posted on April 15, 2005 04:55:30 AM new
So... there's nothing on TV at 4am when I so here I am watching Fox News and they mention an upcoming planned appearance of Bill Frist at a Kentucky church that will be televised where anyone opposing the banning of filibusters will be portrayed as "Anti-Christian".
Am I the only one that thinks that this is going to start backfiring soon? Not that I mind, of course. But seriously, does the far right understand that they are starting to push their moderate supporters away with these types of actions? Should a high ranking government official really be going on a religiously sponsored program in order to try to influence fellow lawmakers in the selection of judges? Does this strike anyone as somewhat surreal?
Oh yeah.... as long as I am babbling in the morning... anyone else as amused as I to learn that the president was surprised to learn one of the big aspects of a recent bill he had signed would require US residents returning from Mexico or Canada to show a passport starting in 2008?
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on April 15, 2005 05:01:42 AM new
I can't understand why they (GOP) can't see that this will come back to bite them one day and should not be messed with.
It has been apart of the Congress since its inception and has worked the way it has supposed to.
This would not be a good change.
It's getting out of hand and it's beginning to frighten even me. There was an interesting article in the Cleveland Free Times. It's enough to make you ill. I'm saving money to leave the state of Ohio and this is in part why:
God is in the Details : Christianity is on the march in Ohio.
Next stop: the governor's office.
By John Fox
Thursday, April 14, 2005
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PHIL BURRESS
Knows what's best for you.
BASKING IN THE GLOW of the sweeping passage of Ohio's Issue 1 last fall, Citizens for Community Values (CCV) President Phil Burress boasted to The New York Times that his religious-based political movement was just starting.
“I'm building an army,” Burress told the paper in a November 26, 2004, story. “We can't just let people go back to the pews and go to sleep.”
The Times described Burress' plans to take his statewide grassroots movement to a new level “using a computer database of 1.5 million voters to build a network of Christian conservative officials, candidates and political advocates. He envisions holding town-hall-style meetings early next year in Ohio's 88 counties to identify issues, recruit organizers and train volunteers. With a cadre of 15 to 20 leaders in each county, he says he believes religious conservatives can be running school boards, town councils and county prosecutors' offices across the state within a few years.”
Today, wishful thinking is turning into political organizing for the religious right in Ohio. Check out the game plan at www.ohiorestorationproject.com:
• Ohio Restoration Project will “create, fund and operate a public information program for pastors and the Christian community” by focusing on key “family” issues such as marriage, right to life, educational choice, taxes and employment; by mobilizing 2,000 “Patriot Pastors” to “equip the Christian community to be engaged in the 2006 elections;” and by increasing “values voter” turnout from 22 percent to 35 percent in 2006.
• Each Patriot Pastor will provide 100 “intercessors” who can join in an Ohio network of “e-prayer” to pray at a moment's notice, recruit 200 volunteers to “make a difference in their congressional district” and register at least 300 new voters “able to shine a light for Godly candidates in the 2006 election cycle.”
• The organization seeks to register up to 600,000 new “values voters” in Ohio to impact the 2006 elections, which of course will include the open governor's seat and Mike DeWine's U.S. Senate seat, as well as congressional seats, the state legislature and various statewide offices.
• These Patriot Pastors and 30,000 other supporters will gather at an “Ohio for Jesus Rally” at Nationwide Arena in Columbus in early 2006 to kick off the official campaign to win these races. Among the scheduled featured speakers will be Burress and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, whom this organization would love to see become Ohio's next governor.
JUST WHAT KIND OF OHIO is the Ohio Restoration Project plotting to restore? Here are the movement's core issues:
• Cultivating a “culture of life” in Ohio, with no details about what this actually means — though the Terri Schiavo situation sparked Republicans in the state legislature to consider new laws regarding citizens' end-of-life decisions.
• State government “should encourage strong marriages,” although again there are no details as to what this means in practical terms. But a description of the April 19 “Ohio Family Lobby Day” on the CCV website mentions “banning homosexual adoption and foster parenting” as an issue that CCV would like the legislature to take up.
• Promote widespread use of vouchers to pay for students to attend religious elementary and high schools. This issue gets to the heart of what Ohio Restoration Project is all about — controlling the future of society by controlling who teaches our children and what they're taught.
“For far too long educational bureaucrats and the elitist unions have dictated public policy in the classroom,” the Web site argues. “It's time to again make children the focus of our efforts and engage children, parents and teachers in a covenant of trust. The end results could change a generation. School choice for parents is fair, equitable. ‘My child, my taxes, to the school of our choice.' If parents decide to take their children where they can learn of their Creator, read from the Bible and pray, that should be their prerogative. If some parents chose a secular system that provides a revisionist version of history, excludes the evidences against creation and discriminates against taxpayers of faith, that should be their prerogative.”
And so Burress and his devotees seem to be devising a two-pronged attack on public schools, starving local systems of students (and resources) by diverting kids to private religious schools; and running right-wingers for school board seats.
Incidentally, Ken Blackwell's wife currently serves as superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools. Either Rosa Blackwell is a Trojan horse for the religious right, situated to help destroy the system from within, or she repudiates her husband's connection to the Ohio Restoration Project.
• Tax reform would push the state “to tighten its belt and control spending,” with some general talk of eliminating waste, encouraging better stewardship and accountability and providing tax breaks for corporations and companies that invest in their communities. Basic Republican Party positions here.
• And medical reform could turn Ohio into “a destination place for multitudes of people who need quality health care” and “a safe place for good doctors to use their healing talents.” What this is all about is tort reform, which the organization would like to see limit citizens' non-economic lawsuit damages to $250,000; require all malpractice lawsuits go before a panel of legal, medical and hospital professionals to determine if the case has merit; limit attorney fees; and ask doctors to “eventually” revoke the licenses of incompetent repeat offenders. Again, boilerplate GOP positions.
And so the Ohio Restoration Project swarms out of Greater Cincinnati behind Burress' religious rhetoric with the goal of pushing Blackwell and other right-wing candidates to higher office. But before Blackwell starts planning his inauguration, he ought to remember that Burress expects total subjugation to his doctrine.
“I'm not an R or a D,” Burress told the Times when describing his disappointment at certain Republican officeholders (like DeWine and Attorney General Jim Petro, Blackwell's foe in the race for governor), whom he called “enablers of the homosexual agenda.”
“Both parties are driven by selfishness. They are run by people who are Republican or Democrat because it benefits them or their jobs. Our movement will be built on passion, on values, on fire-in-the-belly morals.”
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This country is not 100% Christian. There are many other religions practiced in this country. People came here, in part, to escape religious persecution. We are starting it again. The more I read things like this, the more I know why I'm so disgusted with organized religion. God doesn't want people forced into His flock, so I've been told. So, why are so many trying to force it?
posted on April 15, 2005 06:36:33 AM new
He didn't sign anything about passports..this was a proposal from Homeland Security.
Bush questions border I.D. rules
Friday, April 15, 2005 Posted: 8:03 AM EDT (1203 GMT)
President Bush speaks Thursday to a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Plans requiring passports from people entering the United States don't pass muster with President Bush, who has ordered a review of this border security effort amid fears it would impede legal travel from Canada, Mexico and other U.S. neighbors.
The president said Thursday he was surprised by the proposed rules announced last week by the State and Homeland Security departments.
"When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly today's crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said, 'What's going on here?"' Bush said when asked about the rules at a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
"I thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic and people," he said.
Bush, a former Texas governor, said he has ordered a review of the rules. "If people have to have a passport, it's going to disrupt the honest flow of traffic. I think there's some flexibility in the law, and that's what we're checking out right now," the president said.
"On the larger scale, we've got a lot to do to enforce the border," he said.
In December, Bush signed into law an intelligence overhaul that requires tighter border security against terrorists and was the basis for the passport proposal. The White House did not say why the president was unaware of the plans his administration announced just a week earlier.
The proposed guidelines would require passports or a select number of other secure documents from anyone -- including Americans -- entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, the Caribbean and Panama. The rules were scheduled to become final this fall after a public comment period and to be phased in by 2008.
Currently, Americans generally need to show a driver's license or other government-issued photo identification to cross the border from Canada. Customs officials usually require more proof from Americans returning from the other countries -- a driver's license plus a birth certificate to prove citizenship, for example.
An estimated 60 million Americans -- about 20 percent of the national population -- have passports.
The plans have caused a stir in Canada, where the government announced it might follow suit and impose similar rules against the United States. Canada is the largest U.S. trading partner, with $1.2 billion worth of goods crossing the border daily. Nearly 16 million Canadians entered the United States last year.
Canada's public safety minister, Anne McLellan, told reporters in Ottawa that Bush's comments signal his support for negotiations between the two counties about "accepted forms of ID."
"While we want to keep our borders secure and our respective counties secure, we also want to ensure that we're facilitating trade and the movement of people between the two counties," McLellan said.
A spokesman at the Mexican Embassy had no immediate comment.
As proposed, the rules would allow the use of four other documents, geared to the Mexican and Canadian border, in place of a passport.
People entering the United States from Mexico could continue to use a border crossing card or SENTRI card, which can be obtained following background checks and other security measures. From the Canadian border, a NEXUS card for preapproved low-risk travelers and a FAST card for commercial workers would be accepted.
The plans also leave open the possibility for the use of unnamed "additional documents" that remain under consideration. But the passport "will be the document of choice for entering or re-entering the U.S.," according to a Homeland Security information sheet.
Bush said the rules must be more flexible, and could include electronic fingerprint imaging "to serve as a so-called passport for daily traffic" to help speed up the process.
Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that although passports were a requirement of the intelligence overhaul bill, "we are looking at alternative documents that will help us better secure the country, and at the same time facilitate travel."
At the State Department, spokesman Thomas Casey said officials will "look to find ways to implement this program ... in a way that's most efficient and that facilitates travel in the best ways possible."
Bush has proposed immigration liberalization legislation that would establish a guest-worker program. But it has run into difficulty in Congress, particularly among border-state Republicans.
An estimated 10 million immigrants live in the United States illegally; the vast majority are from Mexico, with an additional million arriving every year.
posted on April 15, 2005 06:36:55 AM new
Things like this statement: "Promote widespread use of vouchers to pay for students to attend religious elementary and high schools. This issue gets to the heart of what Ohio Restoration Project is all about — controlling the future of society by controlling who teaches our children and what they're taught" don't bother you?
How about this: "“I'm building an army,” Burress told the paper in a November 26, 2004, story. “We can't just let people go back to the pews and go to sleep.”
What about this: "register at least 300 new voters “able to shine a light for Godly candidates in the 2006 election cycle.”
Burress and his devotees seem to be devising a two-pronged attack on public schools, starving local systems of students (and resources) by diverting kids to private religious schools; and running right-wingers for school board seats.
Religion does not belong in politics. We are a free nation, free to worship or not worship however we want. These people are actually alienating more people than they know and will cause more people to turn their backs on religion than are now. These churches need their 501(c) 3 non-profit status revoked. They clearly violate the IRS tax codes.
posted on April 15, 2005 10:24:47 AM new
See I have a problem with news. I feel it is very biased according to the station and the writers. I do watch ABC at 6 and 10 and only because they have good sports. At least Green Bay Packers Sports. I kinda ignore the news, I do read our biased paper to see what locally is happening and the rummage and estate sales and obitutaries. I usually read different articles on the net and they are probably the same articles with a different twist than I try and figure out what is right. Per usual not much.
posted on April 15, 2005 10:34:07 AM new
::I feel it is very biased according to the station and the writers.::
I think this was a case of either bad info or indifference towards accurate info in favor of better irony since I don't think anyone can say that Fox News is boased against Bush. I swear, I think he could pour gasoline into a day care center and set it afire on live TV and Hannity would host a two hour special defending the action and calling anyone that had the nerve to question him unamerican and anti-god.
I really think the reason that I watch Fox is because of the inadvertant humor that results from their over the top Rah-Rah... Give me a G... Give me an O... Give me a P... attitude.
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If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on April 15, 2005 01:10:33 PM new
I personally wouldn't buy anything, but they make the point that freedom of speech is just that freedom of speech.
posted on April 15, 2005 01:38:34 PM new
I wouldn't buy anything either. They should be allowed to have the bake sale. By forbidding them, I think you'd actually be adding fuel to the fire they insist on creating. Like the article stated, there seems to be a lack of education there. I think these students need to spend some time out in the real world. And, I'm guessing that they learned most of this anti-affirmative action crap from their parents.
