Conservatrolling Topic

[Pyro ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔]

Sept 22, 2013 11:18:49 GMT -5 Tails82 said:

Pro-life = respect for the individual from conception to natural death

Pro-gun = respect for the individual's right to defend themselves

So how can you be pro life if you're pro something thats only designed to be anti life. You can't be both.

If you were pro-defence then you would be for things like safer house security, guard dogs, and things that only subdue attackers such as pepper spray, stun guns, and self defence classes. Pro guns is not pro defence.

Pro guns = anti life.

[Pyro ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔]

Guns are good for suicide though. Especially if you have a good one like a shotgun or something. Not sure what the least painful way would be. But I think a shotgun might be pretty instant. Like. If you try hang yourself you can't really snap your neck or whatever you just end up choking yourself. Thats not nice. Pills, well they might make you brain damaged but what if you're still alive. Wrists, seem... mmmmmmmm I dunno.

[kode54]

You're right about the guns for suicide thing. Most of the gun deaths in the US in 2010 were suicides.

[Tails82]

Self-defense is double effect, not intending to just kill someone but acting to protect oneself, with the possible negative consequences for the other person.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324665604579080921594857770.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

As close observers of history and human nature, James Madison and the other Founders of the U.S. Constitution knew that the equal and unbiased application of the law to all people, especially elected officials, is essential to freedom and justice and one of the primary safeguards from authoritarianism and oppression by a ruling class.

And so, referring to the members of Congress, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57: "[T]hey can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."

Today, elected officials need to be reminded of these truths. Under pressure from Congress, the White House has carved out a special exemption for Congress and its staffers from ObamaCare—the law it recently deemed necessary for the entire country. No Republicans voted for ObamaCare. Yet it appears that some of them support the exemption President Obama approved on his own—so they would not have to go on record with a vote for or against it.

This is the height of hypocrisy, and worse, a trampling of the Founders' code of equal application of the law. Having forced a health law on the American people, the White House and Democrats now seek to insulate themselves from the noxious portions of the law, and from the implementation struggles, indecision and uncertainty that many other Americans face today.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Republican from Florida, recently put forward legislation—aptly named the James Madison Congressional Accountability Act—which would end the special exemption. In the Senate, Republicans David Vitter of Louisiana and Mike Enzi of Wyoming have also introduced legislation to end the exemption.

In response, several Democratic senators have reacted by drafting legislation that would punish anyone who votes for Sen. Vitter's plan by permanently blocking an exemption from them and their staff, even if Mr. Vitter's law doesn't pass. It doesn't get more vindictive and petty than that.

Insane. Just insane.

I mean it's hilarious to think that Democrats are now out in the open threatening Obamacare as a form of punishment, but man, how despotic do you have to be to go after someone if they don't back the party line and decide to vote differently? Is this the America people fought and died for?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304213904579092943047891198.html

Republican House leaders are still stunned by President Obama's in-your-face phone call to Speaker John Boehner late Friday to warn that the White House won't negotiate on a debt-ceiling increase. The bravado and arrogance has further antagonized GOP members.

Mr. Obama has been saying publicly that he "will not negotiate over whether or not America should keep its word or meet its obligations." But this seemed to be the usual chest-thumping in preparation for serious negotiations. Now Republicans wonder if Mr. Obama will refuse to do what every president for at least 40 years has done: compromise on the debt ceiling to get the votes in the House and Senate. There is a growing view on the left that there shouldn't be a debt ceiling and that the president may have constitutional authority to continue to borrow whether Congress raises the borrowing limit or doesn't.

Why don't they just seal the deal and call this a banana republic?

hotair.com/archives/2013/09/23/revealed-obama-came-up-with-obamacare-because-he-needed-a-throwaway-applause-line-in-a-campaign-speech/

Revealed: Obama came up with ObamaCare because he needed a throwaway applause line in a campaign speech

"'We needed something to say,' recalled one of the advisers involved in the discussion. 'I can’t tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good. So they just kind of hatched it on their own. It just happened. It wasn’t like a deep strategic conversation.'

"The candidate jumped at it. He probably wasn’t going to get elected anyway, the team concluded. Why not go big?"

Not until two months after he made the promise described above did he bother to get up to speed on health-care policy, and that was only because Hillary destroyed him over it at an SEIU candidate forum. (It seems looooong ago now but candidate Obama actually argued against Clinton’s preference for an individual mandate on the trail. Why? “Aides say Obama was simply looking for any way to differentiate himself from an opponent whose basic policy positions were indistinguishable from his own.”) Later it was Ted Kennedy who pressed him to stick with health-care reform by making his endorsement semi-contingent upon O doing so. Once Obama got to the Oval Office, Rahm Emanuel pleaded with him to find something else to focus on in his first year but O insisted on forging ahead because, unlike Bill Clinton, he didn’t get elected to “do school uniforms.” He had, as usual, come to believe his own bullsh*t about the grandiosity of Hopenchange, and having orated his way into the presidency, he probably figured (not without reason) that he could sell the country on a new health-care boondoggle too. It’s been a thorn in his side ever since, and the pain’s only going to get worse.

What’s striking about this story is how it mirrors the genesis of his half-assed “red line” on Syria. That was also the product of an idle remark that sounded good at the time on a subject that Obama obviously didn’t consider a high priority. Just as health-care reform became a test of his credibility on the left as a candidate, propelling him into a fight he didn’t necessarily want...

This is what happens when you elect an idiot man-child.

blog.heritage.org/2013/09/23/irss-lois-lerner-finally-loses-her-taxpayer-funded-paycheck/

The IRS has announced the retirement of Lois Lerner, one of the key officials at the center of the scandal over the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups that had applied for tax-exempt status.

Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations office, had been on paid administrative leave since she asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee in May.

E-mails and other testimony by IRS employees have contradicted Lerner’s initial claims that this behavior was the result of low-level, rogue employees in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. We now know that high-level IRS employees in Washington as well as other IRS offices were involved.

"Phony scandal" said the lying turd.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304713704579093271966122970.html

Striking Deals With Despots

Stalin played FDR in 1945. Iran's Rouhani now attempts to do the same with President Obama.

Why are democratic leaders so easily suckered and rolled by dictators when it comes to diplomacy? That's the question to ask as the Obama administration, fresh from getting rolled by Russia over Syria's chemical weapons, now tempts getting suckered by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani over his country's nuclear ambitions.

Part of the answer lies here, at the Livadia Palace in Yalta, where Joseph Stalin hosted Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in February 1945 to negotiate the political map of postwar Europe. For the people of central Europe, especially Poles, Yalta has long been a byword for betrayal: betrayal of Allied assurances that they would be allowed to determine their own futures democratically; betrayal of Western ideals of freedom and human rights at the altar of power politics.

Yet the truth about Yalta is more complicated, and more instructive. Roosevelt may have betrayed the principle of Polish freedom. But there was little he could do to change the fact that the Red Army owned Poland anyway. He also thought that, in exchange for accepting Stalin's terms on one front, he got Stalin's agreement on two others: Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and Soviet participation in the United Nations..."In our hearts we really believed a new day had dawned," Harry Hopkins, FDR's closest aide, recalled about Yalta. "We were all convinced we had won the first great victory for peace. . . . The Russians had proved they could be reasonable and farsighted and neither the president nor any of us had the slightest doubt that we could live with them and get on peaceably with them far into the future."

It didn't turn out like that. But contrary to the suggestion that Yalta was an example of American cynicism or cowardice, it typified a style of American diplomacy that combined boundless idealism with fatal naiveté, an exaggerated confidence in the power of persuasion to bridge differences—and a fatal indifference to the importance of ideology in creating them.

Historians of the Yalta conference have often noted that the Russians had every room in the palace bugged, and that Stalin was provided every morning with transcripts of Roosevelt's and Churchill's private discussions with their staffs. But Stalin's advantage at Yalta wasn't that he was better briefed. It was that he was a better psychologist. He knew how to turn Roosevelt's illusions to his own purposes.

Above all, FDR cherished the illusion that, through universal participation in the U.N., World War II could be what the first one had not: the war to end all wars. Stalin was more than willing to nurture FDR's idealism—provided FDR returned the favor by granting Stalin the run of his ambitions.

Which brings us back to the present. President Obama has spent five years giving abundant evidence of his desire to reconcile with autocrats, as he did with his Russian reset; to overcome mistrust by demonstrating the purity of his intent, as he tried in his Cairo speech; to seize on any enabling fiction that will relieve him of his commitments, as he has done with Syria. A deal with Iran, arranged via a first-of-its kind meeting with Mr. Rouhani, is a personal and ideological temptation Mr. Obama is incapable of resisting.

Should it happen (I'm betting it will), Mr. Obama will be hailed as a master diplomat and a triumphant peacemaker. As with Yalta, it won't take long to learn who is betrayed, and what is lost, in the service of an illusion.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/09/23/Daniels-Newsroom-win

Even the left complains Hollywood is too leftist.

[kode54]

imgur.com/gallery/jXbcz

[Tails82]

Which was decided in Lawrence v Texas in 2003, something I would disagree with, but it's already legal. Gay "marriage" recognition by the government is forcing everyone else to recognize/support a lie.

[Tails82]

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/24/Cruz-Filibusters-I-Intend-to-Speak-in-Support-of-Defunding-Obamacare-Until-I-Am-No-Longer-Able-to-Stand

Cruz to Speak Against ObamaCare 'Until I Am No Longer Able to Stand'

washingtonexaminer.com/obama-heads-to-maryland-to-tout-obamacare/article/2536305

President Obama will travel to blue-state Maryland on Thursday to build last-minute momentum behind his health care overhaul, the White House announced.

The Maryland event is the latest in what the administration promises will be an "aggressive six month public awareness effort."

Why does he need to keep campaigning for a law he passed? Our man-child has lost the ability to govern, if he ever had it (failure to pass a budget, or do anything productive, says no). So he's out trying to relive the greatest hits, the teleprompter glory days when the magic negro could heal the sick and control the tides.

So we have to suffer through five years of this. Half a decade of a trash bill, a third world service, a job-killing train wreck, with millions suffering because a failed president wants to defend a failed legacy.

washingtonexaminer.com/whos-an-extortionist-now-mr.-president/article/2536267

President Obama pledged to end partisanship, but instead has exacerbated it. He recently accused House Republicans of being extortionists for opposing a raise in the debt ceiling and wanting to defund Obamacare.

Dictionary.com defines extortion as “the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one's office or authority.”

Republicans should fling the extortion label back at the president, who wants to raise the debt ceiling, threatening to curtail many government operations if the GOP doesn’t surrender.

Obama once held the opposite position about debt and ceilings. In 2006, when George W. Bush was president, then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.” Really? What, then, does it say about his leadership now?

Sen. Obama went on (as he always does): “It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies …”

As president, Obama has increased our debt and reliance on foreign governments to finance his fiscal policies. Are they any less reckless than when he was complaining about the fiscal policies of the Bush administration?

If $16 trillion in debt isn’t enough, what is? The sky is no longer the limit. We’re now in financial deep space.

“Americans deserve better,” concluded Sen. Obama seven years ago. We certainly do, but we’re not getting it from him, just more debt, more intrusive and regulating government, and less liberty.

A government “shutdown,” which is technically not going to happen as some departments and agencies will continue functioning, should not be seen as bad, but something potentially good.

Like the sequester, which forced government to spend a little less of our money, a government shutdown, if properly framed by Republicans and conservatives, might be a taking-stock moment.

Republicans might use a government “shutdown” to urge citizens to reflect on government’s proper role and why Washington has become so dysfunctional. They could propose the government “re-open,” built on a new (really old) foundation: the Constitution.

This new constitutional government would have limited and enumerated powers beyond which it would not be allowed to stray. Courts would be a passive, not an active body. The elected Congress would pass legislation and the terms of its members would be limited by tradition and if necessary, by law.

The preservation of liberty would be government’s primary concern and all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government would again be reserved for the states and individuals (the 10th Amendment).

Dysfunctional government is bringing us closer to the choice faced by signers of the Declaration of Independence:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Those causes are abundantly clear. It may be time to consider separating ourselves from what the Framers might have regarded as a government foreign to them, which has led to the extortion of its citizens.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/24/Defunding-ObamaCare-Debate-a-Win-for-GOP

all anyone in politics or the press is talking about right now is ObamaCare and the Republican push to defund it. Against this backdrop have been countless stories about the problems coming to light as ObamaCare nears implementation. One company after another are dropping or scaling back health coverage. Even governments are making moves to move their employees or retirees onto ObamaCare exchanges.

Premiums are increasing more than expected for many people. Those with the most affordable coverage will have limited choices of doctors and providers. Most of the health exchanges scheduled to open next week aren't ready or will have serious bugs to work out.

How is it bad for the GOP to have a big national debate on getting rid of ObamaCare on the eve of its implementation, just as the public is again paying attention to the issue? It benefits the party to remind voters that Republicans will go to almost any length to defund a law who's unpopularity is likely to grow. It also benefits the party to remind voters that Democrats will go to almost any length to preserve the law.

Second, while the political world is consumed with ObamaCare funding, it isn't debating spending levels in the Continuing Resolution. The House-passed measure assumes the sequester cuts and sets discretionary spending at $967 billion, a level not seen since before Obama took office. While the sequester has numerous flaws, especially as it relates to the military, that is a significant and real spending cut.

Without the ObamaCare debate, Democrats and the media would be brow-beating Republicans to increase spending or even restore the cuts that have already been made to the budget. The Senate budget called for a big spike in discretionary spending. Harry Reid, however, is expected to agree to the lower level of spending in the House CR as an inducement for the House to pass a Senate version restoring ObamaCare.

Personally, I was never really a fan of the ObamaCare defunding fight. Over 70% of ObamaCare is funded by mandatory spending and can't be defunded through congressional appropriations. Most of the law would march on, even if Congress defunded it.

Politically, though, it is looking more like a winner for conservative Republicans and the Tea Party. Democrats may come to regret that they fought so hard to preserve funding and defend ObamaCare.

washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-editorial-america-suffering-ills-obamacare-was-promised-to-fix/article/2536181

America suffering ills Obamacare was promised to fix

When President Obama began his health care reform push in early 2009, he was facing a problem. He had just signed an economic stimulus bill costing roughly $800 billion and the American public was becoming increasingly concerned with mounting deficits. So, in an act of political jiu jitsu, he pressed the argument that reforming our nation's health care system was in fact essential to tackling our long-term debt.

“The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy,” Obama declared in a June 2009 speech to the American Medical Association. “It's an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It's a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America.”

He went on to warn, “if we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade.” He predicted that inaction would mean government health care programs would “swamp our federal and state budgets, and impose a vicious choice of either unprecedented tax hikes, or overwhelming deficits, or drastic cuts in our federal and state budgets.”

Emphatically, he stated: “So, to say it as plainly as I can, health care is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health. That is a fact. That's a fact.”

Less than a year after Obama made those remarks, his health care plan became law. But two reports released this past week -- one from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services and one from the Congressional Budget Office -- demonstrate that Obamacare is having the opposite effect on the nation's fiscal health. Instead of decreasing health care spending, his plan is now projected to increase it, and the nation is no closer to tackling its long-term fiscal problems than it was before Obamacare became law.

On Wednesday, CMS actuaries released their latest projections, finding that by 2022, health spending will rise to 19.9 percent of gross domestic product — or almost exactly one out of five dollars, which is what Obama warned it would be without action. Over the course of the next decade, according to projections, the law will boost health spending by $621 billion over the next decade compared to what it otherwise would have been. That’s right – the status quo Obama derided as “unsustainable” when selling his health care program would have been less costly than what he’s currently imposing on the nation.

On Tuesday, CBO released projections finding that the nation’s debt burden would be as large as the annual output of the entire economy by 2038, or ten years sooner under alternate projects that assume Congress adjusts fiscal policies as it has in the past. That means that by the time a baby girl born today reaches high school, the nation’s debt could be surpassing current day France and Belgium, and heading toward the levels of Puerto Rico and Sudan. The only choices will then be massive tax hikes, severe spending cuts, or some combination thereof. What about Obamacare preventing this, Mr. President?

blog.heritage.org/2013/09/24/democrats-threaten-government-shutdown-if-they-dont-get-more-spending/

Democrats Threaten Government Shutdown If They Don’t Get More Spending

While much of the debate over government funding has centered around funding for the President’s unworkable health care law, Democrats’ appetite for more unnecessary federal spending has gotten much less attention.

Democrats in the House are demanding more discretionary spending and have openly stated that they would prefer a government shutdown over not getting higher spending.

Their main target: getting rid of sequestration—which pushes discretionary spending down to $967 billion in 2014. Instead, House Democrats want to spend well over a trillion dollars—$1.058 trillion, to be exact—on discretionary programs next fiscal year.

For taxpayers, this would mean an additional $91 billion in deficit spending along with a cancellation of some of the savings put in place to offset a $1.2 trillion increase in the debt limit from 2011. Adieu, Budget Control Act.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) says House Democrats are apparently ready “almost across the board” to oppose any bill containing sequestration-level spending—even if it means a federal shutdown. Representative Jim Moran (D–VA) emphasized that “a government shutdown is better than reverting to long-term sequester-level funding.”

At the forefront of the movement is House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D–MD), who openly stated that he would oppose any bill that would set spending at the sequestration level of $986 billion. For those counting, that’s $19 billion above the sequestration-level spending allowance. But it’s apparently not enough for liberals’ bottomless appetites.

Are the domestic cuts really that bad to warrant such an extreme stance? Sequestration cuts reduce federal spending by a paltry 2.5 percent over the next 10 years. But eliminating them would drive up deficits by 12 percent.

Despite the Obama Administration’s warnings in 2011 that the cuts would halt vital government services and wreak havoc on our economy, most of those dire predictions never came to pass. Indeed, the domestic spending cuts allowed for more job creation in the private sector while cutting some of the fat off the federal government.

However, sequestration falls disproportionally on national defense, undermining U.S. national security. Fixes are readily available, as explained by Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen, who identified $42 billion in non-security spending that could be eliminated.

But some lawmakers simply cannot stop spending. As Senator Charles Schumer (D–NY) stated, “We’re going to try to get as high a [spending] level as we can get.… We think it should be higher than the [$986 billion] level, absolutely. But we’re not going to have a negotiation that deals with extraneous issues,” he added. “We’re going to negotiate to get as a high a level as possible.”

As high as possible. No wonder the U.S. is heading straight for a debt crisis.

[Tails82]

Cruz filibuster cracks the top five, passing a 1981 Democrat who held one against raising the debt ceiling.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXmiuiQHUY8

Cruz Post Marathon Speech Remarks 9/25/13

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/09/25/senator_cruz_continues_the_filibuster_on_eib

Senator Cruz Continues the Filibuster on EIB

www.politico.com/story/2013/09/ted-cruz-is-on-a-path-to-the-white-house-97289.html?hp=r9

Come January 2017, if you see Ted Cruz taking the presidential oath of office, you’ll largely have the Republican Party establishment that hates him to thank for it.

Whether they’re calling his efforts to defund Obamacare a “fraud,” sending Fox News personalities’ opposition research to use against him, or simply claiming to “f——— hate” him, the sophomoric and treacherous behavior by the GOP establishment has helped elevate the junior Texas senator from a “wacko bird” beloved by the base to a force of nature capable of something no movement conservative has done since Ronald Reagan.

It has been the immature and ridiculous antics of the Republican Party establishment that has given Cruz the street cred that usually takes years to acquire. The one thing social conservative and libertarian constituents agree on right now is their mutual disdain for the GOP establishment. Seeing that establishment relentlessly attack and melt down over Cruz is almost like a coded message to the base that says, “This is the guy you’ve been waiting for.”

As I have previously written, Republicans win presidential elections when they do two things: unify the base in the primary and run on a credible, right-of-center populist economic message in the general. Neither McCain nor Romney was able to accomplish either of those things, and thus both lost.

Cruz already has the base unified behind him, as evidenced by the success the defund Obamacare effort has had dragging the leadership kicking and screaming across the finish line in the Republican-controlled House. The Republican Party establishment foolishly made Cruz the face of the grass-roots effort to fight one of the most unwanted and unpopular pieces of legislation in recent memory — further endearing him to a public desperate for leadership.

washingtonexaminer.com/tennessee-obamacare-will-triple-mens-premiums-double-womens/article/2536363

Tennessee: Obamacare will triple men's premiums, double women's

— Today, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest state average is $119 a month — a 190 percent increase.

— Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can also buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest-priced plan in Nashville is $114 a month — a 97 percent increase. Even with a tax subsidy, that plan is $104 a month, almost twice what she could pay today.

— Today, women in Nashville can choose from 30 insurance plans that cost less than the administration says insurance plans on the exchange will cost, even with the new tax subsidy.

— In Nashville, 105 insurance plans offered today will not be available in the exchange.

Said the Republican senator, “Why should a 27-year-old male in Memphis be forced to pay nearly three times more than what he pays today for health insurance? Why should a young woman in Nashville have to pay twice as much? This isn't what President Obama promised Tennesseans, but it's what he's giving them — higher costs and less choice — that are two of the most urgent reasons Obamacare must be repealed and our health care system fixed."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303759604579094953283987052.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

The ObamaCare fight is turning hot and heavy. House Republicans have made an implausible threat to shut down the government to defund ObamaCare, but a plausible motive is to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (which already exists in abundance regarding ObamaCare) during the crucial sign-up period that begins next month.

On the flip side, the administration's last-minute decision not to require income documentation in the first year can only do wonders for enrollment. A handy Kaiser Family Foundation calculator shows how: A single person who estimates his 2014 income as $33,000 would get a measly $6. Change the estimate to $30,000 and, hey, get $507.

This is war—turning sectors of the economy into partisan battlefields is a cost of their agenda that liberals, with their pure faith in "programs," never factor in. But wars also have a way of leading to unexpected outcomes.

The fine balance here is between two subsidies in our oversubsidized health-care system. Figuring out where these lines cross is the kind of thing that keeps economists busy. If all employees for whom it made sense to trade in the tax benefit for employer-provided insurance in favor of ObamaCare's direct tax credits did so, how many would shift?

According to a new Stanford study, 37 million (at an additional annual cost of $132 billion).

That's a huge number of people quitting our employment-based health insurance system. The only ones staying would be the affluent, who get the biggest tax subsidy because they're in the highest tax bracket.

ObamaCare, to be sure, was not reform—it was a piling on of subsidies that can only throw fuel on the fire of health-care inflation. Not even the usual mouthpieces pretend otherwise anymore.

But a society can't give a subsidy to everybody for the same reason you can't give a subsidy to yourself—you end up paying for your own subsidy and aren't better off. In fact, you are worse off thanks to the administrative overhead involved in taking money away from you and giving it back to you.

You are also worse off because of the perverse incentives engendered by diverting yours and everyone's health-care spending through a common pot.

www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/09/25/Moderate-Rouhani-Attended-Rally-Calling-for-Israel-s-Destruction

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304713704579095501041486012.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

"Moderate" Iran and Obama's need to think all foreign problems don't exist and/or we're the problem

www.politico.com/story/2013/09/david-vitter-ethics-complaint-dismissed-97305.html?hp=r12

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics has promptly dismissed a complaint filed by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) alleging that Senate Democratic leaders had unduly sought to pressure senators to kill one of his proposals.

Vitter seized on the revelations in a POLITICO report, saying that the plan to deny coverage to lawmakers who voted for his plan amounted to improper and unethical pressure tactics to oppose his proposal. And he filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee targeting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) for acting improperly.

But on Tuesday, the Senate Ethics Committee — which Boxer chairs — dismissed the complaint...No further action will be taken, the committee said.

A spokesman for Vitter mocked the Ethics Committee’s action.

“Even though,” spokesman Luke Bolar said, “POLITICO reported that the proposed amendment was formally drafted and that that formal draft was affirmatively leaked to POLITICO, the Ethics Committee counsel dismissed the complaint with no investigation whatsoever because it was a ‘mere allegation with no evidence.’ The Committee also ignored the demand that Senator Boxer – who oversees the works of this counsel – recuse herself. Boy, they’re really doing their job.”

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/mark-levin-steps-behind-a-different-mic-at-vvs

Sportscaster Craig James is used to being on the sidelines for games. But he's not going to stay there when it comes to his First Amendment rights. For the first time since his shocking ouster at Fox Sports, the former NFL standout spoke publicly about the story everyone should be talking about. In an exclusive with Breitbart News, the former broadcaster couldn't believe that his views on marriage -- which he never once expressed on air -- would disqualify him from breaking down football plays -- or any other job.

"I was shocked that my personal religious beliefs were not only the reason for Fox Sports firing me, but I was completely floored when I read stories quoting Fox Sports representatives essentially saying that people of faith are banned from working at Fox Sports." James went on, "I have worked in broadcasting for 24 years and have always treated my colleagues with respect and dignity regardless of their background or personal beliefs. I believe it is essential in our business to maintain professional relationships with people from a diverse background and have tolerance for those of different beliefs. I have never discussed my faith while broadcasting, and it has never been an issue until now."

After a single day on the job, James was called into management's office and sacked. "The reason, said [Fox Sports Southwest's Jon] Heidtke, was that somebody higher up in the chain of command had been made aware of James's comments during his unsuccessful 2012 Senate run about gay marriage" -- comments that happened to be echoed by the voters of Texas and the majority of Americans!

What Fox Sports did is much worse than censorship. What Fox Sports is doing is demanding conformity on issues that aren't even relevant to James's job -- then threatening his livelihood when he refuses. That's not your garden variety viewpoint discrimination; it's ideological terrorism. And it has to stop.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323981304579079030750537994.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Some silly climate thing.

[Tails82]

washingtonexaminer.com/epa-admits-new-coal-regulations-wont-reduce-global-warming/article/2536384

EPA admits new coal regulations won't reduce global warming

An Environmental Protection Agency proposal designed to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce global warming will actually have no “notable CO2 emission changes.”

So, a rule that will essentially ban new coal-fired power plants will actually have no impact on global warming. Got it.

The EPA’s rule appears to not actually be about impacting global warming, but all about making the U.S. look good on the issue in the international community. That, and the elimination of coal.

“Even if the entire U.S. coal fleet was somehow eliminated, the decrease in projected sea level rise would be less than the thickness of a dime,” Miller said.

washingtonexaminer.com/another-pro-obamacare-talking-point-bites-the-dust/article/2536442

Another pro-Obamacare talking point bites the dust

For months, as the inherent design flaws of President Obama's health care law began becoming apparent, the program's defenders had settled on a new argument to deflect criticisms.

Much of the problem, they argued, was a result of Republican obstructionism...That argument just got significantly harder to make.

Washington, D.C., was an early and enthusiastic adopter of Obamacare, yet on Wednesday, it announced a major delay...Colorado, Oregon and D.C. are all pro-Obamacare, and yet they are all running into major implementation problems. So much for blaming Republican obstruction.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304526204579097443230322758.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Going back at least to the Breaux-Thomas Medicare Commission in 1999, endless learned bodies have warned that the U.S. entitlement scheme of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is financially unsupportable. Of Medicare, Rep. Bill Thomas said at the time, "One of the biggest problems is that the government tries to administer 10,000 prices in 3,000 counties, and it gets it wrong most of the time." But change never comes.

Medicaid is the worst medicine in the United States. It grinds on. Doctors in droves are withdrawing from Medicare. No matter. It all lives on.

An established political idea is like a vampire. Facts, opinions, votes, garlic: Nothing can make it die.

But there is one thing that can kill an established political idea. It will die if the public that embraced it abandons it.

Six months ago, that didn't seem likely. Now it does.

The public's dislike of ObamaCare isn't growing with every new poll for reasons of philosophical attachment to notions of liberty and choice. Fear of ObamaCare is growing because a cascade of news suggests that ObamaCare is an impending catastrophe.

Enacted with zero Republican votes, ObamaCare is the solely owned creation of the Democrats' belief in their own limitless powers to fashion goodness out of legislated entitlements. Sometimes social experiments go wrong. In the end, the only one who supported Frankenstein was Dr. Frankenstein. The Democrats in 2014 should by all means be asked relentlessly to defend their monster.

If Republicans feel they must "do something" now, they could get behind Sen. David Vitter's measure to force Congress to enter the burning ObamaCare castle along with the rest of the American people. Come 2017, they can repeal the ruins.

The discrediting of the entitlement state begins next Tuesday. Let it happen.

Naive thinking. Libs will just double down on stupid and want socialist medicine 2.0 the I-swear-it-will-work-this-time edition now with 250% more funds and twice the debt. Let Obamacare collapse and take our future with it, or stop it now and prevent the suffering? I say stop it now.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304526204579097061226868586.html

This has been a bad year for President Obama. He lost the sequester PR battle, failed to pass gun control, stalled progress on immigration reform, and handled Syria ineptly. There's been tremendous problems implementing his signature health law, whose unpopularity is rising. Mr. Obama's job-approval numbers have been dropping, down in the Gallup poll to 46% now from 56% in January.

In the face of these setbacks, the president has reverted to form: dishonest and ad hominem attacks against his political opposition. To listen to his rhetoric, there are no honest differences with Republicans; his opponents are not wrong but wicked, motivated by vicious desires to hurt their fellow Americans and the country.

In an Aug. 9 press conference, Mr. Obama made an outrageous assertion that "The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care." Over the past 10 days he has stepped up his attack.

"They're willing to tank the entire economy," he said. The GOP, he said, "promises economic chaos" if it doesn't get its way. Thirty million, incidentally, is the number of people the Congressional Budget Office says will still lack health insurance even when ObamaCare is fully implemented.

Four days later in Missouri, the president alleged Republicans are fighting to "cut basic health-care services for tens of millions of seniors on Medicare" and "rob 25 million Americans of the chance to get health-care coverage." (Over the course of four days, Republicans apparently decided to rob five million fewer people of their health insurance.)

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama declared that Republican opposition to his budget and debt-ceiling requests is based in the GOP's desire to "actually plunge this country back into recession—all to deny the basic security of health care to millions of Americans." And at the Business Roundtable meeting on Wednesday a week ago, the president claimed the GOP's aims were even grander and more malevolent. Republicans want to default on the debt to "cause a world-wide financial crisis."

Mr. Obama also told the Roundtable CEOs that "You have never seen in the history of the United States . . . the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a governing party." Actually, we have.

In March 2006, then Sen. Obama wanted to defund the Iraq war but lacked the votes to do this directly. So he tried the indirect route by rallying Senate Democrats to reject Mr. Bush's debt-ceiling increase. Imagine the howls if Mr. Bush had described Mr. Obama's action as a deliberate effort to default, plunge America into recession, and cause a world-wide crisis?

In his attacks, Mr. Obama isn't saying a global financial catastrophe, painful recession, and people losing health coverage are possible results of Republican policies. He's saying these are the GOP's goals: Republicans simply relish inflicting hardship on fellow Americans.

"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from," Mr. Obama said in accepting the Democratic nomination in 2008. Since then, no man has done more to paint his opponents as those whom other Americans should run from.

In ascribing illegitimate intentions to those who oppose his policies, Mr. Obama may have internalized Saul Alinsky's counsel for community organizers in "Rules for Radicals" that "One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." It is certainly consistent with the image Mr. Obama projects on Republicans. No president has so regularly questioned the motives of his political opposition.

When it comes to governing, Mr. Obama may be epically inept. But give the president his due: When it comes to political slander and polarization, he belongs in a class all his own.

Did you know Obamacare saved the global economy and if we took it away the whole world would collapse? I didn't either. Obama is black Jesus who saved the universe.

washingtonexaminer.com/seiu-unionists-strike-over-obamacare-related-cuts/article/2536458

SEIU unionists strike over Obamacare-related cuts...This is ironic since SEIU is a major supporter of the law.

www.ncregister.com/daily-news/religious-sisters-lead-first-class-action-suit-against-hhs-mandate/

The Little Sisters of the Poor have filed the first class-action lawsuit against the federal contraception mandate, saying that it would require them to violate the teachings of their Catholic faith.

“Like all of the Little Sisters, I have vowed to God and the Roman Catholic Church that I will treat all life as valuable, and I have dedicated my life to that work,” said Mother Loraine Marie Clare Maguire, superior of the congregation’s Baltimore province, Sept. 24.

“We cannot violate our vows by participating in the government’s program to provide access to abortion-inducing drugs,” she said.

The sisters, who operate 30 homes for impoverished elderly persons in the United States, could face millions of dollars in IRS fines if they do not comply with government mandates requiring employee health coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some drugs that can cause early abortions.

Employers that fail to provide the required coverage face fines of $100 per employee per day. The sisters’ lawsuit is the latest in more than 70 legal challenges that have been filed against the mandate on behalf of more than 200 plaintiffs nationwide.

“The sisters should obviously be exempted as ‘religious employers,’ but the government has refused to expand its definition,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund.

“These women just want to take care of the elderly poor without being forced to violate the faith that animates their work,” Rienzi said “The money they collect should be used to care for the poor like it always has — and not to pay the IRS.”

Jen says this isn't happening though. They made it up.

www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/09/26/Harry-Reid-Calls-Obamacare-Medical-Device-Tax-Stupid-Quickly-Apologizes

Whoops: Harry Reid Calls Obamacare’s Medical Device Tax 'Stupid'

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/26/Media-ignore-racially-motivated-shooting-spree

The Racially-Motivated Mass-Shooting the Media Doesn't Want to Talk About

When the media can aid Obama's re-election through the fabrication of a divisive and completely phony black vs. white racial narrative, then the media are very interested in hate crimes and American racism. But when the media are handed an actual hate crime that involves a black man accused of gunning down four white people because they are white, the media collectively shrug.

The media also claim to be interested in mass-shootings. For days and sometimes weeks, we have seen our media turn their outlets over to obsessive coverage of one mass shooting after another. So you would think a racially-motivated mass-shooting would explode in the media.

But according to our media, not all racially-motivated crimes and mass shootings are alike. In fact, if the media see no political upside, some racially-motivated mass-shootings are ignored as though they never even happened.

In Greenville, North Carolina, it is now official. According to the Grand Jury indictments, a black man named Lakim Faust entered a Walmart in June with more than a hundred rounds of ammunition, and targeted white people based on their race...In a just world, a local crime such as this would not deserve national coverage. One man does not in any way say anything larger about our society as a whole. But I do not write the rules, the media does; and the media poses as an objective institution concerned with hate crimes -- so concerned, in fact, that they went so far as to manufacture evidence as a way to falsely accuse the Hispanic George Zimmerman of being both white and a racist.

But an actual, official hate crime in North Carolina is completely ignored by this very same media.

The reason is obvious: the objective, unbiased, not-at-all-liberal media see no political upside in a hate crime that can't be used to gin up the left's version of white guilt, push gun control, or falsely portray America as a country where white people still oppress minorities and therefore need a larger government to right these wrongs.

The media ignoring this racially-motivated murder spree also has nothing to do with protecting black people.

Sadly, the media don't care about black people. This is why Chicago is ignored. Hundreds of black people are gunned down every year in Chicago. But the national media refuse to pressure the politicians in charge of that city and state to do anything, because on paper Chicago is a Liberal Utopia. The city also enforces some of the strongest gun control laws in the country.

If the media questions what is happening in Chicago, that would be mean questioning the very foundation of liberalism. And the media simply doesn't believe a few hundred dead black people is worth doing anything that might undermine their political agenda.

[Tails82]

Climate models are less accurate than those psychics who predicted where the helicopter was in the field

www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/26/dont-be-fooled-latest-attempt-to-discredit-climate-skeptics-flops/?intcmp=latestnews

The urgent issue in climate science today is not whether man-made global warming is real but whether the climate models that scientists use to predict it are realistic enough to assess future climate change and inform public policy. And scientists themselves are pointing this out.

The real, observable evidence increasingly shows that the models, which are no more than computer simulations based on the data and assumptions that scientists currently think are relevant, are way out of line with the changes that scientists are able to measure. And the gap is widening.

Consider some recent science on these matters.

John Christy, a distinguished climate scientist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found that all 73 computer model runs performed by the IPCC as of June 1, 2013 overshoot the observed warming of the tropical atmosphere during the previous 34 years.

And despite the fact that global carbon dioxide emissions are increasing more rapidly than most models assumed (due largely to industrial growth in India and China), the temperatures recorded by the NASA-supported Remote Sensing Systems shows no warming in the earth’s middle atmosphere, or troposphere, over the past 16-plus years.

German climatologist Hans von Storch has found that IPCC climate models project warming trends as low as actual recorded observations only 2% of the time.

The monthly journal Nature Climate Change reports that over 20 years (1993-2012), the warming trend computed from 117 climate model simulations (0.3°C per decade) is more than twice the observed trend (0.14°C/decade). Over the most recent 15 years (1998-2012), the computer-simulated trend (0.21°C/decade) is more than four times the observed trend (0.05°C/decade)—a trend that is pretty close to a flat line.

In fact, a study cited by the NAS researchers, found that the “influence of greenhouse gases” on stratospheric temperatures “is not yet clearly identifiable.” Contrary to appearances, they have not really found the smoking gun of man-made global warming.

washingtonexaminer.com/19-of-health-care-pros-say-americans-will-die-earlier-due-to-obamacare/article/2536481

A unique new survey of health care professionals finds that 56 percent oppose Obamacare, with more than nine in 10 believing that there could be major negative impacts such as a drop in quality care. A shocking 19 percent believe Americans will die earlier.

-- 53 percent, “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.”

-- 51 percent, “Quality of care will go down.”

-- 49 percent, “The law is overly complicated.”

-- 42 percent, “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.”

-- 37 percent, “The law still allows insurance companies to be the middleman.”

-- 32 percent, “Too complex for businesses.”

-- 19 percent, “Americans will die earlier.”

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303342104579099623833385780.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

A Small President on the World Stage

At the U.N., leaders hope for a return of American greatness.

That is the takeaway from conversations the past week in New York, where world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly session. Our friends, and we have many, speak almost poignantly of the dynamism, excellence, exuberance and leadership of the nation they had, for so many years, judged themselves against, been inspired by, attempted to emulate, resented. As for those who are not America's friends, some seem still confused, even concussed, by the new power shift. What is their exact place in it? Will it last? Will America come roaring back? Can she? Does she have the political will, the human capital, the old capability?

It is a world in a new kind of flux, one that doesn't know what to make of America anymore. In part because of our president.

"We want American leadership," said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.

The second takeaway of the week has to do with a continued decline in admiration for the American president. Barack Obama's reputation among his fellow international players has deflated, his stature almost collapsed. In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due, obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of it is connected to the historical moment America is in.

But some of it, surely, is just five years of Mr. Obama. World leaders do not understand what his higher strategic aims are, have doubts about his seriousness and judgment, and read him as unsure and covering up his unsureness with ringing words.

A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. "World leaders are very negative about Obama," he said. They are "disappointed, feeling he's not really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don't pay that much attention to him anymore."

But the magic negro was gonna change this with his fairy powers!

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324463604579040654002211502.html

Mass Slaughter and Obama's Mystifying Indifference

In 2007, as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said ignoring Darfur would be 'a stain on our souls.' Now: nothing.

These days, to learn about what is transpiring in Sudan, one must turn to Radio Dabanga, broadcasting from the Netherlands. A recent report described the bombardment of a Darfur village called Abu Tega, which was "completely burned and the population fled in all directions."

President Obama's critics have denounced his foreign-policy choices, which they believe have weakened the global credibility of the U.S. But Mr. Obama has managed to avoid scrutiny about his most tragic foreign-policy failure: standing by as Sudan's Islamic regime perpetrates a slaughter against its own citizens who belong to non-Arab ethnic groups. Bashir continues a 10-year annihilation, slaughtering many tens of thousands, and very likely more.

Previous American presidents have betrayed a similar callous disregard for the taking of human life. Most notably Bill Clinton, who did nothing to stop genocidal assaults in Rwanda, where the Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis in 1994. Mr. Clinton has come to see this inaction as his most historic dereliction of duty. He has since admitted that the international community was complicit in mass murder abroad when the U.S. could have acted to save a few hundred thousand lives.

Mr. Obama has cited humanitarian reasons to intervene in a crisis when politically convenient. He entered Libya "to prevent a bloodbath," despite no mass slaughter of civilians in that country. This disingenuous explanation only damaged his credibility as a humanitarian, though it did placate the international human-rights community.

There is a moral imperative to help the people of Darfur, which President Obama once articulated..."We've got to have a protective force on the ground."

Yet those suffering in Darfur can expect no such "protective force" from the U.S. For reasons that are unclear, Sudan doesn't meet Mr. Obama's threshold for action.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/09/27/last_gasp_of_the_climate_change_cult

The United Nations, as forecast -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate or whatever -- has predictably issued their latest report based on the hoax of manmade global warming, and they say that it is getting warmer and that we are causing it. I think it's a blatant, flood-the-zone technique. We're not getting warmer. For the last 15 years, it has not gotten warmer. Everybody's running around in the global science community saying, "Global climate change," trying to explain why it hasn't warmed.

They're using, "Well, it's been hurricanes, volcanoes, Sahara dust and so forth." I don't know, folks. We live in an era where nothing is real except the nothing. The real nothing is what's passed off as real, and what is real is mocked and laughed at, made fun of and discarded. Algore, four days ago, called for making climate change denial a taboo. Algore said, "There needs to be a political price for climate denial." A political price?

Now, remember, we have a Constitution, and there is in the Constitution the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments. One of them, the first one, is freedom of speech -- and specifically political speech was singled out as protected. Global warming is a political issue, and if you doubt that, the very people pushing it are all political people, be they scientists or otherwise. But Algore is a politician. He's not a scientist. He has no formal scientific training...The number one advocate for global warming is a politician, and here's a guy now who has made millions, multiple millions of dollars scaring people with this big, fat lie. It has been proven to be a lie and untrue. He has made millions off of this, and he's suggesting that anybody who disagrees with him be punished, or outcast, or pay some kind of a price. Public humiliation or a tax increase or something. This is precisely the mental attitude of dictators and statists who don't tolerate dissent.

'Don’t let denial go unchallenged.' Gore noted how racism and later homophobia have become increasingly unacceptable." So now denying the politics of global warming is akin to racism and homophobia, and it must be treated the same way.

You have done a lot to alert public consciousness about it, and then all of a sudden, 15 years ago go by, and it doesn't warm, wouldn't you be happy? All of that horror, maybe not gonna happen. Wouldn't that be good news? I would think so, but why isn't it? Why isn't the fact that it didn't get warmer for 15 years, why is that a problem? And when you look at it that way, you see that this is nothing put politics. And then you say, "Well, then maybe these global warming proponents don't want this to stop. Maybe they don't want it to end. Maybe they don't want to really succeed in stopping global warming." It hasn't warmed in 15 years. They could claim credit for it and they'd have had the help of the media. They could have made even greater inroads in altering lifestyles by claiming credit for it.

But they didn't. They got mad. And they claimed that it was just a temporary interruption and started looking for wacko, crazy excuses to explain why it didn't get warmer. Well, I thought the objective of the global warming crowd was to arrest the warming, to stop it, to save us all, to save our planet, to save the poor people of the world. And for 15 years it hasn't warmed, and there wasn't one of them that was happy. And there wasn't one of them that claimed success.

Every one of the advocates, every one of the prime movers immediately concocted reasons and excuses to explain that they weren't wrong. That it is gonna get hot. It's gonna get sweltering hot. It's gonna get destructively hot. It's gonna get meltingly hot. It's gonna get so hot that the arctics and the Antarctics are gonna melt and we're all gonna be under water. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. Send me your money now.

We can't predict what the weather is gonna be with ontological certitude five days from now, but the climate, "Oh, no, that's easy, our models, we got that handled." Models weren't right. Abject panic set in. That's why the IPCC has issued their report. That's why Algore's out there. That's why these people are pounding the pavement again, because common sense is standing in the way. Common sense has become their number one obstacle.

Let me give you another analogy. How about the race industry. Do you think that the Reverend Jackson and Al Sharpton would ever celebrate the end of racism in America? If such a thing could be established, if that day were to ever come, and many thought the election of "Barack Hussein Obama! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!" represented that. Many people who voted for the guy thought that's what his election would mean, the end of racism in America...This is easy as predicting that two and two is four. The election of the first black president means any criticism of him is gonna be called racism, and it's only gonna get worse, and that's what's happened. But if we could ever get to that day where we could say that it's over, think Jackson would to put up with it? He's out of business, isn't is he? So is the Reverend Sharpton, if there's no more racism. To show you how desperate they are they have to take an Hispanic guy, claim he's white in the Trayvon Martin thing just to keep the whole thing alive. And then when there is real racism of the reverse kind, they ignore it, because the racism really is another liberal Democrat political movement.

Fifteen years of no warming! They could have claimed credit and had a pretty good chance of being supported by the media in advocating further lifestyle change. But they didn't, did they? Because they don't want the issue changing in any way. They don't want the premise changed. The premise is it's getting warmer and we're causing it, and nothing is gonna change that narrative. Nothing.

[kode54]

Sept 24, 2013 22:40:09 GMT -5 Tails82 said:

Which was decided in Lawrence v Texas in 2003, something I would disagree with, but it's already legal. Gay "marriage" recognition by the government is forcing everyone else to recognize/support a lie.

The law does not force churches to recognize it.

Just like a church of one denomination does not have to acknowledge a marriage performed by a completely different church.

The law does not force churches to perform gay marriages, either.

Besides which, I don't think anyone who calls themselves a <insert parishioner of some church that doesn't support gay unions> would more likely separate themselves from that church than try to force them to accept them.


Slightly off topic, lel your current pope sure is obessed with the gays.

[Tails82]

It forces government to recognize it, therefore everyone must, when there is no reason to.

[kode54]

Oh, but there is. Government benefits for married couples. Straight couples get them, why shouldn't gay couples? Or perhaps you would rather that no couples get to cheat on their taxes? Or that no spouses may have hospital visitation rights?