How The Media Covers Christians In America

More about the SBC convention fiasco. By any reasonable reading the original "anti-alt-right" proposed resolution offered by Dwight McKissic was poorly worded, overly broad in some places and inaccurately specific in others. The annual meeting didn't forward the proposed resolution on the first try and then a second try later when not many people were paying attention also failed. This is what the media was waiting for and they pounced. Here is the headline on my Yahoo! feed from "News"week writer Aidan Quigley:

Christian Leaders Refuse to Renounce White Nationalism at Southern Baptist Convention Meeting

Well, points to Aidan for his mastery of misrepresentation. As a bonus, the article was headed with this completely unrelated picture:

What does Trump have to do with this resolution? Well nothing. Is Trump a Southern Baptist? Nope. Was Trump at the annual SBC meeting? Also nope. Are there actually any Southern Baptists in that picture? Maybe but I don't see one I recognize. So why is there a pic of Trump accompanying this article? The answer is obvious. The media is trying to smear Southern Baptists as a bunch of redneck racists while undermining the Trump administration.

Trump = Steve Bannon = Alt-Right = Southern Baptist Convention

Which is great except that Steve Bannon is not alt-right by any measure nor is he claimed as part of the alt-right. I haven't seen any evidence to support that the alt-right is a significant issue in the SBC. Trump is not alt-right, and if you missed it has a Jewish daughter and is over the top in his support of Israel, not exactly a typical alt-right position.

The media doesn't care about race relations in the Southern Baptist Convention or anywhere else except as a means of selling papers, magazines and online ad revenue. This issue got media coverage because it provided an easy way for the media to take a cheap shot at conservative Christians. They got to drive some page views, make Christians look bad and then get them to jump on command.

Let me let you in on a little secret. Nothing a sincere follower of Christ can do will placate the secular Left in this country and the media is their mouthpiece and often their attack dogs. No matter how many resolutions are passed and denunciations proclaimed, they will still attack and attack and attack. The only way to make them happy is to embrace sexual perversion, reject every single Biblical norm and ultimately deny Christ. So my advice is to stop worrying about the media and start worrying about preaching the Gospel. We can't do anything to change the media's view of us but we can see real people changed by the power of the Gospel we are entrusted to preach.

Who Decides What Constitutes Hate?

I had NPR on the radio the other morning and they had yet another story about the occupation of the wildlife refuge in Oregon. That whole thing is silly and makes an easy source of mockery for the left that diminishes the real issues about an out of control government but that isn't my concern. The piece featured a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center as the SPLC has identified the occupiers as an extremist hate group. The SPLC is considered to be a legitimate resource and authority on "hate groups" and "extremists" without much in the way of critical examination. The media by and large considers the SPLC to be a legitimate source of information and provides them a platform to push their definition of hate, presumably with the aura of independence and fact based neutrality. The reality is quite different. I long suspected the SPLC was not what it is presented as so I took a little time to examine their webpage and in an awful lot of cases it turns out that my beliefs on any number of issues expose me to be a "hate group" unto myself.

What is an extremist? What is a hate group? Who decides? On the Extremist Files section of their webpage we see this description:

Extremists in the U.S. come in many different forms – white nationalists, anti-gay zealots, black separatists, racist skinheads, neo-Confederates and more.

In reality though you don't see much about "black separatists". Instead most of their ire is directed at conservative Christians or "radical right-wing Christian fundamentalists" or some combination of terms. A brief perusal of their webpage today finds that their "Featured Hate Group" for today is Liberty Counsel. What "hate" has Liberty Counsel engaged in? Burning crosses? Lynching? Well not really. Liberty Counsel is a hate group because they are conservative Christians that provide free legal representation to other conservative Christians:

The Liberty Counsel was founded by conservative activists Mathew (“Mat”) Staver – an attorney and former dean at Liberty University School of Law – and his wife Anita. The Counsel bills itself as a non-profit litigation, education and policy organization that provides legal counsel and pro bono assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty, “the sanctity of human life" and the family.

So defending the rights of Christians and others who hold to the traditional, historical and Biblical understanding of human sexuality that has been without serious challenge for all of Western history warrants a label of "hate group" from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Certainly there are actual hate groups listed on the SPLC webpage but there is little to distinguish violent groups from people who hold to conservative Christians views on human sexuality. Thinking that homosexuality is by and large not healthy for individuals and for our broader society as a whole. a position I would generally agree with, is all the reason you need to be lumped in with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation. What Liberty Counsel does is essentially no different from any number of leftist legal groups that represent people who can't afford decent legal representation. It is hardly different other than their constituent base from the ACLU, another poster child for the "tolerant" left in America.You wouldn't know that from reading the SPLC webpage

In fact for most evangelical Christians Liberty Counsel is a wonderful organization that stands up for the rights of Christians in America, a group worthy of financial and prayer support. I might quibble with quite a few of Liberty Counsel's positions but I also think that people who believe in Jesus Christ and don't parrot the politically correct line about homosexuality are citizens who deserve decent legal representation. I believe that they are as deserving of the right to free expression and legal protection of that Constitutionally guaranteed right as any of the people or organizations represented by the ACLU.

So really all you need to be a "hate group" is a stated position that homosexuality is wrong and unhealthy. Oh yeah and it helps if you are white. I suspect that even more mainstream Christian groups would get the "hate group" label from the SPLC if they thought they could get away with it and I expect that more and more of the church will fall into the "hate group" category sooner rather than later. What I find deeply ironic is the frothing at the mouth, hyperbolic vitriolic language employed by the SPLC which is the sort of over-the-top rhetoric that bars any rational discussion of an issue, something I am sure is intentional. I wouldn't much care what the SPLC churned out except for the fact that a) they are given automatic credence and respectability by the media, a media that has many of the same ideological underpinnings as the SPLC and b) they specifically target school children to provide indoctrination materials under the risible guise of "teaching tolerance". The public school system has long been less about education than it is about shaping the worldviews of children apart from and often in opposition to what is believed by the parents of these kids.

Again, there are actual hate groups on their webpage but when you can't or won't distinguish between Stormfront and WorldNetDaily it shows that your mission goes far deeper than exposing dangerous extremist groups. The SPLC is not an unbiased resource by any definition of the terms but is instead a leftist think tank that tries to disguise itself as an impartial source of knowledge while striving to silence certain groups and people while infiltrating the school system by claiming to be interested in "tolerance".

You know, if I didn't know better I might think that the Southern Poverty Law Center was itself a hate group but unlike the SPLC I understand the difference between a far left political organization like them and the Shining Path leftist terrorists.

He was the best of Presidents, he was the worst of Presidents

As we approach the inauguration and the end of the Bush presidency, the liberal mainstream media are stumbling over themselves trying to define President Bush as the “worst President in history”. Listening to NPR, you can just tell that the reporters are giddy with the prospect of Bush leaving and Obama coming in. The Left is flush with victory and the power brokers in the American left have a dream set-up. They have an overwhelmingly liberal congress, a disheartened and discredited American conservatism and an incoming President who, although politically shrewd, is clearly in way over his head. Make no mistake that while Obama will be in the White House, the real power brokers are the Congressional leaders.

Is President Bush “the worst President in American history”? Hardly. Has he been disappointing in many ways, even to conservatives? Yes. Did he make mistakes of action and inaction, and become virtually irrelevant and ineffectual late in his eight years as President? Absolutely! Is he the worst President ever? Not by a long shot. In fact, he isn’t going to be even the worst living ex-President. Mr. Carter wins that one hands down. Despite the image makeover of Jimmy Carter and the kindness of years away from the White House, you cannot forget what a horrible President he was. I was very young when he was President and I remember all too well what a trainwreck he was. That is reflective in a funny way in the pictures of all of the living Presidents and former Presidents in the Oval Office a week or so ago. Much was made of the painfully obvious distance between Clinton, Obama, Bush I and Bush II and the outcast Jimmy Carter. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but it spoke volumes of what a terrible President Jimmy Carter was.

When Ronald Reagan hammered Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, look where America was. We were in a deep economic malaise. We were a paper tiger in the world. The Soviets bullied us, our military was still stinging from the political defeat of Vietnam and in the greatest stain on American sovereignty a number of our citizens were being held hostage by terrorist thugs in Tehran. The sight of American citizens being paraded around as hostages with blindfolds on was one of the most shameful moments in American modern history, right up there with Americans fleeing Vietnam and dead soldiers being paraded around the streets of Mogadishu. After 444 days of the hostages being held in Tehran, in one of the most stinging rebukes ever given, the American hostages were released within minutes of Ronald Reagan taking office. The message was clear. Jimmy Carter was ineffective in getting the hostages released, was unwilling to do anything militarily about it and the botched rescue attempt frightened him into inaction.

The hostage crisis was the most visible of the Carter failures but the economy was in terrible shape as well. It was tough to borrow money at double digit interest rates. The economy was in the tank. There were gas lines in California. Right or wrong (I would say largely “right”!), the American people blamed Carter. Things were bad, he was negative about it and utterly lacking in basic leadership. I wouldn’t trust Jimmy Carter to lead me through the front door of my house, much less lead our nation.

Carter lost to Reagan by almost 10% of the popular vote. He only carried six states and the District of Columbia, losing 489 to 49 in the electoral college. Granted, compared to Walter Mondale’s debacle in 1984 where he carried one state and the District, losing by over 18% of the popular vote and losing 525-13 in the electoral college, it wasn’t that bad but when you look the alleged mandate of Barack Obama who beat McCain by 7% in the popular vote and 365-173 in the electoral college it is obvious that Carter was rejected and tossed out of office by the American people.

What is also forgotten is that while President Bush is at, we are constantly reminded, “historically low” approval ratings, the Democratically controlled Congress gets even lower marks, with an approval rating of around 9%. People are scared and unhappy, and they are reflecting that upon those who are governing them. President Bush gets the attention because he is the President which also explains his approval ratings of over 90% following September 11th. People are mad at government and Bush is the easy target. It is hard to be mad at Representative So-and-so from Podunk, Missouri unless you are in that district, but it is easy to aim your ire at President Bush and the media is more than happy to help encourage and channel that anger. When times are good, the President gets the accolades and cheers. When times are bad, he gets boos and low approval ratings.

So here is my retrospective on the Bush presidency.

The Bush presidency is really divided into two parts. The first part is made up of the weeks and months after September 11th. I would say that this first part ended with the now infamous speech on the warship returning home from the Persian Gulf with the “Mission Accomplished” banner. It was really at that point that opinion seemed to start turning against Bush, with the aid and abetting of the mainstream media beating the drum of defeat and failure, with their macabre running tally of U.S. military deaths reported as they happened.

First the errors of the Bush presidency.

Iraq

Iraq was perhaps the right war at the wrong time. Removing Saddam Hussein was a worthwhile mission. The world is a better place without him and his murderous sons raping and pillaging (literally) the Iraqi people. No sane person has any doubt that Hussein had at one time chemical weapons, proven by the bodies of Kurds in Northern Iraq and the use of those same weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. No sane person thinks that Hussein was not trying his hardest to obtain or develop nuclear weapons. The U.N. had weapons inspectors in Iraq for years to keep him from developing nukes, they weren’t in Baghdad on vacation. (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein’s successor in the crazy Islamic dictator chair is doing the exact same thing and is a lot closer to success.) The war was prosecuted properly, with swift military victory. The war itself is not the problem. The problem came before and after the war. We waited way too long to go in, giving Hussein time to move any evidence of a weapons program out of the country. I assume he thought by hiding his program he could ride out the invasion and go back to developing nukes later. I don’t think he saw his death at the end of a rope being his ultimate destiny. Afterward it became apparent that we had not thought out the rebuilding process as well as we should have, and years of stumbling, roadside bombs and virtual outright civil war followed. Liberating Iraq is not like liberating France from the Nazis. They had no idea how to run a democracy and are just now figuring it out. The liberation of Iraq will be the defining event of the Bush presidency and you can bet it will be spun negatively until Iraq is standing as a free, democratic state on her own someday in the future.

Hurricane Katrina

At the start, let me say that philosophically I don’t think it is the Federal government’s job to run to every natural disaster and fix things. Also, like many of the ills of the Bush administration, this fiasco was partly the fault of the Democrats (i.e. the lovely mayor of New Orleans and others who made it hard to get anything done) and also a media circus. But Bush looked tentative and uncaring during Katrina, and his lack of decisiveness made it seem like something should have been done but wasn’t. Katrina left a black eye on the Bush presidency that he never fully dealt with.

The handling of the economic crisis

Again perception is everything. The perception is that Bush waited too long and the whole collapse was his fault. Much of the fault lies on his desk, but much of it also is systemic (see my post here: Death by Savings) Our economy is a shell game of credit and consumption, and all of that finally came to a head. September 11th is completely forgotten by many Americans who are more worried about their job. Ironically, because the Bush policies have worked so well in keeping us safe, Americans are back to being self-centered about their pocketbooks.

The abandonment of fiscal restraint

This is my biggest gripe. I would say that the GOP with the blessing of Bush has been spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors. Too much was spent, too little was gained. Had we spent money on oil exploration or nuclear power plants, that at least would have been useful. Instead money was poured down a sinkhole. I have no idea where it all went.

President Bush has a high opinion of his fellow man, and that trust in people has been his downfall.

President Bush was played for a patsy by the Democrats on a number of occasions, and he let it happen because I think he inherently has a high opinion and trust for people. I think he needs to get away from the Methodist church he has been a member of and start going to a solid Calvinist church where he will learn about Total Depravity (Voddie Baucham’s church is in Texas I believe…)

But not all went wrong. Here are the things that went right.

Iraq

Iraq is the great contradiction of the Bush administration. On the one hand, for a long time it seemed like an abject failure. But today we see relative calm in Iraq. The government is still hardly stable and will need U.S. support politically, economically and militarily for some time to come. But overall the Iraqi people are far freer than they were under Hussein. There are some who think they were better off under a ruthless dictators, but those same sort of people point out that Hitler made the trains run on time. Someday Iraq will be a stand alone democracy, and people like the crazy guy who threw his shoes at Bush can thank him for liberating their country at the cost of his own political legacy.

Two great Supreme Court Justices in Alito and Roberts.

Those two jurists have proven to be a solidly conservative as advertised. It is too bad Bush didn’t get to replace one of the old line liberals so Roe v. Wade could be overturned. I expect now to see the old liberals retire so that Obama can replace them with someone younger and even more liberal. We were so very close….

Frequent tax cuts.

As President Bush pointed out last night, every American tax payer is paying less in Federal taxes than they were when he was in office. There needed to be deeper spending cuts to go along with the tax cuts (see above) but philosophically Bush was right on that lower taxes are both better for the economy in the long-term and the right thing to do.

Governance with conviction.

Like him or not, agree with his decisions or not, President Bush typically led based on his convictions. When public opinion turned, he rarely strayed from his path. Is that inflexible? Perhaps, but it is also principled and a stark contrast to his predecessor. Bill Clinton never met a Big Mac, intern or opinion poll that he didn’t like. To say that the eight years of Clinton were governance by opinion poll is not being unfair. Right or wrong, Clinton gave the people what they wanted and is remembered fondly for it. Bush often bucked his own party and is being punished for it.

Perhaps in the context of the Bush presidency, one success stands out more than this one: We have had no terrorist attacks on American soil in the more than seven years following September 11th. Those who say America is not safer today are head-in-the-sand liberals. Do you remember the weeks following September 11th? As a nation we were all expecting the next attack. But thanks in large part to the diligence of our armed forces, intelligence community and law enforcement we have not had a terrorist attack on America soil since September 11th. To have thought that would be the case, seven years with no terror attacks in America, on September 12th, 2001 would have been unthinkable. The Bush doctrine of taking the fight to the terrorists instead of trying to deal with the terrorists as common criminals has kept American civilians safe.

When President Bush was wrong, he was really wrong. When he was right, he was really right. Trying to reassure the American people that the economy was fundamentally sound when it was collapsing all around him made him look like “Baghdad Bob” during the liberation of Iraq. But when he stood on that rubble after September 11th and declared that those responsible would come to justice, when he gave his speech in the National Cathedral, there was no President like him. His presidency is one of great opportunity missed and great potential squandered. I, like many others, am disappointed but I think that an unbiased assessment of his Presidency in the future will be more kind than the media and liberal historians are today.

A "small cache of weapons"?

Believe me, I am not a defender of Plaxico Burress. He is kind of a punk and played for Michigan State. But when the news media "reports" on something like this and

Weapons cache reportedly found at Plaxico Burress' home

Reports: Weapons, ammo seized at Burress' NJ home

Authorities seized a small cache of weapons and ammunition from the New Jersey home of New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, the New York Post and Newsday both reported Wednesday, possibly setting up the embattled player for more legal trouble.

The Post, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, said a 9-mm handgun, a rifle and ammunition for three other guns — a .380, a .45 and a .40, the same caliber of gun Burress accidentally shot himself with — were seized during the execution of a search warrant at Burress' home in Totowa.

A "weapons cache"? One rifle. One handgun. Some ammunition. That is newsworthy? The headline makes it sound like he had dozens of M-16s hidden in a fortress, a virtual Branch Davidian compound in New Jersey. Nope, one rifle. One handgun. A couple of boxes of ammunition.

I would be willing to bet that most people in Michigan have at least that many firearms in their house, many of us have quite a few more. I know I do! I am afraid to think what the news media would describe my collection as: "an arsenal"? "A paramilitary training ground"? The national news media is so removed from the majority of Americans that the discovery of law-abiding citizens (not including Mr. Burress of course) owning firearms in the home and believing in God is like discovering a long-lost tribe in the jungle. Little wonder that Barack Obama derisively spoke of middle Americans clinging to their guns and religion, and that the comment caused little uproar on the coasts. How can we expect to get our news from people who spin reports like this, turning a couple of guns in an apocalyptic cult waiting for doomsday?

Media Bias? What media bias?!

I mentioned a couple of days ago, without being overly subtle, a hit-piece in Newsweek magazine chastising Christians for actually believing in that book they carry around when it comes to gay marriage. When it comes to caring for the poor, absolutely read the Bible! When it comes to sin, you need to look first to the prevailing winds of the culture!

The cover story is hardly unexpected, but behind the scenes is a more subtle sign of the extent to which the mainstream media attacks the Christian faith. Along with the piece by Lisa Miller is an editorial salvo from Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek:

On the campus of Wheaton College in Illinois last Wednesday, in another of the seemingly endless announcements of splintering and schism in the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan and other leaders of the conservative forces of reaction to the ecclesiastical and cultural acceptance of homosexuality declared that their opposition to the ordination and the marriage of gays was irrevocably rooted in the Bible—which they regard as the "final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life."

No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.

Apparently being the editor of a "news" magazine with a rapidly declining readership qualifies Mr. Meacham to pass judgment on what is or is not orthodox, historical Christianity. Mr. Meacham uses much of the same mockery and misrepresentations that Ms. Miller used:

This is a sweeping and open declaration of Newsweek Magazines opposition to Biblical Christianity. Mark Hemingway of National Review makes the following succinct observation:

Of course, religious Americans are more than used to shoddy coverage of theological debates. So what else is new? Criticism that a Newsweek cover story serves a left-of-center political worldview is almost, well, a weekly occurrence.

What is remarkable about this week’s cover story was how Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham, has handled the backlash. He hasn’t defended the piece as a matter of opinion or part of a public debate. Rather, Newsweek has apparently come out of the closet as an explicitly ideological magazine editorially endorsing the article’s viewpoint.

Quite true. We are rapidly seeing the sheep's clothing being taken off by the increasingly bold wolves. We saw it in the unapologetic openness of the mainstream media's effusive support for Barack Obama, casting aside any pretense of neutrality. We saw, and are seeing it, in the media's ongoing overwhelming negative coverage of President Bush. We saw it in the media's initial coverage of the passage of Proposition 8. We see it now in this editorial note from Newsweek, perhaps the most bold declaration yet that the media is no longer even pretending to be neutral.

We should not be surprised by this blatant ideological bias on the part of Newsweek and other bastions of the old school mainstream media. In fact, as Christians we should welcome it. For too long these secular left institutions have been hiding behind journalistic integrity to claim to be unbiased. Now that they are increasingly "out of the closet" it should be easier to identify what they espouse as the ideological rhetoric it is, instead of assuming it to be actual news. I just hope that more people in the church will see these organizations for what they are: prophets and evangelists for the secular humanist left.

Feminism is not about women, it is about liberal women

Gotta love this condescending, smarmy hit piece by left wing moonbat Maureen Dowd, attacking Governor Sarah Palin for being too...too...regular womanish?

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.

So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin.

Sheer heaven.

It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on “Meet the Press” triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on “Meet the Press” a lot.

Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes “The Brady Bunch” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.

Instead, they embrace 72-year-old John McCain and 44-year-old Sarah Palin, whose average age is 58, a mere two years older than the average age of the Obama-Biden ticket. Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge, because they expect Republicans to put an underqualified “babe,” as Rush Limbaugh calls her, on the ticket. They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W., and then letting them learn on the job. So they crash into the globe a few times while they’re learning to drive, what’s the big deal?

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter. And she was tougher on the basketball court than the ethereal Obama, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.”

Methinks that Maureen Dowd is just a touch bitter. Could it be that she sees a woman who is way more attractive and successful than she will ever be, and is jealous? Note the arrogant jab because Governor Palin "just" went to the University of Idaho. Remember that liberals love the working folks? Yeah right. Liberals despise working class people except in concept and as long as they never have to deal with one. A regular person as Vice-President? The horror! I mean, she went to the University of Utah for crying out loud! Dear me, I think Ms. Dowd is being, dare I say, a little catty?

It has never been more apparent that the leftist media establishment women care nothing about real women and their issues. All they really care about are politically charged issues. What the feminist agenda is all about is not the issues that women care about, they are socialist political items that disproportionately impact the female gender. There aren't legions of feminists lined up to celebrate Sarah Palin, because she isn't the right sort of woman, just like the liberal long knives came out for Clarence Thomas because he wasn't the right sort of black man, and had strayed from the liberal plantation. Liberals love minorities as long as they smile, keep their mouths shut and pull the right lever on election day. But woe to the woman or the minority who dares hold a different position, because you will see the Maureen Dowds and Anita Hills coming out of the woodwork.

In the "What were they thinking category"

Hurricane Gustav is hurtling towards New Orleans, and at the same time the GOP convention is starting tomorrow. Two liberals have made comments that if uttered by Republicans would be front page news.

First slothful, unhygienic boob Michael Moore:

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise is calling on liberal filmmaker Michael Moore to apologize after he said Friday that the timing of Hurricane Gustav is “proof that there is a God in heaven,” since the storm approaching the Gulf Coast could disrupt next week’s Republican National Convention.

Moore made the remarks to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Republicans have been monitoring the storm’s progress, considering whether to postpone their convention in St. Paul, Minn., if the storm wreaks havoc on the New Orleans area, just three years after Hurricane Katrina.

“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said. “To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River.”

Next a former DNC chairman, someone who should know better:

A former Democratic National Committee chairman apologized Sunday for remarks he made a day earlier that suggested he thought Hurricane Gustav demonstrated that God is on the Democrats’ side in this year’s presidential election.

Don Fowler, who was DNC chairman from 1995-1996, said he was just mimicking Rev. Jerry Falwell when he was caught on tape during a flight from Denver to North Carolina Friday.

“That just demonstrates that God is on our side,” Fowler said during the flight, of which a video was posted on YouTube under the headline: “Fowler Fouls: Hurricane is God’s Favor To Democrats.”

Both have since apologized, but it is ironic that it is the left that is always crying hatred and intolerance, but when you get past the rhetoric it is more often than not the radical left that is spewing hatred and intolerance.

Gustav, like Katrina, is a disaster but to Democrats it is an opportunity to score political points. These are the people who care for the little guy. We should pray for the people impacted and the rescue personnel who are working around the clock to protect them.

Who will decide which candidate will be our next President?

The treatment of Obama is unprecedented. Even the fawning over Bill Clinton doesn’t compare to this. Every thing he does, every step of his day is recorded and gloried in by the media. Saturday Night Live, Jay Leno, etc. have all poked fun at the treatment of Obama by the media, and yet they still do it. The coverage of Obama is unfailingly positive, everything he does is spun in the best light. The “mainstream” media is clearly heavily invested in seeing Obama win, based on a combination between their desire to see the first black President, an open disdain bordering on hatred for President Bush and general warm fuzzies on their part towards Obama. Hopefully the American people will as a whole catch on to this uneven handling of the campaign and refuse to let the media power brokers in New York, Chicago and L.A. determine who will be President. The recent refusal by the New York Times to run a McCain op-ed piece while giving plenty of ink to Obama’s op-ed piece is a prime example, as is the wall to wall coverage of his “tour” of the Middle East.

Despite the one sided positive coverage of Obama, he still has only a slight lead over McCain. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning a poll that shows voters far more comfortable with McCain’s experience and background. That is before ads have really started to fly exposing the gross inexperience of Senator Obama. Average Americans get that he is not qualified or sufficiently experienced for the job, but he still holds a lead because of the non-stop media coverage, all of it favorable, of Senator Obama. From the Wall Street Journal...

WASHINGTON -- Midway through the election year, the presidential campaign looks less like a race between two candidates than a referendum on one of them -- Sen. Barack Obama.

With the nominations of both parties effectively settled for more than a month, the key question in the contest isn't over any single issue being debated between the Democrats' Sen. Obama or the Republicans' Sen. John McCain. The focus has turned to the Democratic candidate himself: Can Americans get comfortable with the background and experience level of Sen. Obama?

This dynamic is underscored in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The survey's most striking finding: Fully half of all voters say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. Obama would be as they decide how they will vote, while only a quarter say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. McCain would be.

The challenge that presents for Sen. Obama is illustrated by a second question. When voters were asked whether they could identify with the background and values of the two candidates, 58% said they could identify with Sen. McCain on that account, while 47% said the same of Sen. Obama. More than four in 10 said the Democratic contender doesn't have values and a background they can identify with.

Those findings suggest voters' views of Sen. Obama are more fluid than his relatively steady lead indicates. In the latest poll, 47% say they prefer Sen. Obama to win, while 41% say Sen. McCain, the same lead Sen. Obama enjoyed a month ago. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The campaign's unusual dynamic appears to be the result of an anxious nation now sizing up an unconventional candidate who presents himself as the agent for change, which voters say they want. The contest thus parallels in some ways the 1980 race, when voters seemed ready for a change away from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats, but weren't persuaded until late in the race that they could be comfortable with a former actor and unabashed conservative, Ronald Reagan, as commander in chief.

"Obama is going to be the point person in this election," says pollster Peter Hart, a Democrat who conducts the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll along with Republican Neil Newhouse. "Voters want to answer a simple question: Is Barack Obama safe?"

If the answer is yes, then Sen. Obama stands to benefit further from a favorable environment for Democrats. If no, Sen. McCain is seen by a wide swath of Americans as a safe, well-qualified potential commander in chief. The poll was taken Friday through Monday, before much of the extensive press coverage of Sen. Obama's trip this week to the Middle East and Europe, meant to build his credibility.

So we have an election where on the one hand we have a young, hip, inexperienced made-for-TV candidate with supports who are incredibly passionate about him: “Sen. Obama is in the odd position of having unusually passionate backing from his supporters -- his voters are three times as likely to say they are excited about their choice as are Sen. McCain's…”, even though I would guarantee that the overwhelming majority of his supporters don’t know the first thing about his background or where he stands on issues beyond vague platitudes about “hope” and “change”. On the other hand we have an old, kind of curmudgeonly military vet with many more years of experience in Washington, a man with a firm grasp on issues even if you disagree with him.

The clear winning strategy for McCain seems pretty obvious, give a clear and simple set of issues, highlight what McCain would do and hammer it over and over…

• Energy independence. Use high energy prices and unease to promote an aggressive plan for new, safe drilling, exploration and nuclear power.
• Obama’s inexperience. This is dangerous because you don’t want to come across like Kerry, who seemed to view his military service even when in ‘Nam as a political tool. But you cannot ignore McCain’s experience as a military officer and a POW, as well as his decades of service and foreign policy expertise

This comment from a voter kind of sums it up:

“Patti Carr, 59 years old, of Collierville, Tenn., outside Memphis, says she voted for Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. But she isn't yet sold on Barack Obama. His experience is giving her pause.

"I see Obama as a very nice person but I don't believe he has the experience at this time to be president," she says. "He's new, he's young and he still has a lot to learn, I believe." She leans for now toward Sen. McCain, but is open to persuasion.”

He is a nice guy (which he may or may not be, I wonder how much of that is a carefully constructed persona). His race to me is irrelevant other than as a landmark of how far race relations have come in spite of the efforts of race-baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to keep the hate alive. He is a great prepared speaker. But he is inexperienced, far left politically and willing to change positions seemingly at will. If McCain makes a shrewd choice for his VP, this could be another four years of the GOP controlling the White House and may even mitigate losses in Congress. But if he makes a poor choice trying to be a maverick he will propel an unqualified empty suit into the most powerful office in the world. Evangelicals want to get behind a candidate but are sitting on the sidelines right now. It is time for McCain to get them in the game.

It's an election, not a coronation, no matter how much the media wished it were otherwise.

All the (liberal) news that fit to print

Here is a shocker. The New York Times printed an op-ed piece from Barack Obama detailing his "plans" for Afghanistan and Iraq. When Senator McCain submitted his only op-ed piece, it was rejected. The reason? It needed to mirror more closely Senator Obama's piece...

The New York Times on Friday blocked an opinion piece submitted by John McCain to the newspaper shortly after it printed a piece by his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, McCain campaign officials confirmed to FOX News on Monday.

Obama’s piece detailed his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. While McCain’s proposed piece also discussed Iraq, The Times told McCain’s advisers that it would not accept the op-ed in its current form because it did not offer new information. Obama’s speech previewed a series of speeches leading up to a highly publicized trip to war zones in the Middle East.

“I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach,” Times op-ed editor David Shipley wrote the campaign via an e-mail later distributed by McCain’s team.

“It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan,” Shipley wrote.

Shipley, who was named deputy editor in January 2003, served in the Clinton administration as a senior presidential speechwriter and special assistant to the president from 1995 to 1997.

Huh, so John McCain's opinion on Iraq and Afghanistan (the opinion of a military veteran and war hero) is only valid if it "mirrors" his opponents op-ed piece. So says a former Clinton speechwriter. I am sure Mr. Shipley is an entirely unbiased source, a true journalist and not a leftist hack and apologist for Democrats who would do anything to see Obama win. What is really sad is that so many people won't see anything wrong with this, because they are drinking the "Hope and Change" Kool-Aid.

See, there isn't a liberal bias in the news media after all!