May 23 2009

What Price Victory? #3

Category: election 2008,politics — amuzikman @ 9:25 am

The Minnesota senate election results are still being contested and a final winner has not yet been declared.  At this point democratic challenger, Al Franken (of Saturday Night Live fame), leads incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman by a margin of just over 200 votes.  And to absolutely no one’s surprise Mr. Franken now wants the recount process halted.  Could it be because he has somehow miraculously overcome a 700+ vote deficit to take this slim lead?  Or does he feel that all recount efforts have been concluded fairly and completely?  What do you think?  Is there ANYONE who thinks the outcome of this election still lies in the process of simply counting votes?  I know I don’t.

As soon as the initial results showed a close finish this race became the domain of lawyers and judges.  And anyone following the recount soap opera knows there is a statistical impossibility in the way additional votes were picked up by Franken, virtually all from heavily democratic precincts!  Go figure.

Now I am no fan of Al Franken. Someday maybe someone can tell me how in the world this nouveau-burlesque comedy writer ever got even one vote.  Oh, wait…. I live in a state that elected a body builder turned movie star, whose most famous utterance is, “I’ll be back”.  Never mind about the comedy writer…

But aside from the individuals involved there is a greater issue at stake-the electoral process.  Once again we see the relative ease with which our process of electing leaders can be usurped.  All it really takes is a couple of politically motivated people in key positions with a win-at-any-cost mentality.  An elections director here, a Secretary of State there…. (see Ann Coulter’s article on this for more details).

The complex legal challenges in this case may go on for many months, maybe even longer.  But it seems to me that no matter who is ultimately declared as winner, the loser is the Minnesota voter who will be left to ponder once again…why bother to vote?

May 16 2009

The REAL story of Samson and Delilah?

Category: arab,Islam,Israel,multi-cultural,music,politics,racism — harmonicminer @ 8:52 am

It seems that there is no story where the demands of art cannot be impressed into the service of politically correct “creativity,” and this “SAMSON” AND OPERATIC INSANITY appears to be on the same general plain as a crucifix in urine, or maybe a star of David in pig blood.

In Belgium, a government-funded opera company is presenting a bizarre reworking of the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. This “updated” version of a nineteenth century Saint-Saens melodrama depicts Samson as a Palestinian “freedom fighter”, not an Israelite, and portrays Delilah as a despicable Israeli agent, not a Philistine temptress.

In the climax of the production, Samson straps on a suicide vest and blows-up the Israeli “oppressors.” This politically-correct operatic indulgence follows announced plans by La Scala—on of the world’s most prestigious opera-houses—to produce a full-scale musical version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and by the Shanghai opera to offer a lavish, five hour singing-and-dancing adaptation of Marx’s “Das Kapital.” As the composer Franz Liszt once aptly observed: “All music is an insane asylum, but opera is the wing for incurables.”

Just a couple of observations, and a plug:

It WOULD be a government-funded opera company producing this trash. What private company would do it with the intent of making a profit? Of course, the Saudis will fund nearly anything that puts Israel and Jews in a bad light, and I’m just guessing that, much like Washington D.C., the Belgian government and lobbying apparatus is full of people on the Saudi payroll, who seem to own 1 out of 3 former congress critters and state department drudges.

As far as a Jewish Delilah goes, it would make more sense to cast Tokyo Rose as General MacArthur’s secret lover.

And the plug. The REAL story of Samson and Delilah, a story about sex and violence, and yet rated G.    “God Brings Down The House” is a particular show stopper.  At the link, just click the cover of Samson and Delilah, and then at the linked site you can play excerpts of the tunes.  Eat your heart out, Belgium.

Apr 09 2009

Random & Sporadic Thoughts

Category: appeasement,capitalism,constitution,Democrat,freedom,government,illegal alien,Iran,liberty,Obama,politics,Republican,right,socialism,taxes — amuzikman @ 10:15 am

Obama is proceeding with “immigration reform” (spelled a-m-n-e-s-t-y) in spite of the fact the American people clearly and unequivocally voiced their opposition to this the last time it was proposed.  Why?  Because amnesty and citizenship for illegals qualifies them for union membership.  And an increase in union membership is an increase in Democrat voters.  Obama has made no effort to disguise this as his motivation.

Obama is radically pro-abortion.  He is in favor of the killing of unborn infants with no restrictions, paid for with a government check.  He is also in favor of killing children born alive as a result of a botched abortion.  He is in favor of forcing doctors to perform abortions even if those doctors have a moral objection.

Does anyone remember Obama’s soft-spoken, relaxed and seemingly innocuous little comment to Joe the plumber?  “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”.  We now see that what he meant was a wholesale destruction of capitalism and a premeditated effort to replace it with socialism.

Obama is robbing our future generations of any hope of prosperity by an orgy of federal spending unheard of in our country.

Obama is reaching into the board rooms of private companies and firing employees.  He has crossed a line between public and private sectors that is unprecedented.

Obama has just completed an international trip with the message of appeasement to our enemies.  When, in the course of human history, has appeasement ever worked?

Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power.  Is there ANYONE who thinks this is a good thing?

The laundry list of Obama appointees who were revealed to have unpaid taxes is shameful.  Is there ANY private citizen who could get away with this wanton disregard for tax laws by simply saying “Oops, I’m sorry”?

The Republican Party is currently populated with political eunichs.  Where is the voice of opposition?

Obama wants to socialize medicine.  If this happens it will complete his coup d’état and America as we know it will be gone forever.

Many citizens of this great country are simply left speechless by this apparently unstoppable. radical, ultra-liberal assault on America.  So many of us feel a combination of powerlessness and outrage in the face of what is happening.  Many are asking, “What can I do to stop this madness?”  Not all of us have a public forum from which to vent our frustrations.  Not all of us are eloquent of speech or skilled in writing.  But we all have family and friends.  We all live lives that are made up of relationships.  This is where the battle must be fought – one friend, one family, one realtionship at a time.  Those of us who do believe America is essentially good – that it was founded and made great on a firm foundation of Judeo-Christian beliefs, that it is a place where people can be free, that perserverance and hard work will be rewarded and that anyone can acheive the American dream – must share our convictions and persuade our family and friends that it is an America worth fighting for.  For outrage is not enough, feeling helpless and powerless is no excuse, and inaction is not an option.

Yeah, I know it’s starting to sound like there should be a choir humming “My Country Tis Of Thee” in the background.  I don’t care. It is a battle worth fighting…but we had better start now.

Mar 14 2009

Does Christian Love call for taxes to fund social programs?

Category: economy,government,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:10 am

John Mark Reynolds thinks not, in Love Your Neighbor and Don’t Tax Him. 

Key graphs, more at the link.

Moral men have a duty to help their neighbors, but nobody has the right to force other people to help.

Jesus told a story of a Good Samaritan who crossed difficult social and cultural barriers to provide relief to an injured man. This is a good model for our own behavior. We should help the hurting neighbor even if he is a pariah in our community. The mortgage broker who has lost his job is also my neighbor and, when he is hurting and repentant, should receive pity, charity, and care—not just sermons about his errors.

Moral behavior is most valuable when it is not easy to do. The temptation is to avoid doing our moral duty by ignoring it or passing off the dirty work to somebody else.

The Scroogish Samaritan ignores his moral duty to help his neighbor. He assumes everybody should care only for self and destroys common culture by his selfishness. The Statist Samaritan forces everybody else to help the injured man and so gains a cheap feeling of virtue, but undermines any real virtue.
……..

Sadly, it is so much more blessed to give than to receive that the Statist Samaritan tries to give all the blessings to the state. He loves the state and so wishes to turn everyone’s appreciation for charity to it.

Not surprisingly charity that is coerced does harm to everyone. The injured party may be helped at first, but only at the cost of doing injustice to others. Taxing Peter forces Peter to help Paul, often does little for Paul, and almost certainly will make Peter resent Paul. Peter should help Paul, but making him do it will teach both men bad lessons. The taxed feels resentment as the object of his charity lacks a human face—he gives his coerced taxes to faceless bureaucracy—and the recipient becomes the ward of government.

When we pass our moral duties over to the state, we lose the power to do charity ourselves, turn an act of charity into coercion, and give the state too much power. People are habituated to look to the state to meet their needs and not their communities, churches, and family. This weakens every non-state institution and risks tyranny.

Forced charity is inefficient because it rarely distinguishes between worthy and unworthy attempts at charity. ….

Forced charity is bad for us because in removing our liberty to choose between goods it makes us perpetual dependents. No good person wants to be perpetually dependent on his neighbor, because his neighbor has a face and knows him. It is much easier to become a perpetual dependent on the government, because the government is faceless.

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Feb 06 2009

Another really, really inconvenient truth

Category: Congress,economy,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:25 am

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Feb 04 2009

Musically celebrating the Inauguration

Category: humor,music,politics — harmonicminer @ 4:30 pm

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Feb 01 2009

The honeymoon, part one

Category: politics — harmonicminer @ 9:07 am

So, is it just me, or is it obvious to everyone else that the press is giving those Obama appointees with vetting problems like unpaid taxes (shoot, undeclared tax liabilities), recent lobbying interests, suspicious connections with misdeeds in the Clinton administration, etc., a very, very easy time of it?

Where are the outraged columnists declaiming the poor judgment of Obama in failing to see to the vetting of his appointees before he names them?  (The Palin “non-vetting” rap on McCain comes to mind, and in that case there wasn’t even a there there.)  What ever happened to “hope and change” and the new breath of honesty and transparency that Obama was going to bring to office?

It’s as if the major media say just enough to claim they’ve covered it (rather like coverage of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers during the election season), but don’t really give the attention or emphasis they’d give to something similar from Republican appointees.

Somehow, I have this feeling that if, say, Rumsfeld had been implicated in tax avoidance after Bush appointed him as Secretary of Defense, the major media would have been all over him, and we’d be seeing editorial after editorial darkly hinting at skullduggery involving the Republican old boy network.  Or maybe not just hinting, but proclaiming.  In contrast, many commentators on the Right have been pretty reasonable about looking past matters that, had the shoe been on the other foot, would have been firing offenses.

I’ve heard of honeymoon periods before…..  but even honeymooners have to pay the hotel bill, don’t they?

Jan 31 2009

Lotsa British students of communism

Category: politics,society — harmonicminer @ 10:20 am

Satisfying his natural curiosity about how his excellent book, Liberal Fascism, is doing in Britain, Jonah Goldberg discovered that his book is only number TWO in the “political science and ideology” category.

Number ONE is  The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.

Hmmm

This would be the crypto-commies re-invigorating themselves before taking on the Islamic invasion of Britain?

Or maybe it’s the Islamic invaders buying the book, so they can know their enemy.  Their former enemy, anyway.

Or it’s the usual dutiful American foreign exchange students taking a political science class from some aging former denizen of Yorkshire at some once-great institution like Oxford or Cambridge (now living on their reputations, mostly), who thinks what Marx thought actually matters anymore, and whose American students are too stupid not to just look up the short version on Wikipedia.

Or it’s all the Russian expats, yearning for the good old days when you could torture someone in the Lubyanka (makes Abu Ghraib look like a meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society…  and you probably don’t even know what it is/was…..  and didn’t when the Soviets were still around, either) without having to look over your shoulder for a western reporter.  (Those days are coming back, though…  good ideas always do, right?  Like plutonium seasoning in your food.)

I think the most likely explanation is far more prosaic.   Britain has taken on the EU’s ridiculous global warming fear-fantasy, and, demonstrating that intemperate public policy is usually invented in the north temperate zone, British bureaucratic wanna-be-apparatchiks are making firewood harder and harder to get.  All that nasty CO2, you know.

And really, really bad ideas burn very brightly, for a short period of time.

I wonder what the carbon offset is for an idea that killed at least 100 million people, conservatively estimated.

I also wonder when my copy of “The Audacity of Hope” is going to get here from half.com.  It’s cold around here.

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Jan 28 2009

Forms of government, some truth about left and right

Category: capitalism,constitution,government,left,politics,right,socialism — harmonicminer @ 10:53 am
Not a perfect presentation, but much better than what’s typically on offer in the schools, or the media.

H/T: Jonah Goldberg

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Jan 23 2009

The Promises

Category: Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:36 am

This is interesting:

PolitiFact | The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama’s Campaign Promises

PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

Just click the link and you can keep track as time goes on. And, of course, you can always pray that he won’t keep some of his promises.

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