Nov 17 2008

The Left At Christian Universities, Part 6: You can’t post that HERE!

Category: diversity,higher education,left,multi-cultural,politics — harmonicminer @ 1:32 pm

If you missed it or want to read it again, Part 5 of this series is here.

At Pepperdine, students aren’t allowed to post signs announcing meetings that might be critical of Obama. And they have a “Director of Intercultural Affairs” to enforce the rule on 18 yr old freshman Republicans, too. After describing the de facto censorship of the the College Republicans at Pepperdine, Mike Adams delivers this assessment of one of the players:
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Nov 15 2008

As goes Chicago goes Illinois

Category: Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:50 pm

In an interesting description of the jockeying involved in trying to get President-elect Obama’s senate seat filled, for the remainder of his term, we find this nugget about the man who will make the decision. Sounds like Illinois politics and Chicago politics were twins, separated at birth, and reconnected shortly after…

And smack dab in the middle of the maelstrom is the current governor, Milorad “Rod” R. Blagojevich, proud Serbian-American. He is also a man on the cusp of becoming the fourth Illinois governor out of the last seven to be indicted for corruption. He was mentioned prominently and not in the best light, during the trial of Obama friend, financier, and patron Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted of fraud in connection with a statehouse “pay to play” scheme. Federal prosecutors have leaked the information that they think they have enough on the governor for an indictment, largely, it is believed, because Rezko is singing to the feds in exchange for a lighter sentence. There is also a move among members of his own party in the Illinois House to impeach him. The governor is not only unpopular in the state, he is spectacularly and universally hated. A recent poll conducted by the Chicago Tribune found that just 13% of residents approved of the job he was doing.

In short, Governor Blagojevich might want to hurry the process of selecting Obama’s replacement along since he may not be sleeping in the governor’s mansion much longer. He claims he wants to settle the matter before Christmas. If so, he will probably be able to make that deadline, barely, before either resigning in disgrace or being kicked out by members of his own party.

At least the Democrats dislike him, too…. that’s something.

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Nov 09 2008

P.J.O’Rourke: We Blew It

Category: left,politics,right — harmonicminer @ 7:49 pm

The satirist at his dyspeptic best.

A look back in remorse on the conservative opportunity that was squandered.

Read it all. You won’t agree with this or that, but it’s hard to deny a great deal of it.

I have only one addition: the Left is bound to blow it, too, though the kind of damage the Left can do is much harder to undo.

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Nov 06 2008

Economic reality, government programs, food and energy

Category: Congress,economy,energy,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:02 am

John Stossel has some good thoughts on what is, and is not, in the power of governments. He begins by quoting African-American economist Walter Williams:

“Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good,” Williams says.

The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.

“Most of life is outside the government sector,” says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. “Most change in America doesn’t come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn’t come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up.”

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Nov 03 2008

A BUNCH of knockout videos, short, sweet, and to the point: bumped AGAIN!

Category: election 2008,McCain,Obama,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:01 pm

I think these videos are so great that I just want to keep them up front and center, so I may promote them occasionally. Here they are again!

This is the campaign to defeat Obama, in a nutshell.

I watched them all.  Obama supporters may complain about interpretations, but these videos do not have a factual error I can see.  They’re quite concise, delivered engagingly, and make their point very clearly.

The McCain campaign should take a lesson from these people.

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Oct 31 2008

The End is Not Near: Or is it?

Category: politics,USA — harmonicminer @ 12:20 pm

Here is an article on American foreign policy couched as a book review.

In From Colony to Superpower, George Herring, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky, provides a comprehensive, competent and rather conventional narrative history of US foreign policy from the origins of the “empire of liberty” in the 18th century to its “unipolar moment” following the fall of the Soviet Union and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001…………….

Despite some major failures, Herring argues, American foreign policy has been “spectacularly successful.” Behaving, for the most part, like a traditional great power, the US has balanced its zeal to carry out a providential mission to spread Christianity and democracy with the pragmatic pursuit of its national interests. Unilateralist, but almost never isolationist, America conquered a continent, dominated its hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean, prevailed in two world wars, won the Cold War and “extended its economic influence, military might, popular culture and ‘soft power’ through much of the world.”

Add this to the list of books (and articles) heralding the much hoped for and frequently sought end of American hegemony on the world stage, in which authors try to make the case that the USA is “losing its grip” and is no longer going to be the “hyperpower” that has dominated the world since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Continue reading “The End is Not Near: Or is it?”

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Oct 26 2008

Evidence That Demands A Verdict

Category: politics — amuzikman @ 11:58 pm

This, the title of a very good book by author Josh McDowell.  First released in 1972, the book deals with the subject of Christian apologetics and it was written to help Christians defend their faith in everything from casual conversation to doctoral dissertations.  I think the book has been updated since it’s first date of publication and is still a very credible source related to the historical evidence of the Christian faith.

If I may I’d like to borrow this book title as a challenge and a plea to voters.  A volume of credible and verifiable evidence now exists relating to both major candidates for president.  Though there have been various attempts to mask and otherwise obfuscate the histories and governance philosophies of both men, there is now no excuse.  It is not a difficult task to investigate the candidates, to learn about their past, their plans, their guiding principles, their hopes and desires, their successes and their failures.  The evidence is plentiful.

All this evidence is meaningless, however, if it is not taken into account when deciding a verdict.  Just as a jury should never convict a defendant without examination of the evidence, I believe a voter should never cast a ballot without a thorough examination of the candidates.  Just as criminal conviction of a defendant based on their race would be a terrible injustice, so would election of an African American to the highest office in the land without examination of that person’s resume’.  Just as a defendant is innocent until proven guilty a political candidate must be given the benefit of the doubt about the veracity of their statements until such time as the reliability of those statements can be verified – and they MUST be verified.

Now the prosecution and defense of both candidates is about to rest.  You, the voter are the jury, and your vote is your finding, your final judgment.  What will be the basis on which you cast your vote? Age? Dress? Speaking ability? Eloquence? Skin color? Warm fuzzy feelings? A simple belief in the candidate? Or will it be based on examination of the evidence?  Evidence that does indeed demand a verdict.

If you cannot be bothered to examine the evidence then you have no business voting any more than you would to serve on a jury.  If you have not and will not examine the evidence then maybe you should sit this one out. Consider yourself recused.  The stakes are too high and the possible wrong verdict could punish ALL of us for a very long time.

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Oct 23 2008

Get out of the kitchen

Category: election 2008,McCain,media,Obama,politics,racism — harmonicminer @ 8:44 am

The main stream media continues to pursue its “Obama the victim” narrative, portrying him as the victim of hate in some unusual way, and consulting only left-leaning organizations and think-tanks to confirm its thesis.  Of course, if they actually did due diligence and interviewed both sides equally, and compared actual research from both sides, they would discover that there is…  no story!  Can’t have that, and the election isn’t quite in the bag for Obama yet, and so:

An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don’t mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse.

And this is somehow worse than the term Bushitler? Let’s just add up the Hitler references to Bush, and compare numbers. But, of course, that would require real research and reporting, and we can’t expect that, can we?  Just count the lawyers and reporters parachuted into Alaska to defame Palin, and compare the numbers to those who have really investigated Obama’s past and alliances, and you’ll get the idea.

“To me, this all feels much worse than we’ve seen in some time,” said Kathryn Kolbert , the president of People for the American Way , which monitors political speech.

Well, yes, because this time it’s YOUR guy on the receiving end of the very kind of hatred that People for the American Way and its allies have stirred up against Bush and Republicans. Except that it isn’t, for the simple reason that no mainstream Republican organization, conservative outlet, commentator or website has used the kind of language being reported here. Rather, it’s a very small fringe of over-the-top extremists, and the Left would love to paint the entire Right as that extreme… but it just won’t wash.

Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don’t accept such change gracefully.

Come on, just say it. Obama is black, and we all know those wascally weepublicans are wacists. Oh, and by the way: which “experts”? This is journalism school mumbo-jumbo for “this is what I think, and if I phrase it this way I can pretend it’s straight news”.
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Oct 22 2008

Not new, but probably true

Category: freedom,philosophy,politics — harmonicminer @ 9:39 am

I was reminded of this at azusapacificalumni.com

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of Athenian Republic some 2000 years earlier: “A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simply cannot exist as a pemanent form of government.”
“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

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Oct 20 2008

Evangelicals, politics and society: what the Left wishes was true, but isn’t

Category: election 2008,left,philosophy,politics,right,theology — harmonicminer @ 2:17 pm

J. Daryl Charles, author of “Between Pacifism and Jihad“, comments on an example of journalistic wish-fulfillment in which David D. Kirkpatrick prays earnestly for the “crack-up of Evangelical politics”. Well, to be fair, he only cheerleads what he wishes was the end of Right-leaning evangelicalism.  After pointing out that the trends present in mega-churches and the “emerging” church are not dispositive of the major part of evangelical Christendom, Charles, whose knowledge of evangelicalism is wide and deep, provides plenty of examples that were in Kirkpatrick’s backyard, but which he failed to notice…  maybe the fences were too high in New York City, so Kirkpatrick had to go to the midwest to find something to write about.  Ending graphs, though Charles’ entire take is worth reading:

And yet, had Kirkpatrick done his homework, his research would have taken him, not to Wichita, Kansas, but to his own backyard and New York City, where evangelical congregations are vibrant and socially engaged. Consider, for example, the very large and increasingly influential Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which embodies what is salutary, healthy, and encouraging about Protestant evangelicalism. But because Redeemer, given its simultaneous commitments to theological orthodoxy and social responsibility, has been making a difference in the city for almost two decades (and doing so without a so-called leftward political shift), such evidence would undermine Kirkpatrick’s thesis. Similar examples abound in metropolitan areas nationwide.
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