Obama The Corrupt

If you live somewhere besides Chicago, you probably thought political machines were things of the past. With the fall of political operator Tony Rezko, friend and business dealing buddy of Barak Hussein Obama, the truth is once again brought to light: the dirtiest of politics are still being played and are still the keys to real power in Chicago and Illinois.

And Barak Hussein Obama is a fish in the waters of Chicago and Illinois. It’s where he cut his political teeth, where he learned his trade, and it is how he operates.

Dennis Byrne, writing in the Chicago Tribune today fears an Obama presidency for precisely this reason:

More than his racist minister chums, his starkly liberal voting record, his pandering to the get-out-of-Iraq-right-now zealots, what really bothers me about Barack Obama is his association with politics as practiced in Chicago and Illinois.
This is not a crime, of course, but the fact that he is someone who got his start and was propelled to stardom after an internship in the incubator of perhaps the nation’s most corrupt state gives me, at least, pause. It seems that everywhere you turn here, especially if it is toward the federal courthouse, some politician or political insider is being found guilty of some or another form of corruption

The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama is popular in Europe, which tells is volumes. And their comments show us how similar to his state-side supporters his Europeans fans are:

“Belgians are rooting for Obama because, let’s face it, the guy knows what he’s talking about, especially compared to Bush,” says Stéphane Mangnay, a 34-year-old house husband in Villers-la-Ville.

I would rephrase that claim: “He knows how to talk” is about all I can agree with.

And yet, the Washington Times reports that Europe may not be as enthusiastic regarding an actual Obama presidency as they apparently are regarding his candidacy:

“Once President Bush is out of the White House, there will be huge expectations in Europe that a new, rosy dawn of peace and love is appearing over the Atlantic,” said Reginald Dale, a Europe scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They’re liable to be somewhat disappointed, because America is still going to look after its own interests, and then the fundamental interests may not have changed that much,” he said.

The article actually begins by noting that an oft-overlooked part of Mr. Bush’s presidency is the fact that European relations have been significantly improved over his second term:

(A)s Mr. Bush heads to the continent Monday for a weeklong goodbye tour, the little known fact is that his administration has done much to repair the trans-Atlantic relationship in his second term.

And then there is the sea-change of leadership and power change in key and leading European countries over the last few years, with heads of state coming into power with decidedly pro-America and pro-Western ideologies:

The French and German leaders who opposed Mr. Bush on Iraq have been replaced by more pro-American conservatives - Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, respectively. Silvio Berlusconi, an old Bush friend, is once again Italy’s prime minister. And in Britain, the Conservative Party is resurgent while Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has distanced himself from Mr. Bush, is fighting for his political life.

Returning to the Chicago Tribune Op-Ed article:

(I)f Obama’s affiliations with the likes of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Rev. Michael Pfleger and ex-revolutionary Bill Ayers are legitimate issues, so is his political apprenticeship in the bowels of a political process that has sent governors, aldermen and countless other public officials to the pen. Has Obama picked up any bad habits by hanging around with these gents? Is he susceptible to the pressures that the “guys back home” will undoubtedly bring? The conventional wisdom among the Chicago punditry is that Chicago and Illinois pols are smacking their lips at the thought of installing an associate in the Executive Mansion.

Obama Pro Post-Birth Abortion

A friend’s status on Facebook spotted by American Texan caught my attention.

Now that we know who the two main options are in the United States presidential election, we need to know where they stand. This election will be, for conservatives, very much a lesser of two evils election.

I’m not one who likes to use that phrase, and I did not believe the GW Bush was a lesser evil in his elections. But given two people with very obvious track records, we are now faced with such a choice: between liberal McCain and socialist/communist Obama.

This gives conservatives a distinct disadvantage in this election: Democrats and Liberals and old hippies and young communists in the college systems of America have their perfect candidate and will be excited and mobilized easily. We have a lesser of two evils and will be dragging out feet. Thank you Mr. Medved.

Obama is pro post-birth abortion

Search google for “Obama post-birth abortion” and you see the details.

Two Conservatives lay out the details: Obama has voted repeatedly and consistently against so-called “born alive infant protection” acts which state that any homo sapien who is outside of the mother and alive is afforded all the protections of any other normal human.

Even the extremely liberal Senator Boxer from California has stated that such provisions do nothing to limit the rights defined by Roe v Wade and supports such measures.

If the stated purpose of regular and common abortion is to protect the health of the woman, then Obama is pro-murder and infanticide, not just abortion. By voting “present” and “no” in such votes, he has stated rather clearly his intention to support all forms of killing the innocent and weak among us for no greater purpose than convenience.

He has said he’d support such provisions when they include language specifying they do not infringe on the “rights” defined in Roe v Wade, but such provisions have also been before him to vote, and he has again voted “present” and refused to support them.

He wants to have his cake and eat it too, he supports one position  verbally but in action and application he has made his true intent and heart known very clearly.

For more information see Laura Echevarria’s list of Obama quotes on abortion.

All Kinds Of Ugly

There are several things which caught my eye today, so consider this another installment of I, Pandora’s “Around The World”.

First, from the pen of Thomas Sowell comes an essay on race politics: “Mascot Politics“:

Years ago, when Jack Greenberg left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become a professor at Columbia University, he announced that he was going to make it a point to hire a black secretary at Columbia.

This would of course make whomever he hired be seen as a token black, rather than as someone selected on the basis of competence.

Would not it be so much better to just hire the best secretary? And if they were black, all the better. Even looking at that one individual from the ubiquitous perspective of identity politics, that one black secretary, having achieved their high success through their own hard work and having overcome all comers would have done provided a better and stronger role-model for thousands and millions of other than one hundred secretaries preferentially promoted due not to their ability, but to the color of their skin. Something, incidentally, they had nothing whatsoever to do with and therefore can claim no honor for.

So it would seem that this (primarily) liberal fixation with promoting based on immutable characteristics will only continue to cheapen people.

It is a wonder the liberal in need of a secretary can get anything accomplished if they are willing to write-off potentially qualified candidates in favor of one conforming to an arbitrary stricture predetermined.

So then conservatives take of the world of bureaucracy by employing qualified secretaries regardless of their race and get so much more accomplished we’ll rule by fiat.

Next, the Czech President Klaus is ready to debate Gore on Global Warming.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.
“Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,” he said.
“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet,” he added.
Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he opposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

McCain the hot air maverick should take note. The Global Warming issue is yet another attempt by Marxist/Communists to enslave the world in thrall to their totalitarian dystopia.

Memories of his old friends in Hanoi should be sufficient to change his mind, or else he is no man.

And finally, Germany adds to the lies by opening a memorial to the homosexual victims of the Holocaust.

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, who is openly gay, hailed the grey, concrete memorial as a long overdue acknowledgment of the repression of homosexuals, 50,000 of whom were convicted by Nazi courts during Adolf Hitler’s 12-year dictatorship.

“The monument consecrated today is a reminder to us of the horrors of the past and draws our attention to the degree of discrimination that currently exists,” Wowereit said.

“Great efforts will still need to be undertaken before the sight of two men or women kissing here or in Moscow or elsewhere on the planet is accepted by society in general.”

How easy it is to overlook the insignificant fact that the Nazi party was started in gay bars and by pedophiles.

The brown shirts and the Nazi youth grew out of a German young-mens group known for rampant homosexuality, and many of the leaders of the Nazi party were known for their preference for young boys.

So then, who were all these homosexuals killed in the Holocaust?

They were the effeminate “girly-men” homosexuals. Butch’s and pedophiles were the leaders, worshiping an enhanced manhood and ushering an era of super-maleness and domination. They could not brook weakness, either racially or sexually.

All this and more in “The Pink Swastika” (you can read the book in it’s entirety at that link). It is well researched and documented and a necessary read in today’s culture.

Numb3rs Blackface

Anybody remember blackface? Considered to both be the advent of black culture growing in the entertainment industry and an evidence of racism based on exaggerated racial stereotypes. In its ugly form, blackface was white people laughing at white people acting like white people thought black people acted.

Courtesy of the CBS Website, I’ve been watching Numb3rs for the past few weeks and find it an enjoyable show. It combines some of the crime drama of CSI with some different forms of character development all arranged around some seriously stretched applications of mathematical models to extremely complex systems which in reality would require super-computers hundreds of years to compute, but with Charles Epps brain, can strung together into accurate models in matters of minutes.

Reality-stretching aside, I’ve enjoyed the show for the most part.

In the season finale “When Worlds Collide” however, the show tries to be political and shows that blackface is still alive an well in America.

The show’s tag was intriguing, to say the least:

A Pakistani non-profit group is suspected to have ties to Jihadist groups and is on the FBI’s terrorist watch.

It was a decent show for the most part, rife with moral quandary, suspense, relational tensions, etc. But as the plot moved along and it became clear who the bad guy was and what his relationship was with the rest of the members of the involved groups, I was rather disturbed.

Xenophobia

A typical xenophobic perspective of other cultures, and one based in sad reality across the world, is that other cultures see themselves the same way we do.

If you don’t know many people of a particular ethnicity, it is normal for you to find it difficult to differentiate recognizable differences and unique characteristics between individual members of that group.

The standard “they all look the same” is real and normal and definitely an indicator of the perceivers lack of familiarity with the perceived.

Blackface

The writers of Numb3rs had resorted to the crudest of blackface to create their villain. The bad guy ends up being an opportunistic former member of the IRA terrorist groups seeking money and markets for this illicit weapons trade.

Using face paint and a beard reminiscent of British military officers in the far east of the last century, he transformed himself into a swarthy quasi-pseudo-Pakistani.

The assumptions were:

• The members of the organization would not recognize this impostor as not being authentically a member of his supposed race.
• The members of this organization would not recognize this impostor for his lack of connection to their group through relationships.
• White people can pretend convincingly to be other races through extensive makeup and acting and survive extended contact while not being recognized.

Individually, these may be true in certain cases, and with dedication and a good makeup crew, they could indeed be accomplished. But the circumstances of the case where such that such foresight did not likely occur.

Just as in your race you are most able to recognize by look, action, and vocabulary, those who belong and those who don’t, and even more so in those groups you are involved in and even more so when those groups are primarily of one race.

So too, in the story premise, the writers of Numb3rs, in an attempt to bring the far-fetched possibility that we’re not really fighting against Muslims: after all, they’re a religion of peace, eh? But against opportunistic old-school European terrorists such as the IRA.

I know they’re not saying “all” such suspect charities are not funneling money to terrorists. I know the government in it’s dealings with Muslims right now is treading a thin line, and most likely, more often than not, abusing it’s responsibility and prerogative in it’s dealings with the same.

But our primary enemy right now, not of our own creation, but born of sheer necessity and self-preservation, is Muslim-based Islamo-Facist ideology and it’s supporters, both active and passive.

‘Big Oil’, Big Good

Cal Thomas, In Defense Of ‘Big Oil’:

Where is it written that the cost for a product or service should be frozen in place and in time, never to rise again, or to rise at a pace commensurate with our incomes? People who think this way know little to nothing about supply and demand and less than nothing about the profit motive. That’s because at least three generations have been raised on the notion of entitlement, and when one feels entitled to something, one believes someone else should pay.

McCain On The Judiciary, More Reasons To Vote

I like this part of him, and for this reason we conservatives ought to do what we must to quell our gag reflexes and vote McCain into office.

In a speech on his philosophy and standards regarding the Supreme Court of the United States, John McCain specifically referenced Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr, and the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as epitomes of those he’d choose.

He called them:

“jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference.”

What a concept: “know their minds, know the law, and know the difference”.

A liberal sees their mind as the law. If man is the chief end of himself, he is his own highest law. If that man is one of authority and power, his mind is the law of those he rules.

Whim and feeling have greater weight than principle and immutable law.

Rush Limbaugh, in a “Pearl of Wisdom” included in his latest Show Notes email explained the how the liberal ideal actual creates dystopia instead of the utopia they desire:

Liberals stand up for principles, but they never stand up for people. People always suffer when liberalism succeeds — and when people are suffering, I don’t think you can shout the warning too loud that it needs to stop.

With the whim and feeling of liberalism leading us by our noses, we cry “Foul!” when shown stories like this one from Indiana last night titled “Indiana’s primary turnout high, despite photo ID law“:

About 12 elderly Roman Catholic nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, even though they had been told earlier that they would need to get such an ID to vote.

“One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, `I don’t want to go do that,’” McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drive.

Elsewhere across the pivotal state, voting appeared to run smoothly, despite the fears of some elections experts that the photo ID law could cause confusion at the polls.

The money line is at the end of a picture description in the sidebar of the story:

McGuire said most of the nuns were in their 80s or 90s, and the other nuns had spoken with them frequently about the need to get out to a Bureau of Motor Vehicle branch for their free ID.

A practical and normal person led, not by whim and feeling, but by a reasonable balance of justice and mercy would see those old ladies and think “they were warned, others offered to help, there was no fee, they knew better”.

Instead, with the leading title, we are coerced into thinking how mean and ugly those conservative leaders in the Indiana State House who had it out to get these poor old ladies who just wanted their voice to be heard *sob*.

Come on people, do we expect nothing from anybody or anything except the government?

People are capable. People have will and ability. People are free moral agents, with choice and consequence set before them.

The creeping liberal ideology seeks to devalue individuality by removing all force of will from individual people. By passing the place of moral agent from an individual to a group they steal all originality and identity.

And changing the government is not the only answer.

It is more important to work in individual people’s lives, showing them the increased labor of individuality is worth while for the increased liberty it provides.

Samuel Adams put it this way:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Why I Will Vote This Election

Because I don’t take politics too seriously.

I sympathize with Ms. Green: there is nobody I really like out there right now.

I am a moral absolutist, an incurable optimist, and purist, and an artist. I deal in complex absolutes and relish it.

Politics is not about absolutes though. Politics is the business compromise.

The goal of politics is to use relationships of convenience and shared purpose to achieve and incremental and gradual change to return America to where it ought to be.

The enemies of right and good have used this same tactic to pull us away from our mooring, setting us adrift on the sea with a gale wind blowing towards the shoals of socialism.

But politics has a problem: it is only a mirror of the culture.

Americans are finding it is good to vote money to themselves from the pot.

Elections are becoming more and more about what we can vote for ourselves. More about campaign promises and less about the right and good and correct path. More about self and me and less about us and them.

So what will fix the problem?

Christ.

Only in the redemptive and heart-changing work where the heart and mind of the person is changed is true change that has a likely chance of lasting beyond the next feel-good and gimme-gimme sessions.

So I vote, not to get my will exactly produced in my elected leaders, but to give me time to work the sea change from the bottom up.

This is why I find world-view classes and training to be so very important. So many Christians vote against God without knowing it. There are many deluded and deceived and yet redeemed souls who do not realize the err of their way.

So I will vote, not for Mr. or Mrs. Right, but for the one who is best.

I can vote for the lesser of two evils with a clear conscience and redouble my efforts next time to continue to fight the fight, first for the hearts and souls of men, and second for the hope of the world through this great land.

The Sun Is Shining

Scientists are now saying global warming is paused, for as long as 10 years.

They just really can’t let go of the power of fear that has been wielded over fearful people for far too long.

Reading the comments to this article, I was pleasantly surprised that clear-headed and free-thinking individuals seemed to dominate the conversation decrying the repressive and power-grubbing aims of politically motivated science.

London Telegraph: Global Warming May ‘Stop’ - Scientists Predict

The Supreme Court thinks it’s just fine to require people to prove who they are when they vote. There is no significant disenfranchisement which would offset the benefits and necessity of such minor and completely acceptable requirements.

Understandably there are some who are very sure they’ll be disenfranchised. They should just remember to take their wallets with them as they head out to vote.

And Larry Kudlow says this recession was rather… um.. recessive. And that bodes well for conservatives.

This election is meaningful as ever. Even if we don’t have the perfect guy (busy blaming Michael Medved and my friend Jay) we have much more than just a man in the office we’re fighting for.

Obama The Racist And Government (In)Ability

Heather MacDonald in the Wall Street Journal:

Some in Mr. Wright’s crew of charlatans have already had their moments in the spotlight; others are less well known. They form part of the tragic academic project of justifying self-defeating underclass behavior as “authentically black.”

Obama is coming out hard against the man he previously dismissed with “Oh, him? He’s just crazy sometimes. But he doesn’t mean any harm…”

The wise saying that one’s walk talks louder than their talk talks is bringing all Obama’s chickens home to roost.

He spent 20 years listening to this vitriol and hatred spewing against the very nation which has blessed him, his ungrateful and narcissistic wife, and his children. He chose to allow this man to be a confidant and counselor. He exposed his children to a hate-monger.

And we trust him to make good and sound judgments for our entire nation?

Moving on to other news:

I’ve never much cared for Newt since his affair. A man who cannot love his wife is a man I cannot trust.

But this is against his philosophy and all the good things he has stood for:

This is mostly right:

“If enough of us demand action from our leaders…”

After all, it is our leaders who have not allowed us to harness the natural resources so plentiful in our land.

This is all wrong:

“…we can spark the innovation we need.”

Thomas Edison did not ask government to invent a light bulb. He did it himself.

Many liberals are claiming now that the “deregulated” energy companies need government oversight to ensure they are innovating enough and not gouging their customers.

If they were indeed deregulated there would not be an issue. It is the fact that the energy industry has to ask permission of the government before their allowed to breathe, let alone innovate. A deregulated energy industry would be drilling in ANWR right now, without harming animal populations (because who wants the backlash from that). We would have been building Nuclear power plants by the dozens and they’d be efficient and reliable and safe, the way they have been.

Instead we’re stuck with too little growth and subsequently higher and higher costs for energy.

Scoop your brains back into your skull Newt. Government is never the answer.

Six Flags Over Jesus

This movie is long, but worthwhile. Very worthwhile.