Chris Christie Comes Out Against Gay Conversion Therapy

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Photo Credit: Mel Evans/AP

After initially saying he was undecided on the topic, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is against gay conversion therapy. Christie faced criticism when he said earlier in the week he wasn’t sure if he would sign legislation banning the practice on minors.

“Governor Christie does not believe in conversion therapy,” spokesman Kevin Roberts said in a statement to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. “There is no mistaking his point of view on this when you look at his own prior statements where he makes clear that people’s sexual orientation is determined at birth.”

Gay conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, claims to be able to change the sexual orientation of gay people through religious counseling, intense therapy and other methods. Health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, have all spoken out against conversion therapy, saying it can cause serious and long-term harm. The New Jersey state senate’s health committee approved legislation banning the practice on Monday.

Christie, who is widely thought to have 2016 presidential aspirations, has not said whether he will sign the bill banning the practice. He remains opposed to same sex marriage.

At a press conference Wednesday, Christie said he wasn’t sure if he would sign the bill because he needed more information, as well as wanting to give parents as much leeway in raising their children as possible.

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Sean Hannity Says Yasir Arafat Is The Father Of Modern Terror, But Arafat Learned From Ireland’s Michael Collins

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Photo Credit: IrishCentral

President Obama’s trip to the Middle East saw him making speeches and conferring with Israeli, as well as Palestinian leaders. While Obama was in Ramallah with Palestinian President Abbas, they held a joint press conference. Unfortunately for President Obama, the optics didn’t look good as he addressed the assembled journalists under a Yasir Arafat banner.

Arafat probably one of the worlds most renowned terrorists before Osama Bin laden came on the scene, is responsible for thousands of deaths to innocent civilians. For a President of the United States to be caught under a poster of this man, is an extremely bad gaffe. The photos will be used as propaganda by many groups around the world to recruit terrorists.

According to the group known as the “Committee for Accuracy in Mideast Reporting in America,” Arafat is the father of modern day terrorism. Perhaps that is why Sean Hannity echoed that opinion today on his radio show, as he railed against the President getting caught under the Arafat poster. See list of Arafats terror strikes here.

But modern day terror tactics were not an invention of Yasir Arafat, they were in fact invented by Ireland’s military leader and brilliant tactician, Michael Collins. Many consider him to be the father of modern day terror tactics as well as the father of the Irish Republic.

In 1916 Collins invented those tactics as he sat in a Welsh prison…put their by the British. Those tactics as employed by his Irish Republican Army, forced the British to the bargaining table after centuries of effort by Ireland’s citizens failed to do it.

According to terrorism expert James Biesterfield in a very informative article published in IrishCentral, September, 2011:

From a purely analytic viewpoint, Michael Collins was absolutely critical in the advancement of modern terrorist & insurgency organizations. In following the timeline through the 20th Century terrorist groups, it appears that virtually ALL groups have and are following, the IRA Model.

The PLO and Yasser Arafat used and improved upon this model in the 1960’s/ 70’s. This led to a vast number of terrorist fighters from all over the world attending training at PLO camps located in Libya during this period. Following this, we began to see cooperative efforts on the part of terrorist groups (i.e. Lod Airport, Rome Airport, Mogadishu, etc).

For good or bad, credit should be given where due. One mans freedom fighter can be another mans terrorist.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Paul Ryan’s Ax Isn’t Sharp Enough

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Photo Credit: Sam Island

THE latest budget proposal by Representative Paul D. Ryan, called “The Path to Prosperity,” is anything but. It fails to seriously address runaway government spending, the most pressing problem facing our nation. I cannot vote for something that would trick the American people into thinking that Congress is fixing Washington’s spending problem, when in actuality we’d just be allowing it to continue without end.

Supporters of the “Path to Prosperity,” including many of my fellow Republicans, say that we have to stop spending money we don’t have, an idea I promote every chance I get. But under the proposal by Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the federal government would continue to spend more than it will this year.

Spending would grow by an average of 3.4 percent annually, only slightly less than the rate under President Obama’s plan, which is 5 percent a year. After 10 years — Mr. Ryan’s target for eliminating the deficit — the “Path to Prosperity” will have spent $41 trillion, when the president’s plan would allow spending of $46 trillion. My party’s de facto position has become “we’re increasing spending, but not as much as the other guy.” That’s not good enough.

Just reducing growth in spending does almost nothing. We have to dig deeper and make profound cuts now. We cannot continue to assume that future Congresses will do our dirty work for us.

We ought to get rid of certain federal departments and agencies, stopping only to shift the role of governing back to the states, where it belongs. The Departments of Education and Energy, for example, are two bloated bureaucracies that we don’t need; their core functions would be absorbed by the states through block grants, saving taxpayers at least $500 billion over the next decade.

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Obama’s Nuclear Weapons Drawdown Likely Illegal

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey

President Barack Obama’s efforts to significantly curtail U.S. nuclear weapons without seeking the proper Senate approval are at best misguided and worst illegal, sources tell Newsmax.

Obama is exploring opportunities to achieve the reductions in infrastructure and capability he seeks – including a drawdown to 1,000 weapons – without seeking the advice and consent of the Senate that international treaties require.

Efforts to push the boundaries of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia are ill-advised, sources say. A proposal that seeks to achieve nuclear arms reductions outside the framework of New START, however, would run afoul of the law.

“A presidential announcement that would try to do a nontreaty agreement would be prohibited by the code,” Baker Spring, a research fellow in national security policy at the Heritage Foundation, tells Newsmax.

The Senate has specifically spoken to the precise circumstances pertaining to any modification or reinterpretation of New START or a new agreement that would reduce the U.S. arsenal to levels below those included in New START.

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Memo To Reince Priebus: It’s About Principles Not Process

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has launched a nationwide “Growth and Opportunity Project” reviewing eight key areas he believes must be examined in the wake of a disappointing 2012 campaign.

While I applaud Priebus for his willingness to engage in some self-critical analysis, the reality is none of the eight aspects he’s reviewing holds the key to a Republican resurgence. It’s not that reviewing campaign mechanics, messaging, fundraising, demographics, SuperPacs, campaign finance laws, the primary calendar, and successful Democrat tactics aren’t important because they are. That’s why I might spend as much time analyzing the process of politics as any nationally-syndicated conservative radio host does.

But if you’re analyzing what went wrong in 2012, and is still going wrong for the GOP right now, it begins and ends with its principles—or lack thereof.

No campaign, no matter how well-funded and organized, can rise above its own candidate. Now, a campaign can sink a good candidate (and haven’t we seen plenty of that recently) but it can’t make a bad candidate good, because grueling campaigns reveal every candidate’s true character and capabilities. You can’t hide your candidate in today’s multi-media environment where everybody has a camera on their phone and mobile device. If a candidate lacks integrity, consistency, professionalism, or discipline, it will be found out. A good campaign with a bad candidate is like good marketing of a bad product. All that good marketing can do for a bad product is help consumers realize quicker just how bad the product really is once they buy it.

There was no technology, messaging, or fundraising that was going to save Mitt Romney. For heaven’s sake, the GOP was so flushed with cash the RNC ended the 2012 campaign cycle with unspent money in the bank. No tactic was going to make people forget that Romney was on every side of every issue. No tactic was going to make the conservative base forget how many times Romney had sold them out. The campaign revealed Romney failed to be bold, consistent, and aggressive. If he does those things effectively and credibly, then the process comes into play, but until he does the process is irrelevant.

People become Republicans or vote Republican based on issues and not personalities. People become Democrats or vote Democrat based on personalities (identity based politics). This is why Republicans tend to win general elections when they’re about issues, and Democrats tend to win when they’re about personas.

When you think Republican you think issues: limited government, pro-life, anti-tax, strong national defense, family values, etc. When you think Democrat you think personas: blacks, Hispanics, single women, homosexuals, young adults, etc. That’s why Obama ran in 2008 on the narrative of being the first black president (or “the one”), and in 2012 on the phony “war on women” meme.

What did Romney run on? He ran solely on Obama’s failures, but that’s not an issue that’s a complaint. Yes, Reagan famously asked voters in 1980 “are you better off than you were four years ago?” But he still had to give them a credible vision on issues they could vote for and not just against. To this day, decades later, its still those issues Reagan’s presidency is most known for—specifically tax cuts to stimulate the economy and defeating the Soviet Union.

Romney couldn’t win the general election for the same reason all establishment milquetoast candidates have lost since 1976: they failed to inspire their base in the primary which is always a sign they won’t inspire the masses in the general election. It should be simple common sense to anyone with any marketing acumen that if you can’t convince those most likely to buy your product to buy it, you’ll never convince those initially skeptical to do so.

Until Reince Priebus and the other five Republican “leaders” assisting him on this project make first things first – and this case that means principles – they’re either not really serious about winning or incapable of it. Voters, even many Republicans, could care less about voting for a political party brand-name. They also don’t care that you dressed your stink-brick up in pretty pastels, or that you said “pretty please” when you asked them to take that lemon off their hands on social media.

There’s a reason the most noteworthy national Republican election victories of the last 30 years happened in 1980, 1984, 1994, and 2010. It’s because those were the years the GOP did the best job of offering a truly principled contrast to the Democrats, thus framing the election those years around issues and not personalities. The Left tried saying we hated women and minorities those years, too. But since Republicans focused the voters on issues first it never became about personalities.

Right now the average American thinks Republicans hate Obama because he’s black and/or just because he’s a Democrat. Until that changes no amount of addressing the process will change that perception of Republicans. And until Republicans rediscover their principles again, that perception will remain.

You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

GOP Autopsy: Change The Politicians Not The Policies

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Amidst the soul-searching being conducted by party leaders in pursuit of the solution to the GOP’s electoral problems, everyone is missing the obvious culprit. Whenever a private entity goes through a period of lethargic growth and management failures, it seeks new leadership. Yet, immediately following the election, Republicans reelected Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to be the face of the GOP in Washington. Talk about stuck on stupid.

In their “autopsy” report, the RNC notes the following: “The GOP today is a tale of two parties. One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and successful. The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.”

Hmmm…maybe that has something to do with the fact that there are some new dynamic leaders on the state level. Where are they on the federal level? Nobody can look you in the eye – even supporters of Boehner and McConnell – and declare with a straight face that these two leaders are eloquent voices for our party’s principles and have a dynamic appeal to a broad populace. Likewise, even those who don’t necessarily share the principles of the Tea Party can easily agree that figures like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio evince a stronger, more persuasive image to voters than the current group of banal bulls.

Yesterday, The Hill published a poll asking respondents which method they preferred in order to balance the budget: slashing spending with no tax increases or a mix of both. A clear majority supported the conservative position. But when the pollster designated the two positions with party identifications, a plurality supported the Democrat approach, even though it was the same path that was soundly rejected without the party label. This is a very vivid example of the need to give the Republican politicians a facelift, not the policies.

In fact, it is the lack of passion and consistency to fight for these policies when it really counts that has gotten us into trouble. Republicans won the 2010 elections in a landslide, primarily with the mandate to get rid of Obamacare. There was no ambiguity about the results of that election. It had nothing to do with ground game, technology, immigration, gay marriage, minorities, etc. It was purely based on ideology of limited government, most notably, disquiet against Obamacare. The Democrats got crushed. Republicans should have taken the first opportunity to defund Obamacare in the CR or debt ceiling when the righteous indignation was still palpable. They failed to do it, opting instead to cut a backroom deal. They failed to inspire anyone. The voters saw through the fakery.

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Hussein In Jerusalem

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Photo Credit: Muhammad غفّاري

No, not the Mufti al-Husseini of Jerusalem, but Obama. Close enough.

Why is Obama going to Israel? The Muslim Brotherhood advocate in the White House has refused to speak to the Knesset. He caved to Muslim threats and supremacist demands and is not going to the Temple Mount with an Israeli escort. And an Obama administration official has said that Obama will not bring any new Middle East peace plan with him, because he doesn’t think the Israelis are interested in peace. Not the “Palestinians” with their calls for blood and genocide, but the Israelis.

So what is he doing there? He is going on the offensive against Israel, and he is doing it from Israel. Expect the notorious leftist Israel press to applaud Obama’s land confiscation policy.

And Obama is not going over there empty-handed. He brings a cash infusion of 500 million smackers for the jihadists, aka the Palestinian Authority. No money for White House tours or military tuition – but half a billion for the terror statelet and billions and F16s to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Yet the more he prostrates himself before the Palestinian jihadists, the more contempt they have for him. I wonder how much this will cost the American taxpayers, not to mention Israeli blood and land … and 3G technology. No joke: Muslims in Bethlehem were burning pictures of Obama and protesting, among other things, the absence of 3G communications technology.

And the Times of Israel reported that Israeli Knesset member Nachman Shai “called on students to skip U.S. President Barack Obama’s planned speech to the Israeli public, scheduled for Thursday night, citing the White House’s exclusion of Ariel University from a program to allow students to attend the Jerusalem address.”

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Nobody’s Property Is Safe When Bailouts Begin

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Photo Credit: Petros Giannakouris

Imagine checking your bank statement one day only to discover that someone had just taken 10 percent out of your savings account without your permission.

You’d be pretty upset, wouldn’t you? So were many citizens of Cyprus, whose government announced last Friday it would be assessing a 9.9 percent “stability levy” on all deposits of more than $100,000 and a 6.75 percent levy on deposits less than that. Cypriots quickly deduced that the government was seizing their property to bail out their nation’s banks and immediately tried to withdrawal their funds. To prevent them, the government of Cyprus has declared a bank holiday that has been extended through at least Wednesday.

The Cyprus crisis began last spring when the face value of Greek debt was cut after that government was bailed out last spring. Cyprus banks, which have longstanding cultural ties with Greece, carried substantial exposure and lost billions. Cyprus Popular Bank alone had $3.4 billion in Greek government debt, whose value was reduced to $2.5 billion. Cyprus was forced to nationalize that bank last November, and things haven’t gotten any better since.

Like the rest of the European Union, Cyprus has been mired in recession since 2011. Its government has been seeking a bailout from its EU partners since last June. But EU member nations, especially Germany, are tired of bailing out their spendthrift neighbors, especially ones like Cyprus, where the banking sector was recently measured to be eight times as large as the entire Cypriot economy.

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America Is Under The Tyranny Of Corrupt Big City Political Machines

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Democrats are fighting tooth and nail, any efforts to clean up our election system.

Photo Credit: Daquella manera

Just the simple act of proving you are an American citizen to vote, is being fought all of the way up to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, in its attempt to thwart Arizona’s voter ID laws.

The simple requirement to show identification when you register to vote/ vote is also being branded as unfair and racist by democrats

Is there anything more important to a democracy than ensuring the election system is being conducted fairly? Fair elections are the very heart and soul of a democracy.

If the elections are rigged, or manipulated, a democracy can no longer be called a democracy. It becomes a tyranny ruled by those who corrupt the election. As Joseph Stalin said: It is not so important who votes, what is important is who counts the votes

Recently it was revealed Florida uncovered an attempt to hack into its elections and hijack 2,500 absentee voter pamphlets. The intrusion was discovered and blocked before the ballots were sent out, but is this just the tip of the iceberg? See the complete story in Tech News World.

Election officials are saying this is the first documented case of online voter hacking. But is this just the first one they found? How many others were done successfully and election officials have no clue about? Evidently it is quite simple to gain entry/hack into many election systems electronically; some don’t even have passwords for entry.

Fox News has been doing an excellent ongoing investigation into voter fraud in our country and the results are disturbing. Time after time, it is proving out where there’s smoke, there is voter fraud fire. What Fox News is discovering about our elections. See stories

A Cincinnati Ohio poll worker is being charged with voting 6 times in the last presidential election. This is a poll worker, someone who is trusted to watch over our elections. What else did she do to throw the election? See story here.

This poll worker was one of 19 others in just this one county who is under investigation for vote fraud. “I’m outraged, and every voter, regardless of political affiliation, should be outraged,” said Hamilton County Board of Elections member Alex Triantafilou, who is also chairman of the county Republican Party. “It causes folks to have real doubts about the fabric of our very democratic process, and it’s dangerous.

Would this be uncovered if there wasn’t a member of the opposite party to raise an alarm and start an investigation?

Most of Americas big cities have been dominated by the democrat party for years. One party rule engenders corruption, especially if that party oversees most aspects of the election process. The big cities are the population centers of the state, it is usually a huge hurdle for the rest of the state to overcome that advantage. Sometimes it comes down to a few votes in just a few counties to determine where all of that states presidential delegates will go.

Many years ago someone confessed to me towards the end of his life, that in his younger days he had been a player in the manipulation of votes in one of the largest cities in America. He was part of an organized operation that threw out the contents of ballot boxes and filed them with their ballots, in order to assure their party prevailed. He felt guilt and shame many years later, but at the time he felt he was doing the right thing for his city and country….Probably the same way the Ohio poll worker felt when she voted for Obama 6 times in the last election.

When democrats say there is little, or minor vote fraud in the country, they are “misspeaking.” In one big city, Philadelphia, some poll workers actually threw out members of the opposite party sent to observe voting practices in their precincts. How can we have trust in the outcome? Pennsylvania is a key state in presidential elections.

With the advent of electronic voting and counting, it not only makes it easier to manipulate our elections, it almost guarantees it, especially when you hear the lax protections in place to safeguard the systems.

First we need to clean up our nations voter rolls, get all of the dead, non existent and non citizens off the rolls who are voting. All of this should be done on a local level done under the close observation of both political parties. All registration of voters needs to be accomplished using verifiable identification.

Since absentee/electronic voting is the easiest way to manipulate/rig elections, these should be scrapped and we should require all elections be done at polling precincts using paper ballots that require to be hand counted and securely tallied….closely monitored by members of both parties.

States should also look at proportionally awarding delegates in presidential races, this will help negate the power of big city political machines that dominate an entire state.

Sadly, perhaps its time to emulate other countries who have had problems with corrupt elections: After voting dip the index finger of the voter in purple ink.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Rush Limbaugh: Gay Marriage and Freedom

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Photo Credit: Rush Limbaugh

[Transcript from Limbaugh’s show yesterday] I’ll tell you, there’s something else I’d like to spend some time on today and develop further if it works out. I’m making no commitments. Hillary Clinton has come out today for gay marriage. I warned you about this months ago.

This issue has now catapulted to the top seemingly of everybody’s list. It’s stunning the way this has happened. In the millennial generation, 25 and under, it’s all that matters. Gay marriage. Young conservatives 30 and under, 35 and other, Manhattan bar scene conservative: Gay marriage, all that matters. People are willing to leave the party if the party doesn’t change its mind, and you know how it’s happening? Not just on the basis that love is a wonderful thing and who are we to say somebody could or could not love somebody.

It’s also coming under the umbrella of freedom. This is something that concerns me, because I think “freedom” is being misapplied or maybe incorrectly defined. Freedom does not mean hedonism. Freedom does not mean the sybaritic pursuits, “Just do what you want.”

RUSH: One of the things here that the left does, that the Democrat Party does, is they pretend to be the party of freedom and liberation. You talk about marketing? What a masterful marketing trick they have pulled off here, with the notion that they are the party of freedom and liberation when, in fact, it’s just the opposite. You see, the left’s big lie is that government frees people and that only government can liberate people, when really it’s just the opposite.

That’s why the left is constantly looking for new groups that they can cast as victims. I mean, we acknowledge that the left seeks to victimize everybody. But many people think that it’s so that they can provide benefits and grow the welfare state — and that’s, in part, true. But there’s another hideous reason for trying to put so many people into different groups of victims, and it is that those groups need protection. From whom? Mean-spirited, extremist, radical, right-wingers!

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