Obama joins long line of vacationing presidents

CBSNEWS.COM ^ | August 22, 2014, 6:58 AM | CBS

[hattend]

BTTT

[a fool in paradise]

How much fundraising has Obama done as well?

[imardmd1]

National security? We are such sinners, we don't deserve to have a nation, let alone a secure one.

We are not secure any more. We are just a breath away from maniacal dictatorship. Your comment is a correct observation, but it's important to recognize that it's just a description of progressive decadency filling the country like an abscessed tooth.

You have to have lived in the age of the dominion of the press and radio, before the takeover of the Playboy Philosophy in mags, and inanity in newspapers. The spread of radio, then TV, heralded instant news reporting with lessening moral repression of vulgarism, obscenity, pornography, and slanderous gossip.

Names in the media, of Gabriel Heatter, Lowell Thomas, Edward R. Murrow, John Cameron Swayze, filled the airwaves with daily oral summaries to a wide and credulous audience. You might want to check these out:

http://www.referenceworld.com/MTM/journalism/sample%20docs/Commentatorsradio.doc

http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1950/1950.shtml

But you cannot discount the huge effect of the Catholic moralists--Father Coughlin

http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/spring09papers/archivespr09/fein.pdf

and Fulton J. Sheen--said to have been stemming the tide of communism, but really bringing in their own outlook on "the social gospel" which only prepared the minds of the gullible for a greater numbness, apathy, and decay. See:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/media/me0018.html

In the end, you have Walter Cronkites (a dyed-in-the-wool socialist), Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley funneling and massaging the news, and on the other hand the Berrigan brothers and Bill Ayers implementing social justice theory.

What I see is the long abandonment of principle in the hearts of the general public, and from generation to generation the embracing of anti-Christian and anti-decency influences in the name of "Liberty" that brought us here. Overall, we seem to be a bunch of plastic idiots, ready to be molded by corrupt braggarts filling the various direction-determining offices.

We are ripe for a Fidel Castro type, and we have one who is no longer fettered by the Constitution, having destroyed the system of checks and balances meant to restrain evil.

Our leaders have often meant well, but were not propelled by a Christ-loving heart.

(I want you to know that in my fraternity days at Syracuse University, Teddy Koppel was in the pledge class following mine. I helped put him through Hell Week. In school, Teddy was one of the best, and a hard , honorable worker, although I was not too happy with his later political bent. So I know what these guys were about.)

But those glorious days of hope are over with, and they are not coming back.

[EinNYC]

Our leaders have often meant well, but were not propelled by a Christ-loving heart.

Neither am I. I'm an Orthodox Jew. Does that mean that only people with a "christ-loving heart" are morally correct individuals? Father Coughlin was a out and out antisemite of the worst kind, siding with Hitler and Mussolini.

[imardmd1]

All "Christ" means is "Messiach." As an Orthodox Jew, do you have a heart yearning for The Messiach, for His Coming to rule the world?

I love you with the same love Messiach employed toward His Israelite brethren and I trust in Him, myself as a wild branch grafted as a member of the True Tree of Life, which from the time of Moses have been chosen to represent Him in the world sphere.

So, many well-intentioned individuals are driven by a desire to see morally correct choices made; but they cannot achieve them when their efforts are filtered through (a) sin-stained heart(s), and often produce unanticipated negative results. The problem is that they are blind guides of the Scripture-rejecting blind, and they all fall into the ditch.

Please note that in describing the composition of the mind-set of the last century's media manipulators, it is not with approval of the named commentators, only pointing out their prominent influence.

And regarding such as Coughlin, I do not think one could point to him and say, "There goes a man with Christ's love in his heart."

Nor could one say so of his organization, who refused to severely chasten him for his Satanic influences, nor made him cease such blasphemy. Don't forget that the supreme leader of Coughlin's organization did not exactly find himself at odds with Mussolini, a fellow Italian, nor excommunicate him.

Nor did he call Germans to separate from Naziism at the cost of their lives, like first-century Christians did when they refused to follow their leaders' orders to abandon their religion of self-abasement in worshipping the Messiah rather than Kaiser/Caesar.