Orthodox Editors

Can Warren Buffett Do Simple Arithmetic?

September 1, 2011September 2, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Buffet and Obama Love fest Notice the striking similarities in misrepresenting the facts and seeming to lack basic math skills when making pronouncements on taxes and embracing a liberal/progressive agenda?

by Verum Serum –
As you probably heard, Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed last week begging to be taxed at a higher rate. Rather than give you an excerpt of the article, here’s a little video clip in which he makes most of the same points:

Two points to make about this. First, can Warren Buffett do math? The Tax Foundation looked at his proposal [ht: Matt Cover at CNSNews] and found that his plan is a bust:

Suppose Mr. Buffett got his wish and loopholes and deductions were eliminated, making it possible to tax the “super-rich” (those earning $1M – $10M per year) at an effective rate of 50%.

This would theoretically (in reality people would find ways to protect their money) bring in enough to reduce next year’s deficit by 8%. This amounts to 1% of our current debt. But Buffett also envisioned a super-tax on those making over $10 million a year. It’s an easy sell since few of us are so fortunate, but what would it accomplish? Again, the Tax Foundation crunched the numbers and found that a 100% tax rate on these individuals would reduce the deficit by 12%. [Read more…]

Liberals’ View of Darwin Unable to Evolve

September 1, 2011September 1, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Ann Coulter –

Amid the hoots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for saying there were “gaps” in the theory of evolution, the strongest evidence for Darwinism presented by these soi-disant rationalists was a 9-year-old boy quoted in The New York Times.

After his mother had pushed him in front of Perry on the campaign trail and made him ask if Perry believed in evolution, the trained seal beamed at his Wicked Witch of the West mother, saying, “Evolution, I think, is correct!”

That’s the most extended discussion of Darwin’s theory to appear in the mainstream media in a quarter-century. More people know the precepts of kabala than know the basic elements of Darwinism.

There’s a reason the Darwin cult prefers catcalls to argument, even with a 9-year-old at the helm of their debate team.

Darwin’s theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the “fittest” to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo. [Read more…]

Observing 9/11 without God

August 31, 2011August 31, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Ground Zero Cross by Robert Knight –

We’ve got a word for people who hate Christmas. The Grinch.

What should we call people who hate America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, even to the point of barring clergy at a ceremony at the site of a major tragedy?

How about “theophobic”? The word is already out there. You can look it up.

In one special case, we can just call the theophobe “Mayor.” That would be Michael Bloomberg, New York’s trendy, formerly Republican leader, who has topped even his own endorsement of a mosque near Ground Zero by forbidding prayer at the upcoming ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Maybe Mr. Bloomberg is only selectively theophobic, and would consider allowing some Muslim prayers, or perhaps an atheistic chant. To be fair, it must be noted that he has not had a problem with the display of the World Trade Center Cross, a 20-foot edifice composed of steel beams found that way in the Ground Zero rubble.[Read more…]

The Church as the Bride of Caesar

August 30, 2011August 31, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Fr. Robert A. Sirico –

It is telling that the Washington Post report on the religious Left’s Circle of Protection campaign for big government describes the effort as one that would “send chills through any politician who looks to churches and religious groups as a source of large voting blocs,” because, in fact, this is not an honest faith-inspired campaign to protect the “least of these” from Draconian government cuts, as claimed. It is a hyper-political movement that offers up the moral authority of churches and aid organizations to advance the ends of the Obama administration and its allies in Congress.

The Circle of Protection, led by Jim Wallis and his George Soros-funded Sojourners group, is advancing a false narrative based on vague threats to the “most vulnerable” if we finally take the first tentative steps to fix our grave budget and debt problems. For example, Wallis frequently cites cuts to federal food programs as portending dire consequences to “hungry and poor people.” [Read more…]

Sun Causes Climate Change, Not Humans

August 30, 2011August 30, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Lawrence Solomon –
New, convincing evidence indicates global warming is caused by cosmic rays and the sun — not humans

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere. [Read more…]

Families of 9/11 Victims Knocking on America’s Door

August 28, 2011August 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Bishop Savas Zembillas with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg NYC

by Rev Michael Bresciani –

It is no secret that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has decided not to ask clergy of any religion to be part in the tenth anniversary ceremonies at Ground Zero. A cross section of responses from both religious and secular sources shows that most people are shocked or at the least scratching their heads in wonderment at Bloomberg’s decision.

Bloomberg said that government “shouldn’t be in the business of picking” one minister or religion over another. That being true, it raises two simple but important questions. The first is, who asked him to pick? Is Mr. Bloomberg the Mayor, or is he New York’s pastor?

The second question should be whether he has considered asking the families of 9/11 victims if they want clergy to be present and to offer prayers. The ceremony is not about the government and it has never been.

In the gospel of Luke Christ gave a parable about a woman who comes to a judge to seek avengement in her cause. The judge ignores her because it is said that he “feared not God, neither regarded man.” (Lk 18: 2) In today’s twisted world who would have guessed we have come to a place where even this has been reversed and now it seems there are those who “fear man and don’t regard God” Has it come to this? [Read more…]

Archbishop: New York Times, CNN, MSNBC can’t be trusted on abortion, faith

August 28, 2011August 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Jeremy Kryn –
When it comes to finding information on vital issues like abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and faith, the mainstream media simply can’t be trusted, the incoming archbishop of Philadelphia told a group of youth in Spain last week.

“Being uninformed about the world and its problems and issues is a sin against our vocation as disciple,” Archbishop Charles Chaput told his audience during a special World Youth Day session in Madrid. And yet, he went on to note, the Christian believer is faced with a unique challenge in finding accurate sources of information on key issues.

“In the United States, our battles over abortion, family life, same-sex marriage, and other sensitive issues have led to ferocious public smears and legal threats not only of Catholics, but also against Mormons, evangelicals, and other religious believers,” he said. [Read more…]

7 Reasons Why Liberals Are Incapable of Understanding The World

August 27, 2011August 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by John Hawkins –
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. — Charles Krauthammer

Even liberals who’ve accomplished a lot in their lives and have high IQs often say things on a regular basis that are stunningly, profoundly stupid and at odds with the way the world works. Modern liberalism has become so bereft of common sense and instinctually suicidal that America can only survive over the long haul by thwarting the liberal agenda. In fact, liberalism has become such a toxic and poisonous philosophy that most liberals wouldn’t behave differently if their goal were to deliberately destroy the country. So, how does liberalism cause well-meaning, intelligent liberals to get this way? Well, it starts with… [Read more…]

The Wacky World of Liberal Fundamentalism

August 25, 2011August 25, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

American Thinker logo conservatives by Robert Weissberg –

The candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Bible-affirming Christians, predictably have ignited the liberal media’s zeal for exposing their allegedly odd if not wacko religious beliefs (see here). Support for some version of creationism, a faith in the efficacy of prayer, and actual belief in scriptural condemnation of homosexuality (among other religious views) are taken as prima facie evidence of presidential unsuitability. To be sure, millions of Americans (assumed to be ill-educated trailer-court denizens with rotting teeth and beer guts) may share these odd inclinations, but, at least according to liberal pundits, holding them betrays a lack of intellectual sophistication plus an aversion to modern science. Such antediluvian fundamentalism should, say the experts, have gone extinct with the Scopes Monkey Trials.

Ironically, liberal attackers are guilty of far greater unscientific dogmatism, sloppy thinking, and mind-boggling confusion but fail to notice it thanks to a manufactured respectability that deters — if not forbids — close inspection. [Read more…]

Christian Church facing a revolution that is shaking its foundations: the gay revolution

August 24, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Albert Mohler –
The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it’s facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.

To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can’t Christians just join the revolution?

And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, “The Honor Code,” moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we’ve witnessed on the question of homosexuality.

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than “moral deficiency.” [Read more…]