Our Lord & Savior – Barack Obama

I saw this Monday morning after returning to work from the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. I actually got nauseated for a few moments. After getting past the nausea and nearly puking (literally, no exaggeration) – I knew I had to comment.

Actor Jamie Foxx called President Obama “our Lord and Savior” during an appearance Sunday on the Soul Train Awards.

“It’s like church over here,” Foxx told the audience. “First of all, give an honor to God and our Lord and Savior Barack Obama.” - “Barack Obama,” he shouted as the audience cheered.

The backlash on social networking sites was almost immediate. A number of viewers called the remarks “creepy.”

“Obama may be your Lord and Savior,” wrote one Twitter user, “But I’m thankful that he’s not mine.”

Amen to that!

The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the United States Bill Donahue released a statement regarding the actor's comment, saying, "Foxx's epiphany is startling. It just goes to show that even though Obama did not succeed in stopping the oceans from rising (as he promised to do in 2008), he did succeed in convincing Jamie Foxx, and no doubt legions of others, that God exists. Whether God can survive an ACLU lawsuit accusing him of violating church and state grounds remains to be seen."

It’s not the first time Obama supporters have attempted to deify the 43rd President of the United States.

Earlier this month Florida A&M professor Barbara Thompson published a book titled “The Gospel According to Apostle Barack.” The book likens Obama to Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here in my hometown of Charlotte, as we hosted the DNC; street vendors across downtown Charlotte were selling posters and artwork depicting President Obama as Jesus Christ. One poster featured an image of the president in prayer with the headline, “Prophecy Fulfilled.” “Barak is of Hebrew origin and its meaning is ‘flash of lightning,” the poster notes, referencing a passage in in the Old Testament book of Judges. Hussein, they allege, is a Biblical word meaning “good and handsome.”… “So you see, Barak was destined to be a good and handsome man that would rise like a flash of lightning to win victory in a battle against overwhelming odds,” the poster read. The posters were being sold outside security zones at the Democratic National Convention. The posters are not sanctioned by the DNC.

In 2012 another book was published titled The Gospel of Barack Hussein Obama According to Mark -  and is designed to initiate the reader into a meditation on what it means to be human, what it means to be a manifestation of God, and how Barack Obama is a unique and important manifestation of God’s desire for human flourishing. It is a blend of words from his public speeches, imagined conversation, and fictional situations.

Even if Foxx was kidding and trying yet unsuccessfully to be funny; there are many in our society who are actually seeing our President as Messianic. There is even a blog dedicated to promoting the idea that Barack Obama is the Messiah - obamamessiah.blogspot.com

SERIOUSLY!

Can you imagine what the total backlash would be – what the public outrage would be if any other president in our history – from George Washington to George H. W. Bush had ever been publically called “Our Lord & Savior”.

One might suggest that Mr. Foxx was merely kidding; or simply over excited as he hosted the Soul Train Music awards. However, the audience did not even for one moment decrease its cheers and no one appeared to be appalled or even offended by what is most certainly an incredibly offensive and over the top comment.

Ok – let me point out for the record; leaders who have been deified in the past or those who claimed they were God or like God include:

Adolf Hitler

Kim Il-sung - Prior to the proclamation of a North Korean state, the Soviet Union had established in 1946 the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea as a de facto government in their occupation zone. Its chairman was Kim Il-sung.

Kim Il-sung was the head of the Workers' Party of Korea

The people of North Korea under Kim Il-sung and his successor Kim Jong-il, who passed away in 2011; have suffered what is now documented as the most oppressive government in the last 100 plus years.

The Kings of England in the centuries leading up to the revolution claimed to be divinely appointed by God. Their decrees and judgments could not even be questioned or citizens could be punished, imprisoned or even put to death.

Gaius Julius Caesar, the Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire – and he was deified. With the passage of the lex Titia on 27 November 43 BC, the Second Triumvirate was officially formed, composed of Antony, Octavian, and Caesar's loyal cavalry commander Lepidus. It formally deified Caesar as Divus Iulius in 42 BC, and Caesar Octavian henceforth became Divi filius ("Son of a god").

Seriously – I could go on. Just for fun sometime; do some research on nations and societies that have given their leaders status as god-like or deity. They are true stories – and do not have a happy ending.

 

Why Increase Taxes if it does not Actually Increase Revenues to the Federal Government?

One might expect Obama to join this debate, but he hasn’t. The reason is evident from a 2008 interview that Obama did with Charlie Gibson of ABC News. The topic was raising the capital gains tax rate on the rich.

Gibson: George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased—the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

Obama: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Gibson: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.

Obama: Well, that might happen, or it might not.1

It’s worth pausing to ponder what Obama is saying. Basically, he is saying that it doesn’t matter whether higher tax rates on the rich actually generate additional revenues for the government or not. This is not about government revenue. Rather, it is about Obama’s own basic notion of fairness which demands that the rich pay more. Perhaps—to take a cue from his father’s writings—if the highest income earners paid tax rates of “up to 100 percent,” Obama would finally be satisfied that they were contributing their fair share.

That’s right – Barack Obama Senior, our President’s father was a socialist who once wrote an article in the East Africa Journal – “Theoretically there is nothing that could stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits commensurate with their income which is taxed”.2

Barack Obama Sr. himself, in 1965, published an article in the East Africa Journal which considered what a country should do when a large portion of its wealth is controlled by a small number of people at the top. Obama Sr. states his objective: “We need . . . to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” But how to achieve this? Obama Sr. proposes the use of state power to take over large parts of the private, or as he puts it “commercial,” sector. Obama Sr. says there is no reason to worry about economic freedom or individual rights; what matters is the good of society as a whole. “We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise.” Obama Sr. recommends that the state compel private firms to become what he calls “clan cooperatives.” These are basically government-regulated or government-managed companies that produce goods less with a view to profit than with a view to meeting the government’s own social and political objectives. Obama Sr. also proposes that the rich be dealt with through very high rates of taxation. Again, he’s not worried about how much the government is confiscating. “Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation.”3

 As cited in the quotation above, Obama Sr. is even willing to consider tax rates up to 100 percent!

It’s remarkable that this paper by Obama Sr. has gotten so little media coverage. One would expect it to be on the front page of every newspaper and a lead item on the evening news, especially during public debates in America over taxes and massive government intervention in the healthcare and financial sectors.

Notice the two-part economic strategy proposed by Obama Sr. - Forced state control over private enterprise, and confiscatory tax rates with no upper limit. We will find it instructive to compare this to President Obama’s economic policies. For example, President Obama frequently talks about people being forced to pay their “fair share” in taxes, but he never specifies what that share is. Here, we have a document that explicitly states his father’s thoughts on the subject and may provide some guidance to the son’s own thinking. Yet for many in the media, these father-son comparisons are completely taboo. For them, it seems, the ghost of Barack Obama Sr. must be quietly ignored, so it cannot be seen haunting the corridors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Clearly the shocker of the paper is the suggestion of a 100 percent tax rate. We may think: How can a man in his right mind propose something so ridiculous? We can imagine the income tax form, a mere postcard with just two line items: a) List what you earn, and b) Send it in.

Yes, by conventional economic considerations Obama Sr. is a crank. The law of incentives holds that it makes no sense to impose taxes that eliminate the motivation to work. But we know from the many writings of Barack Obama Senior and as well as the writing and activities of Barack Obama’s mother – that they were both virulent Anti Colonialist. So, when we insert the anti-colonial premise, we can see why confiscatory tax rates—even 100 percent rates—do make a kind of sense.

First of all; one must understand the mindset and ideas that run throughout anti-colonial theory. The central anti-colonial idea is theft. In this view, countries get rich through invasion and plunder, and people and corporations acquire wealth through their greedy exploitation of others.

Now imagine if you came to my house and stole all my furniture. In terms of those goods, what’s the appropriate tax rate for you? The answer is: 100 percent, because it’s not your furniture. Thus when you assume that income is not the result of effort or work; when you assume that it is not “earned”; when you consider income and wealth to be the product of greed, exploitation, and theft; then you have no problem with taking as much of that income and wealth as you can get away with. After all, the rich people and the corporations are a bunch of thieves; the money doesn’t really belong to them! The government shouldn’t seek to motivate thieves, but rather to punish them and seize their ill-gotten wealth.

The centerpiece of Obama’s re-election campaign is an attack on the rich, the millionaires and billionaires, the top 1% of income-earners in this country. From Obama’s point of view, these are greedy, selfish people who are not paying their appropriate share.

Obama champions the Buffett Rule, which calls for capital gains and dividends to be taxed at a minimum rate of 30 percent. The rule is named after investment guru Warren Buffett, who declared that at 15 percent he pays a lower rate of taxation than his secretary. Buffett’s observation seems to buttress Obama’s point that the rich get unfair tax breaks. In fact, however, capital gains and dividends are taxed twice. They are taxed as corporate profits-and America has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world; and then they are taxed again as payouts to individuals. The real capital gains tax rate is closer to 45%. Moreover, when rich people have more of their own money, they can spend it or invest it. The purpose of a relatively low capital gains tax rate is to encourage them to invest it and help foster innovation and job growth.

Finally, as an editorial in the New York Times noted, the Buffett Rule would generate an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, a pittance compared to our annual trillion-dollar deficit. Even if Obama got his way, the Times conceded, his solution would “not to make an appreciable dent in our deficit.” In fact, it would not pay for a single one of Obama’s extravagant spending programs. 4

Notes & References

1 Transcript: Obama and Clinton debate, ABC news, April 16, 2008

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/story?id=4670271&page=1#.UKP1RIbNl3h

2 Barack Obama Sr., “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” East Africa Journal, July 1965.

3 Ibid.

4 editorial, “the Buffet Alternative Tax,” Wall Street Journal September 20, 2011,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576580800735800830.html

Excerpt from - Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream by D'Souza, Dinesh (2012-08-13). Perseus Books Group.

Does Barack Obama Really Care about the Poor?

If President Obama really cares for poor – why has he never lifted a finger to help the poor in his own family?

Here is a telling personal peculiarity about Obama: some of his closest relatives are living in desperate poverty, yet he refuses to help them in any way. His father’s sister is Hawa Auma. This is how she describes herself: “I am the daughter of Hussein Onyango Obama and the sister of Barack Obama senior and the aunt of the president.”

Hawa Auma is a widow in her seventies, and you can find her on the streets of a small town in Kenya called Oyugis. There she sells charcoal by the side of the road, making barely enough to live on. She says she would like to get her teeth fixed, but she doesn’t have the money.6

Then there is George Obama, the president’s half-brother. George is the eighth and youngest child of Barack Obama Sr., a son he conceived with his fourth wife, Jael Otieno. Dinesh D'Souza first encountered George during the 2008 presidential campaign when he came across an article in a London newspaper saying that “George Obama, Barack Obama’s long-lost brother, was tracked down living in a hut on the outskirts of Nairobi.” In the article, George was quoted saying that he lived on a few dollars a day. He was reluctant to use the name Obama. “If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.” A subsequent report on CNN showed George’s six-by-ten-foot hut in the Huruma slums of Nairobi. One of George’s neighbors, Emelda Negei, told CNN, “I would like Obama to visit his brother to see how he is living, to improve his way of life.” But Obama never has, nor has he provided a penny to help George. 7

Finally, there is the case of the Barack Obama Schools in the Kenyan village of Kogelo, where Obama’s father grew up. Obama visited Kogelo as a U.S. senator in 2006, and he was given a hero’s welcome. There are two schools in Kogelo, and both were renamed after him: Senator Obama Primary School and Senator Obama Secondary School. One third of the students there are orphans. Obama toured the secondary school and saw its dilapidated classrooms that lacked electricity, sanitation, and running water. He told the people gathered there, including the Kenyan president, local politicians, and the press, “Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school.” Later he assured Principal Yuanita Obiero, “I have said I will assist the school and I will do so.”

Two years later, in July 2008, Obiero told the London Evening Standard, “Obama has not honored the promises he gave me. He has not given us even one shilling. But we still have hope.”8

Dinesh D'Souza visited the school in mid-2012 and was told that Obama has yet to contribute anything to help. One local resident told him, “We have completely given up hoping that he is going to do anything for us.”

Most of the American press simply refuses to report this kind of information about President Obama. This is bizarre in itself, because the stories are both interesting and relevant. Obama’s own conduct in these situations is odd, not only because Obama is a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world—it would take so little for him to help—but also because his entire political agenda seems to be based on asking people who are well off to pay more to assist those who are not so well off. Obama wants to force the rich to pay more taxes in order to benefit the poor and the middle class (or so he says). Yet in situations where Obama is in a direct position to contribute and one would think has every reason to contribute, because many of these are family; where even a little assistance would go a long way. Yet -  he doesn’t provide any assistance whatsoever.

Notes & References

6 Peter Firstbrook, The Obamas (Crown Publishers, 2010), p. 169; Sally Jacobs, The Other Barack (Public Affairs, 2011), p. 25.

7 Nick Pisa, “Barack Obama’s ‘lost’ brother found in Kenya,” London Telegraph, August 20, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obamas-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html;

David McKenzie, “Behind the Scenes: Meet George Obama,” CNN, August 22, 2008, http://articles.cnn.com/2008-08-22/politics/bts.obama.brother_1_half-brother-kenyan-father-barackobama?_s=PM:POLITICS.

8 David Cohen, “Barack Obama’s Broken Promise to African Village,” London Evening Standard, July 25, 2008.

Excerpt from - Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream by D'Souza, Dinesh  (2012-08-13). Perseus Books Group.

God Bless Those Who Protest out of Moral Convictions

The activist protesters among our liberal establishment have given high praise to citizens who will stand up against corrupt power and moral wrongs.  Here is a video of a man exercising his First Amendment freedom to protest our corrupt leader and his ilk in our government. 

This Anti-abortion heckler is being taken out of an Obama rally after repeatedly yelling out and holding up a sign with graphic medical abortion photographs.

This is a man of great courage and conviction. Imagine the courage it took to go into this crowd and protest the immoral and disgusting policies of our President.

There are no perfect people – only God is perfect. From a Biblical World view – every US Election is a choice between the lesser of two evils – because there are no perfect men on the planet.

For those of you who say we should not mix our religion and politics; or that Jesus did not get involved in politics; take a look at Matthew chapter 23. Jesus is going after the Pharisees – who were the Political Leaders of Israel at that time. Jesus certainly got involved in politics; he continually went after the political leaders in Israel.

Jesus said to them “you have neglected the weightier matters of the law”. We are doing that here in our country today. We have people in Washington; and President Obama is one of them; who are saying – We should only be allowed to use certain light bulbs; or telling us what the lunch menu should be in a public schools – but they want to place no restrictions on abortion.

THEY WANT TO TELL US WHAT LIGHTBULBS WE CAN OR CAN’T USE – BUT THEY WANT TO SAY IT’S OK TO KILL OUR CHILDREN!

I ask you – are we as a people neglecting the weightier matters of the law?

We are facing major issues regarding the law that are ‘the weightier matters’ in our society.

The sanctity of life – Protecting Life and limiting abortion.

Religious Liberty

Our economy and in particular our debt. Yes – this is a moral issue because policies that will place more of our citizens in poverty and harm people’s ability to feed their families and take care of themselves; policies that will weaken the United States of American - are at the core of the economic policies of this election.

These are all MORAL issues!

God bless this protestor for his amazing courage!