Obama and the Democrats keep jabbering about “comprehensive immigration reform” as they refuse to secure the border.

This 90 second video will likely “go viral” this week:

Senator Kyle tells a town hall audience that President Obama told him:

The problem is, if we secure the border then you all (Republicans in Congress) won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.

Gasps are heard from the audience.

While it is perhaps startling to hear in such frank language, this isn’t new information.  The President has made no secret of his determination to prevent any consideration of border security as a stand-alone issue.  Whenever the subject comes up he conflates border enforcement with immigration.

This Administration is now engaged in extortion, threatening to allow continued chaos at the border,  unless Congress and the voters submit to “comprehensive reform,” code for amnesty for some 12 million people who are already here illegally.  Last week the Obama Justice Department confirmed a bomb-shell leak from Secretary of State Clinton: it is preparing to sue the state of Arizona to stop it from implementing a new law that would empower local police to identify and arrest people who have crossed the border and entered the country illegally.

“Comprehensive Immigration Reform” will turn out to be another of those two-thousand page monstrosities from Congress, making hundreds of changes in the law all at once.  As with ObamaCare, there will be no way to predict how all the intended and unintended consequences will interact in the future, but unpleasant surprises are guaranteed.

Last month Mexican president Calderon visited the White House and during a joint appearance Obama made a pitch for his vision of “reform”:

…comprehensive reform means accountability for everybody: government that is accountable for securing the border…

Apparently, Obama hopes we’ll forget that the federal government is already accountable for securing the border. That responsibility is mandated in Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution.  No “reform” should be needed for the Administration to obey the Constitution.

By willfully refusing to secure the border The Obama Administration stands in defiance of the Constitution.

Obama’s speech continued…

…[comprehensive reform means] people who break the law by breaching our borders being held accountable by paying taxes and a penalty and getting right with the law before they can earn their citizenship.

“Before they can earn their citizenship?”   Who decided they should become citizens?  Inadvertently, his real goal was revealed: that the 12 million illegals who  are already here not only be allowed to stay, but to become citizens.  So they can vote.  Democrat.

But the American people are increasingly resistant to immigration flimflam.  By wide margins the people tell pollsters that border security is a core responsibility of government to be addressed immediately, and by itself, not as a subordinate piece of  “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Since immigration policy is, at its core, about who should be permitted to live here and who should not, there can be no effective policy if the border is not secure.

How will Obama respond to Senator Kyle’s statement in the video?  Will he deny what Kyle said, even though his public statements support it?  Will he say or do something to try to convince us he’s a hawk on border security?  Most likely he’ll say nothing, hoping the oil gushing into the Gulf will distract us from the people gushing across the border.

UPDATE:

A White House spokesman was asked by reporters if Kyle’s account was true.  His response, in part:

No, that statement’s not true.  And, we’re going to continue to work and hopefully get the support of senators like Senator Kyle for comprehensive reform.  Because that’s the only way we’re really going to be able to address this problem.

So, the White House denies what Kyle said, but reaffirms the President’s refusal to “address this problem” outside the context of so-called “comprehensive reform.”  By insisting that comprehensive reform is the only way it will deal with border security the Administration just confirmed Kyle’s claim.

I’ve just expressed concerns on the basis of what I’ve heard about the law. But I’m not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is,”

Regrettably, The President emphatically affirmed his determination to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, despite the opposition of scores of credible, military authorities.  Until today, part of the plan was to send several Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, where Al Qaeda is emergent and where they trained the Christmas bomber/terrorist.  Obama said they have decided not to send anyone to Yemen but they would definitely close the prison because it…

…has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. In fact that was an explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Penensula.

So because Al Qaeda told potential recruits the prison where captured terrorists are housed is “bad,” we must close it down?  What would keep Al Qaeda from telling potential recruits the new prison is even worse?  Does the President actually believe this enemy will stop recruiting and training terrorists if America shuts down structures or institution they criticize in their propaganda?

How can a man who is so naive have been elected President?

On 8/30 General Stanley McChrystal submitted his comprehensive plan to accomplish the Afghanistan mission President Obama declared.  He and the troops continue to struggle, and continue to wait for their Commander in Chief to make a decision.

On October 20, White House Press Secretary Gibbs told reporters that consideration of General McChrystal’s report and resource request continues, with no sense of urgency:

I have continued to say a decision will be made in the coming weeks as the president goes through an examination of our policy.’

Administration officials have suggested that President Obama may not approve McChrystal’s strategy and instead order something less than a fully resourced commitment to success in Afghanistan because the Afghan government is less than ideal, with apparent corruption at high levels.  Some officials have said the strategy should focus training Afghan forces instead of continuing to fight back against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

In his strategy recommendation, McChrystal asserted four “main pillars.”  Numbers one and two are the very issues Administration officials have recently floated as pretexts for not accepting McChrystal’s plan and denying his request for additional troops:

1. Improve effectiveness through greater partnering with the Afghanistan National Security Forces. We will increase the size and accelerate the growth of the ANSF, with a radically improved partnership at every level, to improve effectivenes and prepare them to take the lead in security operations.
   
2. Prioritize responsive and accountable governance. We must assist in improving governance at all levels through both formal and traditional mechanisms.
3. Gain the initiative.  Our first impreative, in a series of operational statges, ist to gain the initiative and reverse the insurgency’s momentum.
4. Focus Resources. We will prioritize available resources to those critical areas where vulnerble populations are most threatened.

In 66 pages McChrystal lays out detailed strategies and tactics for each of his four pillars, including training Afghan security forces and making the government more responsive and accountable.  He explains why all four must be pursued in order to ensure success.

Yet the Vice President and the Political-media establishment, utterly bereft of competence, have tried to plant the impression in the public mind that General McChrystal failed to consider, or was unaware of the need to improve the Afghan government and security forces.

One wonders if the President and his people have even read the report.  McChrystal begins with a statement of his commitment to the mission that was assigned to him by President Obama:

NATO’s…Military Plan and Pesident Obama’s strategy to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and prevent  their return to Afghanistan have laid out a clear path of what we must do.  Stability in Afghanistan is an imperative; if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or has insufficient  capability to counter transnational terrorists – Afghanistan could again become a base for terrorism, with obvious implications for regional stability.

Contrary  to the impression left by media reports, McChrystal did not simply emerge from nowhere to start harassing the Administration for more troops and resources.  McChrystal, who was appointed by Obama to command the Afghanistan operation, did exactly what the Commander in Chief ordered.  He exhaustively assessed the situation and developed strategies and tactics to achieve Obama’s stated goals.

More from McChrystal’s report:

The situation in Afghanistan is serious; neither success nor failure can be taken for granted…many indicators suggest the overall situation is deteriorating…there is also a crisis of confidence among Afghans — in both their government and the international community — that undermines our credibility and emboldens the insurgents.

Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents.

Obama’s response has been nearly two months of public dithering and vacillation.  High-profile administration officials, including the Vice President, have publicly proposed ill-considered half-measures.  This public display of angst and incompetency and has only made things worse by confirming the Afghan perception that America lacks resolve.

General McChrystal did his best to convey a sense of urgency:

Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.

So far, nearly two of those near term 12 months have been lost to Presidential temporizing.

At Midnight on Saturday the White House issued Van Jones’ letter of resignation.  Jones accused his critics of being  “opponents of reform,”  and of “using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

Let is not forget that what he called “lies and distortions” were

• several videos of  Jones making offensive and outrageous remarks in speeches and interviews, and
• his signature  on a petition promoting the 9-11-was-an-inside-job conspiracy.

There will likely be an effort from the left to turn Jones into a martyr/hero victim of a a conservative/corporate smear.

By Drew, our contributing writer from the world of banking and corporate finance

The issue of President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones has dominated the airwaves recently.  Appointed without the advice and consent of the Senate because his position is one of a newly created – “czar” – (what next, Mr. President, the position of “Most Excellent and Exalted Leader?”) that isn’t subject to those rules.  No, this fine chap is one of the Obama Administration’s own picks.  And what a doosey.

Mr. Jones has proved himself to be quite the poster boy for the current crop of crass Democratic/leftist “statesmen.”  In February he thought it wise to go into a public forum and describe Republicans as “assholes” in response to a question about the relative legislative effectiveness of Democrats and Republicans.  He’s a YouTube hit right now. This might appeal to the kiddies – they were all giggling at the meeting -, or the left wing of the Democratic Party (what’s the difference?) but it’s not what we expect from high level public officials.

And here is Mr. Jones’ acumen on display when it comes to business and the “green jobs czar” position he holds:

Remember, a big chunk of the African-American community is economically stranded. The blue-collar, stepping-stone, manufacturing jobs are leaving. And they’re not being replaced by anything. So you have this whole generation of young blacks who are basically in economic free fall.

If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in ten. And then they become inventors. The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people—while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country.”

Now I’m all for entrepreneurship and the American dream.  But I’m also a seasoned investor.  In the last three months alone we’ve seen a whole host of solar ventures that have gone bust.  Some crazy notion of economic viability, you see.  Solar energy is a very high cost and in most geographies unreliable source of energy.  It’s a niche product.  It’s great to an article about how some guy in Arizona built a solar house.  But on a grand scale?  Not yet.

Unless oil spikes up to $150 a barrel, the numbers just don’t work for solar.  And no politician can change the laws of physics or economics.  So I have to say, I’m not worried about the polar bears.  But I do worry about those kids being duped into pursuing something as likely to happen as making it to the NBA.

But here is the most important issue:  Van Jones is a “9/11 truther.”  That’s right, a truther.  His signature appears as #46 on a petition demanding an official inquiry into:

…unanswered questions that suggest that people within the [Bush] administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.

If you’ve never read some of the truther’s theories they make great party topics, if you’ve had some adult beverages.  I’m talking about straight faced accusations that VP Cheney was there first hand.  Can’t you just see him scampering through over a hundred stories, setting off controlled detonations in the World Trade Towers? And two buildings!!  No bad ticker that guy.  It was just a head fake!!

These people are just absolute, bottom of the barrel whack jobs.

There are only three possible explanations for Mr. Jones truther beliefs:

1. He’s really, really dumb,
2. He’s mentally unstable,
3. He’s so blindly partisan and reckless that he would lend his name to this lunatic effort.

Oh, I suppose we could be conciliatory and say he forgot to take his meds for a week.  But no explanations reflects well on Mr. Jones.

More importantly, the possible explanations reflect so terribly on Mr. Obama’s judgment – if not character – that it leaves one confounded as to just what people meant when they called him “smart” or possessing the talent and traits to lead.

Appointing truthers?  What next?  People who claim to have been abducted by space aliens??

If I was President and it came to light that I had let 9/11 truthers get into key positions in my administration I’d fire them so fast it would make your head spin.  It’s professionally embarrassing.  But as of this morning (Friday) White House Press Secretary Gibbs indicated there are no plans to cashier Mr. Jones.

Perhaps even scarier, we have a President who believes it wise to appoint a truther to lead us into the wild blue yonder of a green economy.  Go to your dictionary and look this up:  g-r-o-s-s  i-n-c-o-m-p-e-t-e-n-c-e.

Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff & Presidential Advisor

Rahm Emanuel is President Obama’s Chief of Staff and senior adviser.  He’s deeply involved in decisions about how to deploy Trillions of taxpayer dollars to rescue banks and financial institutions that have become insolvent.  The Administration is now considering ways to penalize executives of these institutions by confiscating through the tax system all or portions of their compensation.

The Chicago Tribune has done rigorous research and thorough reporting on Mr. Emanuel’s “service” on the Board of Directors of Freddie-Mac.  Here’s a little sample:

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant  Freddie-Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel  – now chief of staff to President Barack Obama – who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

Click on the logo to read this fascinating article.  Then call the White House and demand that Emanual’s sub-prime lucre be treated the same as Congress is preparing to treat the AIG bonuses, confiscated via a punative, retroactive, 90%  tax. (202) 456-1111

ILMP uses a well-worn leftist tactic, rolling scores of false assertions, and miss-statements of fact into a few pages so that it takes hundreds of hours to compose corrections by compiling all the data.  Our counter-tactic will be to dispute key assertions, upon which most of the rest of the assertions rest, starting with this one:

…for far too long, the resilience, optimism, and industriousness of the American people have been frustrated by irresponsible policy choices in Washington. Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care, and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.

Obama’s intent is to plant in the mind of the reader the perception that there has been a trade-off, that Congress and previous presidents faced a choice between tax cuts and “prudent investment” and that they chose the tax cuts, and that as a result the government didn’t collect enough revenue and had no money to increase spending or  “prudent investments.”  Obama and The Left identify Reagan era tax cuts as the beginning of the this, “far too long” problem.  Under Reagan all tax bracket rates were reduced.  The top  bracket was reduced from 70% to  28%.

If we accept the conclusion that too little tax revenue and too little spending caused all our nation’s problems, then of course the Obama agenda of tax increases and oceanic increases in spending makes sense.

Income Tax Revenue 1984 - 2008

As the chart demonstrates, income tax revenue began to increase dramatically, just after the Reagan tax cuts were implemented.  Revenue actually went down just after the first President Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge and joined Congressional Democrats in raising rates.

The only significant tax revenue decline over the past quarter century resulted not from tax cuts but from a recession caused by the bursting dot-com stock bubble and the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  Two years later, Congress and President Bush implemented significant cuts in all tax bracket rates, and in the rates for Capital Gains and Dividends.  Only then did the economy begin to recover from the Dot-com-911 recession, generating increasing tax revenue for the government.

Since last fall tax revenue has been falling, but not because the rates are too low.  The rates the same as they were when revenue was higher, and rising.   Revenue is falling because a severe recession has, again, lowered taxable income.

As the data demonstrates, declining tax revenue cannot be the cause of America’s economic problems.  But it clearly is possible that  government has caused problems by collecting TOO MUCH from tax payers, especially small businesses.

In the next post we’ll examine spending data and show how it also contradicts Obama’s assertions.

aaa.again is the nom de plume of a frequent commenter who has agreed to be a contributing writer.  He writes from the perspective of decades of success in business, finance and entrepreneurial enterprise.   Learn more about him on the About Us page.

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and we all are all thinking about stimulus, right?  However, on this blog we talk about all things economic and political, including the government stimulus package.  For Valentines Day you are on your own.  Good luck.

In recent weeks this blog has more than adequately exposed and enumerated portions of the waste, fraud and hypocrisy that characterize the “stimulus” package, haphazardly crafted by a Congress drunk with its newfound power.  So I thought I would attempt to weigh in with some thoughts that are not so much an amplification of the problems with specific spending proposals, but rather some hopefully thought provoking queries highlighting the responsibilities of leadership, and some basic economic considerations.

Welcome to the Office, President Doom

During difficult economic times in the past, our national leaders have offered messages of various tones, such as President Roosevelt’s “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”  Or how about President Reagan’s classic message of trust and hope:  “stay the course,” which led to “Its morning in America.”

On the other hand, President Carter, a less optimistic “leader,” gave us the infamous “malaise,” speech and admonished us to don our cardigans and turn the thermostat down.  Pretty inspiring, eh?     And now we have President Doom, who intones “pass my bill, or else disaster will follow, you will all be unemployed, to be followed by a slow and agonizing death.”  OK, I took literary license.  But you get my point.  This is not leadership.  This is fear mongering.

Ask yourself, with such supposed high stakes, why do we have the pure politics and blatant pork spending in both the House and Senate bills?  If things are so dire, isn’t there a responsibility to make every last dollar work to get a reasonable economic result?  As recent essays on this blog have pointed out, that is far from the case.  I remember when we suffered the 9/11 attacks.  The parties came together because there was real concern and fear in the country.  I don’t see fear in Washington today.  I see opportunistic, garden variety pork politics designed to expand government.

Give It to Me Straight, Doc!

How bad is it??  For those who are not students of economics, there actually has been wide spread agreement among economists for some time that government fiscal stimulus (spending) is not a particularly effective counter to recessions.  (Paul “I Never Saw a Government Expenditure I Didn’t Like” Krugman aside).

Somehow the notion has lost its way in the current environment.  Why?  Perhaps because monetary policy – the Federal Reserve induced reduction in interest rates – is viewed as tapped out.  The rates can’t go any lower.  Or perhaps because of the canard that “these are extraordinary times,” so we can throw the rules out.  Politicians making justifications like that should make you suspicious.

Extraordinary times?  Let’s talk about that.  The primary statistic we get in media reports and political speeches is “job losses greater than any time since the Great Depression.”  Have you noticed that only raw numbers are cited?  What these people fail to tell you is that if properly characterized, job losses as a percent of the size of the population aren’t even close to the worst.

The “workforce,” defined as everyone with a job, plus everyone who is unemployed but wants a job, is 47% larger today, than it was at the beginning of the 1981-82 recession. You would expect the raw job loss numbers to be bigger today.

The unemployment rate during the 1981-82 recession reached 10.8%.  It is now 7.6%.  President Obama says we’ve lost 3.6 million jobs since the current recession began.  In fact, if that number doubled the unemployment rate would reach 9.8%, still not equal to the 1982 rate.

Give It to Me Straight, Doc! II

So will the stimulus cure it??  I won’t get into boring academic jargon or mathematical models.  Let’s just say, it will work, but just a little, and not nearly as much as advertised.  But more importantly, one has to ask, as any economist would, not just what the potential benefit of an economic policy is, but also what are the costs?  So what are the potential costs of the stimulus?  They are threefold:

• A short term stimulus may have a benefit in, well, the short term.  But when the stimulus is withdrawn, the effect is reversed.  Said another way, unless you believe in a strategy where we are to have serial stimulus packages every two to three years, (which is silly, not to mention unaffordable) we are just moving recessionary contraction from today until a couple years from now.  Kicking the can down the road, if you will.

• Classic government fiscal stimulus largely takes the form of construction projects.  It sounds so seductive and easy.  “Hey!! Here’s some money.  Go build some stuff, and employ some people.”  (It gets labeled ‘infrastructure,’ today.)  Well, yes, we do need some infrastructure rebuilding.  But how much?  More importantly, has anyone noticed that we just came off an easy credit and government policy induced building binge, ending in a classic bubble bursting?  That bubble means we simply have too many structures, residential and commercial, and more construction workers than the long term needs of the economy suggests we should have.  The country needs to make adjustments; those workers need to get at the task of moving into other lines of work.  But what does the stimulus package do?  It has us, and those workers, diving right back into that construction mess.  This only means that when the stimulus money runs out, those workers are two years older, and still facing the same problem.  Delaying the inevitable is not good policy, it’s a cruel joke.  But it is classic government, and it carries a cost.

• Again, without getting into economic jargon, there is a textbook economic identity that no economist, left or right disagrees with:  savings = investment plus the current account.  (The current account is the deficit, however financed.) So if the government stimulates spending then in the short run savings must go down (your only choices are to spend, or to save), which means investment goes down or the current account goes down.  Said another way, we reduce growth inducing investment, or we finance the deficit with more debt, or selling off assets.  Those are real costs.

If your eyes have glazed over, let me put this all into summary perspective.  All this means is that working our way out of the current economic issues will take time, perhaps two to three years.  This is the way a large and complex economy works: slowly.

Remember the 1999 dot.com bust??  Then 9/11.  It took time to recover.  Bust in ’99, sliding into recession in 2000; recovery not until 2003.  Recoveries require population growth, older goods wearing out, productivity growth, investment and innovation.  Perhaps, dare I say it, even a tax cut?!  In other words, recovery the old fashioned way.  Slow, steady, hard work.  Beware the man peddling a magical quick fix.  It’s not what it seems.

President Doom is clearly playing politics, telling us of his concerns about the unending depths of the recession, but in my opinion really using this fear mongering as a prod to implement a leftist agenda.  Further, all the costs I cited about the stimulus have a common theme: they don’t solve the problem, they just kick the problem down the road a few years.  In my opinion, President Doom is hoping for a quick fix, hoping that the 2010 congressional elections will be conducted in an environment of recovery.  However, chickens eventually will come home to roost, as his pastor has informed us.  I don’t like politicians who play politics with people’s economic wellbeing.

We once had a great President, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who entered office facing runaway inflation, stagnant productivity and high unemployment, and a dispirited public.  He told the nation that if they stayed the course with his policies, and put their belief in themselves, the country would recover and achieve new heights.  It was tough, but two years later he was right.  And twenty-five years of growth and prosperity were unleashed.  He didn’t go for the expedient quick fix.  That’s called leadership.

Unfortunately, in this Presidential election cycle we got President Doom, who trades quick fix gimmickry for political gain.  As all the country has just witnessed, it’s the Chicago/Illinois machine way.

CNN Fact Check: The [GOP Ad's] Claim That Obama Would Spend A Trillion Dollars More Is “Misleading” Because It Doesn’t Take Into Account The Savings From Other Policy Changes Obama Is Calling For. Verdict: Misleading. The figure McCain gave is based on his campaign’s tally of the costs of numerous programs Obama has discussed, but ignores the savings from other policy changes Obama is calling for.”

Then it goes on offense:

McCain Offers Four More Years Of Soaring Deficits. Just like George Bush, McCain budget plan offers four more years of soaring deficits, which the non-partisan Tax Policy Center said McCain’s tax plan would add $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next decade…

Update: Click to see a revised deficit chart as of May, 2010

Obama Deficit projection

President Obama has not proposed any spending cuts, except to order his appointees at the Pentagon to study and recommend cuts in military funding that would not take place until next year.   With the Obama Stimulus plan passed by the House last week, and the bank bailout, 2009 will be the largest deficit ever.  The chart compares what the Obama campaign called  the “soaring” deficits of the Bush years with the projected deficit this year.  The comparisons are for the government’s fiscal years, from October 1 through September 30.

A 1961 law prohibits the use of US government funds to perform or promote abortion in foreign countries.  In the early eighties President Reagan found that several organizations that promoted and performed abortions continued to receive federal funds because they claimed their abortion activities were funded from other sources.  But by paying an organization’s non-abortion expenses US taxpayers freed up more of those funds from other sources to promote and conduct abortions.

The “Mexico City Policy,”  named for the location of the 1984 UN Conference on Population where it was first announced, was an executive order by President Reagan that  required organizations to agree, as a condition of their receipt of any Federal funds, not to perform or promote abortion in other nations, even if they had other sources of funds.

The policy was in effect from 1984 through the end of the Bush 41 Administration. It was rescinded by President Clinton, and then reinstated by President Bush 43.

On his third day President Obama issued an executive order rescinding the Mexico City Policy again, thus making available more funds for promoting and conducting abortions in foreign countries.  The White House announcement includes the following:

For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us.  I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.

Does the President actually believe it’s the debate, rather than the moral question of abortion that divides us?  If the debate is “fruitless” it’s because after 30 years at least half of us are still not persuaded that abortion is moral.  We understand there is no way to reconcile killing a human fetus with the fundamental right to life, recognized by America’s founders in the Declaration of Independence.   At least half of us remain morally opposed to an American foreign policy of promoting and funding abortions in other nations.

Apparently, President Obama believes his own campaign hype, that the power of his being will dissolve principled debate as soon as he comes down on one side or the other.

The White House announcement continues…

It is time that we end the politicization of this issue.  In the coming weeks, my Administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.

Translation:  Opposing  abortion is politicizing,  supporting abortion  is “a fresh conversation on family planning.”

As Obama knows, America does not have the authority to ban abortions in other countries, and the Mexico City Policy did not prevent Americans from making voluntary contributions to organizations that promote and perform abortions.  But Obama, who claims to the man of compromise and concensus, was not satisfied with anything less than full, forced compliance with his abortion agenda.

For this old guy, who as a student in the Sixties participated in a low-risk civil rights demonstration in Los Angeles, and who was teaching in a 90% black junior high school the day Dr. King was murdered, it’s a moment of genuine joy, even if tempered with apprehension about the future under hard left leadership.

The folks at Catholic Vote have produced a video gently calling attention to another bit of dramatic symbolism in as much as President Obama has aligned himself with those who demand unqualified, unlimited abortion rights, and  has promised to immediately reverse Bush executive orders that curtailed federal funding of abortion.
.

The report states that Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, had “one or two” phone conversations with the governor, and “about four” conversations with the Governor’s aid, John Harris.  But, the report assures us, there was no talk of exchanging anything of value for the appointment.

So, that’s it.  The media herd will roam in other directions, having been assured that this “investigation” of the transition team, by the transition team, has cleared their hero, The One, President-elect Obama and all his people.

Click to download the five page pdf

Before I continue, full disclosure:  I’m an Evangelical Christian.  I’ve read several of Pastor Warren’s books, including “The Purpose Driven Church,” and “The Purpose Driven Life.” I attended a four-day church leaders’ conference he put on at Saddleback Church, where I met and chatted with him.  I admire and respect him.

Some Evangelicals worry that this could signal some change in Pastor Warren’s theological principles.  But the most outrage comes from the so-called “gay community,” politicians, activist groups, bloggers and media writers.  Phil Bronstein of the San Francisco Chronicle was typical:

Just when you thought maybe the molten lava of the Proposition 8 protest backwash had cooled  to street steam and legal challenges, BOOM! Barack Obama, of all people, rolls a great big grenade under the door of the gay community.

California Ballot Proposition 8 was a proposed State Constitutional Amendment, put on the ballot to nullify a bizarre State Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.  The court found that the authors of the State Constitution, in 1849, somehow intended to confer a right of same sex marriage, without mentioning it, even though there had been no such marriages in California’s  history.  John McCain won only 37% in California, while Prop 8 passed with 52%.  Since election day there have been scores of demonstrations against Prop 8, all over the state.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-bisexual-transgendered activist group published a letter he sent to Obama, protesting the selection of Pastor Warren.  An excerpt:

By inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.  In this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.

Calling Pastor Warren “an architect and promoter of an anti-gay agenda” is a bit over the top.  Warren leads no “anti-gay” movement or activities.  He  did support Proposition 8, but then, so did a majority of voters here in in hyper-liberal California.  Does that mean we have several million “architects of an anti-gay agenda?”

In just 24 hours Cable TV has managed to present a dozen or more vitriolic spokespersons from “the gay community” who have condemned Pastor Warren for “using religion to divide people,” and expressed disgust with Obama for daring to defy the leaders of this vocal constituency, who are now beginning to claim they were bamboozled into supporting him, even though he never endorsed their top issue, gay marriage.

For an insight into why Pastor Warren would want to participate in the inauguration, even though he openly disagrees with Obama on abortion, gay marriage and other issues I offer the two scriptures Warren adopted as the fundamental, guiding principles of his ministry.

The first is called The The Great Commandment; Mark 12: 28 – 31:

One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

The Second is called The Great Commission; Matthew 28: 18-20:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Pastor Warren’s mission transcends political and moral disagreements.  His decision to accept this invitiation would have been guided by these two scriptures.  He believes that his appearance to give the invocation will be a demonstration of Christ’s love for all, and will further the goal of The Great Commission, spreading the Gospel to all nations.