iPandora

Consistent discipline works for both recalcitrant children and rogue nations.

With children, letting them know their options and the consequences of their choices and allowing them to choose and accept their consequences is the bedrock of discipline.

Growing up, all of us children knew that for standard disobedience, the punishment was three swats from the Red bud rod. For lying, it was “triples” or 9 swats.

Some infractions had stronger or different punishments: when I tried burning the house down by inserting foreign objects into our old furnace, Dad grounded me for 6 months (I think I was out after 3 months on good behavior). For throwing nuts and dirt over my friend’s neighbors fence into their pool, we had to go to their front door and apologize. When I yelled at mom ( a few times), dad “tanned my hide” until he felt I’d learned that wasn’t an approved method of communication.

But the consistency was that we knew when we did something, there were expected and consistent consequences.

Now what if my parents were elected every 4 years, and they could only get 2 terms consecutively?

That wouldn’t work for child-rearing, obviously. But it is the best bet for a Republican form of government.

And yet, many of the weaknesses that make a constantly changing head of state such a bad idea for a family continue into the structure of the Presidency of the United States.

Right now, there is a nuclear-armed North Korea threatening severe retaliation to any attempts to curtail their missile-rattling. They are publicly stating their intention of shooting a missile towards Hawaii. None of their current arsenal will reach that far, but it’s no light thing to shoot a missile in the direction of the United States of America.

It’s my country.

The organization which likes to think it is the supreme chancellor of the entire world has already laid out sanctions against North Korea explicitly stating that country is not allowed to export any weapons or weapons materials.

North Korea has their number: now shipping to Myanmar/Burma is a shipload of weapons origination from North Korea.

So the cheeky brat has toed the line. It’s the recalcitrant child acting up and testing how far he can push against the rules.

The UN is in high dander over this and is threatening… wait for it… more sanctions! Yea, that’ll stop ‘em.

The United States of America is not the mother of the world, nor the father. We’re the big brother. We’re not responsible for controlling the internal workings of other nations, but as the largest and most moral (I did not say perfect, I said “most moral”) we bear a responsibility to the rest of the world that is not shared by any other nation right now.

In the Reagan and Bush days, our President would be standing tall and calling the leadership of North Korea on the carpet for the systematic denial of basic human rights even to their own citizens. Shame would be called upon the leadership of that nation for it’s repression of dissent backward, anti-liberty policies. And for it’s missile-rattling, North Korea would be facing an insurmountable and effectively devastating result to it’s brutish and bullying behavior.

In the Obama era we sit, and wait. And send a single ship to babysit the weapons-carrying vessel as it plies the waters heading towards the despotic dictatorship destroying Burma/Myanmar.

We aren’t allowed to board or hinder the vessel in any way.

We can ask them to stop.

Perhaps these people just feel they are misunderstood by the rest of the world. And if we just ask them how they’re feeling they’ll open up to us.

A word of advice, completely free: Don’t let psychologists run the police department and don’t let them run foreign policy.

“How do you feel” is not a valid question in foreign policy. Particularly when the one you’re asking is holding the trigger on a nuclear device and when his history shows mental instability on the part of the entire government.

You hold up a bigger hammer that he has and you let him know that if he takes one more step, you’ll whack him.

And when he takes that step?

Whack him.

As an expectant father, I’m none too interested in raising my child in a new round of fall0ut shelters and nuclear attack drills.

MADD is not peace. MADD is fear. (Nothing against Mothers Against Drunk Driving).

I don’t live in fear.

I choose to live in peace brought about by the appropriate and effective use of threat and fact of force.

President Obama apparently plans to achieve peace through the shrinking violet method.

Something the American populace needs to understand, and quickly, is that every election is a foreign-policy election.

The less our government does internally to America, the better off we’ll be. The more our government is involved in protecting American interests off-shore, the better off we’ll be.

And because, right now, we’re still the most moral nation in the world. It can be generally said that when America operates in it’s own best interest, the world benefits from it.

Not that we are so full of ourselves that we believe goods things for us are good things for all.

But a strong United States of America means petty tyrants the world over will know they can trust the actions and will of America will be continually against their petty tyranny. And that if they attempt to export either their pettiness or their tyranny, we’ll be there with a big stick, a mop, and a bucket to beat them into submission again and clean up their mess.

A strong United States would be calling steadily and constantly for freedom of the election in Iran, and working actively in support of the open and democratic process in that nation. And the world would safer.

A strong United States would be responding to North Korea’s insane and idoitic ambitions as it would to a petulant and rebellious child. We would state the consequences of their continued stupidity, and if they continued, we would give them the consequences they were promised. And the world would be safer.

It’s not really a difficult or complex idea, from this side. Which is probably why the hyper intelligent President Obama, who, along with his leadership team insist on seeing everything in so many shades of grey it would make a color blind person swear they could differentiate green and blue.

But unless there is a consistent, strong, and swift exercise of our own (and all others on this globe’s) rights to life and liberty ensured through the appropriate show and use of force, there will be consequences…

For us.

Want to know how to kill a butterfly?

Help it.

Yes, it’s that easy.

You see this newly metamorphosized creature, brimming with potential beauty and wondrous mystery, struggling weakly against the tough confines of it’s chrysalis shell. Moved with pity you gently tear the chrysalis further, freeing it’s hostage, the beautiful young butterfly.

And yet, what is this?

The fair creature is still weak. It’s body not energized with the pangs of struggle, and it’s abdomen still engorged with liquid it must now pump into it’s wings. Without the necessary and draining struggle for freedom from it’s chrysalis, the butterflies strength is stunted and it will not have the strength to pump it’s wings full.

It will fall to the ground and become easy prey to the other creatures waiting for food or it will simply die.

It is good to minimize suffering whenever we can. It is our moral responsibility to strive to help and assist others however we are able.

However, all assistance and relief must be provided with an awareness of the necessity of the situation.

Does a parent do their child good by covering for them when they cheat or break the law? Often, it is a parent’s failure to provide the necessary discipline at home that allows the child to grow up to break the law, and the best thing they can do is to allow that authority willing to provide the necessary correction the freedom to mete out the necessary punishment.

Does a parent do their child good by demanding the opening of the school basketball court to where they are skipping classes and failing everywhere except for their “mad skillz” on the court? Wouldn’t it help the child by standing firm beside others who care and require higher standards from children who obviously have drive and intelligence?

The easy solution is often fraught with foreseeable future failure.

An often maligned conservative standard is to expect more from people. It is completely true that this perspective tends to hurt more than the soft tyranny of low expectations held by many of a liberal bent. However, the people who grow through adversity are stronger people, more independent and more positively beneficial to the independently interdependent system our Founding Fathers devised for us.

It has been said the most difficult part of raising children is consistency, and also the most rewarding. Consistantly providing instruction, correction, support, guidance, and parental leadership will take life from me and cause hurt and pain. But it will reap rewards far beyond any mushy permissiveness or laissez-faire Spockian parental philosophy.

Our dear child is to be a butterfly, and I shall not do more nor less than hold his hand as he struggles through the various chrysalis’ life passes him through. I not ease his way only in giving him the tools he needs to accomplish his own way.

I will not kill my butterfly.

From today’s Whirled Views from the WorldMagBlog:

Today’s quote is from an African-American pastor on abortion, the leading cause of death among black Americans since 1973: “The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother.”

How true, and how sad. Entire generations wiped away because of any of so many lies and decietful and destructive philosophies.

The rocks are drenched in blood and the cries of a multitude massacred rise before our God.

Who will hear?

Who will praise the Lord when His smallest children, the offspring of the jewels of His creation, are being murdered?

Continued from part 5

10 Little and Big Things You Can Do:

1: Hypocrisy: Publicly-”Green” people tend to fly more, take more expensive and expansive vacations and use loop-hole systems such as Carbon Offsets to make the claim they are caring about the environment (ie: Al Gore).
Demonizing Corporations: Requires corporations.Solar panels require extremely high amounts of wealth and take extreme amounts of time to recoup the dollar and energy costs.

2: Average people are better at this, the cost of items drives conservation. Growing up we always used paper garbage bags for our trash bags in the kitchen. I upgrade computers for several years, replacing internal parts piecemeal as my needs change.

Potential Hypocrisy: “Visibly engage in re-use”: It’s what we do when people aren’t watching that shows who we are. We should simply engage in re-use, not visibly or invisibly, but as part of who we are.

3: Good, but know where the rational, reasonable, and practical parts are, and avoid the conspiracies, fallacies, and manipulations which use the Green movement to further enrich callous liars such as Al Gore.

4: Al Gore, wrong poster boy. John Doe, right poster boy. Climate change, arguable issue, plenty of science on either side. Cyclical, “hockey stick” graph magnifies an infinitesimal temperature change, ignore the fact that the pollution spike follows after the temperature spike. Sun spot cycles are more closely correlated in a casual relationship.

5: Good, but Chemical and Toxic do not necessarily equal. Is not government’s responsibility. Internet and modern communcation allows ’small’ people to have large voices and affect real and substantive pressure for change on private industry.

EU example: “Tin slivers” are dangerous, lead better, more reliable, safer for the reliability it has. Forces private industry to make inferior products.

6: Agree. This is the Church.

7: Public transportation does not ease congestion, is prone to government-induced cronyism and corruption in the lucrative contracts. Dirty, inefficient, cannot profit. Is not federal government’s responsibility. Privatize public transportation. Airlines and bus lines and Ocean lines are profitable and successful. Why not trains? Government run failures.

Master-planned communities tend to be less diverse economically and inhibit the upward- and cross-mobilism that is encouraged by an open and spread community system. Is government going to require people live within 5 miles of their job? Who can do this? Do you want to be forced to live next door to the supermarketor the office building? This inhibits personal freedom and the meeting of needs by artificially conforming all members of a community to lead similar lives in a pre-defined economony. This is a tried and proven recipe for economic stagnation, poverty, and dissatisfaction (ie: communism/socialism). Causes harm.

8: Hypocrisy: CFLs (”energy efficient light bulbs”) contain mercury, which is released when they are disposed of or broken. Talking about toxins: Mercury is known bad. Also, some people are more sensitive to the 60-Hz “flicker” of fluorescent bulbs, causing headaches and other physical problems. It’s a good idea at its root, but more wealth allows for more development which allows for better solutions. CFLs are not the solution to the lighting problem. Corporations need the freedom to innovate further to address the needs which we present to them through the force of the market.

Answer is to innovate and develop and start own corporation which will produce the solution.

9: Recycled bottles take more energy to make than “original” bottle of similar dimension. Needs innovation and development to make effective. Only because we have corporations allowing people to make money and get rich can we afford to support economically wasteful systems which are cleaner and more “Green”.

10: Good… but. Wal-mart. Average family in Wal-mart neighborhood has $2000 extra at the end of the year because of the price deflation a Wal-mart forces on the area. Thats $2000 they can spend on glasses for their kids, medicine, etc, without going to the government. Wal-mart hires people not as ‘acceptable’ at other places: mentally handicapped, older, etc. Without Wal-mart keeping their costs down they would be forced only to hire healthy, good-looking people like everybody else. What is better: An Old person with self-respect due to a productive job who has to pay for their own health insurance or an old person decrepit and decaying in the lounger at the nursing home paid for at exculpatory rates by money taken from you and me by government-run bloated social welfare programs which I can no longer use to give to my Church so they can’t keep up the outreach to the nursing home or to pay for medicine for my children?

Yes, there is a problem and the root of the solution is not all that complex.

Continue reading in part 7

Continued from part 3

DISTRIBUTION: “Selling all the toxic, contaminated junk as fast as possible”
“Keep the prices low, keep the people buying, keep the inventory moving”
“How do they keep the prices down?”
“They don’t pay the workers very much, and they skimp on health insurance everytime they can. It’s all about externalizing the costs. What that means is the real costs of making stuff aren’t captured in the price.” – Is there a mandate that companies provide health insurance? It definitely is a perk and people are perfectly able to vote with their feet and take jobs which provide insurance coverage, which will then encourage more employers to provide health insurance.
“We aren’t paying for the stuff we buy”
“I didn’t pay for the radio. So who did pay?”
These people paid with the loss of their natural resource space.
These people paid with the loss of their clean air, with increasing asthma and cancer rates. – A bugbear: healthy diet and exercise have been shown over and over again to allow our body to process toxins it encounters and avoid the problems many people result to medication to resolve. Also, studies have shown that rates of many diseases are not increasing so much as diagnosis of them is. People are more willing to be tested for diseases and conditions and accept treatment of those diseases and therefore the incidence rates are going up. There may indeed be increases in the actual incidence rate, but we cannot know a) how much is accounted for by the more pervasive testing and b) whether there is significant enough correlation between the two data sets to support the claim of pollution causing the increasing incidences of illness.
“Kids in the Congo paid with their future. 30% of kids in the Congo dropped out of school to mine… a metal we need for our cheap and disposable electronics.” – If that job payed them more than they’ve ever dreamed of earning before in a society where education does not mean what it means to us, is that as terrible as the initial claims sounds? The video makes the error of viewing these cultures through the prism of a Western viewpoint. The children would be better served in the long run by staying in school now. Their potentials would be significantly improved. But to leave those schools now and go to work supporting their families was a valid and tempting option to many of them. Our cheap and disposable electronics has grown their economy and given money to the lowest of the low in their society. How is that bad again?
These people paid by having to cover their own health insurance. - If you compel every employer to provide health insurance, you raise the cost of each employee to their employer. If the cost of employing people goes up, employers will employ fewer people. So then which is better: A worker paying for their own insurance or an unemployed person unable to pay for anything and living off the government dole?
All along this system people pitched in so I could get this radio for $4.99. - That is the beauty of the system. It is not perfect, and many people don’t get the same “treatment” by the system. But by and large, more than any other system that has been tried or theorized, more people benefit to a greater extent across all levels of income, culture, and economy by the capitalist system. It is not that capitalism is the perfect system, it is simply the best system we humans can engage in.

Continued from part 5

Continued from part 2

PRODUCTION: “Use energy to mix toxic chemicals in with natural resources to make toxic contaminated products” – Very crafty. Immediately we associate the words “toxic” “chemical” “contaminated” and “products” where there is not a necessary link. Chemicals are naturally occurring elements. Sodium Chloride is a chemical, and we use it in food to help our bodies retain water (Table salt). Dihydrogen Oxide is a chemical, and yet we’d die without it (water).
Over 100,000 synthetic chemicals in use in commerce today. – Very little could be made without them.
Only a handful tested for health impacts. – This is true, and a problem. Market pressure from a populace wealthy enough to pay for the extensive and expensive testing is the best way to fix.
None tested for “synergistic” health impacts: impacts when combined with other chemicals accidentally or purposefully. – See above
Toxins in = toxins out – True. Read about Lobsters. Talk to ShatteredChina.
BFR’s = neuro-toxins, flame retardants added to many products. – How many lives are saved because of it? Is there something better right now? There are places people can purchase products free of this.
Food with highest level of “toxic” contaminants: Human Breast Milk – Real gut-wrencher. Likely true, but what does it mean? Here in the most toxic land on the planet we have very low infant mortality rates. Why?
Babies = most vulnerable – What about abortion? Which is the greater moral ill: possible harm from higher toxin rates in their food, or killing them before they even have a chance?
Why are we not protecting “sacred” breast feeding.
Goes back to government: “I thought they were looking out for us” – Is the government morally responsible or is it defined in their limited scope to protect breast feeding? This is a ludicrous assumption. Government policy may indeed have been indirectly responsible for pollution, but if that is true, do you trust them, being part of the problem, to be part of the solution? Further, your rage, as a consumer with a voice, is much more effective in causing change on the part of the corporations which can develop and create and invent actual solutions to problems. Is the government capable of development of creative solutions?

Factory workers, many women, of reproductive age – This is a bloated claim. Quick to tug the heart strings, but without serious validity. The number of safety precautions in modern manufacturing are mind blowing. Further, this is reminiscent of the tales told in Sociology classes of the hideous conditions of the common man over the years of industry. They are sensationalist and disproven. The photographers famous for their cataloging of the ills of modern commerce were out to make a buck. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a truism and has led to many a distortion. Not that there are not cases of real damage, they just are not nearly as common or egregious as is commonly believe based on the narrative sold us by the purveyors of doom.
No other option – What about the better lives they are able to give their children because they have a more stable job with better wages? A good parent will do what is necessary to give their children every advantage they can. If that includes taking risks, that is a judgment made by each individual. Certain jobs carry risk. Do we ban jobs which entail risk? Would such a ban be truly beneficial?
Erosion of local economies and resources push people to leave previously self-sustaining local economies live in cities - If they were self-sustaining why did people leave? The agrarian economy is subject to a boom/bust cycle which is one reason the push to a industrial/commercial economy has been so embraced by so many. We tend to glamorize the agrarian life-style to a dangerous degree, philosophically. And while there are many good people who survive and thrive in that life-style, many choose to leave it, and have chose to leave it, due to it’s many hardships.
“many to live in slums” – Should we outlaw slums?
“looking for work no matter how toxic that work may be” – And now we are to outlaw work? As a husband and potential/hopeful father, I make a judgment call when I take a job whether the potential risk outweighs the potential benefit. Watch the Discovery Channel’s shows Dangerous Jobs, Ice Road, and other shows which highlight people performing hard work under extreme conditions. Often they enjoy the jobs. They fill serious needs and sometimes ‘frivolous’ desires of
“Not just resources wasted along this system, people are wasted, whole communities” – There is never a waste where people choose to apply themselves to a system which produces. This is loaded language with the intent of causing us to be increasingly against the heart of personal enrichment: the ability to create and earn wealth from that creation.
Environmental impact of production: toxic byproducts, pollution. – This is incontrovertible, but incomplete. Therefore it is misleading.
4 billion pounds US industry “admits” to releasing each year. – Spread that across the volume of the atmosphere, water, subtract for the processing ability of the green on the earth. Now how much is left?
“It’s probably a lot more because that’s only what they admit” – Leading language, assumes they are all crooks.
“So what do they do? Move the dirty factories overseas. Pollute someone elses land.” – Why is it that the Kyoto Accord and other such environmental pacts exempt third-world countries and their corporations and factories from any accountability? Because without the ability to produce “more than their fair share” of garbage until their populace gained enough general wealth they will not be able to afford the production standards and technology necessary to make cleaner factories and production environments.
Pollution “comes right back at us carried by wind currents” – This has been true for a long time. Early mariners sailing outside the Los Angeles bay and basin noted the smog in the areas. It’s not worth panicing over.

Continue reading in part 4

Voting for Obama, for many black people, is about sticking it “To The Man,” – whether they know it or not. Other than the color of the skin, Obama is simply popular among his ethnicity because he is a socialist and black culture is heavily influenced by this belief system – take from those who are capable and have, and give to those who are not and have not. Much of this aligns with the black culture which believes they are still regularly discriminated against by the white man in high places from businesses. So if the government can be turned into a tool to take from the rich, they will vote for people to do so; and the socialist Democratic party is more than willing to use these votes to their advantage. This partially explains why, even though it was the Republican party which freed the slaves, that the Democratic party gets the largest percentage of votes from the black community.

Obama in a radio interview in the early 2000s stated he believes the Civil Rights movement of the 60s didn’t go far enough because he believes there wasn’t enough “distribution….change.” LINK. He’s also went onto say the founding fathers did not do enough with the constitution because it doesn’t say what the government is to do for us LINK So this IS the change of which Obama wants to bring to America. I can understand why people with entitlement mentalities would vote for him, however, what really concerns me is the average American who is okay with paying more in taxes directly, or indirectly via the products of companies which pay, now, higher taxes. With this passive, boiling-frog mentality, before they know it they or their grandchildren will be in the cross hairs of the government.

As an Independent I have some serious issues with the Republican party, but the vote is between an American socialist (John McCain) and a European socialist (Obama); and the reason my founding fathers came to America was to NOT be like Europe and be our own nation. I hope my generation, which by many polls is more conservative, can steer this great nation back on course.

This is going to be an interesting election and next four years.

Or, why using a pro-life criteria as a single-issue voting guide is acceptable and responsible in the American Republic.

A fellow-student of my wife’s at her well-known Christian school wrote a note stating her belief that Obama is a better Christian and will be a better President than McCain. It was discouraging to read.

This makes the second person who I’d've thought would be able to see beyond the incessant, sycophantic cheerleading by the MSM and the carefully tailored lies of the Obama campaign to the real depth of his deception and would not support him for that.

I guess an audacious hope in change for the sake of hope or something similar really is something for which people yearn to such an extent they are willing to kneel at the baals of our culture and join the thronging hordes chasing the dream of socialism.

I thought I had one more generation before America had it’s watershed moment of decision over communism.

We can’t choose our situations or the perils which will beset our life, we can only do our best in the situations with which we are faced. As when Frodo faced with despair his imminent doom:

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.

But to the subject at hand:

This student, writing in her note, commented that she had people in her life who would not vote for Obama under any circumstances due to his support of Abortion. She considered this view too narrow and not a careful approach to the broader issues at hand.

She further commented, as noted earlier, that per her reading of Proverbs, Obama was living his Christian witness on the campaign to an extent she’d not seen elsewhere.

Two questions: Is a single-issue pro-life position too narrow a view and is Obama living a Christian witness on the campaign trail?

The abortion battle which divides much of our society so drastically is so divisive and drastic because it is so very important, and those who have considered it at all either believe it is extremely important for many reasons beyond those just on it’s face or they are decieved.

Suitable to the depth of the issue (not the complexity, abortion is not complex: the baby is either dead or alive), there are a plethora of positions on abortion, all along the continuum from “No, not ever” to “The more dead the merrier, the later the better”. I can understand and sympathize with those who have honestly experienced a “for the life of the mother” situation and have their ideas formed that way. But were my wife in that position (though the percentage chances of that are incredibly miniscule), I would only allow myself the position that it is an accepted risk and part of life that we go through, and that were it necessary for me or my wife to give up our lives for the sake of our child, that is the correct thing to do. Pragmatically, it is the measuring of potential: my child has greater potential than I. Theologically, Jesus died for me, God’s child, I can die for my child. Being a man it is easy to dismiss my argument as being ill-considered and shallow and prone to revisiting when I’m actually faced with that. But the truth is there, and I could not live with another decision.

Most average people believe the lies that abortion is intended only for rare cases of parental abuse, rape, incest, and the like, and therefore support it for those reasons. Some people recognize it for it’s inherent racism: whole generations of black and other minority children cut down like so much government-subsidized and unwanted wheat.

The real militants take it is a watershed for womens rights, making motherhood as much a choice as fatherhood.

Only the cold-killers go all the way: Abortion anytime, anywhere, for any purpose. Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the Illinois Legislature AFTER it was ammended to included the obligatory protections for cases of rape and incest at his request. This is not a case of one random vote against, it is a case of him realizing the political expediency of something (support for such an obviously good piece of legislation) and then changing his mind for the sake of his personal belief that children are only to be kept when they’re wanted.

Obama further supported and defended a hospital which was found to be condoning the practice of leaving unwanted babies delivered during botched abortions unattended in storage closets until they died.

Obama is for, and this is not a debatable or arguable issue, the allowable killing of babies who have survived the horrifics of an abortion and are living outside of their mother.

Right now we call this murder.

What kind of man believes this is good? What kind of president would that man be who believe such a thing?

Human dignity was a term this student used to describe the totality of Obama’s ideas. His ideals were better for human dignity.

If we as a society believe it’s OK to kill babies AFTER they’re born, have we ANY acceptable or reasonable perception of human dignity?

A man who would not work to save a baby does not understand the magnificence and wonder of human life. A man who does not understand these basic aspects of human dignity has no dignity himself.

It is not a small view or a narrow perception to believe that one who does not support the protection of human life, especially that of the weakest and most innocent among us, is not a fit man to be president.

Is Obama living a “Christian” witness on the campaign trail?

He denies that children are a blessing from the Lord. Or if believes that, he doesn’t want that blessing.

He finds it necessary to lie about his past and about his views and opinions on issues. He was not raised in the middle class but by his extremely successful bank president grandmother. Nothing against him or his grandmother for that. I would not think less of him, were he to only not seek to hide it and lie about it.

He claims that it was deregulation which allowed the banking failures when it was his direct actions and work which contributed towards the protection of Fannie and Freddie from scrutiny and increased regulation at the hands of the Bush administration and John McCain years ago which may have averted this crisis we are now experiencing.

He claims that taking a position on the beginning of human life is “above his pay grade”, again failing to stand up, as a Christian man ought to have done, in protection of the innocent and unborn among us and denying that his actions, speaking much louder than his words, show that he believes human life begins when the parents decides they want the child and not a moment sooner.

He associates with people who support the disruption of society and killing of people in terrorist acts and who when given opportunity to recant, say they did not do enough.

He spends 20 years in the pews of a church which has more in common ideologically with Marxism than Christianity as Jesus modeled it.

This is not hidden fact or obfuscated information. It is all readily available to those who would listen.

I am not to judge because I will be judged with the same measure I have measured with, but I can observe based on the evidence before me and draw conclusions.

I just don’t understand.

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.

McCain has restored a great deal of hope to me.

Coworkers who don’t necessarily agree with my politically are even calling the election for McCain-Palin.

I am hard pressed to think of another person who could actually bring a history and actual person of outside-Washington strength.

Obama-Biden are two pols, one young and inexperienced with anything besides Chicago-style corruption politics and one old and seasoned in the ways of Washington lies.

Palin has actually run something, stood up to corruption in her own party, and is in touch with ordinary Americans in ways that nobody else running this November are: she hunts and fishes, has children, including one with Down’s Syndrome (Hat Tip: Sol).

Welcome aboard Mrs. Palin.

And you know any strategist recognizes this is also about someone challenging Hillary in 4-8 years.