Mitt Romney’s announcement Saturday that Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan is his VP choice is getting widespread approval within the conservative community, reports onenewsnow.com. Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action, says Ryan, who is from Janesville Wis., is a policy expert who will elevate serious discussion about limiting the size of government. Ryan’s proposed budget plan would trim $5 trillion over 10 years and reduce spending by 3 percent. “Congressman Ryan has distinguished himself as a strong fiscal conservative over the fourteen years he has been in Congress,” Appling told onenewsnow.com. “He has a chance of reining in our out-of-control spending. Furthermore, reducing the deficit is imperative if we are going to give the next generation the opportunities the rest of us have had.” Appling believes Ryan also ensures America’s best natural resource—traditional families—is given the very best opportunity to remain or become independent of government. “We are also very encouraged by Rep. Ryan’s strong pro-life voting record and his understanding of the importance of strengthening and preserving the traditional family, beliefs that are founded in his religious background and are modeled in his own family,” said Appling. “His statement in his speech today about our rights coming from God, not government, is further evidence that he understands and appreciates, as did our Founding Fathers, what has made America great.” Several women’s groups applaud Romney’s choice. Since 1984 women have outnumbered men in voter turnout. The Independent Women’s Forum contends the selection is a bold move that will reverse the election narrative from trivial political attacks to a serious debate on key issues of voter concern.
Other news:
- A recent study confirmed that as adolescents absorb sexual content from movies, they are more likely to attempt to live it out in real life. Statistics compiled in the study point to a major challenge for parents striving to raise godly children, reports Baptist Press. Of the data reported in the study, published in July by the Association for Psychological Science: among movies released from 1950 to 2006, roughly 85 percent contained sexual content (68 percent of G-rated movies; 82 percent of PG-rated movies; 85 percent of PG-13-rated movies; and 88 percent of R-rated movies); sexual explicitness of PG-13-rated and R-rated movies has increased over the past decade; 70 percent of the sexual acts depicted in movies released from 1983 to 2003 occurred between newly acquainted partners, 98 percent included no reference to contraception, and 89 percent resulted in no consequences; adolescents sometimes seek out sexual media, with 57 percent of U.S. adolescents ages 14 to 16 reporting that they use media as a primary source of sexual information.
- Thanks to an Obamacare regulation that took effect on Aug. 1, health care plans in Oregon will now be required to provide free sterilizations to 15-year-old girls even if their parents do not consent to the procedure, reports cnsnews.com. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finalized the regulation earlier this year. It says that all health care plans in the United States—except those provided by actual houses of worship organized under the section of the Internal Revenue Code reserved for churches per se—must provide coverage, without cost-sharing, for sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives to “all women with reproductive capacity.” Under Oregon law, girls from 15 years of age and up are given complete control over whether to be sterilized or not. The parents or guardians of a minor girl—between 15 and 18—can neither grant nor deny consent for a sterilization.
- President Barack Obama “robbed” Medicare to pay for the healthcare legislation he pushed through Congress in 2010, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview broadcast Sunday night, reports newsmax.com. Romney made the claim when asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes about the political risk of picking Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has led efforts to save Medicare, the government health-insurance program for the elderly, but is being charged by the Left with trying to get rid of it. “There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare,” Romney responded. “What Paul Ryan and I have talked about is saving Medicare, is providing people greater choice in Medicare, making sure it’s there for current seniors,” Romney said on 60 Minutes. “No changes, by the way, for current seniors, or those nearing retirement. But looking for young people down the road and saying, ‘We’re going to give you a bigger choice.’ In America, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices.”
- The gay marriage controversy may now be standing in the way of a new Chick-fil-A opening in California. Several days ago, five members of Santa Barbara’s architectural board abstained from approving a landscaping plan for a restaurant, reports cbn.com. The move essentially halts the project from moving forward. City Councilman Frank Hotchkiss condemned the board and requested its members resign. “For a group that’s supposed to [be] working on architectural benefits for the city to just stop what they’re doing because of their political views is outrageous,” he said. Board member Gary Mosel disagreed with Hotchkiss. “I feel he’s jumping the gun, and not knowing the situation and asking for our resignation is not a fair assessment,” he said. Mosel admitted he abstained from the vote because he’s a member of two gay and lesbian groups. But he said each board member has their own reasons for not voting. Meanwhile, liberals are petitioning the Berenstain Bears publisher to cut ties with Chick-fil-A. According to charismanews.com and AP, three organizations said they delivered petitions with 80,000 signatures to HarperCollins demanding the move. The AP reported the opposition’s stance: the “beloved bears teach the importance of standing against ‘bigotry.’” Jim Henson Co. already pulled Muppet toys from Chick-fil-A kids’ meals.
- Believing God will allow him to live to 95, famed evangelist Billy Graham is making his “final call to America to turn to God,” reports WorldNetDaily. Timed to coincide with his 95th birthday, Graham is calling people in the United States and Canada to repentance as part of the “My Hope with Billy Graham” evangelistic outreach set for the week of Nov. 7, 2013. Unlike his famous stadium crusades over the past six decades, Graham is asking Christians to invite family, friends, and neighbors to their homes to watch the “Living Room Crusade” on their televisions, tablets, or smartphones as part of a massive grassroots effort to ignite a spiritual awakening in North America.
- Lolo Jones, the track and field athlete who placed fourth in the 100-meter hurdles at the London Olympics, caught heat from fellow athletes, the media, and on Twitter for publicly discussing her stance on waiting until marriage to have sex, reports The Christian Post. Jones may have made it to the London Olympics, but the 30-year-old Christian hurdler did not win a medal in her 100-meter event after she placed fourth last Tuesday. Some people took to Twitter to blame the athlete’s virginity for her performance that failed to gain her a medal. In an interview, Jones revealed why she has chosen to remain a virgin and shared her story of struggling with the choice. “It’s just something, a gift that I want to give to my husband. But please understand this journey has been hard. If there’s virgins out there, I just want to let them know, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Jones admitted. “Harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college, has been to stay a virgin before marriage.” After losing out on her hopes of an Olympic medal in , Jones said she had no regrets. Instead of responding to the comments made by her teammates who placed highly in her competition, Jones took to her Twitter to thank God and congratulate them.
- According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, federal and state welfare assistance has grown almost 19 percent under President Barack Obama, reports cnsnews.com. All in all, there are 79 means-tested federal welfare programs, at a cost approaching $1 trillion annually, said Heritage Senior Research Fellow Robert Rector. Rector conducted a comprehensive analysis of spending for government assistance programs, ranging from food, education, and childcare programs to housing and medical care. Since Fiscal Year 2009, federal and state welfare spending has risen from $779.9 billion to $927.2 billion, an increase of 18.8 percent. That fiscal year includes spending from Oct. 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2009. In his report, Rector said the increase in federal means-tested welfare spending during Obama’s first two years in office was two-and-a-half times greater than any previous increase in federal welfare spending in U.S. history, after adjusting for inflation. Rachel Sheffield, a research associate at The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, told CNSNews.com that this kind of payout cannot be maintained. “It’s a huge amount of money we’re spending on these programs and our debt is growing,” she said. “It’s not sustainable.” Rep. Paul Ryan, whom Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked as his running mate, told cnsnews.com four years ago, in August 2008, that the U.S. was heading toward bankruptcy on the fiscal path it was then following and that it would be “mindboggling” to make the problem worse by adding the sort of health-care plan that then-Sen. Barack Obama was advocating in his presidential campaign. Since cnsnews.com first published Ryan making this prediction on Aug. 4, 2008, the debt of the federal government has grown by $6.35 trillion—rising 66 percent, from $9,565,042,361,845.53 then to $15,915,814,457,919.46 now.
- Will your doctor quit? asks a report in forbes.com, citing a recent survey by the Doctor Patient Medical Association Foundation that reveals 83 percent of physicians surveyed are thinking of quitting because of Obamacare, and 90 percent feel that the U.S. health care system is now heading in the wrong direction. This result is not a surprise, said the report; “patients everywhere need to be concerned that Obamacare is putting an enormous new weight on the back of doctors who were already over-burdened.” This survey is not alone, said the report. Previous surveys by Athena, Sermo, Deloitte, the Doctors Company Survey, the Physicians Foundation, and IBD/TIPP have clearly shown that most doctors are unhappy with the direction of things, and a clear majority are opposed to the health care law. The Physicians Foundation survey in 2010 found that physicians view Obamacare “as a further erosion of the unfavorable conditions with which they must contend.” The New York Times reported that vagueness in the new health care law could make health care coverage too costly for many. Democrats in Congress and advocates for low-income people say coverage may be unaffordable for millions of Americans because of a cramped reading of the law by the administration and by the IRS in particular.
- Pro-choice groups have wasted no time in launching vicious—and false—attacks against Rep. Paul Ryan after Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney selected him as his running mate for the November election, according to breitbart.com: “In a NARAL press release being circulated by Democrats and women’s groups, the Catholic, pro-life Ryan is accused of ‘extreme’ anti-abortion views. NARAL isn’t simply content to disagree with Ryan’s views; it resorts to lying about Ryan–and about much else besides. For example, one of the lies told by Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is that Ryan ‘supported the “Let Women Die Bill,” which would allow hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency, lifesaving abortion care, even if she could die without it.’ It goes without saying that there was never any such piece of legislation. The actual bill to which Keenan is referring was called the “Protect Life Act,” H.R. 358, and it is about protecting religious freedom, not banning abortion. The act was passed in response to concerns that the Obama administration would force Catholic hospitals (and others) to provide abortions. Keenan makes it seem as though Ryan had voted to ban abortion at all hospitals, even if the mother’s life was in mortal danger. He did not.”
- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under fire for leaving Iran as the nation reeled from twin earthquakes that killed 306 and injured thousands just two days earlier, reports Fox News. Ahmadinejad is visiting Saudi Arabia for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is expected to deal with the crisis in Syria. The decision to leave Iran less than two days after the quakes is criticized in an editorial in the newspaper Asr-e Iran, titled “Mr. Ahmadinejad, where have you gone?” “In every other part of the world, the tradition is that when natural disasters happen, leaders will change their plans and visit the affected areas in order to show their compassion . . . and observe rescue efforts,” the editorial said, according to Reuters.
- Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has no problem calling for the destruction of Israel and blaming it for attacks linked to his own party, but when his relative needs life-saving heart surgery, only Israeli doctors will do, reports Fox News. The “stunning hypocrisy” has come to light after five Hamas-backed terrorists allegedly killed 16 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula that borders Gaza. Although evidence points to a Hamas-backed terror operation, Haniyeh inexplicably blamed it on Israel. The suspects were later killed by Israeli Defense Forces when they tried to cross the Kerem Shalom border.
