his eyes, and in the eyes of many on the left, it is either kowtow to our wishes or just stop offering health benefits to your workers.

I say the “crazy part” is just what Lincoln said, that “those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves,” and this is exactly what the government is asking the Supreme Court to do. Uncle Sam wants the court to take away Hobby Lobby’s freedom of religion, yet what happened to Mr. Pitts’ quote about swinging your fist, but not hitting my nose?

Just saying that “If a Hobby Lobby executive has no interest in contraceptive care, good for her,” is on the face of it a rather crass statement and not germane at all to the discussion. The case before the court has nothing to do with personal preferences. That is why his argument that this creates a slippery slope where some future company can decide, for religious purposes not to hire women or persons of a particular faith, etc… doesn’t fly. The idea that adhering to the Constitution will lead to violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 is a straw man argument, at best.

If I were to obtain a job at the store of a Hasidic gem merchant, should I be upset that there’s no bacon in the cafeteria?

If I am a Mormon and there is tea and coffee in the break room, do I have the right to demand my employer removes them because in my faith, I abstain from those beverages?

Hobby Lobby’various birth control methodss owners believe that life begins at conception and that adhering to the regulations in the ACA violates their religious beliefs or forces them to either pay millions of dollars in fines or stop offering health benefits entirely.

The ironic part of this story is that Hobby Lobby offers SIXTEEN other forms of birth control listed in Obamacare.

While Mr. Pitts is absolutely entitled to his opinion, he damages his credibility when he calls Hobby Lobby’s desire to remain true to their religious tenets, “faintly Talibanesque,” and that allowing them to decline to cover certain contraceptives and abortifacients is “anathema to our ideals of individual liberty and yes, religious freedom.”

Really? So telling a business what they can and cannot do as it relates to their 1st Amendment rights is “faintly Talibanesque,” yet allowing the wishes of a few employees to be forced upon all businesses upholds the ideals of religious freedom?

Let us not forget that the right to swing a fist ending where someone else’s nose begins is a two way street.

 

To read Mr. Pitts’ full article, click here.

Republic. One Of Those Words…

Republic.

One of those words. A word we far too often neglect to use today, but we need to be reminded of it once in a while.

“Republic, I like the sound of the word. Means people can live free, talk free, go or come by ourselves, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. Republic is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat, the same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step, or his first baby shaves and makes his first sound like a man. Some words can give you a feeling that’ll make your heart warm. Republic is one of those words.” John Wayne as Colonel Davy Crockett to Laurence Harvey as Colonel William Travis, Commander of the Alamo

This is from the movie, The Alamo directed by John Wayne. He also starred in the movie with Richard Boone, Richard Widmark, Chill Wills, Patrick Wayne, Frankie Avalon and Ken Curtis (best known as Festus on Gunsmoke).

Now this was just a short speech by an actor in a movie, but it wasn’t just any actor, it was The Duke. It wasn’t just any movie, it was about The Battle of the Alamo. It seems to me that we need more leaders today that feel this way about our republic.

I Promise!! Barack Obama’s Great Deception on Obamacare Premiums

Remember way back to the 2008 Presidential campaign? Then Senator Obama made a promise, one he repeated over and over for the next few years. Here’s a reminder of what he said:

“If you’ve got insurance through your employer, you can keep your insurance. We estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, then we’re going to provide you the option of buying into the same kind of federal pool that both Sen. McCain and I enjoy as federal employees. We’re going to make sure insurance companies can’t discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions. We’ll negotiate with the drug companies for the cheapest available prices. We are going to invest in information technology to eliminate bureaucracy and make the system more efficient. We’ve got to put more money into preventive care.” – Senator Barack Obama, 2008

This figure that Obama kept spouting ad nauseum was derived from a memo by three Harvard professors that were unpaid advisers to the Obama campaign. Their memo cites their “best guess” of annual savings of $200 billion. They then divided that by the U.S. population, multiplied out to represent a family of four, then they rounded down to get to the $2500 figure.
However, we ultimately got confirmation of something that just about every logical thinking American knew for the truth – that Obamacare would not drive costs down, but it would have the opposite effect and inflate healthcare costs across the board.

“During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term.
But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama’s vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey.
Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370.
What’s more, premiums climbed faster in Obama’s four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.” – SOURCE

Now fast forward to today and what does Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius have to say about Obamacare?

““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.” – SOURCE

Now that the election is over, and Mr. Obama is safely ensconsed as President Obama for a second term, and as we are starting to see the mal effects of Obama’s policies more and more of the undeniable truth is being revealed.
But it isn’t only individual and family insurance costs that are costing more, the states are on the hook for billions more healthcare costs, as well.

““The additional cost to employers in states that do not expand Medicaid has been estimated as $1.3 billion a year. Of course, if Medicaid is expanded, that’s another fleecing for we, the taxpaying sheep.  If we’re going to get our pockets picked anyway, subsidizing businesses sounds like it would be cheaper.  And that’s what waiving the notorious “individual mandate” or business maandates amounts to, because the purpose of those mandates is to force every American to buy health insurance right away, rather than waiting until they get sick and invoking that “must cover pre-existing conditions” mandate.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas, which is resisting Medicaid expansion, made this point through a spokeswoman: “This is not free money from the federal government – it’s either being borrowed from China or taken out of taxpayers’ pockets.  The state and federal government can’t afford the current Medicaid program as is, and it’s financially irresponsible to continue expanding a program that we know to be broken.”  – SOURCE

Thank you President Obama, you’ve made sure you were the U.S. President who ushered in socialized medicine, regardless of whether it actually helps anyone…

There are still selfless people in this world.

Larry the Flagman Eckhardt is a very special individual and the quintessential American Patriot. Please watch the video and see what he does for all of our fallen heroes. Chris Hayes would do well to spend one week with this man.

Here is a link to his Facebook page – Larry “The Flagman”

 

Obamacare summed up in ONE sentence.

Dr. Barbara Bellar Candidate for Illinois State Senate, District 18 sums up Obamacare in one sentence. She says:

I am a candidate running against the Chicago Machine and I could use your help! With the national attention I am receiving from this video you know that the Chicago Machine will be even more motivated to defeat me. So if you could please go to website http://electbellar.com and click the donate button. If you could please send me a donation of any size it would be greatly appreciated. And know that your donation will go to defeat the Chicago Machine.

Checks can be sent to Citizens to Elect Barbara Bellar – PO Box 557766, Chicago, IL 60655.

To view my complete speech go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnAP0xnfjB8&feature=share&list=UUBzUlz…

Follow my mobile campaign by texting “Bellar” to 90210.

I wish I could vote for this lady, she is exactly the type of citizen politician our Founding Fathers envisioned.

U.S Armed Forces – We Must Fight – President Reagan (HD)

Belonging to a Conservative Chat Group on Facebook is not only entertaining, it is educational as well. Once in a while someone links something that just makes you sit back and ask why our present day politicians just don’t get it. This is one of those videos.

A very patriotic man named Matthew has a great youtube channel and he made this video. It features great footage of our amazing Military and also of the greatest American President of the 20th Century, if not of all time, Ronald Reagan.

On his youtube channel, Matthew introduces himself this way:

My name is Matthew, I am a proud C SQN Royal Canadian Dragoon in the Canadian Army and make videos on my spare time. I am Canadian/American and as such also make American videos from time to time. I am currently deployed overseas. None of the videos are made for profit, nor are any of them commercializing on any contents or media used in them. They are made solely for educational purposes and are not intended to be used in any form for any sort of monetary gain.

Without any further ado, here is the video, do yourself a favor and take 3 minutes to watch this. You’ll be glad you did.

It’s “Everyone Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day!” How Kimberlin Operates

~ Hat Tip to Conservative Hideout 2.0 ~

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, United States of America

That quote is most appropriate today, and dozens of bloggers unite to raise awareness regarding the activities, past and present, of Brett Kimberlin. As it has been noted, Kimberlin has been threatening (via the legal system, to the best of my knowledge), any blogger that discusses his criminal history. At the time of this writing, Robert Stacey McCain, and family, are in hiding due harassment by Kimberlin. And, as Franklin suggested, we are uniting in common cause, as if we allow thuggish behavior to silence one of us, and another, and another, it is only matter of time before we are all silenced. What happens to Stacey McCain today, can happen to me tomorrow, or Bob Belvedere, or Gator Doug, or King Shamus, or Zilla, so I am doing my part to make sure that this harassment and intimidation is exposed for all to see.

As Stacey McCain points out, this isn’t about him. It’s about Kimberlin. So, to illustrate the alleged current activities of the convicted bomber, I am going to cover the story of Aaron Walker, who has suffered considerable disruption to his life due to Kimberlin.

Starting on January 9, 2012, Brett Kimberlin actually attempted to frame me for a crime. He falsely accused me of essentially beating him up inside the courthouse for the Montgomery County Circuit Court, in Rockville, Maryland. He has claimed at different times that I decked him, that I struck him three times, that I wrestled with him, that I pushed him, that courtroom staff separated us, that the sheriff’s deputies separated us, and that even after the deputies arrived that I kept coming at him repeatedly and had to be restrained.
What didn’t occur to him was that there was a security camera that captured what really happened in the courthouse that day. I have the footage and I have included it in a long post that tells the whole story of how I came to be there that day and what really happened. You will read with your own eyes the transcripts and documents in which he claimed I beat him up, and then you will see the footage that proves that this was a fabrication. I have even created a video comparing his description of what happened to the video footage, piece-by-piece. In other words, you won’t have to believe my word on this. You will only have to believe your eyes.
But the post will also tell you the harrowing story of the damage this man has done to my life. He did more than just lie about what happened. This convicted document-forger produced fake photographs of his supposed injuries and even fake medical records. And using that falsified evidence and his lies, he convinced the Montgomery County State’s Attorney to maintain second degree assault charges against me for over two months—with a punishment of up to ten years in prison, if convicted—taking it so close to trial that I was forced to take the time and expense of preparing much of my defense. He has cost me and my wife our jobs because our workplace was frightened that this violent bomber might show up at work. After all, he had published my home address and work address in court filings, for no reason other than to harass me. He has obtained a peace order (similar to a restraining order) against me in part for supposed “harassment” for having told the truth about him on this blog. And you will learn that after the video emerged, the charges were dropped and the peace order was dismissed on appeal.
And you will learn that once I had the video, I came to the State’s Attorney’s office for Montgomery County, Maryland. I showed them, as I am about to show you, how Kimberlin lied repeatedly under oath in his attempt to frame me. I documented it meticulously, as I will for you. And I demanded justice. And they refused to provide it for me; they blew me off.

You can see that Walker has done his homework, and if you go the full post (which is broken into sections) you will see court documents, videos, and transcripts of testimony. All of them, according to Walker, display a pattern of deceit and harassment that borders on obscene. I would encourage you to go and read it fully.
Additionally, there have been more developments. After the charges against Walker were dropped, and the peace order was dismissed, Kimberlin has taken even more legal actions…

Here’s a screencap from the Maryland Judiciary Case Search:

(Open the image in a new window to see it more clearly)

So here we go again. His abuse of the legal system continues. This is plainly in retaliation for my post exposing with video and documentary evidence, his recent criminal attempt to frame me for a crime.
Bluntly, this is illegal under the Peace Order statute. The court would have to find I did some kind of physical act against him, or that I stalked him or something like that. I have not even been in Maryland for well over a week and I simply put have never done anything to put him in reasonable fear of his life. I haven’t even seen him outside of court. I can’t say I have never been in his presence because somehow he or one of his allies has snapped a picture of me surreptitiously, so maybe he was nearby and I didn’t know. But I know I was never knowingly in his presence in the last 30 days.

So then, even when the first peace order is thrown out, another one is filed.
For me, I see this as a part of an overall pattern. If one wants to silence another, and they sought to use the legal system as a weapon, one might just keep filing frivolous legal actions in an effort to drain the resources of their target. If you, me, or any other “regular” citizen are targeted in such a way, it wouldn’t be too long before our resources would be drained. Walker lost his job, as did his wife. Then, the legal filings kept on coming. That would be too much for many people, and they would likely throw in the towel, and try to pick up the pieces of their lives. And that is the main intent. People that speak out and put forward inconvenient truths are to be attacked until they are silenced.
We know that the left goes to the judicial system when reality doesn’t agree with them. Kimberlin is no different in that regard. So, we have to be aware of this type of activity. With this being an election year, and bloggers are doing so much in terms of covering what the MSM ignores, the take-down of bloggers would be a great way to distract from those efforts. Am I necessarily convinced that this will become a common tactic? I’m not sure. But, we need to track people like Kimberlin, and other felons, convicted or otherwise, that have learned to use the legal system to attack and punish anyone that points out their past or present activities.

Bill Whittle and why 2027 is an important year

Bill Whittle is a paragon of explaining Conservatism and how it works.

Under George W. Bush, the federal budget grew by leaps and bounds, and under Obama it has literally exploded. Even though the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that our economy hits a brick wall in 15 years, Geithner admits to not even having a plan to avert our impending fiscal doom. And just for the record, the CBO made that projection with Geithner’s numbers.

Bill Whittle makes great videos which never fail to educate and this one is no exception. Please take a few minutes and watch, it is well worth your time.

 

 

Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.

In this age of social networking, email, texting and instant messages parents sometimes can feel out of touch or even out of control when it comes the normal teen angst. Where a grumbling teen used to gripe to their friends at school about how mean and unfair their parents were, now the dirty laundry of family interaction can be posted for the entire world to view.

This father of a teen girl who decided to get even with her parents by talking disrespectfully and using language befitting a Marine Corps Drill Sergeant discovered her rant on her Facebook page despite her best efforts to block her family. Her undoing was that she didn’t block the family’s dog’s Facebook page… ROFLMAO!

Anyway, without further ado here is the video:

Here is the link to the original Facebook page.

Beer Warfare

Obama has been waging his class warfare for months now in anticipation of campaigning against his preferred candidate, Mitt Romney. So I thought that it would be a good time to explain our progressive tax structure in beer summit terms.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beers by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.’

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before and the first four continued to drink for free, but once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got TEN times more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something very important….they didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.

The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Now I don’t know who the original author of this little parable is. It has been floating around the internet for quite some time, in fact I think I have gotten it in various forms in my emails several times.

No matter who first penned it, this piece is quite accurate and it strikes at the heart of progressivism and our very progressive income tax system.

Remember, one of the 10 Planks of Communism as described in Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a “heavy progressive” income tax.