Whats Happening?

So . . . I spent some time browsing and have some news to share.

Iran is working on nuclear capabilities and has the neccessary nuclear material.Should we be worried? I honestly do not think we need to be worried about our own safety, but world politics could change. After all, India will be the first target.

We all knew this was comming, but Proposition 8 in California, the ammendment defining marriage as a man and a woman (not directly banning homosexual marriage) is being challenged in courts.Now let me get this right. Prop 8 was a Constitution amendment that passed . . . So, why are courts considering these cases? After all, Prop 8 is now basically the law of the land in California. The California Supreme Court may interpret the Proposition (scarry thought) but may not rule is Unconstitutional (because it is part of the Constitution). So, in light of this logic, what does the California Supreme Court think they can do?

Here is a very revealing quote from the article:

All three cases claim the measure abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change.

I am sorry, this just gets my blood up. If voters, the most fundamental part of our governmental system, do not have the authority to enact such legislation (more importantly, a constitutional amendment, than who does? Because, even though the legislature and courts have enacted similar legislation, they have done it outside their authority. All I can do is shake my head.

Change we can believe in has become change that always was.Obama, in a further effort to show his bipartisanship, continues to appoint Clinton and Democrat stalwarts. And the Republican party grows smaller.

Hey, there is some good news though. A disabled man in California who has filed over 400 suits against businesses for not totally complying with the American’s With Disabilities Act (not enough disable parking spaces, no hand rails . . .), has been barred from filing and more suits. The man would sue and ask the courts to fine the businesses $4,000 a day till the changes were implemented. So, your might be thinking, that is a little crooked, but he isn’t making anything off it. Well, it turns out that a lot of businesses were afraid of him and would settle out of court, earning him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

We all like being generous, right?Well turns out that the people that have managed our money for years . . . and years, are asking for us to be generous again . . . to the tune of $1 Trillion. Yep, we gave them our earning and investments, they screwed us over, and now they want more of our money so that they can somehow “get back” what we initially invested in them. On a side note, there is only $350 Billion left from the $700 Million bail out package. It is good that the money has gone to help . . .  to help . . . to help . . . hmm . . . that is funny, I don’t know what the $350 Billion dollars helped. Probably created another bureaucracy somewhere and is helping pay for salaries. Hey it could be anything seeing as there is no oversight board.

And lastly, Obama is already voting “Present” in high profile public policy.It seems that Obama does not mind changing our anti terror policy by releasing inmates from Guantanamo, but is wary of change when it comes to taking a stand on bailouts for under producing, over paid auto companies. Maybe if they made a better product their revenue might be better. Just a thought.

Inclusion Not Dillution Or Surrender

Michael Medved opened my eyes.

On his radio show he was trying to explain on “Disagreement Day” to disheartened conservatives that trying to “purify” the Republican is not the correct course of action. The root of his argument:

You win by making your group bigger, not smaller.

First: you should not win by selling out. A win bought at so dear a price may not be worthwhile.

Second: you should not compromise your deepest principles either.

But, in my stands and beliefs there is a hierarchy: Abortion is one of my strongest concerns, to not value life is to not value life, there is no grey area. The issue of homosexual privilege is strong, though not as strong as abortion. Abortion is more external and more obviously a violation of laws and human rights and can be dealt with more legislatively than homosexual privilege.

The economy is a matter of principle: free market economics benefit the most people in a way most conducive to supporting Free Will as divised by God. But we can witness to people regardless of thier economic station and a faulty economy is less of a harm to people’s souls than abortion or homosexuality.

By balancing the hierarchy of beliefs and convictions and principles I can find ways to include people who I may have less in common with in reaching my goals.

I have no qualms working with members of the Mormon church to work for significant reinforcement of traditional marriage and the preventing of special privilege for homosexuals beyond the privilege accorded to heterosexuals, despite my serious disagreements with their beliefs.

I have no qualms working with Catholics to further the protection of the innocent unborn despite my belief that most Catholics are decieved and not Christians.

I have no problem working with athiests in pursuit of a libertarian economic policy despite serious disagreements on probably every other issue due to our differences in root beliefs.

The point is: Being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, I will work with any I can to achieve the ends which follow my convictions. I will be accepting and friendly to all as people so that none will have reason to say that I’m not for them as they could be for me.

With the devious I will be devious, with the narrow I will be narrow. The goal being that by any and all means, except those which violate my conscience and God’s law, we can advance the cause of physical and economic freedom here on earth for as many as possible, and hope and eternal freedom in the life hereafter for as many as will believe.

Refining this ideal is the fact that people follow a leader with a vision. It does not have to be a clearly defined vision so much as a stirring vision (or at least one spoken of stirringly, see Barack Obama). Reagan was the “Great Communicator” and people followed his visions. Barack Obama has a way with words, a visible empathy that stirs people to want to believe what he says.

Individually, we need to be ready and willing and able to act in concert with all kinds of people, making the “big tent” an actual Big Tent. Seek common ground more than ideological purity within the bounds of our own individual abilities to accept differences. Instead of finding people most like us, find people most able to bring most of us along with them in a path headed towards truth.

As a group we need to find those people who have strong and principled stands we can agree with mostly who are also strong communicators and vibrant individuals. Vision and passion have few foes who can stand against them working together.

That is my plan for real change.

Change I Cannot Support

Moving to home-state politics: California Proposition 8, the new, second, again, same ol’, do we have to, stupid judges, Marriage Protection initiative on the California ballot.

David Blankenhorn, a self-described Liberal Democrat, says he supports California Prop 8 and correspondingly does not support homosexual marriage because of the children:

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

I like the physical aspects of my marriage, but it is the focus on what is currently mostly a potential for us, the ability to have children and raise them, that directs and focuses our growth as a couple in our marriage. It is because I want her to be the mother of my children that I married her. She’s the right one.

David’s money line:

…Marriage says to society as a whole:

For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

And People Trust Them?

There are two things which I do not understand regarding this vomit-inducing spectacle which is the media frenzy regarding all things Obama:

First, that people still believe the media to be an accurate and unbiased representation of the facts of any matter.

Second, that people can still claim with a straight face that the media sides with McCain.

Glenn Beck (The Conservative CNN Can’t Fire): Obama coverage embarassing

As candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are ironically a lot like the way the media treats them: Obama is the glitzy magazine cover that screams for people to buy the issue, and McCain is the fact-filled article buried inside that makes you glad you did.

Chicago Tribune: The Germans love him more than we do

Berlin police estimated more than 200,000 people attended the speech, more than twice as large a crowd as Obama has drawn at any event in the United States.

Chuck Raasch (possibly Another Fawning Groupie): Even though it’s a circus, it’s an important circus, dammit!

Obama did have shaky moments. In tough interviews with network anchors and correspondents, he looked evasive and irritated when pressed on his unwillingness to acknowledge the U.S. troop surge supported by McCain had been a success in Iraq. Some reporters blogged about Obama aides acting as if he were already president. There’s that presumptuousness again, enhanced by reports Obama had ordered presidential transition planning.

But this trip was about images, not words. In sideways glances at TV screens, Americans were able to take measure of a potential president on the world stage. The choreographed political diplomacy showed a confident-looking Obama on even platforms with heads of state. Obama can now sprinkle speeches with phrases like, “As I said to Hamid Karzai.”

What if all this crowning doesn’t mean anything?

And what if California goes Red?

Obama is a pompous and arrogant man. If only so many weren’t so blind.

Support Dollar Tree

Found this on a pro-homosexual blog from the California Central-Valley city of Visalia:

I found this through a member of the International Court System emails.

Can you believe a company can actually get away with this?

I choose not to shop here until they change their policies and who knows. Maybe I will take my business elsewhere from now on.

Michael

Read more at the Manteca Bulletin…

We Said It Before, We’ll Say It Again

California Proposition 22 stated:

“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Sounds clear and unequivocal to me, but apparently perversions of a sexual nature tend to affect the linguistic comprehension ability as well.

In November 2000 the measure was approved by a resounding majority of votes, 61.4%, a landslide no matter how you look at it.

I was involved in the debate over Prop 22 due in part to my participation in a debate/speech class at the local Junior College during the Fall 2000 semester.

California is often considered a Socialist state, but when you get down to serious issues, there is a significant and vocal Conservative, Classical Liberal, and Christian population which have and will be mobilized.

When the California Supreme Court swept away the true voice of the people in June by declaring the words of Prop 22 invalid, the fire was lit once again.

A ballot iniative has been submitted again, with the exact same wording as Prop 22 because it is strong and unquestionable, despite what the California Supreme Court claims.

Prop 8 has received an incredible level of support across the state, submitting nearly twice the number of signatures needed to quality for the November Ballot.

The presidential contenders have weighed in on this critical issue: Barak Hussein Obama is against it and for Homosexual Marriage, while John McCainis for Prop 8 and supports Real Marriage.

Those who would expand the government and silence the vote of the people filed a lawsuit to block this initiative, which was just denied.

JPennStar: What is your take on the pulse of the people regarding this initiative? Is it generating the buzz that existed for Prop 22?

Work hard. Pray, but don’t stop just with that. California needs to be pulled back to it’s mooring once again.

Goodies

Some goodies that I’ve found interesting, enlightening, and maybe a bit scary in the last few days worth of news.

First up, Jesse Helms.

He died recently, and our condolences and sympathy go out to his family and friends, of which he apparently had many. People who met him invariably found him courtly and affable, the quintessential gentleman, regardless of whether they agreed with him or not.

“If you took a poll of the pages and the people who work in the Capitol about who was the most popular member, I expect Jesse Helms would have won, which would surprise an awful lot of people in the press and people out in America who thought of Jesse Helms as a fierce individual,” (Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Senate Monday.

In the Wall Street Journal, John Fund said of Helms:

If Ronald Reagan was the sunny and optimistic face of modern conservatism, the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar of it was Jesse Helms.

Senator Helms was a man of character and consistancy, with few equals alive in our time. Mr. Fund ends with this:

Jesse Helms was a major influence on American conservatism, but his career provides a blueprint for anyone who represents an embattled minority viewpoint. You can, with persistence and unflinching determination, change the political odds in your favor.

We see liberal and socialist causes operating today based on the methods Senator Helms pioneered and championed for many years.

But the socialists who disagreed with him in nearly every way except method have besmirched his record by use of a myopic focus on several incorrect and inexcusable stands and a refusal to see Senator Helms’ rationale and larger worldview and philosophy.

The Day of Connecticut claims he was against civil rights progress. I, too, would be against much of what they consider to be progress.

I have referenced Booker T. Washington previously. The gist of his philosophy was that rather than trying to erase the effects of slavery by raising the black American above his comparable white American we ought to focus on erasing every wall or seperation or limiter between any race, allowing all to equally participate so much as they desire in the American Dream. Currently, American policy is racist, purportedly in favor of the black American, but by attempting to ease the way of the black American, they are damning the average black American to a life of desperation as by policy they are not allowed to compete in the marketplace of merit, only the bazaar of skin color.

I do not know enough of Senator Helms’ view on integration, and from reading the current crop of articles framing his life, I do not think I would agree with much of what he believed on the issue. At the same time, it is conceivable that the ideas of Booker T. Washington would be vilified with much the same hatred as has been directed to Senator Helms.

San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, BeyondChron.com, “The Voice of the Rest”, makes their view very, very clear: “Jesse Helms: Just A Dead Southen Bigot” (written by “a radical southern Italian atheist queer with a website”, Tommi Avicolli Mecca).

The Washington Post rises no higher than the “radical southern Italian atheist queer with a website”, and, in face, cannot even come with anything original. The Post re-posts an article they wrote 7 years ago: “Jesse Helms: White Racist“.

The National Review calls him a Patriot. One wonders if this were a according to a definition Obama would posit.

Speaking of Obama (that was a segue worth of Michael Medved), even the pro-socialist media are starting see that he cannot possibly support the massive amount of money and government largesse he has promised to each and every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory and Liberal Petproject to be found.

The LA Times adds up the cost of Obama’s agenda:

“I don’t think it all adds up,” Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama’s spending plans.

The Houston Chronicle points out that laundry-lists are often tossed once the person is elected:

In more than a year of campaigning, Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.

But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact.

The Houston Chronicle goes on to point out a distinct and significant difference between John McCain and Barak Hussein Obama:

Obama has said he would:

• strengthen the nation’s bridges and dams ($6 billion a year)
• help make men better fathers ($50 million a year)
• aid Iraqis displaced by the war ($2 billion in one-time spending)
• extend health insurance to more people (part of a $65-billion-a-year health plan)
• develop cleaner energy sources ($15 billion a year)
• curb home foreclosures ($10 billion in one-time spending)
• and add $18 billion a year to education spending.

It is a far different blueprint than McCain is offering. He has proposed relatively little new spending, arguing that tax cuts and private business are more effective means of solving problems.

It is socialism that Obama proposes. He is a socialist of the common order. Perhaps it is inexperience, perhaps it is that he honestly thinks this is the correct way, perhaps he hungers for the reality of the power that many ascribe to him in him nearly messianic coming.

And finally, some local goodness. My governor, Rod Blagojevich hears it from the media. The allegations against him are more serious than those for which former governor George Ryan was just sent to prison. And Obama is mentioned:

From the BloggingBlagoBlog.

Duh!?! And Other Interesting Stuff

First, the Duh!

Gay men get HIV, and they’re getting it faster. 12% faster, says a new CDC report.

And of course, to remind those hotheads whose brains have boiled out: HIV is the disease the US Government released in Africa to desimate the black population.

The rest of us know it’s transmitted by homosexual relations between men. And that it’s not bias or bigotry that caused it, but pride, willful ignorance, and the natural result of an unnatural act.

Now the Interesting Stuff

Investor’s Business Daily reports that an architect the the Canadian socialized health-care system, that one we hear is so incredible and worthy of emulation from the leftist socialist running for POTUS, has had a change of heart:

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says (Claude) Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Counteracting the tales of woe and terror which are peppering the debate south of our northern border, the IBD tells a tale of truth which ought to give those considering the proposed socialized utopia pause:

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

Because she’s a woman, and it’s her ovaries, it’s a real tear-jerker.

No, the point is that the capitalistic, profit-based system provides better care to a greater number of people with two primary reasons:

1. The costs cause people to evaluate themselves whether they really need that procedure, freeing the system from a glut of unnecessary and frivolous procedures.
2. Those same costs entice more skilled labor and research and development into medical/technological advances, enhancing quality and quantity of available care.

Read more at IBD.

Republican ‘”Obama”, Only With History And Substance’ Jindal takes the hard line

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has actually accomplished things in his life, was outraged over the Supreme Court’s liberal judges finding the death penalty is not applicable or valid for use in extreme cases of child rape, so he signed a bill allowing chemical castration in certain specific cases of rape and sexual abuse.

Sponsored by Democrat Senator Nick Gautreaux of Meaux, LA, arguments surrounding the bill were mostly on scope and effect, rather than validity and right.

It sounds like, unlike the members state houses in many of the states, the members of the Louisiana State House are a group who actually have backbones connected to their brains.

Think Again

Think the issue of homosexual marriage isn’t that important, or that it is not indicative of such terrible possibilities as many seem to say? Think again:

From the AFA

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.