Brutally Honest

"The secular state is no longer satisfied with this sort of steady drift toward secularization..."

Father Robert Barron speaks to Obama's secular totalitarianism with wisdom and prescience... listen through to the end and understand why he's not just speaking to Catholics:

The Obama Commandments

Brought to us by Mr. Vanderleun.

"It was, shall we say, something out of left field"

On the heels of my last post covering The Daily Caller's piece on White House/Media collusion, comes this from Professor Jacobson:

Remember when George Stephanopoulos, at the New Hampshire Republican debate on January 7, brought up and harped on whether the candidates thought states could ban contraception?

Everyone, at least on our side of the aisle, shook their heads in disbelief as to why Stephanopoulos was bringing up the issue.  There was no active controversy over contraception, it wasn’t in the news, and there were far more pressing political issues, yet what seemed like an eternity of debate time was devoted to the subject at the insistence of Stephanopoulos.

It was, shall we say, something out of left field.

Go read the rest.  It ought to enlighten those slow to believe and validate the rest of us who've known about this for some time.

If you watch or read the mainstream media for your news, you're a dupe.

Are you a dupe?

"Virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

They're not simply biased, they're coordinating with the White House:

Founded by [David] Brock in 2004 as a liberal counterweight to “conservative misinformation” in the press, Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in Democratic politics. The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country. Brock, who collected over $250,000 in salary from Media Matters in 2010, has himself become a major fundraiser on the left. According to an internal memo obtained by TheDC, Media Matters intends to spend nearly $20 million in 2012 to influence news coverage.

Donors have every reason to expect success, as the group’s effect on many news organizations has already been profound. “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

...

High profile though these victories against conservatives were, Media Matters has perhaps achieved more influence simply by putting its talking points into the willing hands of liberal journalists. “In ‘08 it became pretty apparent MSNBC was going left,” says one source. “They were using our research to write their stories. They were eager to use our stuff.” Media Matters staff had the direct line of MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and used it. Griffin took their calls.

Stories about Fox News were especially well received by MSNBC anchors and executives: “If we published something about Fox in the morning, they’d have it on the air that night verbatim.”

But MSNBC executives weren’t the only ones talking regularly to Media Matters.

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.

Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment.

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

Smith, who refused to comment on the substance of these claims, later took to Twitter to say that he has been critical of Media Matters.

Reporters who weren’t cooperative might feel the sting of a Media Matters campaign against them. “If you hit a reporter, say a beat reporter at a regional newspaper,” a Media Matters source said, “all of a sudden they’d get a thousand hostile emails. Sometimes they’d melt down. It had a real effect on reporters who weren’t used to that kind of scrutiny.”

A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it’s no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.

It’s not clear what the four spoke about — no one in the meeting returned repeated calls for comment — but the apparent coordination continued. “Anita Dunn became a regular presence at the office,” says someone who worked there. Then-president of Media Matters, Eric Burns, “lunched with her, met with her and chatted with her frequently on any number of matters.”

Media Matters also began a weekly strategy call with the White House, which continues, joined by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. Jen Psaki, Obama’s deputy communications director, was a frequent participant before she left for the private sector in October 2011.

Every Tuesday evening, meanwhile, a representative from Media Matters attends the Common Purpose Project meeting at the Capitol Hilton on 16th Street in Washington, where dozens of progressive organizations formulate strategy, often with a representative from the Obama White House.

In the past several years, Media Matters has focused much of its considerable energy on the Fox News Channel. The network, declares one internal memo, “is the de facto leader of the GOP and it is long past time that it was treated as such by the media, elected officials, and the public.” At the end of September 2009, Burns made the case publicly in an interview on MSNBC.

Fox, he said, “is a political organization, and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda.”

Less than a month later, in language that could have been copied directly from a Media Matters press release, White House communications director Anita Dunn leveled almost precisely the same charge, dismissing Fox as “more a wing of the Republican Party.”

Were the lines of attack coordinated? “To my knowledge, there wasn’t coordination,” says a source. But at times there has seemed to be a kind of mind meld between the Obama political team and Media Matters.

There's tons more, all of it damning, all of it pointing to what many of us already knew.

We are reaching a point, and in all honesty, we're probably already past it, where we can't trust a damned thing coming from mainstream media outlets, especially if it's got a political slant to it.

But again, thinking people know this.  

The psychophants and easily led?  Not so much.

"A sad but apt metaphor"

Charlie Lehardy is writing about blindness and her consequences:

John Hull began losing his eyesight at the age of thirteen when he developed cataracts. By the time he was seventeen he was blind in his left eye. Vision in his right remained adequate until his mid-thirties, when it, too, began deteriorating, necessitating thicker and thicker corrective lenses to carry out his duties as a professor of religious education. In his 48th year, he lost all sight.

Having grown up seeing, Hull retained the images of faces, objects and scenes in his memory, as you might expect; but it wasn't long until he began losing these memories, too. Eventually, he forgot what seeing had been all about, an experience he calls "deep blindness." His other senses, in particular his hearing, seemed to have crowded out his now useless abilities of visualization. As he grew more adept at "seeing" the world in a very non-visual way, he lost all that he had formerly experienced through his eyes.

John Hull's experiences are one of many cited by the neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks in his book "The Mind's Eye," in which he examines what it means to have sight and how vision influences our experiences. I've been a fan of Oliver Sacks for many years because of his ability to explain in plain language some of the remarkable complexities of the mind and how it shapes — and sometimes distorts — the realities of the world we live in.

John Hull's experience of deep blindness serves as a sad but apt metaphor for the deep spiritual blindness of the world we live in. Those of us who live our lives in the context of our faith in the reality of a personal and eternal God, who experience constant spiritual fellowship with his Son, Jesus, the Galilean rabbi of the New Testament, who practice conversational prayer and meditation and enjoy communal experiences of worship with other believers — those of us who call ourselves Christians see vivid and convincing evidence of God's presence and activity all around us.

Meanwhile, walking beside us, witnessing the very same wonders, there are others who live in deep blindness, failing to see God at work anywhere. They have become so convinced that we are adrift and alone that many have actually forgotten who God is and have constructed in their minds a perfect, alternate reality where God is neither necessary nor wanted.

Case in point: The recent Health and Human Services ruling that would force everyone, even those with deeply held moral beliefs to the contrary, to finance free contraceptives and abortifacients to all.

Yes, he makes the connection and expounds.  Go and see for yourself.  

It is indeed sad but apt.

Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

By Locutisprime

This colonel's military career is over after this, but what he has to say is riveting. Speaking truth to command is not a survivable enterprise in the US military. By all means, follow the link and read the entire piece, as it really brings into focus what many Americans have known for at least the last five years as it concerns the war in Afghanistan.

How military leaders have let us down

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

From Bad to Abysmal

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.

In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

Komen CEO defends decision to defund Planned Parenthood (UPDATED)

The pro-aborts are up in arms and are slinging many arrows in the direction of the breast cancer awareness charity.  The following is from SGK Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker defending the decision:

Hats of to her and her organization as they find out how committed the baby-killers truly are.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

UPDATE: Komen reverses, and caves to the death culture:

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity said it is reversing its decision to cut breast-screening grants to Planned Parenthood.

"We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," a Komen statement said.

As reported by the Associated Press on Tuesday, Komen had adopted criteria excluding Planned Parenthood from grants because it was under government investigation, notably a probe launched in Congress at the urging of anti-abortion groups.

Komen said Friday it would change the criteria so it wouldn't apply to such investigations.

"We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants," the statement said.

Sad and frankly, infuriating.  Proof that principle means nothing today to far too many and that would now include the Susan G. Komen foundation.

And it proves how entrenched the death culture really is.

Shameful day.  A most shameful day.

"The president isn't leading. The president isn't being truthful..."

Paul Ryan is being brutally honest about Obama:

President Obama's claims of wanting to give people a fair shot, make everyone do their fair share and have everyone play by the same set of rules may be the making of a great slogan, but his policies will lead to "debt, doubt and decline," a top Republican said Sunday.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said that Obama uses the rhetoric of the right to make a case about fairness and equality, but produces policies that lead to "crony capitalism" and result in giving the government more power. 

"The outcome of these policies is to consolidate power in Washington where you have crony capitalism, which his rhetoric tries to decry," Ryan told "Fox News Sunday." "The president isn't leading. The president isn't being truthful with the American people about what kind of fiscal train wreck is coming."

...

Ryan said Obama has no plan to tackle the nation's weighty debt and isn't even planning to include his own tax reform proposals in the budget he will submit to Congress next month.

"What we have learned with the president time and again is he is going to put some kind of poll-tested line in the State of the Union address and have no follow-up whatsoever," Ryan said. "We have learned already that the president who's had three years to try and propose real solutions to fix our fiscal crisis is ducking it. He hasn't put a plan on the table yet. He formed commissions and super committees, so he sort of outsourced the leadership only to decry their results."

Will this administration's lack of leadership and dishonesty end in November.

It's hope and change we'll need to make come true.

Hey man, you knocking the Church?

Then you're knocking Christ.  It's that simple.

But don't take my word for it, take Archbishop Dolan's:

It’s one of my favorite works of art: The Conversion of Saul by Caravaggio. There it is, meekly on display in the corner of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Saul, the raging persecutor of the followers of Jesus, literally “knocked off his high horse” by the radiance of Jesus, the “light of the world,” transformed into a passionate apostle of Christ and His new Church, whom we now venerate as St. Paul.

And what question does Jesus bellow out to the shocked Saul?

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Parse that very carefully. Saul, of course, has been harassing the Church, killing the followers of Jesus.

Yet, note well: Jesus does not inquire, “Why are you persecuting my Church” or “my people” or “my followers.”

No! The Lord asks, “Why are you persecuting me?”

Get it? The Lord is saying, “You hurt my Church, you hurt me. The Church and I are one.”

That epic lesson came up again yesterday, January 25, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. (By the way, today, January 26, is the feast of Paul’s loyal disciple, St. Timothy—just thought I’d mention it!)

Jesus Christ and His Church are one.

Now, that’s a revealed truth that needs repeating today.

What we’ve got now, if the scholarly research is accurate—and I’m afraid it is—is a growing tendency to split Christ from His Church. More and more seem to be claiming such things as:

“Oh, I’ve got faith. I just don’t need the Church.”

“Faith is great; religion stinks.”

“I believe. I just don’t want to belong.”

“I got Jesus. Why bother with the Church?”

“I pray how and when I want. What’s the big deal about the Mass and Church on Sunday?”

St. Paul would take exception. So would Jesus.

When God chose Israel he selected not a person but a people. Faith in God is communal by its very nature.

Like our Jewish neighbors, we Catholics have always believed that God chooses us and gives us the supernatural gift of faith. It’s not that we decide our faith. You bet, we freely decide how firmly and generously we will live out our faith, but we are “born into” a Church. Faith is a gift from God given us on the day of our baptism into His Church.

Just like we’re “born into” a natural family. We are a member of a human family. That family is often flawed and imperfect. In fact, there are times when we’re angry at it and might even drift away from family events. But, family membership is in our blood.

So it is with our spiritual family, the Church. Oh, we may get upset with her to be sure; we may even drift away from her. But, she never leaves us. The Church is in our supernatural DNA.

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, writing last week in the Wall Street Journal about the viral video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” concludes with this cogent thought:

“Stating that religions build churches at the expense of the poor…turns a blind eye to the single greatest charitable institution on the planet. Blaming religion for wars ignores the fact that the greatest mass murderers in the 20th century—indeed in all of history—killed for nonreligious reasons. And advocating for a kind of Christianity that is free of the ‘bondage’ of religion opens the door to dangerous theological anarchy that is all too common among young evangelicals and absolutely antithetical to biblical Christianity.”

Speaking of Jesus and His Church, the acclaimed French theologian Henri de Lubac exclaimed, “For what would I ever know of Him without Her.”

Never give up on your family.

Never give up on Jesus.

Never quit His Church.

For, as St. Paul learned the hard way, Jesus and His Church are one.

Let him with ears hear.

You got ears?

That was the sound of truth, something sounding more and more foreign these days.

Hope you got ears.

"We understand that you are no longer a press that is free, but one that is enthralled to its own ideologies"

The Anchoress, post Newt Gingrich's evisceration of CNN's John King and his cohorts in bias, reacts as only she can:

The standing ovation for Newt’s remarks were not an endorsement of his behavior — many conservatives are troubled by Gingrich’s past and character does matter to them, while other conservatives are remembering their own sins and falling back on what they know of mercy, for the time being. No, that ovation was an endorsement of Gingrich’s disdain for the mainstream media, which they share, and a declaration to that same media that their playbook is played-out. It said:

“We are done responding like Pavlovian dogs to your bells; we no longer trust you; we understand that you are no longer a press that is free, but one that is enthralled to its own ideologies and agendas. From this point on, a candidate is going to rise or fall on the substance of their ideas and abilities, not on your prosy gushes about his brilliance, or stern warnings about her stupidity. You savagedGeorge W. Bush you savaged Sarah Palin and you got away with it. You carried your own preferred, utterly inexperienced, passionate ideologue into the White House with over-effusive rhetoric and you have buffeted him from inquiry (tax returns? Hell, we’d just like to see Obama’s college transcripts!), or what you perceive to be damaging stories, but you elevated your favorite at the cost of your own credibility, and now it comes back to bite you. Because a press with no credibility has nothing to offer us. It has nowhere to go, now, except into the arms of the political machine it has loved. Just like Pravda, actually.”

The mainstream press does not want to discuss last night’s standing ovation because it shakes their worldview. They were supposed to be able to control the narrative; they were supposed to be able to corral the sheep. And last night, the sheep indicated that they’re no longer willing to be herded, no longer going to allow their own moral judgments to be exploited in a time when the nation is facing serious issues. They’ve decided they’re going to make up their own minds, thank you, about who they think is up to dealing with those issues. They’re looking at the press and saying, “Scallywags, heal thyselves!”

In my quick post after Newt's rant, I wrote:

I'll admit to wishing that it was someone with less baggage than Newt who could and would take the fight to a media so blatantly biased against conservative thought but I'll also admit that Newt seems to be the best equipped at this time to do so. Battle on Newt.

Newt's got his problems.  He's not the perfect candidate.  And only God knows how the rest of the country might react to him in the general election but he does seem to be the candidate who is best articulating what many of us on my side of the ideological aisle are feeling.  

Whether or not the country will embrace him as an answer to Obama's follies is undoubtedly the question of this election season.

Crossposted at Wizbang.