Istook’s Insights: Imaginary friends, hostile work environments, early birds for president, tangled webs we weave
Published: April 20th, 2015
Washington, D.C. – President Obama’s words keep getting stranger.
Obama claims there’s an agreement to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
To reach a deal, Obama already:
* Removed Iran from the list of sponsors of terrorism (despite its ongoing help to Hamas and Hezbollah),
* Restored $13-billion in assets to Iran, and
* Evidently agrees to end all trade sanctions on Iran up front, supposedly because they will allow inspections of their nuclear program.
I quote Obama: “Iran will face strict limitations. . . . Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections . . . ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.”
Now I quote the #2 man in Iran’s army:
Quote: “They will not even be permitted to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams.”
That sounds like zero agreement exists.
Some people have imaginary friends. President Obama seems to have an imaginary agreement.
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Is America’s military now part of the war against Christians?
Our military leaders are selected by the Commander-in-Chief, the President, and they carry out his policies.
Religious faith should be treated with respect, but political correctness often protects other faiths but is used to attack Christianity.
Some reports claim that our military has become so PC that Christians—even chaplains—sometimes wonder if their faith allows them to serve.
So when a Navy chaplain is disciplined for advocating sex only within marriage, was he expected to denounce his faith in order to serve?
When a base commander tells guards at the gate not to wish people a “blessed day” isn’t that being hostile to their faith?
There’s even a group calling itself the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that works with atheists to strip away signs of faith from within the ranks.
Our military should not be a hostile work environment for people of faith. Not in America.
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The early bird hopes to get the nomination.
Election Day — November 8, 2016 – is over a year and a half away, yet Presidential announcements are coming fast and furious.
Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have made it official. Ben Carson and Martin O’Malley will proclaim soon. Not to mention Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Jim Webb, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry.
What started this super-early trend?
President Bill Clinton began airing TV ads over 15 months before his 1996 re-election, successfully reversing his sagging support.
Now everyone tries to get a jump.
It becomes a frenzy.
More candidates and lengthier campaigns mean the costs get steeper.
Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each raised and spent over a billion dollars last time around.
The bigger our government grows, the higher the stakes, and the more expensive the elections.
***
Beware the brave new world.
The Internet is now the hub of our news, entertainment, sharing and socializing with friends and family.
We’ve put all those eggs into one basket, so we’d better watch that basket closely.
It watches us back. Cellphones are everywhere and can post your picture and video on the Internet in minutes.
That lady’s glasses might be streaming your actions online in real-time.
Coming soon: Cameras hidden in contact lenses. And in shirt buttons.
And your neighbor might send a drone snooping over your back fence.
Want to block it all? China has maybe 100-thousand government workers constantly censoring the web, using the Great Firewall of China.
Here stateside, the Obama Administration plans to control the Internet in the name of fairness. Once they control what you know, they can control what you do.
Remember that a web is something that we can get tangled up in.