Double Barrel BB
Senior Member
Obama spells 'persecution,' warns Focus on the Family
<!-- end head --><!-- deck -->[SIZE=+1]Analysts see same-sex marriage, Fairness Doctrine on horizon[/SIZE]
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<HR SIZE=1>[SIZE=-1]Posted: October 22, 2008
10:53 pm Eastern
[/SIZE]
[FONT=Palatino, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times, serif]By Art Moore[/FONT]
What would America look like after four years of a Barack Obama administration?
"Hardship," "persecution" and "suffering" are among the prospects in a hypothetical letter from a "Christian from 2012" released today by evangelical leader James Dobson's political activist group Focus on the Family Action.
Titled "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America," the piece clearly targets the many evangelical Christians seeking "change," particularly the young, who could tip the election in favor of the Illinois Democrat. At the end of the letter, the fictional Christian laments that these people "simply did not realize Obama's far-left agenda would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently," pointing to a new, liberal-majority Supreme Court unlikely to change for 30 more years.
"I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat," says the fictional writer. "Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years," America is no longer "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
"Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more," the letter writer says.
Focus on the Family Action, established as a separate legal entity from Focus on the Family, has expanded abilities under the IRS code to lobby for political change.
Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family Action, affirmed to WND the letter is designed to address a "concerted effort by Obama and Democrats to capture people of faith since 2004."
"Certainly, I think, younger evangelicals may be swayed by the rhetoric and charisma of Obama without really having the historical perspective of what allowing liberal Democrats to control government would do," she said.
"I think a lot of Americans are not connecting the dots, that this would be the first time since 1965 that liberals have dominated the White House, Congress and, potentially, the Supreme Court."
Earll affirmed that Dobson has not endorsed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain but plans to vote for him.
In a preface, Focus on the Family Action explains the letter is a "What if?" exercise, but insists "that does not make it empty speculation, because every future 'event' described here is based on established legal and political trends that can already be abundantly documented and that only need a 'tipping point' such as the election of Senator Obama and a Democratic House and Senate to begin to put them into place."
Focus adds that evangelicals on both sides of the election should "continue to respect and cherish each other's friendship as well as the freedom people have in the United States to differ on these issues and to freely speak our opinions about them to one another."
Nevertheless, the footnoted letter anticipates an America, under Obama, that realizes the worst fears of Dobson and his millions of supporters.
Among the possible developments by 2012:
Six liberal justices sit on the Supreme Court after the immediate resignation of John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the later resignations of Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Homosexual marriage has been ruled a constitutional right that must be respected by all 50 states.
The Boy Scouts have disbanded rather than obey a decision forcing them to allow homosexual scoutmasters. (The Scouts already had been kicked out of public facilities because of an expansion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover people who engage in homosexual behavior.)
Elementary schools have compulsory training in varieties of gender identity. Courts rule parents cannot opt out their children, because the training is deemed essential to psychological health.
Evangelical and Catholic adoption agencies cease to exist after the Supreme Court rules they must agree to place children with homosexuals or lose their licenses.
Church buildings are now considered a "public accommodation" by the United States Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples.
High schools are no longer free to allow "see you at the pole" meetings where students pray together or any student Bible studies even before or after school.
The Supreme Court barred public schools in all 50 states from allowing churches to rent their facilities, even on Sundays, when school was not in session.
Obama signed the Freedom of Choice Act, as he promised the Planned Parenthood Action Fund last year, nullifying hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion.
The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and TV broadcasts, and television programs at all hours of the day now contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.
As a result of a reversal of its 5-4 decision in the D.C. gun-ownership case, it is now illegal for private citizens to own guns for self-defense in eight states, and the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships
Parents' freedom to teach their children at home has been severely restricted nationwide after the Supreme Court followed the legal reasoning of a Feb. 28, 2008, ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal in California.
The letter also "recalls" a President Obama fulfilling his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, resulting in a flood of al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran pouring into Iraq and completely overwhelming Iraqi security forces.
"A Taliban-like oppression has now taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of 'American sympathizers' have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed," the letter says. "The number put to death may soon reach into the millions. Al-Qaida leaders have been emboldened by what they are calling this American 'defeat' and their ranks are swelling in dozens of countries."
The letter also looks back at an explosion of terrorist bombs in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds and spreading fear across the nation.
"President Obama in each case has vowed 'to pursue and arrest and prosecute those responsible,' but no arrests have yet been made," the letter says.
Obama 'tested'
The hypothetical letter plays on vice presidential candidate Joe Biden's warning to fundraisers last Sunday in Seattle that some hostile foreign country will test the inexperienced Obama in his first six months of office.
In early 2009, the letter says, Russia "followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania."
But the Russians don't stop there, occupying over the next three years former satellite nations, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, "with no military response from the U.S. or the U.N."
By 2012, health care has been nationalized with a single payer system patterned after the United Kingdom and Canada.
"The great benefit is that medical care is now free for everyone – if you can get it," the letter writer says. "Now that health care is free it seems that everybody wants more of it. The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting list for ovarian cancer is 2 years."
Care also has been limited for older Americans, the letter says.
"Because medical resources now must be rationed carefully by the government, people over 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical procedures. Their 'duty' is increasingly thought to be to go home to die, so that they don't drain scarce resources from the medical system."
Devastated economy
The letter says many Christians voted for Obama because they thought his tax policies were more fair and his "middle class tax cuts" would bring the economy out of its 2008 crisis.
"But once he took office he followed the consistent pattern of the Democratic Party and the pattern of his own past record and asked Congress for a large tax increase," the letter says. "He explained that the deficit had grown so large under President Bush, and the needs of the nation were so great, that we simply couldn't afford to cut taxes at the present time."
Several of Obama's economic policies have hurt the poor most of all, says the letter, because they have decreased production, increased inflation and increased unemployment, leading to a prolonged recession.
"Tax rates have gone up on personal income, dividends, capital gains, corporations and inheritance transfers. The amount of income subject to Social Security tax has nearly doubled."
The effect on the economy has been devastating, says the letter.
"When critics objected that Obama's tax policies were leading to inflation and unemployment, he responded that our goal should not be merely to increase America's materialism and wealth and prosperity, but to obtain a more just distribution of wealth, even if it costs everybody a little to achieve that important goal," the letter says.
The Focus on the Family Action letter also sees gas at $7 a gallon, because Obama has refused to allow any additional drilling in the U.S. But many Democrats openly applaud the high prices since they reduce oil consumption and thus lower carbon dioxide output.
Goodbye to talk radio
Another development is restoration of the "Fairness Doctrine," which required that radio stations provide "equal time" for alternative views on political questions.
As a result, "nearly all conservative stations have now gone out of business or switched to alternative formats such as country or gospel or other music. Conservative talk radio, for all intents and purposes, was shut down by the end of 2010."
The fictional letter writer concludes that Christian share much of the blame, having chosen Obama because they believed he "sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable."
"And during the campaign, after he had won the Democratic nomination, he seemed to be moving to the center in his speeches, moving away from his earlier far-left record," the letter says. "No one thought he would enact such a far-left, extreme liberal agenda."
Earlier in the letter, the fictional writer notes that after many Supreme Court decisions, particularly those that restricted free speech, Obama "publicly expressed strong personal disapproval of the decision and said that the Supreme Court had gone far beyond anything that he ever expected or thought that it would do."
"But he has also stated repeatedly that he had sworn to 'preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,' and, now that the Supreme Court had ruled, he had no choice but to uphold the law, for these decisions were now the law of the land."
Americans should have known what they were getting into by choosing Obama, the letter says, his record "was all there for anyone to see."
"The agenda of the ACLU, the agenda of liberal activist judges in their dissenting opinions, the agenda of the homosexual activists, the agenda of the environmental activists, the agenda of the National Education Association, the agenda of the global warming activists, the agenda of the abortion rights activists, the agenda of the gun control activists, the agenda of the euthanasia supporters, the agenda of the one-world government pacifists, the agenda of far-left groups in Canada and Europe – all of these agendas were there in plain sight, and all of these groups provided huge support for Senator Obama. The liberal agenda was all there. But too many people just didn't want to see it. Christians didn't take time to find out who Barack Obama was when they voted for him. Why did they risk our nation's future on him? It was a mistake that changed the course of history."
Click here to read the complete letter.
<!-- end head --><!-- deck -->[SIZE=+1]Analysts see same-sex marriage, Fairness Doctrine on horizon[/SIZE]
<!-- end deck -->
<HR SIZE=1>[SIZE=-1]Posted: October 22, 2008
10:53 pm Eastern
[/SIZE]
[FONT=Palatino, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times, serif]By Art Moore[/FONT]
What would America look like after four years of a Barack Obama administration?
"Hardship," "persecution" and "suffering" are among the prospects in a hypothetical letter from a "Christian from 2012" released today by evangelical leader James Dobson's political activist group Focus on the Family Action.
Titled "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America," the piece clearly targets the many evangelical Christians seeking "change," particularly the young, who could tip the election in favor of the Illinois Democrat. At the end of the letter, the fictional Christian laments that these people "simply did not realize Obama's far-left agenda would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently," pointing to a new, liberal-majority Supreme Court unlikely to change for 30 more years.
"I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat," says the fictional writer. "Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years," America is no longer "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
"Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more," the letter writer says.
Focus on the Family Action, established as a separate legal entity from Focus on the Family, has expanded abilities under the IRS code to lobby for political change.
Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family Action, affirmed to WND the letter is designed to address a "concerted effort by Obama and Democrats to capture people of faith since 2004."
"Certainly, I think, younger evangelicals may be swayed by the rhetoric and charisma of Obama without really having the historical perspective of what allowing liberal Democrats to control government would do," she said.
"I think a lot of Americans are not connecting the dots, that this would be the first time since 1965 that liberals have dominated the White House, Congress and, potentially, the Supreme Court."
Earll affirmed that Dobson has not endorsed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain but plans to vote for him.
In a preface, Focus on the Family Action explains the letter is a "What if?" exercise, but insists "that does not make it empty speculation, because every future 'event' described here is based on established legal and political trends that can already be abundantly documented and that only need a 'tipping point' such as the election of Senator Obama and a Democratic House and Senate to begin to put them into place."
Focus adds that evangelicals on both sides of the election should "continue to respect and cherish each other's friendship as well as the freedom people have in the United States to differ on these issues and to freely speak our opinions about them to one another."
Nevertheless, the footnoted letter anticipates an America, under Obama, that realizes the worst fears of Dobson and his millions of supporters.
Among the possible developments by 2012:
Six liberal justices sit on the Supreme Court after the immediate resignation of John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the later resignations of Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Homosexual marriage has been ruled a constitutional right that must be respected by all 50 states.
The Boy Scouts have disbanded rather than obey a decision forcing them to allow homosexual scoutmasters. (The Scouts already had been kicked out of public facilities because of an expansion of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover people who engage in homosexual behavior.)
Elementary schools have compulsory training in varieties of gender identity. Courts rule parents cannot opt out their children, because the training is deemed essential to psychological health.
Evangelical and Catholic adoption agencies cease to exist after the Supreme Court rules they must agree to place children with homosexuals or lose their licenses.
Church buildings are now considered a "public accommodation" by the United States Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples.
High schools are no longer free to allow "see you at the pole" meetings where students pray together or any student Bible studies even before or after school.
The Supreme Court barred public schools in all 50 states from allowing churches to rent their facilities, even on Sundays, when school was not in session.
Obama signed the Freedom of Choice Act, as he promised the Planned Parenthood Action Fund last year, nullifying hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion.
The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and TV broadcasts, and television programs at all hours of the day now contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.
As a result of a reversal of its 5-4 decision in the D.C. gun-ownership case, it is now illegal for private citizens to own guns for self-defense in eight states, and the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships
Parents' freedom to teach their children at home has been severely restricted nationwide after the Supreme Court followed the legal reasoning of a Feb. 28, 2008, ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal in California.
The letter also "recalls" a President Obama fulfilling his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, resulting in a flood of al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran pouring into Iraq and completely overwhelming Iraqi security forces.
"A Taliban-like oppression has now taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of 'American sympathizers' have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed," the letter says. "The number put to death may soon reach into the millions. Al-Qaida leaders have been emboldened by what they are calling this American 'defeat' and their ranks are swelling in dozens of countries."
The letter also looks back at an explosion of terrorist bombs in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds and spreading fear across the nation.
"President Obama in each case has vowed 'to pursue and arrest and prosecute those responsible,' but no arrests have yet been made," the letter says.
Obama 'tested'
The hypothetical letter plays on vice presidential candidate Joe Biden's warning to fundraisers last Sunday in Seattle that some hostile foreign country will test the inexperienced Obama in his first six months of office.
In early 2009, the letter says, Russia "followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania."
But the Russians don't stop there, occupying over the next three years former satellite nations, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, "with no military response from the U.S. or the U.N."
By 2012, health care has been nationalized with a single payer system patterned after the United Kingdom and Canada.
"The great benefit is that medical care is now free for everyone – if you can get it," the letter writer says. "Now that health care is free it seems that everybody wants more of it. The waiting list for prostate cancer surgery is 3 years. The waiting list for ovarian cancer is 2 years."
Care also has been limited for older Americans, the letter says.
"Because medical resources now must be rationed carefully by the government, people over 80 have essentially no access to hospitals or surgical procedures. Their 'duty' is increasingly thought to be to go home to die, so that they don't drain scarce resources from the medical system."
Devastated economy
The letter says many Christians voted for Obama because they thought his tax policies were more fair and his "middle class tax cuts" would bring the economy out of its 2008 crisis.
"But once he took office he followed the consistent pattern of the Democratic Party and the pattern of his own past record and asked Congress for a large tax increase," the letter says. "He explained that the deficit had grown so large under President Bush, and the needs of the nation were so great, that we simply couldn't afford to cut taxes at the present time."
Several of Obama's economic policies have hurt the poor most of all, says the letter, because they have decreased production, increased inflation and increased unemployment, leading to a prolonged recession.
"Tax rates have gone up on personal income, dividends, capital gains, corporations and inheritance transfers. The amount of income subject to Social Security tax has nearly doubled."
The effect on the economy has been devastating, says the letter.
"When critics objected that Obama's tax policies were leading to inflation and unemployment, he responded that our goal should not be merely to increase America's materialism and wealth and prosperity, but to obtain a more just distribution of wealth, even if it costs everybody a little to achieve that important goal," the letter says.
The Focus on the Family Action letter also sees gas at $7 a gallon, because Obama has refused to allow any additional drilling in the U.S. But many Democrats openly applaud the high prices since they reduce oil consumption and thus lower carbon dioxide output.
Goodbye to talk radio
Another development is restoration of the "Fairness Doctrine," which required that radio stations provide "equal time" for alternative views on political questions.
As a result, "nearly all conservative stations have now gone out of business or switched to alternative formats such as country or gospel or other music. Conservative talk radio, for all intents and purposes, was shut down by the end of 2010."
The fictional letter writer concludes that Christian share much of the blame, having chosen Obama because they believed he "sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable."
"And during the campaign, after he had won the Democratic nomination, he seemed to be moving to the center in his speeches, moving away from his earlier far-left record," the letter says. "No one thought he would enact such a far-left, extreme liberal agenda."
Earlier in the letter, the fictional writer notes that after many Supreme Court decisions, particularly those that restricted free speech, Obama "publicly expressed strong personal disapproval of the decision and said that the Supreme Court had gone far beyond anything that he ever expected or thought that it would do."
"But he has also stated repeatedly that he had sworn to 'preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,' and, now that the Supreme Court had ruled, he had no choice but to uphold the law, for these decisions were now the law of the land."
Americans should have known what they were getting into by choosing Obama, the letter says, his record "was all there for anyone to see."
"The agenda of the ACLU, the agenda of liberal activist judges in their dissenting opinions, the agenda of the homosexual activists, the agenda of the environmental activists, the agenda of the National Education Association, the agenda of the global warming activists, the agenda of the abortion rights activists, the agenda of the gun control activists, the agenda of the euthanasia supporters, the agenda of the one-world government pacifists, the agenda of far-left groups in Canada and Europe – all of these agendas were there in plain sight, and all of these groups provided huge support for Senator Obama. The liberal agenda was all there. But too many people just didn't want to see it. Christians didn't take time to find out who Barack Obama was when they voted for him. Why did they risk our nation's future on him? It was a mistake that changed the course of history."
Click here to read the complete letter.
