Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Har har har...

Crosswalk.com has a news story today about a school in Michigan that did a terrorism response drill involving the bombing of a school bus. Sounds good? The problem is that the fictional terrorists were homeschool advocates...

According to the Muskegon Chronicle newspaper, the exercise was designed to "simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group called 'Wackos Against Schools and Education,' who believe everyone should be home schooled."

Normally I would brush this aside as just harmless. However, two facts leap out at the reader. 1) Had they used almost any other group as a fictious terrorist like radical environmentalists, animal rights activists or Muslims (all three of which have a serious and longstanding record of terrorism, unlike homeschoolers who mostly want to be left alone), they would have felt the wrath of the ACLU, CAIR etc. 2) There is a pervasive hostility to homeschooling amongst the pseudo-intellecutal elites, and the secular culture in general. This may be a response to the liberal hegemony of union run failed public schools or a reflection of the real disdain and hostility of the culture as a whole towards Christians. Regardless it was done in poor taste and homeschoolers have every right to be outraged.
Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, made a great point at a recent luncheon reprinted in Southern Seminary Magazine. Dr. Mohler stated five characteristics we should seek in a new generation of pastors and the third one was the recapturing of expository preaching, preaching the Living Word of God. As Dr. Mohler rightly states, too many pastors use a verse of scripture as a launching point for their sermon and that is the last time God's Word is preached from the pulpit. Too many sermons I have listened too have focused on church governance and Christian living (which are important) and too little on the Word. The church has become too enamoured of The Purpose Driven Life and the Left Behind series, substituting second and third hand Biblical knowledge for direct preaching of the Word.

I know that conventional wisdom holds that you need to make sermons "relevant". At church last weekend, the youth pastor preached and as part of his sermon used a video clip from Disney's The Lion King as an illustration. Don't get me wrong, he is a great guy and a good youth pastor. However, it wasn't a very good use of video, the sermon was way off from an exegetical standpoint and he didn't seem to recognize the pagan viewpoint of Simba talking to his dead animal father at the bequest of a witchdoctor monkey. There comes a point where you have to let the Word and the Holy Spirit speak for themselves. We are in a sad state indeed when a Disney movie with talking animals is needed to make a point about a Biblical passage.

Charles Spurgeon filled the hall with thousands when he preached, and even a cursory look at his sermons shows a solid expository style and a reverence for the Word of God. He preached the Word and God took care of the rest. We too often feel that we have to carry the load when getting the message out. Preach the Word of God and He will see to it that the audience is there. It is true that we must be disciples, carrying out the Great Commission but we must also be servants and not assume that we have a better plan than God. To paraphrase another pagan themed movie, if you preach it they will come. Our goal ought not be to fill churches with hundreds of lukewarm Laodiceans. Better to preach the Word of God to 50 committed believers than to 500 casual "Christians". We are not doing them a favor or the church a favor by given them a watered down, more palatable Gospel. The Gospel is loving but it is also stern, and in an effort to not scare people away the church is in danger of losing it's very foundational truths, without which we see apostasy and falling away like the Episcopalians. Evidence shows that the conservative, Bible believing *GASP* FUNDAMENTALIST churches are the ones that are growing, not the liberal, go along to get along denominations.
Big Time!

President Bush was in Southwest Ohio yesterday and drew a crowd estimated at 50,000 to the rally. Read that again: 50,000. Bush is extremely popular in this part of the state as well as state wide. Peter Bronson of the Cincinnati Enquirer points out that there was only 7 days notice of his coming, so they managed to draw that big of a crowd on very short notice. Pretty impressive stuff!

It is only a matter of time before Kerry yanks his ads totally from Ohio. If he doesn't score big in the debates he may need that ad money to focus on states he should win but is losing ground in, like Wisconsin and Minnesota. Some states are clearly a lost cause at this point, even states that Gore won like Missouri.

Somewhere Hillary Clinton is smiling and preparing her announcement speech for 2008.

Thursday, September 23, 2004

I thought of this Kerry analogy while reading posts on the World Mag blog...

Kerry and his supporters respond to virtually any critique by screechnig about his Vietnam service. How dare you be critical of a war hero! (ignoring how critical they were of Bob Dole, a legitimate war hero who suffered real wounds). Kerry isn't the first man to win acclaim in war and then betray his fellow soldiers and shame his nation.

Benedict Arnold was a celebrated war hero, having fought alongside Ethan Allen in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. Reagrdless of his prior military exploits, he is branded one of histories great terrors, with a name that has become synonymous with treasonous behavior. John Kerry should keep that in mind, being a war hero (however dubious) one day doesn't mean you get a free pass forever.
I was listening to Bob Burney yesterday and he was quoting from an L.A. Times (registration req'd) expose on TBN. Now I am not a fan of the L.A. Times and doubt a lot of what they say, but this story rings pretty true to me based on what I have seen and what others have said about TBN.

Apparently the foudners of TBN's "ministry", Paul and Jan Crouch, live quite the lavish lifestyle. Now I don't mean he has a new car. I mean they live in 30 luxurious houses paid for by the faithful contribution of well-meaning poor folks who don't know a shyster when they see one. They fly in a private jet. They earn over $700,000 between the two of them. They operate at a huge multi-million surplus and yet still wail and beg for money during "Praise-a-thons".

Now I know that the servant is worthy of his hire. I don't begrudge anyone their salaries. I do object to what is an obvious abdication of responsibility and stewardship. I don't think there is even a little bit of Gospel basis for their lifestyle. I think they hoodwink poor old ladies out of their money and do so in the name of Christ Jesus. I can think of few things worse than using the Gospel to steal from the flock. Perhaps almost as badly, this gives ammunition to the opponents of the Gospel. "See how guillable these people are, no wonder they believe in fairy tales about a guy dying on a cross and being resurrected." The church does not need this sort of attention. We should be focusing on the Good News, not on snake oil salesmen who lie their way into riches.

The main problem is Biblical illiteracy. People who know little about His Word are easily swayed by ouot of context and mistranslations of the Bible, because they don't know better. There are a myriad of problems caused by this and only one sure solution: read it!
Good stuff...

Eschatology makes my head hurt normally, but the Evangelical Outpost has a nice summary of eschatology and a spirited but generally courteous discussion to follow. Nice to see a decent Biblical argument that (at least so far in the posts) has not turned ugly...
When is a strike not a strike?

Teachers in Kentucky are staying home Monday to protest against increases in health insurance costs. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that my kid's teachers in Kenton County are joining in and we were notified today that the kids would be staying home on Monday. Not a big deal for us since my wife is a stay-at-home mom but those kids with working parents will need to find an alternative that will cost them. Almost every employer in the country is raising the empoyees share of health insurance. We don't all walk out.

If teachers think they are getting a raw deal, let them find other jobs. I get that they love their jobs (at least some of them) but this is the reality of the situation. With skyrocketing health costs due to excessive litigation, everyone is forced to pay more to subsidize the trial lawyers (just ask John Edwards). In order to eat up part of the teachers increased costs, that means the money has to come from somewhere. Either something else gets cut or taxes get raised. IT HAS TO COME FROM SOMEWHERE. You can't just arbitrarily take the money out of a magic basket of gold. Socialized medicine is clearly not the answer, so we need to look hard at alternative ways to decrease the costs of health care. In the meantime, the teachers have decided to place the burden on working Americans to make their petty point.

You say you are in this profession for the kids. Really?

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Just a riot!

David Korn, Washington editor of the leftist magazine The Nation and author of the cleverly named book The Lies of George W Bush, was on Fox News tonight as a guest on John Kasich's show Heartland. He was scrambling to try to defend Dan Rather and the obvious lies he spouts night after night about his forged memos. The new latest defense is that while the memos are indeed lies, is that it is conservatives who are muddling the real focus here, which liberals think should be on the accusations made in an admittedly false document!

Excuse me?

If I put out a memo, proved to be false, that John Kerry had carnal knowledge of sheep last week, even if it is proved to be false we still should focus on the allegations and not on the false memo? What kind of tortured logic is that? This is how far the Left has fallen off the sanity bandwagon, and yet they wonder why Bush keeps climbing in the polls even in formerly safe Gore states like Minnesota.

We should demand that CBS come clean about who gave them the memo. They are clearly covering it up out of embarrassment. CBS should expose the source of these bogus memos and admit that they are false and what their role has been in trying to cover it up.

Another week goes by and the focus is on Vietnam and this time an obvious desperation ploy to slam the President with a bogus memo that even if it were true no one would care about! The American people are more concerned with the last 3 years and who is best able to lead us in the war on terror over the next four years. It is Kerry who has made this campaign about the past and it is going to cost him the election (along with his being a far leftist, East Coast elitist liberal).

Friday, September 17, 2004

John Kerry pretending to be a champion of Second Amendment rights has always been laughable and hasn't worked in the least. He may assume that all gun owners and hunters are rubes, but we know a decoy from the real thing when we see them. Dressing up like a hunter and cavorting for the cameras in blaze orange doesn't wipe away the stain on 20 years of voting for every gun control bill that came along.

Kimberly Strassell, on OpinionJournal.com, is glad that Kerry has finally given up pretending to be a friend of hunters and gun owners. She repeats one of my favorite quotes of the election season (other than Howard Dean saying that Job was his favorite book in the New Testament)...

Take, for instance, a July interview in which he was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. Here was our Nantucket Natty Bumppo's response: "Probably I'd have to say deer. . . . I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach."

What she fails to point out, as have most commentators, is that while crawling on your stomach is NOT how you hunt deer, more importantly NO ONE hunts deer with a "12-gauge double barrel", trusty or not. True, so states require you to use a shotgun when hunting deer but in those states almost everyone uses a pump or semi-auto. I don't know that I have ever seen a double-barrelled shotgun that has rifling for shooting slugs. I know of NO ONE that shoots deer with a "12-gauge double-barrel", trusty or otherwise.

John, you aren't fooling anyone. Embrace your east coast liberalism. It is probably better to lose honestly for what you are than dishonestly pretending to be something you are not.
Pat Crowley writes in the Cincinnati Enquirer about the political dichotomy between Ohio and Kentucky. Because we sit on the border and a large percentage of Cincinnati's workers live n Kentucky, we see a little of both worlds. In the Presidential race, it is a tale of two cities (or states in this case). Ohio is inunudated with candidates. Bush, Cheney, Kerry and Edwards are all over Ohio. In Kentucky, while we get the TV and radio ads since they originate in Ohio, the candidates are nowhere to be seen. He hots on a bigger issue with this comment...

But there is a also a deeper reason why Kentucky is almost certain to be a red state this year, and it explains why Kerry is going to have a hard time winning.

Parties can't win with near hatred for their opponent but only lukewarm support for their own nominee. Ask the Republicans about 1992 and 1996. The party couldn't stand Clinton, but the GOP faithful roused little passion for his opponents.

The same dynamic is happening this year. Democrats are working hard to defeat Bush on issues such as Iraq, the economy, the deficit and more. Against a stronger opponent I'm convinced Bush would be in serious trouble.

But Kerry does little to raise the juice of most voters. He's there because the Democrats, at least nationally, currently have a very thin bench. He was the best they had, but that's probably not going to be good enough.

I've said it before, John Kerry is the Democrats Bob Dole. We expected Dole, a legitimate war hero, to just show up and the contrast between him and draft dodger Bill Clinton would lead to him sailing into the White House almost unopposed. Unfortunately, conservatives were uninspired by Dole and didn't show up. Heck we didn't show up all that much in 2000 and Bush won. His support amongst the religious right is at it's peak and I expect my peeps will show up in droves nationwide.

Also, Cincinnati and southwest Ohio in general are far more conservative than Toledo and Cleveland, probably due in part to our proximity to Northern Kentucky.

Things are starting to sound grim in the Kerry camp. With basically six weeks to go, Kerry keeps sliding. Unless something dramtic happens soon, this race might be over. I know nothing is over until the votes are counted (or recounted and re-re-counted until the Democrats and their lawyers have had enough), but Kerry needs to find some momentum fast. The big opportunity might be the debates but when he shows up on national TV and comes across as haughty and dour (which he will), I doubt he will inspire much confidence. If he loses, I imagine the Swift Boat Vets will have played a large part, as here we are in mid-Septmeber and he is spending all of his energy defending his increasingly dubious Vietnam war record. You live by the sword and die by the sword. Kerry got his wish and this election is all about his war record, it just didn't work out quite like he had hoped.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

As I was reading OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web today, I came across this quote from Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe...

John Kerry is in trouble because the Bush campaign has seized control of what psychologists call the "frame" of this year's presidential contest. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and company have framed the election starkly: Bush will keep us safe in a time of terror. He will put money in people's pockets by cutting our taxes, and somehow that will also be good for the economy.

This is a telling quote. To leftists like Kuttner, ALL tax dollars belong to the government and they determine how much we should get to put in our pockets. To conservatives, it is OUR money and WE should decide how much to send to the government. Kuttner's blind ideology shows further in this paragraph....

For Kerry and for Democrats, the frustrating reality is that everything important about George Bush and his presidency is a lie. Bush himself is far more of a phony. As several biographies have documented, he virtually fell upwards, benefiting from family connections to survive a dissolute youth, draft avoidance, and several business failures. But Bush has seized the iconography of the honest cowboy, the regular guy clearing brush on his Texas ranch, the war hero arriving by fighter plane to rescue America. That Kerry actually served in combat, that he made his way upwards with far less family help, gets buried under the smears.

BUSH is living a lie? Kuttner aparently takes at face value the hit jobs done by leftist "biographers", and yet discounts eye witnesses of John Kerry's self-inflated war exploits. Kerry is in trouble not because of framing the election. Kerry is in trouble because he is what his detractors claim: an elitist liberal who is pretending to be a moderate. He predicated his entire campaign on being a war hero 30 years ago, and it turns out that he lied about big chunks of that (like the memory seared-seared!- into his mind about a false trip to Cambodia. Lies about being wounded when in fact they were self-inflicted. Lies about his fellow servicemen and women when he got back to the states. Lies, lies and more lies.).

Kerry opened the Pandora's Box of Vietnam and now he has to deal with it. Kuttner and his ilk can't imagine that everyone in America doesn't agree with them, so they must have been duped by Bush because he is so clever. Or is he stupid? Or cleverly stupid? Kuttner is like most New Englanders/East Coasters, he is outraged that the rubes in fly-over America would dare question the judgement of the Boston and New York media outlets. Here's a hint Robbie, America has moved past you people. It was your lies and bias that forced us to find alternate methods of information gathering. First talk radio, which people like you villified as causing the Oklahoma city bombings, and then the internet and finally Fox News. You brought this upon yourselves just as surely as Kerry did by running on a platform of "I served in Vietnam, elect me!"

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

I am sure this will be even-handed....

Richard Ostling, a well-known writer on religious subjects, writes about a new PBS show called The Question of God, a show purporting to examine the question of the existance of God. Red flags immediately go up, as the show looks specifically at Genesis and is hosted by unabashed liberal Bill Moyers.

Ostling wonders aloud if Christians and other people of faith will be overjoyed by the mere raising of the question by PBS...

Believers may be so pleased PBS is even taking the God issue seriously and portraying Lewis' conversion that they'll overlook the tilt against belief.

In a word, no. Ostling goes on to say...

So Question unwittingly indicates that faith remains on the defensive among cultural elitists, notwithstanding popular-level revivals and the supposed Twilight of Atheism proclaimed in a new book by Alister McGrath, a Lewis-style atheist turned Oxford theist.

The programs seem to reflect less of Nicholi, a churchgoing Protestant, than of Tatge, a former Catholic on a "faith journey" wed to an agnostic who co-produced.

So we have a panel of people mostly hostile to faith and a few weak-kneed believers. PBS has tried hard to produce shows about faith but invariably falls short. This may be due to a combinaton of fearing to cross the imaginary line between church and state or it may be based in the inherent leftist hostility to faith. Most likely it is a combination of the two. It is virtually impossible to find common ground behind the self-appointed cultural elites who sneer at people of faith and those same people of faith who disdain the cultural elites. Those in the middle are like those who are lukewarm in the church of Laodicea "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit you out of My mouth." (Rev 3:15-16).

If you deny God in all of His Glory to appeal to the pseudo-intellectuals in academia and Hollywood, you lack the changed nature of a Christian. If you are one of th elite and profess a strong faith, you find yourself outcast and ridiculed like Mel Gibson. It is imposible to please the world and please God at the same time, so everyone must choose who they serve. Like Joshua, me and my family choose the Lord.
'tis a glorious day in Northern Kentucky, as our new Wal-Mart Supercenter has opened in Fort Wright, providing a plethora of inexpensive products and friendly, non-union employees. Never again will I darken the door of our local Krogers, with it's poor selection, terrible prices and rude employees!

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has a scathing critique of both Dan Rather and Big Media in general regarding the fraudulent memo's regarding Bush's service record.

These are a few of my favorite lines from Goldberg...

Anyway, let me make one directly partisan point while I'm at it. Dan Rather considers it outrageous and offensive that anyone would question the judgment that led to this situation. He defends what appear to be very shoddy methods (reading letters over the phone to sources, asking sources not to talk to the press, etc.), as if only a "partisan" or a fool would question them.
Well, if you agree with Rather, maybe you should give just a smidgen more slack to George W. Bush about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's sources were more solid by several orders of magnitude than Rather's, and yet it is "obvious" to so many that Bush lied while Rather deserves the benefit of the doubt. George W. Bush had the head of the CIA, the intelligence agencies of all our allies, the Clinton administration, the United Nations, and most of the establishment media generally backing his understanding of the threat from Iraq. Dan Rather had a couple shoddy Xeroxes — not all of which were examined thoroughly or at all. He interviewed a partisan — Ben Barnes — a huge backer of Kerry whose story has changed several times. But because many who hate Bush believe he lied, they are willing to believe any lies that confirm what they already know to be true.


That puts it pretty succintly. I have said over and over again what a hypocritical party the Democrats are. Bush serving in the National Guard rather than going to Vietnam disqualifies him as Commander-in-Chief but Clinton dodging the draft entirely was irrelevant. MoveOn.org's ads are perfetcly legal, nay wonderous expressions of our First Amendment rights but the Swift Boat Veteran ads are deceitful and shold be silenced. What Rather is outraged about is that anyone would dare question him, as he thinks we are still in a world with three equally biased news stations that provide all of the news the public gets. Surprise Gunga Dan, we no longer rely on CBS/ABC/NBC, in fact I and many others never watch the network news channels. Rather is a relic, a dinosaur of an age gone by and he isn't smart enough or man enough to realize it.
Speaking punishing criminals (or the lack thereof)....

Fox News reports that model citizen Brian DeVries is being released from prison in San Jose, California. So what? Well Mr. DeVries is what we like to call a serial sex offender. According to Fox, he has molested at least 9 young boys in New Hampshire, Florida and California. That is just the ones we know about. Now he is leaving prison and moving to Washington state, where perhaps he will have some anonymity? His parents are ecstatic...

"I think (the judge) made the right decision," DeVries' father, Barry, told reporters outside court. "Now he goes on with his life."

What about those 9+ boys he molested? Can they get on with their lives? Or has he scarred them for life? He has been in this treatment program for violent sex offenders since 1997, a whopping 7 years. 7 years. That is less than one year for every boy he molested, every life he destroyed.

The two psychologists who examined DeVries disagreed as to his readiness to rejoin society. The one who supported releasing him says...

"I think we have to allow people to change," Charlene Steen, a psychologist who evaluated DeVries and testified on his behalf, said Monday. "He has clearly changed his behavior ... He's done everything in his power not to reoffend."

Of course he hasn't reoffended, he has been locked up! I am all for people changing their lives, but we ought not put the children of Washington state at risk to see if DeVries is cured. Homosexuality is a deviant behavior, child molestation doubly so. He has been castrated, but my understanding is that is off limited efficacy. Homosexuality and pedophillia are mental disorders, so I would expect we will be hearing about another victim of Mr. DeVries in the not too distant future. Why do we let predators out on the street?
Speaking of gun control...

One of the last vestiges of the Clinton era died yesterday as the "assault weapons" ban expired. If there was every a piece of legislation that deserved to be let go, this was it. It did nothing to stop crime. A very informative article in today's Cincinnati Enquirer quotes a gun dealer, referring to the sale of the liberal bogeyman, AK-47's....

It never outlawed the sale of AK-47s and SKS assault rifles - Denny (Karen Denny, owner of Land, Air & Sea Inc) said she has sold those every week. Rather, the law restricted the manufacture and importation of new ones.

It is informative that while police chiefs support the ban, the actual cops on the street who are allegedly threatened by these weapons are ambivalent...

The International Association of Chiefs of Police called for members to urge their congressional delegates to extend the ban. But local police officers say they don't expect anything to change.
Gun owners who legally buy the weapons aren't usually those who cause problems with them.


You could buy (and I have) Ruger Mini-14s legally and places like Cabelas had a large stick of high capacity magazines. I have several 30 round magazines for my Mini-14, all legally purchased.

Ultimately, gun control doesn't work because the people who committ crimes are already willing to break the law, so what does one more mean to them? People like me get punished and haven't committed any crimes.

Instead of focusing on the legal gun owners, let's look at the criminals. Rather than letting criminals back on the street after vacations to Federal penitentaries where they worked out, played basketball, watched cable TV and surfed the 'Net on our dime, let's keep then locked up and lets make it less pleasant. Forget having ESPN, get them out working on roads picking up garbage, breaking rocks, digging ditches, doing SOMETHING. Instead of punishing criminals we are warehousing them. Rather than discouraging them from committing crimes, we get them off the street for a couple of years and give them little disincentive to not go back. Prison should be humane but it ought not be comfortable, places for criminals to work out with weights and get proselytized by Muslim extremists. They are being PUNISHED for crying out loud.

Friday, September 10, 2004

An oldie but a goodie!

I came across this editorial by Thomas Sowell, dated in 2000, but it is still as relevant today four years later. Sowell rightly points out the hypocrisy of that day concerning Rosie O'Donnell, darling of the anti-gun, hiring an armed security guard for her kids. He then goes on to make the comparison between armed gun control advocates and opponents of school vouchers sending their kids to private schools that others can't afford. This quote hits the liberal nail on the head...

More than 90 percent of all uses of guns in self-defense do not involve actually firing the weapon, despite gun control advocates' assumption that we are all such trigger-happy idiots that letting ordinary citizens have guns will lead to bullets flying hither and yon. Like virtually every other liberal crusade, gun control is based on the assumption that other people lack common sense and must be controlled by the superior wisdom and virtue of the anointed.

Bingo! You are too stupid to care for yourself, so you need a Hollywood celebrity to tell you how to live and how to think. These self-annointed types include the Teresa Heinz Kerry's of the world (the super rich who assume the middle class are boobs), the Hollywood elite (who think that being able to pretend to be someone else convincingly makes them smart) and the eductaional establishment (who have lived in the academic world so long they have ceased to even recognize the real world off campus). They are the heart and soul of the Democratic party, a party that prefers paternalism to freedom, lemmings to patriots and the U.N. to the Constitution.
Ah, the American school system, bastion of "Blame America First"

Fifth grade teacher Bob Peterson at Fratney Street School in Milwaukee is teaching his students about the root causes of terrorism. Is he teaching them about radical Islam? Nope. Theocracies versus democracies? Nope. A geopolitical lesson on the thousands of years of turmoil in the Middle East and the clash of cultures between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West? Nope. Bob is using cookies to help kids understand that terrorists kill us because we refuse to share our cookies with them. According to USA Today:

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Bob is being awarded for his teaching methodology.

Another teacher, Masato Ogawa of Ontario (Ore.) High School , has an even more PC lesson plan…

Ogawa's students discuss the Patriot Act and the U.S. government's treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and consider whether the government should extend the limits of its authority during wartime.

No mention is made of Islam in the article. Shocking!

Terrorism is not an issue of have's and have not's. Where do these terrorists come from? The heart of the radical Islamic movement is Saudi Arabia, a land with natural riches beyond belief. They pick up their cookies in Mercedes Benz and BMWs. Those who are impoverished in Saudi Arabia are so because they live in a theocratic dictatorship, not because Americans have more cookies.

The problem with terrorism is not a lack of cookies or an uneven distribution of them. The Saudi's do nothing to help their poor oppressed fellow Muslims in politically and strategically insignificant places. It is the Christian missionary worker that is bringing food, education and medical supplies to these people.

Is this the role of public education? Teaching our children at a young age to be ashamed of being American and blaming the victims for the terrorism that takes their lives? There are unfortunately poor starving people all over the world, but it is only from Islam that we get suicide bombers and atrocities like 9/11/01 and the murder of Russian children in Beslan. No plight of poverty provides an excuse for killing 10 year old school children in the name of Allah. As Victor Davis Hanson points out in NationalReview.com, these terrorists are not "screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe."

Why would a wealthy scion of a rich Saudi family turn into the most hunted terrorist in the entire world, with the blood of thousands of innocents on his hands? Why would gunmen shoot children in a school and laugh at their terror? Why would young men throw away their lives crashing planes into buildings full of innocent people who just want to go about their business? Why would teens strap explosives on themselves to blow up busses in Israel? The only common thread is Islam, and it is past time pretending that it is not.
Saint Teresa Heinz Kerry, she of the multilingual ketchup dynasty, has weighed in on her husband's proposed socialized medicine plan. Because she is SOOOOO smart and well-spoken, she had this brilliant rebuttal of critics of her husband's plan:

"Only an idiot wouldn't like this…Of course, there are idiots."

If you oppose this plan, you are an idiot. Brilliant! How can you argue with a deeply thought out, logical argument like that? Luckily, as a billionaire widow and wife of a U.S. Senator, Teresa has a keen understanding of the plight of the little man.

"I don't have to sell it — the people want it," The people? She forgot to add the word "little" in front of "people". Like she has any idea what "the people" want. As one of "the people" I am uniquely suited to benefit from a socialized medical plan. Even though I make a very nice salary, with six kids and a spouse that is not employed outside of the home, I have virtually no tax burden. I could take the kids to the doctor with no co-pay perhaps or at least a subsidized co-pay, so it makes great sense for me. But it is bad for the country, and despite the caricature of Republicans set forth by the media, that is to say all we care about is lining our own pockets, I oppose this because despite being good for my wallet it is bad policy for the nation.

This is so indicative of Teresa and her husband's mentality (and Al Gore, Hillary, Michael Moore, the Hollywood glitterati, etc.) Anyone who dares disagree with us is an idiot. There are plenty of people who don't agree with me, many of whom ARE idiots, but not all and disagreeing with me does not make them an idiot. It just makes them wrong. Imagine this line coming from Laura Bush "Anyone who doesn't support my husband's tax cuts is an idiot". Think she would get a free pass from the media? Not hardly.

Teresa then pontificated that those "idiots" who opposed her husband's plan would be voted out of office. Just like the last time socialized medicine was proposed, a bunch of people got voted out of office. Wait a second, it wasn't the opponents of socialized medicine, it was the supporters who "the people" voted out in droves last time. So, who is the REAL idiot here?

Teresa sez: "The common man doesn't look at me as some rich witch."

Wanna bet?

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Al Gore, sore loser and lunatic....

In this week's The New Yorker, which I normally never read but was referenced to by Fox News, one of the features is an interview with Al Gore. Clearly Al went off the deep end after losing the election in 2000 and has never recovered. The New Yorker is obviously an enabler to his delusion, neglecting to mention that HE LOST the 2000 election. Instead they blame the insidious Supreme Court:

Gore, along with no small part of the country, is convinced that had things turned out differently in Florida in 2000, had the conservatives on the Supreme Court not outnumbered the liberals by a single vote, the United States would not be in the condition it’s in...

Hey Al, no matter how you counted the votes, YOU LOST FLORIDA! Unless of course you choose to only count votes for you, which they would have if they could have gotten away with it. Of all the lies propagated by the Left, this is the most disconcerting: they ignore every bit of evidence and insist Gore won Florida. So what if he got more overall votes nationwide, we have had an electoral college system in this country forever. Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote but boy did he think he had a mandate (other than groping chubby interns). Gore then goes on to attack Bush, not for his policies but for his faith and personality...

He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious....But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of.

Imagine if anyone said that Kerry was a lackluster Catholic and as such had no respect for the unborn? That he was morally weak? His nudge-nudge, wink-wink slam on Bush's intelligence without coming right out and saying it is infuriating, especially from a mental midget like Gore who's idea of intellect is parrotting back information. He claims Bush suffers from "from genuine moral cowardice" that stems from being beholden to big money groups. I am reading a book by Linda Chavez, Betrayal, about the enormous sums of money and unquestioning control that union bosses wield over the Democratic party. How about George Soros and the Hollywood elite? The trial lawyers? I guess money to Democrats is pure and with no strings attached but money to the Republicans is tainted.

This takes the cake...

A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush’s public kind of faith. “It’s a particular kind of religiosity,” he said. “It’s the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it’s not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don’t hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don’t hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It’s the vengeance, the brimstone.”

I can't even come up with an analogy towards Kerry that begins to come close to this. Gore claims to be born again and yet he is willing to sacrifice the unborn on the altar of political expediency. I would counter that Gore has the opposite problem, all he sees from Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount, he sees Christ as Savior but not Lord. Christ saves but Christ also condemns. Bush, and me too I guess, have the same sort of religious fervor that led to bin Laden? Gore has the false sort of religiosity without real faith that Jesus condemned.

Gore tries so hard to come off as the intellectual, sitting back and pontificating about his genius and tsk'ing at simple minded Bush. He spends so much time stringing together quotes from legitimate thinkers that he sounds like Mike Tyson trying to sound intelligent by using big words. I remember the debates between Gore, Quayle and Stockdale in 1992. Gore ain't near as smart as his handlers have trained him to sound. Two words that describe Al Gore with an emphasis on the second one...

SORE LOSER!!!
Ooohhh, sounds like unilateralism to me!

The Russians have apparently found their spine, or at least their tough talk. They claimed the right today to PREEMPTIVELY take out terrorist bases anywhere they may be found..

Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff, reasserted Russia's right to strike terrorists anywhere in the world.

"As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases, we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," Baluyevsky told reporters.

What's this, no mention of getting UN approval? Can condemnation from John Kerry be far away? After all, he considers having dozens of industrialized democracies joining the liberation of Iraq to be unilateral, what will he make of this? Sounds a lot like President Bush's much maligned position, that we reserve the right to hit terrorists before they hit us and not get a "by your leave" from the U.N. first. Make there is hope for Russia after all....
I have come to a conclusion about John Kerry and his obsession with Vietnam. John Kerry wants to turn Iraq into another Vietnam, because he has no identity outside of the Vietnam era. Everything he is and will ever be is based on his identity as a Vietnam "war hero" and an anti-war advocate afterwards. No wonder he never talks about his liberal Senate record, it is irrelevant to him compared to the four months he served "in country" and his "principled" opposition to the war afterwards. Kerry will always be fighting in and against the Vietnam war, the ultimate postmodern anti-hero: a decorated war veteran and a leftist war opposer mixed into one. He is like an Oliver Stone movie.


Paul Marshall has an interesting article in NationalReview.com on the modern conditions in Vietnam; the suppression of religious liberty and the medieval way in which they live. We fought Vietnam to prevent this from happening and by swaying cowardly politicians and self-indulgent baby boomers, Kerry and those of his ilk helped consign the people of Vietnam to three (and counting) decades of communist tyranny. The contrast is even more pronounced when you look at the two Koreas. We spilled lots of our blood to keep the South free, and now they boast a vibrant economy. The North languishes in poverty and mismanagement. The people of Vietnam have John Kerry to thank in large part for the misery they live in today.
More proof that it has never really been about "choice", it has always been about abortion…


Steven Erterlt has a horrifying piece in NationalReview.com about China's forced abortion policy and the utter silence of the "pro-choice" crowd. This begs the question, if it is about choice and not abortion, sholdn't people being forced to HAVE abortions be as "repressed" as those being prevented FROM having them?

President Bush has cut funding to the the U.N. Population fund "because of its tolerance of and participation in brutal Chinese population-control policies.", and gotten blasted by the abortion mill advocates for standing in the way of choice (plus how dare he bnot fund every whim of the U.N. with U.S. tax player money?). But if the U.N. is subsidizing forced abortion, where is the choice?
This is a perverted leap of logic...

CNN.com reports that a new film coming out, "A Dirty Shame", by John Waters has been given an NC-17 rating, which is supposedly the kiss of death in theaters. Of course, the cry and hue is out: this is a right wing conspriacy!

"I think that even just two years ago, the MPAA would have given ("Dirty Shame") an R," , she said. "I think the pressure has to do with the current administration, and (there is) this encroaching feeling constantly of the notion of family values."

How terrible! News flash, family values are NOT NEW. We have let perversion and debauchery encroach on our traditional values, not the other way around. We are finally seeing some backlash, and it is long overdue.

So here is the movie industry complaining that standards are ***GASP*** being enforced. Oddly, when I look at movies I wonder how movies that get a PG-13 rating ever made it with that rating, when not that many years ago they would have been R-rated. Nudity, graphic violence, strong language no longer ensure an "R" rating but rather a "PG-13". How these movies are appropriate for 13 and 14 year olds is beyond me. The ratings system is a sliding standard, a constantly moving target making it almost useless. When you compare a PG-13 movie from 1995 to a PG-13 movie today, the difference is startling.

Here is a news flash: you can make a movie that doesn't have scene after scene of graphic nudity and still have a good film. Thanks to the MPAA for finally giving the appropriate rating to a movie. Monty Python manages to convey ribald humor with a minimum of skin. It is the fault of these producers and directors, who lack the artistic creativity to get their point across without being in your face and constantly pushing the boundaries of decency. Try directing a serious film for a change instead of pushing the soft core porn boundaries.
This is a perverted leap of logic...

A new film coming out, "A Dirty Shame", by John Waters has been given an NC-17 rating, which is supposedly the kiss of death in theaters. Of course, the cry and hue is out: this is a right wing conspriacy!

"I think that even just two years ago, the MPAA would have given ("Dirty Shame") an R," , she said. "I think the pressure has to do with the current administration, and (there is) this encroaching feeling constantly of the notion of family values."

How terrible! News flash, family values are NOT NEW. We have let perversion and debauchery encroach on our traditional values, not the other way around. We are finally seeing some backlash, and it is long overdue.

So here is the movie industry complaining that standards are ***GASP*** being enforced. Oddly, when I look at movies I wonder how movies that get a PG-13 rating ever made it with that rating, when not that many years ago they would have been R-rated. Nudity, graphic violence, strong language no longer ensure an "R" rating but rather a "PG-13". How these movies are appropriate for 13 and 14 year olds is beyond me. The ratings system is a sliding standard, a constantly moving target making it almost useless. When you compare a PG-13 movie from 1995 to a PG-13 movie today, the difference is startling.

Here is a news flash: you can make a movie that doesn't have scene after scene of graphic nudity and still have a good film. Thanks to the MPAA for finally giving the appropriate rating to a movie. Monty Python manages to convey ribald humor with a minimum of skin. It is the fault of these producers and directors, who lack the artistic creativity to get their point across without being in your face and constantly pushing the boundaries of decency. Try directing a serious film for a change instead of pushing the soft core porn boundaries.

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

The price of appeasement...

The Russians have long been a neutral bystander in America's war on terror. Perhaps it is, as Putin suggests, a throwback to the Cold War era distrust between the two nations but whatever the situation the Russians haven't been a ton of help. They actively fought against us removing Saddam Hussein both for their own profit and perhaps as a bone thrown to radical Islam, but now they see what happens when you try to be limp wristed with Islamic terrorists: they see it as a weakness to be exploited, not a commendable trait. Clinton tried to pursue Islamic terrorists with the FBI and it led indirectly or directly to the events of 9/11/01. In his defense, no one could have known what was going to happen and even if they did no one would have listened to them. Bush sees the war on terror as a war, and in war we don't send in the FBI we send in the Marines.

We cannot win the war on terror through negotiation or containment. We must crush them so unmercifully that they will either be eradicated or sent into hiding. These are NOT freedom fighters. In a salient editorial in today's OpinionJournal.com, this point is rightly raised:

Whatever Russian President Vladimir Putin's mistakes in Chechnya...they don't justify the deliberate targeting of innocents. Nearly all nationalist movements--from the American revolutionaries to the Irish Republican Army--have had enough restraint to avoid the systematic murder of children. But there is something dysfunctional within the soul of modern Islam and its supporters that deems such depravity acceptable. Perhaps after Beslan more of the world, and especially much more of the Islamic world, will begin acknowledging this as the deadly poison it is.

This is an enemy that not only has no compunction about killing women and children, it actively seeks to do so in a cowardly attempt to horrify us into submission. Make no mistake, losing the war on terror will not bring peace but rather subjection. To radical Islam, success can be measured by having only two types of people, those who convert to Islam and those who die as infidels. The very existance of free, non-Islamic people is an affront.

President Bush is right, we may not be able to win the war on terror by conventional means but we certainly can lose it.

Friday, September 03, 2004

Jay Nordlinger of NationalReview online quotes General Tommy Franks making what I think is the most salient point of the Iraq War: where do we fight the terrorists?

The global War on Terrorism will be a long fight. But make no mistake — we are going to fight the terrorists. The question is, Do we fight them over there — or do we fight them here? I choose to fight them over there.

Some argue that we should treat this war as a law-enforcement issue. Some say we should fight a less aggressive war — that we should retreat into a defensive posture and hope that the terrorists don't attack us again.

Well, my wife Cathy and I are simply not willing to bet our grandchildren's future on the "good will" of murderers. I learned long ago that hope is not a strategy. In the years ahead, America will be called upon to demonstrate character, consistency, courage, and leadership.


It is not the case, despite what Kerry says, that we have made "new" terrorists spring forth whole from the earth. These people, by the thousands, have been plotting against us for decades, and rather than being placated by our indifference they were emboldened. They have brought the fight to us and we MUST respond. They will not go away if we assume the fetal position. Like any bully, they are full of bluster and the only thing they understand is a bloody nose. One of the unintended positives of Iraq is that it has served as a magnet, drawing thousands of terrorists away from America and into firefights with our soldiers.

We will have to fight them. We can fight them in Iraq with Marines or in the streets of Bloomington, Austin and Boise with innocent civilians. The terrorists would prefer to attack us at home where we are weakest. Like General Franks, I choose to fight them on our terms not theirs.
Ugh. Just when I thought Alec Baldwin couldn't be any more repugnant...

USA Today has a very short piece about Alec and his brother Stephen, two brothers on opposite sides of the political spectrum. When USA Today asked Alec about Stephen, he gave this condescending, sneering response...

"Stephen's been fairly apolitical for a long, long time. Then he embraced a born-again Christian faith, which is very near and dear to him and very real for him. As a result of that, of course, certain operatives of the Republican Party came to him and said, 'Why don't you come on over and join our unit of spokespeople who are show business?'"

Huh, completely different from the Democrats who have never used celebrities as their mouthpieces and fund raisers. Oh wait....

I especially liked the line "he embraced a born-again Christian faith, which is very near and dear to him and very real for him.". How typical is that. It is true for you, and that is OK, as long as you don't dare suggest it is true universally. He ends by saying....

"Of course, he's going to ignore my advice as he's done throughout his life," the elder Baldwin brother said.

How dare he not walk in lockstep with you! Liberalism is all about freedom of speech and thought, as long as it agrees with liberalism.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Another good piece on NationalReview.com, this one from Peter Robinson. He pulls no punches on VP Cheney....

This is hard to say, so I’d better just take a deep breath and say it: About two-thirds of Dick Cheney’s speech just wasn’t much good. His mode of delivery? Gulp, utter two sentences, then wait for some reaction from the crowd. Thirty minutes of that was about twenty too much. And the writing in, roughly, the first and last ten minutes proved flat and pedestrian. Even when the speech reached for sentiment and poetry toward the end, it did so only in hackneyed terms.

I agree with the critique of Cheney's style, although I think Cheney is an ideal VP: He doesn't detract from the President, he is mature and serves dutifully and I have every confidence he could be President if something happened to President Bush.

He was effusive in his praise for Zell Miller, and rightfully so. Zell had his rhetoric going on last night. Robinson quotes of his (and my) favorties lines from Miller...

[I]t is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

That may be my favorite outside of his "Commander in Chief of the armed forces, armed with what?" quip about Kerry ...
I was not the only one who noticed that my fellow Republicans have no rhythm. John Derbyshire, in a riotous piece for NationalReview.com, stated...

Well, there was a bit of spontaneity. The delegates started doing a "FLIP FLOP! FLIP FLOP!" chant every time Cheney mentioned Kerry, waving their arms back and forth in the air to the rhythm of the chant. Here again, though, the fundamental problem that Republicans have with rhythm worked against them. The delegates behind kept trying to synchronize their back-and-forths with the people in front, but couldn't, and the whole thing quickly petered out in frustration.

Very true. He didn't mention but I will how hard the Fox News camera crew was trying to find minorities in the crowd. They must have shown the same handful of black people two dozen times each (along with several very fat white chicks in gaudy attire. Shudder.)
I actually watched some of the Republican convention last night.

First observation, Republicans cannot and should not dance or try to. Especially when by 10:00 most of them were lit up like Christmas trees.

Second, Zell Miller is freakin' DY-NO-MITE! He laid into Kerry, hitting him up one side and down the other. That was the harshest criticism of Kerry yet by a public figure and it came from a fellow Democrat! Cheney's address was a lot more ponderous, Miller didn't even wait for applause he just stormed ahead (like the good Marine he is, Semper Fi! ). Cheney came across as very statesmen like, which I think will play well as a contrast to infantile John Edwards. In peace time when we can be more frivolous, Edwards might seem the more attractive and exciting candidate, but I think that in these serious times of war we need a Vice-President who looks Presidential.

I loved this quote from Zell Miller, among the many I liked last night...

"For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure," said Miller, the convention's keynote speaker, pointing out that the Kerry opposed weapons systems like the B-1 bomber, F-1A Tomcat and Patriot missile that are helping win the War on Terror.

"This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of our U.S. armed forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?" Miller asked. "Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric."


Serving in Nam does NOT give you immunity for 20 years of voting to defund our troops and weaken our national defenses!

Third, some crackpot woman started shouting something during Cheney's speech, but was smacked down immediately. What did she hope to accomplish? She got herself arrested, but no one could hear what she was saying and she barely interrupted Cheney at all. That is the sort of mindless activism that wastes everyone's time and money.

I eagerly look forward to tonight's speech by Bush. This is vitally important, he needs to lay out very clearly what the next four years would hold under his administration, not just in the war on terror but also domestically. How is he going to rein in spending? Defend the unborn? Protect marriage? Continue to seek tax relief for working families? Should be good stuff.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

This is funny stuff...

In a report on Crosswalk.com, Democrats are denying major campaign shakeups are in the works for Joh Kerry's campaign. After getting no "bounce" from his convention, slipping poll numbers and an inability to counter the Swift Boat Vet's ads, some are calling for a shake-up. Of course, Terry McAuliffe and company are denying this. I found this comment hillarious...

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack... said the president cannot run on his record because it's a turnoff for swing voters."Let me tell you something, you've got two options when you run for re-election," Vilsack said. "It's very simple. You can either talk about your record .... or you can tear the other guy down."

Uh Tom, check my math but it is BUSH who is running ON his record and KERRY who is running FROM his record. "Senate voting record? What Senate voting record?" Kerry has no platform other than "Bush is bad and I ain't Bush". President Bush is running his campaign based on the achievements of the past four years and his plan for the future. Kerry's plan? Ask Europe for permission and not be Bush. No wonder even hardcore liberals are voting against Bush, not for Kerry.
FoxNews.com reports on yet another protest march in NYC, this one protesting "unemployment". Protesting unemployment? That is a reality of the world, and I am quite sure we had unemployment in the pre-September 11th halcyon days of the Clinton administration. You might as well protest against rain on Saturday's ruining your golf outing. Here is a hint, instead of wasting time and the tax payers monye coralling these freaks, why not go look for a job nistead of complaining about not having one?