Our #1 story compares Tim Tebow to Barack Obama. One humbles himself before his Deity, the other thinks he is a Deity. #2 asks whether Obama’s recess appointments backfired on him. It appears they may have. #3 builds on the recess appointments and reviews the many illegal moves this administration has made. #4 is an outline of what Obama’s five most “let them eat cake” moments have been. #5 exposes a fund raising letter from People for the American Way using a lie. #6 is a ridiculous story about the EPA requiring and fining the fuel industry for not doing something that is impossible to do. #7 demonstrates what folly you can have from an out of control left wing government (in this case Greece). #8 is a heartwarming story about Margaret Thatcher. And finally #9 is an interesting look at the science of whether oil is a finite fossil fuel or something the earth continues to make within its crust.
1. Tim Tebow vs Barack Obama
…Upbeat and optimistic, having both physical and spiritual strength, unlike Barack Obama, Tim Tebow tends towards the positive and thus far appears to be doing a much better job of ensuring his team’s victory than hero Obama is at ensuring victory for the Democratic Party.
Ironically, Denver Bronco number 15's home is the same Mile High Stadium where Barack Obama, positioned betwixt two Greek columns, made his celebrated acceptance speech, followed by the adulating roar of a packed house.
Yet the difference between Obama and Tebow is that, rather than wallow in the misguided adoration of star-struck people void of a relationship with God, true heroes exhibit an intrinsic reticence that issues forth from a heart that worships someone greater.
Tim Tebow speaks highly of others and humbles himself. He once said, "There are several things that keep me grounded and focused ... When you can humble yourself to say 'I'm no more important than anyone else. I just have a gift.'" That is quite different from Obama, who, in his first year in office, mentioned himself 1,200 times in 41 speeches.
Unlike Obama, who referred to his critics "purveyors of vitriol," Tim has yet to retaliate to his critics with harsh words or angry retorts.
Thus far, not humbled by shortcomings or failures, and as Obama prepares to inundate the nation with even more overconfident praise directed toward himself, the election season promises to bring personal exaltation to new heights, which is against everything Tim Tebow stands for. Yet hope springs eternal that America will not be duped a second time.
Regardless of the outcome, Tim Tebow could teach Barack Obama a thing or two about how heroes wait patiently for vindication to come based on the merit of their own character and performance. That patience may be why, after being told to discontinue writing Scripture references in his eye black, God stepped in and guided a dedicated servant's arm to write John 3:16 in the wind, an impossible occurrence that reminded a world searching desperately for a hero of the one achievement, in all of history,that really mattered.
Hence, if even for a season, while Icarus attempts to repair those melted wings, America has turned its eyes from Obama toward a young man who, with renewed strength, soars like an eagle; runs but does not grow weary; walks and does not faint; and whose hero is not himself, but whose hope rests solely in the Lord.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obama_tebow_and_americas_hunger_for_heroes.html#ixzz1j9ACHcgO
Go Broncos!
2. Did Obama’s Recess Appointments backfire?
“Why is Barack Obama’s approval number sinking again on both Gallup and Rasmussen? He hasn’t been in the news much–something that often helps him. Instead the focus has been on the fussing and feuding GOP candidates, the so-called ‘clown car.’ Could it be that the President’s brilliant populist power play of making a questionable recess appointment to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau backfired? It certainly doesn’t seem to have helped. On January 2, the RealClearPolitics average put Obama one point underwater, with a disapproval rating of 47.8 and an approval of 46.8. He appointed Cordray on January 4. He’s now almost 6 points underwater.”
Obama does best in the polls when he stays out of sight. That’s one of the reasons I’m looking to the coming election to be a disaster for the Democrats.
3. Obama’s law breaking
There has been for months a popular parlor game of tallying instances in which President Obama seems to have either ignored or simply bypassed federal law. But what started out as a way of exposing occasional hypocrisy is now getting a little scary.
Most recently, President Obama made several recess appointments — a tactic that as a senator he once criticized — even though Congress was not in recess. In December, the president signed a $1 trillion omnibus spending bill, but notified Congress that he might not abide by some of the very provisions he had just signed into law. During the Libya war, Obama felt that bombing Qaddafi’s forces did not really constitute military operations, and therefore he had no need to notify Congress under the War Powers Act.
It is clear that Arizona is not trying to circumvent federal immigration law, but rather is desperately trying to find some way to enforce it, given that the Obama administration has selectively chosen not to do so. In response, the federal government is suing the state of Arizona, even as it assures illegal aliens that they will not be arrested if they have not committed a crime — as if Obama can by himself decide that illegally entering and residing in the United States is not a federal crime in the first place.
President Obama argued that it was constitutional to force citizens to purchase federalized health care, and that all Americans would be subject to his new health-care law — except some 2,000 businesses and organizations that were given politically driven waivers. Obama decided to reverse the legal order of creditors in the bailout of a bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in favor of more politically suitable constituencies. The administration does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, and therefore announced that it won’t enforce it. When a federal judge struck down an Obama- administration ban on new leases for gas and oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama for a time ignored the injunction. When a BP oil leak in the Gulf outraged America, the president met with company executives and announced that they had agreed to set up a $20 billion “fund” to pay for imminent damage claims — as if our chief executive now meets with culpable private businesses to assess what he thinks they should pony up to avoid federal retaliation….
Is BHO the most lawless President ever? He’s close if he isn’t. Andrew Jackson may have him beat.
4. Top 5 ‘let them eat cake’ moments of the Obama White House
1. The Pain in Spain…
…Quotable: NYDN writer Andrea Tantaros labeled Mrs. Obama “more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette than an average mother of two” and noted that “the trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy.”…
2. Date Fright..
Quotable: Said Rick Santorum: “I think [Mr. Obama] has to realize that flying to New York is self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, it’s with your wife. That’s really the point.”..
3. Concerted Efforts
Quotable: “The young people who read this stuff, hear this stuff, are getting a very dangerous and deadly message,” said president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association union David Jones, referring to Common’s lyrics…
4. Hawaii Five-Oh No..
5. Island of Misadventure..
Quotable: Sarah Palin called the president “tone deaf,” adding that she wouldn’t go on vacation if she was Mr. Obama, “especially to Martha’s Vineyard.”..
There are a lot more details if you want to hit the link.
5. Left lies in Fund Raising Letter
It won't shock AT readers to learn that the Left is deceitful, but here's another piece of evidence: a fundraising letter from Ralph Neas's People for the American Way (PAW) arrived in the mail today. The outside of the envelope and the letter inside display a large photo identified as "Demonstrators at Presidential Inauguration." The signs held by these "demonstrators" read: "God Hates Obama," "Fags Love Obama," and "Hell to the Chief."
Anyone paying the slightest attention knows that signs with the word "fag" and "God hates..." most likely originate from the despicable Westboro Baptist Church, and sure enough, a Google search confirms that all these slogans are used by Fred Phelps's demented flock.
The PAW letter exhorts Americans to "Say 'No' to the Politics of Fear and Hate!" Below the photo, the letter opens: "The Republican Party has been hijacked by the Tea Party Movement and has now fully embraced Right Wing Extremism." The obvious implication is that the Westboro people in the photo are Tea Party members, those hateful terrorists who have hijacked the GOP….
Not only is Fred Phelps not a member of the Tea Party, but he is a democrat who has run in various Kansas Democratic Party primaries five times, but has never won.
6. Are Regulations hurting Business?
When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.
Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act….
Quite frankly I wonder what congress would do if we had them pay the fine out of their salaries. It would amount to just over $12,700 per person in Congress. I would think they would complain and say how can they be held responsible for this. But then how can we hold the motor fuel companies responsible for adding something to their fuel that DOESN’T EXIST??
7. Liberal Government: Examples of Zero Common Sense
Greek disability groups expressed anger Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.
The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.
The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list - that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists - were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance….
Surely murderers are morally disabled. Shouldn’t we be giving them money as well? This is what liberal governance ends up like.
8. Margaret Thatcher’s greatest accomplishment
When asked about her most meaningful accomplishment, Margaret Thatcher, now embodied by Meryl Streep in the biopic Iron Lady, did not typically mention serving in the British government, defeating the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, taming runaway inflation, or toppling the Soviet Union. The woman who reshaped British politics and served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990 often said that her greatest accomplishment was helping save a young Austrian girl from the Nazis.
In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, wrote to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s older sister, asking if the Roberts family might help her escape Hitler’s Austria. The Nazis had begun rounding up the first of Vienna’s Jews after the Anschluss, and Edith and her family worried she might be next. Alfred Roberts, Margaret and Muriel’s father, was a small-town grocer; the family had neither the time nor the money to take Edith in. So Margaret, then 12, and Muriel, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help.
Edith stayed with more than a dozen Rotary families, including the Robertses, for the next two years, until she could move to join relatives in South America. Edith bunked in Margaret’s room, and she left an impression. “She was 17, tall, beautiful, evidently from a well-to-do family,” Thatcher later wrote in her memoir. But most important, “[s]he told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.” For Thatcher, who believed in meaningful work, this was as much a waste as it was an outrage. Had the Roberts family not intervened, Edith recalled years later, “I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.” Thatcher never forgot the lesson: “Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,” she told audiences in 1995 after Edith had been located, alive and well, in Brazil.
In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, wrote to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s older sister, asking if the Roberts family might help her escape Hitler’s Austria. The Nazis had begun rounding up the first of Vienna’s Jews after the Anschluss, and Edith and her family worried she might be next. Alfred Roberts, Margaret and Muriel’s father, was a small-town grocer; the family had neither the time nor the money to take Edith in. So Margaret, then 12, and Muriel, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help.
Edith stayed with more than a dozen Rotary families, including the Robertses, for the next two years, until she could move to join relatives in South America. Edith bunked in Margaret’s room, and she left an impression. “She was 17, tall, beautiful, evidently from a well-to-do family,” Thatcher later wrote in her memoir. But most important, “[s]he told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.” For Thatcher, who believed in meaningful work, this was as much a waste as it was an outrage. Had the Roberts family not intervened, Edith recalled years later, “I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.” Thatcher never forgot the lesson: “Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,” she told audiences in 1995 after Edith had been located, alive and well, in Brazil.
A beautiful story of a famous woman before she was famous and while she was still just a young girl.
9. Is Oil a Fossil Fuel?
Here’s an interesting article which makes a case that oil is not a fossil fuel that is being depleted and which will eventually run out, but rather a product of natural processes within the earth which will continue to be created for as long as the planet is still around. It’s worth your time to read it.
…To recapitulate, Stalin’s team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a ‘fossil fuel’ but is a natural product of planet earth – the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide – two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust. This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the ‘death’ of planet earth in millions of years’ time. The high pressure, as well as centrifugal acceleration from the earth’s rotation, causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth’s crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. All we have to do is develop better geotechnical science to predict where it is and learn how to drill down deep enough to get to it. So far, the Russians have drilled to more than 13 km and found oil. In contrast, the deepest any Western oil company has drilled is around 4.5 km….
and here’s another link along the same line.
http://www.viewzone.com/abioticoilx.html
