Why the New York Times Fears Marco Rubio
Over the past week, the New York Times, supposedly America’s leading newspaper (“All the News That’s Fit to Print”), published two hit pieces on US Senator Marco Rubio who is a Republican candidate for president.
No, they didn’t call them hit pieces. But that’s what they were.
The first story was about Senator Rubio’s (and his wife’s) traffic tickets over the past twenty years. The second detailed his personal finances, including mortgages, student loans, and even the purchase of a boat.
Both stories were political hit jobs–very misleading, and extremely biased.
Why is the mighty New York Times so afraid of Marco Rubio?
The name of the first NYT story was called “Rubios on the Road Have Drawn Unwanted Attention.” It pointed out that over the past eighteen years, Sen Rubio has received four moving violation tickets.
That’s about one every four to five years.
Senator Rubio lives in Miami which is a big city with a lot of traffic. So it’s worth a major story in the New York Times to point out four traffic tickets in almost twenty years?
Is that all they’ve got?
Oh, but what allowed them to publish the story is that his wife, Jeanette, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, received thirteen tickets during that same time–so the total for both of them was seventeen. One of Mrs. Rubio’s sins, pointed out by the Time’s Morality Department, was a ticket for going 23 in a 15 mile an hour zone.
E-gads! Stone her to death! (Oops, we’re not in Saudi Arabia.)
I think I commit that type of sin a number of times a week. Guess the cops here just aren’t as good as Miami Vice.
What do a few speeding tickets have to do with becoming president of the United States? So his wife’s not the best driver in the world. Big deal. I know a bunch of people who can relate. The Times’ bosses must have forgotten that when a man becomes president, he and his wife no longer have to drive themselves around–so it’s irrelevant for their White House years.
Actually, it’s rather refreshing that the Rubios are real people who actually drive cars and deal with the same frustrations we do. If I remember right, the lady in the other party who’s running for president hasn’t driven a car for over twenty years, so maybe they should have written a story on her being out of touch.
If you’d like to take a brief course in hit pieces 101, you can read about the Rubios traffic ticket sins here.
Then came the other slam on Marco Rubio from the Times entitled “Marco Rubio’s Career Be-Deviled by Financial Struggles.” The headline choosers at the New York Trash must have really had fun with this one. I can hear the conversation.
First, let’s throw in the word “Be-deviled” because it has the word “devil” in it which makes Marco appear to be in line with El Diablo. Then we’ll finish with the word “Struggle” to make it appear that he’s in trouble.
Bingo.
Then you read the actual article and it simply reveals a normal American story. Rubio’s parents escaped from Cuba and settled in the Miami, Florida area. They were blue collar folks–his dad working as a bartender and his mother doing maid, office, and assembly line jobs to make ends meet.
Marco Rubio began his life like many of us–from the lower side of the tracks. To go to college, he took out student loans and worked hard to pay them back over a number of years. He got married, started a family, bought some homes, and worked his way up the ladder.
The Times makes this all look like bad financial management. They say he takes out loans he shouldn’t have (too much money)–that he sold a house at the wrong time and took a loss on it (as if he’s at fault for the American economy and rise and fall of real estate prices).
They fail to mention that these heavy personal debt years were his family and career start-up years where he was:
- Elected to the Miami City Commission in 1998.
- Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1999.
- Became Majority Leader in the House in 2003 and Speaker in 2006.
- Elected to the US Senate in 2009.
Start-up years are difficult years, often involving the use of debt for long-term gain. Rubios’ financial tests seem to mirror once again the average American experience. He knows what we all face because he has looked it in the eye himself.
Yet, he never missed a mortgage payment and eventually paid off his student loans and began making enough money to elevate and bless his family.
Heck, I didn’t get out of the family debt scenario until I was sixty.
In the article, the NY Times points out two glaring sins that are apparently greater than the others. The first is Marco Rubio recently bought a speed boat for $80,000–apparently for fishing and family outings in the beautiful Florida sunshine.
The Times writers called it a “luxury speedboat.” Kind of gives you the impression of a Ferrari with fins or maybe even an opulent yacht. Then you look at the picture and you say to yourself, “Hey, it’s a speedboat. What’s the big deal?”
That’s what average people say. But not the New York Times.
I know many working people who own speed-boats. Marco Rubio worked hard to purchase his, parks it in Florida and pays taxes on it. Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry has a real luxury yacht that’s never been flagged by the New York Times. By the way–he didn’t work for it but married a wealthy heiress who paid for it and who parks it in Rhode Island to avoid tax liabilities.
Oops–we can’t point that out. Kerry’s a progressive chap and that means his wealth is always good.
The other thing that grated me about the second story was a reference to Rubio buying a house in West Miami for $550,000. The NYT reporters said it was the “most expensive” home in the neighborhood–as if the Rubios are upper class snobs who crave status.
Then you see the picture of the house. It looks like an average home in a suburban neighborhood with Rubio’s Ford F150 truck parked in the driveway.
In Seattle, the median priced house costs the same as the Rubios.
So what’s the story here? Isn’t there another presidential candidate who owns a mansion in Chappaqua, New York, another home in D.C., and makes hundreds of millions of dollars through a family foundation?
Who’s really normal and in touch with the average American?
Here’s the second NYT hit piece for you to read for yourself: “Marco Rubio’s Career Be-deviled By Financial Struggles” here.
So why is the nation’s most prestigious newspaper out to get Republican Senator Marco Rubio with crappy caricatures and hit pieces? Why does the mighty New York Times fear presidential candidate Marco Rubio?
The answer is very simple.
A generation ago a good-looking man rose up out of his own humble beginnings and made a name for himself both in business and in government. He was handsome, charismatic, a good speaker, and seemed to be able to relate to the common person in America.
Over time, that individual was elected president of the United States, and turned the American nation back to trust in God, restraints on government, lower taxes, a robust military, and belief in the uniqueness (exceptionalisnm) of the American Dream and experience.
This man set back the liberal/progressive agenda some twenty or thirty years as a time of renewal visited the United States of America and sound conservative policies elevated many. This drove the New York Times and their acolytes crazy.
That man, of course, was Ronald Reagan.
That period was similar to today. The US was going through a time of sexual revolution, riots against war and policing, economic problems, and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter.
The New York Times, and those who share their worldview are scared to death of Marco Rubio because he (and a number of others) could once again reverse America’s death spiral:
- He is young (44). Hilary Clinton is 67. He is the future–she is the past.
- He is of Hispanic origin. She can only claim white-privilege.
- He is from humble means–a self made man. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
- He is handsome and charismatic. She is a grandmother who sounds like your mother-in-law.
- He is extremely articulate and sharp as a tack. Hillary is slow on her feet and is always parsing words.
- He is known for honesty and integrity. She lives under a constant cloud of scandals.
- He has policy principles that will limit government and empower people. She is a Big Government devotee.
There are other good candidates on the Republican side who are young, experienced, articulate, and share good principles that could encourage another renewal of the American Republic.
But few are as attractive as Marco Rubio.
That’s why the New York Times fears him.
With Bruce Jenner, Sexual Atheism 4.0 Has Launched
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees–especially when the trees are moral.
Moral issues, like evergreens, often take a lifetime to develop. Because of their slow growth, we might not recognize what’s happening around us until we rise to 35,000 feet in an airplane and look down and exclaim:
“Wow, that’s a big forest!”
To use another metaphor, following Bruce Jenner’s recent interview with Diane Sawyer announcing his gender change from man to woman, Sexual Atheism 4.0 has launched. It’s been for a long time coming, but now the forest is fully formed.
Here’s what’s happened to sexual morality during the past sixty years.
Many of you know that I deal with politics and moral issues on a regular basis. Most stories and interviews that you see in the media do the same, but rarely do they either “look behind the scenes” as to why a moral change is happening or put you in a philosophical airplane to give you the big picture.
I want to do both today. I want you to understand what’s happening on the sociological level of human sexuality in the Western world. More importantly, I want you to understand why.
After that, we’ll deal with Bruce Jenner’s trans gender coming out party.
The Spiritual View
Why do human beings believe certain things about right and wrong and act out what they believe in everyday life?
Because God exists–and from his nature come all concepts of righteousness. God revealed his moral standards to the world via human conscience, the Ten Commandments, the coming of Jesus Christ, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Morals exist because moral beings have free wills. To do right we must give God his rightful place in our lives and treat other humans with equal respect. This means not murdering, stealing, lying, coveting etc.
Right morals produce freedom and blessing. God wants people to be happy and fruitful.
But as most news shows don’t reference God and his laws for living, they also don’t mention the satanic underworld also influencing human behavior. The Bible is quite clear on the subject:
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).
Remember that when you see riots on television, or hear about governmental corruption, or dead babies killed in the womb, or any other form of bad or evil behavior.
There is a devil and demons in this world trying to influence people to do wrong. Call it a devil-inspired mindset that is meant to produce bondage and suffering.
So on the one hand, God loves people and wants them to be blessed. On the other, Satan hates people and wants them to be destroyed.
That’s the real why behind the good and bad in our world.
The World View
Secondly, in human societies, both God-thoughts and satanic thoughts become codified into a perspective on life we call a world view. World views don’t come out of thin air–they are the taking of either godly or satanic ideas and forming a mental grid with them through which we make our moral choices.
For most of America’s history, the reality of God and a biblical world view formed the backdrop of social behavior. In all the early documents of American history and even inscribed on the monuments today, you see references to God and his ways for living. In fact, during the original U.S. Constitutional Convention, the single most quoted source for framing the laws of America was the book of Deuteronomy.
Early Americans believed in God, the Bible, and his prescriptions for living.
Sure, there were times of moral decline in American society such as the early 1800s which led to the second spiritual awakening, and also the Roaring Twenties of the past century which preceded WWII. But it would not be incorrect to generalize that from 1776 to 1945 “God’s ideas” and moral standards prevailed in the United States as the dominant worldview.
What did this mean for American ideas about sex?
The Bible (and actually most religions and human history) teaches that sex is reserved for a man and woman in covenant marriage to God and each other. This perspective was revealed at the beginning of creation (Genesis 2) and confirmed in the New Testament. It became the normal practice of Christian Europe, the United States of America, and the vast majority of the civilized world.
In the biblical worldview, there are at least six perversions of God-ordained sex: 1) Adultery (sex with someone not your spouse), 2) Fornication (sex before marriage), 3) Incest (sex with a close relative), 4) Homosexuality (sex between members of the same gender), 5) Pedophilia (sex with children), and 6) Bestiality (sex with an animal).
All are condemned as abnormal and unhealthy–even evil–in the Old Testament and three are mentioned in the New Testament (while assuming the rest).
Sexual Atheism
This term is helpful because it describes how we can remove God from our understanding of sex.
Beginning in the 1950s, the USA began to drift away from its faith-based origins, including our socially-accepted understanding of sex. Satan’s ideas began to replace God’s maxims of human love and sexual relations. A worldview called secularism (humanism or atheism), began to grow a forest of trees in the American landscape. It was slow, deliberate, and satanically-inspired.
And it was progressive–just like the upgrades of computer software.
Here are the first three versions:
Sexual Atheism 1.0 – The first domino to fall in corrupting God’s view of sex was toleration for adultery including easy divorce and re-marriage. This was initially popularized by movie stars who slept around with their married co-stars and started an affair/divorce revolving door. Elizabeth Taylor is a prominent example who did it seven times. After a decade or so, the American public began to tolerate both adultery and divorce as never before. Today, adultery is common–and in some ways, expected.
Sexual Atheism 2.0 – In the 1960s, the Baby Boom generation, who’d grown up idolizing the unfaithful movie stars and now rock stars of their generation, made fornication fashionable. In that era it became “okay” to sleep around with anybody of the opposite sex–even if you weren’t married. Venereal diseases increased, babies out of wed-lock sky-rocketed, and over a number of decades, sex before marriage became the new norm for many singles.
Sexual Atheism 3.0 – The 80’s and 90’s brought the next logical deception in sexual practice–sex between members of the same sex. In some ways this was a reaction to the debasement of marriage, but it still came from the same source–the satanic world. Same sex relationships are not normal–it is abnormal when judged by universal and biblical norms. But in the last twenty years, the American nation has moved so far away from God and his principles that love itself has been re-defined to mean “doing what I want with whomever I want.”
Which brings us to Bruce Jenner–soon to be called Caitlyn Jenner. He is a tragic figure who was once an Olympic decathlon champion. He was born a man and has fathered children. He is the poster-child of the secular press and academia for:
Secular Atheism 4.0
In his recent interview with Diane Sawyer, which was held with much fanfare as “courageous” and “historic” from the progressive press, Jenner told the world he was born a man but considers himself a woman inside. Just recently he completed the final surgeries necessary for becoming female-ized.
His trans gender transformation will be celebrated in an upcoming article in Vanity Fair. In that piece, Jenner says he “suffered a panic attack the day after undergoing 10-hour facial-feminization surgery on March 15″—a procedure he believed would take 5 hours. Jenner thought to himself, “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?”
A counselor then assured him that all was well. Two months later, he is a “she” who goes by the name Caitlyn, wants to marry another woman, and is also hosting “girl’s nights” with wine and cheese to show off his/her new identity. Jenner’s children are putting a positive spin on their father’s coming out, but have refused to participate in Caitlyn’s docu-series for the E! network, set to begin this summer.
Now you know why the trans gender movement (e.g. common bathrooms) is starting to take off in the public schools. We’e been secularized by the satanic mindset. Who knows what the next versions of sexual atheism will include. Multiple people marrying? Sex with kids if it’s consensual? Sex with pets if its consensual? How about bigamy and polygamy?
A forest of immorality has been growing in this nation for six decades. I hope you see what’s happening from the higher elevation of Scripture.
Sexual sanity and purity has been replaced bit by bit with adultery, fornication, homosexuality and now transgenderism. They are “normal.” They were once abnormal–and even unthinakable. Biblical sexuality is now being ridiculed–all in the name of love and self-expression.
But here is what’s really going on: A satanic mindset is trying to destroy the image of God in human beings. It will cripple many lives and could even take down a great nation. Of course, that is the strategy of the immoral attack.
All the dominoes of sexual immorality have one thing in common: The exaltation of SELF. I will sleep with another man’s wife if I desire. I will have sex before marriage if I want. I will have sex with whatever person I choose. And I will change my gender if I feel inclined.
The key word in that sentence is I. To sin is to do your own thing.
To live a godly and moral life is to trust your Creator with your make-up, temptations, insecurities and questions and follow his wise ways for living and salvation–to make Him Lord of your life.
Not I, but Christ.
Weep over and pray for Bruce Jenner and those who will follow him off the cliff of self-realization. Only one self-discovery is paramount: “I am a sinner, and I need a Savior who can forgive and transform me.”
His name is Jesus.
We desperately need Him to bring us Revival 4.0.
Rotten Core, Baltimore, Who’s Your Friend?
This past week saw the ISIS Islamo-Nazis take major cities in Syria (Palmyra) and Iraq (Ramadi).
In Texas, record rains have broken a ten-year drought, but now flooding rivers have left parts of Austin and Houston underwater with at least eight people dead and sixteen missing.
On the Memorial Day weekend, following a month of turmoil, a record number of people were shot and killed in Baltimore, America’s 26th largest city.
Let’s pray for the situations in the Middle East and Texas. But today, let’s focus on what is absolutely destroying Maryland’s biggest city (along with Detroit, Chicago, and many others).
Rotten core, Baltimore, who’s your friend?
As you know, Baltimore has been in the news for six weeks after African American Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12, 2015 and died six days later–apparently of injuries suffered either during or after his arrest.
Gray’s death led to rioting in the streets of Baltimore, a stand down order of the police force for a period of time, and millions of dollars in property damage as angry mobs looted and destroyed local businesses.
On May 1, six Baltimore police officers, (three black and three white) were charged in Freddie Gray’s death.
The Baltimore riots were the latest in a string of police-citizen confrontations that some have used to stoke racial fires all across America. There are many more than these, but three brought national attention:
In August, 2014, Michael Brown robbed a convenience store in Furgason, Missouri, resisted arrest and charged Policeman Darren Wilson who was trying to apprehend him. In this initial race-war escalation incident, people shouted false slogans about Brown’s innocence (“Hand Up, Don’t Shoot!) which were later de-bunked. Wilson was cleared of all charges.
The Furgason furor was bogus from the beginning–an excuse for anarchy and race-hustling.
Then, in December 2014 a New York Grand Jury failed indict officers in the chokehold death of Eric Garner who resisted arrest for illegally selling cigarettes. This incident was tragic yet accidental. Riots ensued.
Finally, Freddie Gray died on April 18 after being arrested by police for illegal possession of a knife (he had a long rap sheet). The verdict is still out of this one, but many believe that District Attorney Marilyn Mosby over-charged six officers in Gray’s death and fanned the fires of hatred via her words (“This is our moment!”).
Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, also failed to protect the citizens of the “Star Spangled Banner” city by holding back police during early encounters with protesters. Her now infamous line: “We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”
Baltimore was looted and burned–and it has only gotten worse.
This past month was the deadliest that Baltimore has seen in more than 15 years. More than two dozen shootings over the Memorial Day holiday weekend alone had city police working around the clock. From West Baltimore to the East Side, a spike in weekend violence took place all over the city. Over the Memorial Day Weekend, city police report 28 shootings and 9 homicides.
Baltimore Police say they responded to six shootings on Friday night, seven on Saturday, five on Sunday and eleven by night fall on Monday. One of those included a double shooting in which a 9-year-old boy was found shot in the leg and a man who suffered a grazed wound to his head.
I like Baltimore. I’ve been there a number of times. It has many great attractions as a city and a lot of good people. But two social elements have been extremely hurtful to the lives and future of Baltimore. There is also one friend who needs to help heal the carnage and point the way to hope.
What are the negative factors that have created a rottenness in Baltimore’s urban core?
Negative Factor One – Bad Leadership
Former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, penned an astute assessment of what is rotten in Baltimore from a leadership standpoint. Entitled “The Collapse of Baltimore City,” he points out that Baltimore’s problem has been one-party dominance by Democrats for decades. The Democratic Party and its ideology have destroyed the once great city of Baltimore.
I don’t particularly like party labels because I know good people in both political parties. But it’s also true the today’s Democratic Party is not the party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, or even Franklin Roosevelt. It is generally far-left liberal, secular-based, socialism leaning, and produces many victims and government dependents.
Let’s use the modern term “progressive.” Progressive politics are regressive to people, cities and nations.
Here is Newt Gingrich’s fact-based proof that progressive leaders and policies play a major role in Baltimore’s rotten environment:
- Fact: the last Republican city council member in Baltimore City left office in 1942. That is 73 years of solid Democrat city councils.
- Fact: the last Republican mayor of Baltimore City left office in 1967. That is 48 years of unbroken control of the mayor’s office.
- Fact: the Maryland Senate is currently 33 Democrats to 14 Republicans.
- Fact: the Maryland House is currently 90 Democrats to 50 Republicans.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held both the Maryland Senate and the Maryland House of Delegates was 1897.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held even one chamber of the Maryland General Assembly–the House–was 1917. That is unbroken Democrat control of the Maryland legislature since 1918–or nearly a century of Democrat control.
- Fact: 7 out of 8 members of the Maryland delegation in the U.S. House are Democrats.
- Fact: Last Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland was elected in 1980.
I think you get the point. Progressive “leadership” (Democrats) has made Baltimore what it is today.
Gingrich points out:
“The collapse of order has a continuing effect. There has been a drastic increase in shootings and homicides in Baltimore since April 27. More than 50 people have been shot. At least 10 have been shot and four killed since Saturday May 9. Nonfatal shootings are up nearly 50 percent. All of this happened under the leadership of a Democrat mayor who was worried more about the rioters’ free speech than about the safety, protection, and livelihoods of innocent Baltimoreans.”
He concludes his argument by reminding us that the first duty of government is to protect the innocent and the weak from predators and violence. But progressives “favored the violent over the victims.”
Newt also destroys the false charge that the police are racist. Here is his second “fact check” list:
- Fact: More than half of the Baltimore City police force is minority.
- Fact: Four of the six top commanders are African American or Hispanic.
- Fact: Half of the police officers being prosecuted are African American.
- Fact: The problem is not lack of money. Baltimore spends $17,329 per student, and its unionized, bureaucratic schools fail. (Amazingly, as Archbishop of Baltimore William Lori points out, the Catholic schools cost $6,000 a year and have a 99 percent graduation rate. Yet the Democrats are committed to locking poor children out of those schools if it takes a dime away from funds for failing, unionized public schools.)
Gingrich summarizes that in Baltimore, and many other progressive-led cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York, bad leadership policies have “trapped people in dependency, killed small businesses in favor of bureaucracy, and favored unionized workers over children. The result has been a 50-year disaster which no liberal Democrat is prepared to analyze honestly.”
Problem one in Baltimore is the rotten core of progressive leadership (or lack of it).
Negative Factor Two – Family Breakdown
The other major factor in the chaos, crime, and rottenness of progressively-led cities in America is the tragic breakdown of the African-American family. Whereas relatively intact black families were the norm in this nation all the way up to the 1960s, that is no longer the case.
Seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Seven out of ten black teenage girls get pregnant and don’t graduate from high school. The “fathers” don’t take responsibility and split the scene. The single parent homes go on welfare. Crime increases in the neighborhood as fatherless children join the gangs to find “family” and peddle drugs to survive.
No one in America has been a clearer voice on the tragic breakdown of the black family that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, anchor of the number one cable news show in America, “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Please take time to watch this short video. No one says it plainer than Bill.
The stunning collapse of the African-American family has produced poverty, bad neighborhoods, and rotten cities where it’s easy to light a match of racism or any other grievance and watch the culture go up in smoke.
Two human resources are rotting Baltimore’s core: Broken families and bad leadership.
So who is your friend?
The person who is the answer to all human needs is Jesus Christ, the God-man, who not only died for our sins but sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of those who turn and become reconciled to God.
God in us provides the will to reject violence and hatred; Christ in our hearts gives us the power to create strong and healthy families; God’s grace in our lives lifts us out of despair and poverty; Christ-centered leaders enact and enforce good laws that create security for people, good schools for children, jobs for the industrious and deterrents for criminals.
How does Jesus accomplish this? Through his people–the Church–who rise up like the morning sun to bless the city through their prayers, evangelism, charity, acts of service, and leadership
Followers of Jesus in Baltimore–this is your kairos moment. Flood the streets with God’s grace, justice and goodness and pray that the Lord of the harvest will make Baltimore a “city on a shining hill.”
[An encouragement from Steve Hall, Northwest Prayer Leader: