Our Transparent Community Thanksgiving Service

In the name of transparency, I want to let you know exactly what’s in store for you if you vote with your feet to attend this year’s Community Thanksgiving Service.

That line is intended to speak in contrast to the current White House administration which promised to be the most transparent this nation has ever seen. As it has played out however, they’ve been doing nothing but covering up, misleading, deceiving, distancing, backpedaling and eating their empty promises. When South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson rudely interrupted the President’s joint session speech to Congress in 2009 yelling out, “You lie!” at least he was telling the truth.

In the news this past week (not the main stream lap dog news media, mind you), videos have surfaced unveiling some telling footage featuring one of the major advisors to the Affordable Care Act. The infamous consultant is Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor and Obamacare architect, who was paid $400,000 through contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services in 2009, in addition to other state contracts of $1.6 million to help design the health law.

You need to look up some of the videos to get the full impact of Gruber’s arrogance and condescension, but here are a couple of lines. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

And this: “This [Affordable Care Act] was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” If I had more space, there’s plenty more material indicting the administration’s intentionally dishonest approach. But you get the idea. You’re not stupid.

Now that’s what I call true transparency. This has been quite a revealing behind-the-scenes look at what many of the leading liberal elitists really think, but are usually careful to not say publicly. Yet they’re not even blushing as they brush this news aside.

Nancy Pelosi (should I even waste the ink on her comments?) has touted Gruber’s work in helping craft the healthcare plan. After his comments have gone public however, Pelosi now claims she doesn’t even know who he is, nor did he help write the bill.

Seriously, you can look all this stuff up. Not on the main stream news, however.

And President Obama himself is, of course, distancing himself from Gruber, calling him “some advisor who never worked on our staff.” Just some advisor, huh? Records show Gruber has visited the White House more than a dozen times, with one of the meetings in the Oval Office with Pres. Obama, which Gruber bragged about on a PBS “Frontline” interview in 2012, as they ironed out the bill.

The healthcare fiasco is just one of many news items which make it seem to me like we’re just not getting the whole story. Think IRS scandal, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Immigration issues, birth certificate (oh, I forgot, that one’s been settled, right?).

So when it comes to transparency you may not get it from Washington, but you will get it here without the spin. The Community Thanksgiving Service to be held this Sunday, Nov. 23, at 7:00 p.m. at the Petersburg First Baptist Church will be a worship and thanksgiving celebration to the Lord Almighty. We will sing praise songs and hymns. We will pray. We will read the Bible. There will be a gospel-centered message. We will receive an offering. We will offer a mix of healthy and unhealthy snacks after the service.

I’m not lying. Pastors from at least seven churches are planning to be there, and I hope you are, too. We think you’re smart enough to make a good decision and join us!