2016 movie reveals some of the radical influences on Barack Obama

This is the most popular editorial at Investors Business Daily right now. It goes over what we know about Barack Obama influences and background.

Excerpt:

Obama’s father was so anti-West that British intelligence warned the U.S. not to grant him and a group of Kenyan students visas to study in the U.S. They were flagged in a 1959 diplomatic cable as radicals with an “anti-American and anti-white” political agenda.

When Obama Sr. returned to Kenya with a Harvard economics degree, he joined the newly independent Kenyan government as a Marxian economist. AP never mentions the July 1965 policy paper he wrote advising Nairobi to wring all vestiges of Western “neocolonialism” out of the Kenyan economy and replace them with Soviet-style communism, including industrial nationalization.

In the eight-page tract, he proposed economic tonics strikingly similar to ones now being pushed by his son, including: taxing the “rich” to “redistribute economic gains” and “economic power,” funding public works projects and other government “investments,” and forcing “people to do things they would not do otherwise,” such as joining government-run cooperatives to discourage “individual” choices not in the “public interest.” He railed against “free enterprise,” arguing it creates wealth “disparities” and benefits “only a few individuals.”

And more:

It’s plain from Obama’s memoir that he worshipped his father. Obama devotes more than 130 pages, or roughly a third, of “Dreams” to covering his father’s life and his colonized ancestry in Kenya. This is purposeful. Obama sympathizes with the idea that “neocolonial wealth,” held even by Asian business owners in Nairobi, should be “redistributed to the people.” (Neocolonialism is the alleged economic exploitation that remains even after political independence.)

Obama says he realized who he is and what he really cares about when he visited his father’s grave. He describes breaking down and weeping, whereupon he reflects: “The pain that I felt was my father’s pain.”

D’Souza says Obama sought out paternal surrogates who shared his father’s anti-colonial, anti-capitalist beliefs, including:

Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member investigated by the FBI for un-American activities. As a teenager, Obama sat at Davis’ knee in his Waikiki bungalow, where he was brainwashed into hating America while romanticizing Soviet Russia. Interestingly, Davis put Churchill at the center of Anglo-American “imperialism.”

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, moreover, baptized Obama into “liberation theology,” which emerged from the communist movement in Central America. Wright’s church “stood in solidarity” with the Sandinista dictators of Nicaragua while Obama attended there.

Not surprisingly, Obama protested U.S. support for the Contra rebels. Wright also lionized Hamas and called for divestment in Israel, which he accused of having “illegally occupied Palestinian territories” for decades.

Derrick Bell, the late Harvard law professor, taught Obama “critical race theory” and “postcolonial theory,” which argues that Western imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Obama remained close to Bell until his death last year.

All three of these surrogate fathers of Obama, along with Obama Sr. himself, were heavily influenced by Frantz Fanon, a Marxist revolutionary who didn’t look or sound like one. Rarely seen without a suit and tie, the handsome and cerebral Fanon nonetheless described capitalists as “wretched” and the United States as “a monster.”

He called for “a planned economy, for outlawing profiteers,” and for wringing neocolonialism and capitalism out of every institution of society. In “The Wretched of the Earth,” the late Fanon wrote, “What matters today is the need for a redistribution of wealth,” adding “humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.”

If you’ve never heard about any of the facts from Obama’s background, then I really recommend you go and check out “2016: Obama’s America” in theaters now.

UK government lawyers want Christians to behave like atheists in public

From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Landmark cases, brought by four British Christians, including two workers forced out of their jobs after visibly wearing crosses, were heard on Tuesday at the European Court of Human Rights, a judgement will follow at a later.

Despite previous pledges by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that he would change the law to protect religious expression at work, government lawyers insisted that there was a “difference between the professional and private sphere”.

James Eadie QC, acting for the government, told the European court that the refusal to allow an NHS nurse and a British Airways worker to visibly wear a crucifix at work “did not prevent either of them practicing religion in private”, which would be protected by human rights law.

[…]The QC also told the court that, unlike the Muslim headscarf for women, wearing a cross is not a “generally recognised” act of Christian worship and is not required by scripture. “A great many Christians do not insist on wearing crosses at all, still less visibly,” he said.

[…]Shirley Chaplin, from Exeter, was moved away from nursing to a clerical role by the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust in Devon after refusing to remove a necklace bearing a crucifix. She has since lost her job after 30 years of nursing.

Mrs Chaplin told The Daily Telegraph that she felt “insulted” by the argument that Christians who are told by their employer that they cannot wear a cross at work can always find another job.

“It is insulting, humiliating and degrading.My Christian faith isn’t something that you put on and then take off to go to work,” she said.

“We are treated differently. Britain is a very tolerant country but we seem to be more tolerant to some groups than others and at the moment we’re not at all tolerant to Christians. You can have faith but not demonstrate it.”

James Dingemans QC, acting for Mrs Eweida, questioned the value of having a right to religious belief if it could not be applied at work, where people spend 80 per cent of their adult lives.

“What value is a right that stops when cross the threshold of work,” he said.

I guess that these secularist lawyers simply don’t understand that there is a requirement for Christians to be public and evangelistic about their faith, and to ask them to act like atheists is to ask them not to be authentic Christians. It’s the most intolerant thing to do to a Christian – to issue a Christian with orders that override their obligations to Jesus Christ. This is not an undue burden on employers and clients – it’s just being allowed to (quietly) be who you are and to signal to others who you are.

Let me illustrate from the Bible exactly what is expected of Christians.

Matthew 10:32-33:

32“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.

33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

1 Corinthians 4:1-2:

1So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.

2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

That’s what’s at stake here. These are just a couple of examples, there are many more. What gives these left-wing atheists the chutzpah to run around telling other people how to practice their religion? Let each person practice what they believe, and let’s all tolerate the differences. There is a right to practice what you believe, there is no right to control what others believe and to take away their basic human rights just because you are offended. Only people on the left are fascistic like that, and it’s got to stop.

People on the left should reflect and understand what it is exactly that they are doing by marginalizing Christianity and trying to stop people from believing it by shaming and intimidating Christians, and leading people into sin. If Christianity is true, then actions like that are probably the absolute worst thing you can do. It’s particularly nasty when you realize that the reason that secular leftists try to suppress Christians from being authentic Christians is because of their feelings. Secular leftists feel that they have a right to suppress the freedoms of others by force of law, on the grounds that they feel offended by someone else’s religious beliefs and practice.

Let’s double-check that with the Bible and make sure.

Matthew 18:6-14:

6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!

8 If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?

13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.

14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

Trying to persuade a Christian that they are wrong is fine, but using the power of the state to take away a faithful Christian’s job, which discourages them from being Christian, is something else. In my view, it’s worse than murder. I think that this sort of heavy-handed, intimidating secular fascism masquerading as “tolerance” is worse than murder. You do not intimidate someone away from an authentic relationship with God as he really is, just because of your feelings of discomfort at public expressions of religious faith. The right of each person to express their religion in public is a basic right, but there is no right not to be offended by someone else’s use of liberty to just be themselves. No one is asking for non-Christians to be forced to convert to Christianity or to be forced to celebrate and affirm Christianity by the power of the state. We’re just asking to be who we are without losing our jobs.

CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022

Here are the raw numbers from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, as reported by CNS News:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting that if changes in federal taxing-and-spending policies already enacted and set to take effect at the beginning of next year do in fact take place, the unemployment rate will climb to 9.1 percent.

In a report released on Aug. 22, An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022, CBO’s baseline projections show that by the fourth quarter of 2013 the national unemployment rate will be 9.1 percent.

[…]Widely referred to as the “fiscal cliff,” the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and over $1 trillion in automatic defense and discretionary cuts as a result of last year’s failed budget deal are set to take effect in January 2013.

[…]If no action is taken by Congress, current CBO projections show that unemployment will not return to pre-recession levels until 2017.

And more CBO: federal health care spending will exceed all discretionary spending by 2016:

Under current law, federal health care spending is on pace to exceed all discretionary spending by 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The change is due to large increases in Medicare and Medicaid spending and added spending under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) over the next decade, a feat the Tax Foundation calls a “truly unprecedented and scary” scenario.

The nonpartisan tax research group analyzed recent CBO projections of the budget for 2012 to 2022, finding that over the next decade Medicare spending will increase from $550 billion to $1.064 trillion, while Medicaid would more than double from $253 billion to $592 billion.

In addition, new exchanges and subsidies under Obamacare will force mandatory healthcare expenditures to grow from $25 billion to $181 billion in 2022.

“In total, healthcare entitlement spending is due to more than double, from $828 billion this year to $1.837 trillion in 2022,” according to the Tax Foundation.

“This means healthcare spending will overtake all discretionary spending in 2016 – Obama’s last year in office if reelected,” the group said.

And more CBO: taxes will shoot up by more than 30% between 2012 and 2014:

The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

And the GAO reports that the Obama administration has waived work requirements for welfare programs, which reduces revenues from employee income taxes and increases spending on welfare programs.

Now you might expect that the Democrats would have some bold plan to tackle unemployment, spending and high taxes. And they do!

Bold policy ideas at the Democrat National Convention

Take a look at this video on bold, innovative tax policy from the DNC convention:

That will fix unemployment for sure.

And they want to augment that tax policy with some reasonable pro-growth regulations:

If you don’t think that this is a good plan to solve our economic problems, then Democrats will say that you’re a racist homophobic Islamophobic sexist bigot.