Jun 20 2011
Powerline explains how the US Department of Justice and the ATF deliberately allowed 2000 AK-47 style (semi-auto) rifles to be bought in the US illegally and then smuggled into Mexico, ostensibly to create a connection with drug gangs, but instead possibly for other, far more political motives.
Can you imagine the outcry from the Left and the media if the Bush administration did this?
Jun 17 2011
They’re going to have a Breakthrough Dialogue
Breakthrough Institute is hosting its Breakthrough Dialogue to discuss the challenge of modernizing liberalism in the wider context of human development and new risks. Breakthrough is hosting this small, private gathering of intellectuals with the purpose of gaining clarity and building community among important thought leaders.
……………….
The Dialogue will take place at the spectacular Cavallo Point resort near Sausalito, California. Our dining and meeting rooms overlook the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. The resort consists of a horseshoe of former Army officer houses, the insides of which were recently remodeled. There is a spa and massage center on-site, and the resort’s restaurant, Murray Circle, won a Michelin star last year. We are encouraging participants and speakers to bring their families to enjoy this special place.
I suggest that if the conference planners really want participants to see the fruit of liberalism, they should hold it in a public school auditorium in East Los Angeles, or Oakland, or maybe South Los Angeles, with lodging at nearby motels. That would be an object lesson in the results of the domination of public policy by liberals in California, and in California cities.
Bring your spouse for a romantic evening walk in the neighborhood.
Liberalism needs a breakthrough alright. But it needs to be the sort of breakthrough experienced by drug addicts who finally hit bottom and renounce everything that got them there.
May 26 2011
This is the most incredible set of photos I’ve seen about the destruction in Joplin, MO, with before and after photos of neighborhoods, stores, schools, etc.
May 25 2011
ABC News has put up basic pro-abortion propaganda masquerading as news.
Mixing facts and interpretation, without differentiating the two, the link above has a “news” story accompanied by a video (with the ABC News logo!) that was actually produced by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a strongly pro-abortion advocacy organization. The video is not even thinly disguised; it is straight-up pro-abortion propaganda. For it to be presented with the ABC News logo, in a “news” story purporting to report demographic changes in who gets abortions and why, is the clearest possible evidence of the pro-abortion slant of the major media, a part of their over-all leftist tilt.
It’s also evidence of the inability of the major media to keep news and opinion/perspective separate, despite the major media’s protestations that even though most of its members are left, they can still be objective in reporting the news.
Ask yourself this: would ABC News put up a video produced by, say, Focus on the Family, reporting the exact same facts as the Guttmacher video, but offering a different interpretation of causes and effects, and a different prescription for what women really need? And would it put up such a video as the sole interpretation of the demographic “facts”?
The idea is risible, of course.
Of course, ABC News didn’t even bother to ASK any pro-life organization for a competing interpretation to the Guttmacher propaganda piece. Or, if ABC News did ask, it certainly didn’t report it.
Instead, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (given a bully pulpit by ABC News) would have us believe the canard that “poverty causes abortion” and that more federal social spending/entitlements would reduce abortion (Not so, but even if it was true, so what? It’s not like abortion is a BAD thing to the pro-aborts of the world, right?).
In another post, I’ll discuss some interpretations of the demographic aspects of abortion that ABC News didn’t bother to solicit from any pro-life organization.
For now, just know this: you can’t trust the reporting of the major media on abortion. Period.
Or on much else, either.
May 24 2011
At 7:20 into the video, Netanyahu educates Obama about realities that our president apparently does not understand, based on recent speeches.
Does Obama know ANY of the history of Israel since 1947? Or does he just not care what happens to it?
h/t:rightcoast
May 17 2011
Here is an article on the Jewish people as the chosen people, by Dennis Prager
I assume that the type of person who reads columns such as this one has wondered at one time or another why, for thousands of years, there has been so much attention paid to Jews and why, today, to Israel, the one Jewish state.
But how do most people explain this preoccupation? There is no fully rational explanation for the amount of attention paid to the Jews and the Jewish state. And there is no fully rational explanation for the amount of hatred directed at Jews and the Jewish state.
A lifetime of study of this issue, including writing (with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin) a book on anti-Semitism (“Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism”) has convinced me that, along with all the rational explanations, there is one explanation that transcends reason alone.
It is that the Jews are God’s chosen people.
Now, believe me, dear reader, I am well aware of the hazards of making such a claim.
It sounds chauvinistic. It sounds racist. And it sounds irrational, if not bizarre.
But it is none of these.
As regards chauvinism, there is not a hint of inherent superiority in the claim of Jewish chosen-ness. In fact, the Jewish Bible, the book that states the Jews are chosen, constantly berates the Jews for their flawed moral behavior. No bible of any other religion is so critical of the religious group affiliated with that bible as the Hebrew Scriptures are of the Jews.
As for racism, Jewish chosen-ness cannot be racist by definition. Here is why: a) The Jews are not a race; there are Jews of every race. And b) any person of any race, ethnicity or nationality can become a member of the Jewish people and thereby be as chosen as Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah or the chief rabbi of Israel.
And with regard to chosen-ness being an irrational or even bizarre claim, it must be so only to atheists. They don’t believe in a Chooser, so they cannot believe in a Chosen. But for most believing Jews and Christians (most particularly the Founders who saw America as a Second Israel, a second Chosen People), Jewish Chosen-ness has been a given. And even the atheist must look at the evidence and conclude that the Jews play a role in history that defies reason.
Can reason alone explain how a hodgepodge of ex-slaves was able to change history — to introduce the moral God-Creator we know as God; to write the world’s most influential book, the Bible; to devise ethical monotheism; to be the only civilization to deny the cyclical worldview and give humanity belief in a linear (i.e., purposeful) history; to provide morality-driven prophets and so much more — without God playing the decisive role in this people’s history?
Without the Jews, there would be no Christianity (a fact acknowledged by the great majority of Christians) and no Islam (a fact acknowledged by almost no Muslims). Read Thomas Cahill’s “The Gifts of the Jews” or Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews” to get an idea about how much this people changed history.
What further renders the claim for Jewish chosen-ness worthy of rational consideration is that virtually every other nation has perceived itself as chosen or otherwise divinely special. For example, China means “Middle Kingdom” in Chinese — meaning that China is at the center of the world; and Japan considers itself the land where the sun originates (“Land of the Rising Sun”). The difference between Jewish chosen-ness and other nations’ similar claims is that no one cares about any other group considering itself Chosen, while vast numbers of non-Jews have either believed the Jews’ claim or have hated the Jews for it.
Perhaps the greatest evidence for the Jews’ chosen-ness has been provided in modern times, during which time evil has consistently targeted the Jews:
— Nazi Germany was more concerned with exterminating the Jews than with winning World War II.
— Throughout its 70-year history, the Soviet Union persecuted its Jews and tried to extinguish Judaism. Hatred of Jews was one thing communists and Nazis shared.
— The United Nations has spent more time discussing and condemning the Jewish state than any other country in the world. Yet, this state is smaller than every Central American country, including El Salvador, Panama and even Belize. Imagine if the amount of attention paid to Israel were paid to Belize — who would not think there was something extraordinary about that country?
— Much of the contemporary Muslim world — and nearly all the Arab world — is obsessed with annihilating the one Jewish state.
In the words of Catholic scholar Father Edward Flannery, the Jews carry the burden of God in history. Most Jews, being secular, do not believe this. And many Jews dislike talk of chosen-ness because they fear it will increase anti-Semitism; they may be right.
But it doesn’t alter the fact that the obsession with one of the smallest countries and smallest peoples on earth, and the unique hatred of the Jews and the Jewish state by the world’s most vicious ideologies, can be best explained only in transcendent terms. Namely that God, for whatever reason, chose the Jews.
Prager’s observation about how bad the Jewish scriptures make the Jews look runs parallel to the observations of many Christian apologists about how bad the four Gospels make the disciples look. In the Judeo-Christian scriptures, most of the major figures are described as very, very human, warts and all.
The basic idea? God chose people for reasons that He knows, but we don’t…. and the reasons don’t have much to do with the apparent qualities of those people.
Which does not make them one whit less chosen.
