iPandora

Thomas Sowell writes on GOPUSA regarding McCain:

We have been hearing for years that Senator John McCain gives “straight talk” and his bus has been endlessly referred to as the “straight talk express.” But endless repetition does not make something true.

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker.

There are short, blunt lies — and he told a big one on the eve of the Florida primary, when he claimed that Mitt Romney had advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Even the Washington Post, which supports McCain, said that the Senator “has distorted the meaning” of what Governor Romney said, that Romney “has never proposed setting ‘a date for withdrawal.’”

Read on for more of McCain’s Straight Lies…

I work in the field of public policy and keep abreast of current events. But despite being in the midst of the primary season, I remain undecided regarding my choice for the nomination. So what better way to make my choice than fill out a questionnaire remotely resembling a personality profile on a matchmaker website.
A friend told me about this web site, so I’ll pass it along: http://www.votechooser.com/

Huckabee is a Christian, and I welcome him and love him as a brother in Christ. But his politics and views are not good for the country.

His views on illegal immigration are terrible, involving the giving away of American money to people who’ve broken the law.

His views on foreign policy are immature and inane and will result in more erosion of world stability, not just American reputation. Reading his primary article outlining foreign policy, I get the feeling he considers current American foreign policy to be akin to biggest bully on the block mentality:

The United States, as the world’s only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised.

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.

And Romney, while being vocal in pointing out the problems with Huckabee’s positions, is not the only one beating that drum.

From MyManMitt comes and extensive list of prominent conservative leaders and their qualms with Huckabee, including:

• Rush Limbaugh
• Michelle Malkin
• George Will
• David Limbaugh
• Pat Buchanan
• Dean Barnett
• Hugh Hewitt

We have before us an historic election: the nation desires further change, traditional media is obviously failing in balance and importance and is taking extraordinary steps to try and reclaim their relevance.

The country has seen the change offered by the Democrats and their complete failure to implement any of that change even from a position of strength given them by the people in 2006.

Therefore we have before us a chance to elect another conservative Republican with a good chance of being able to spend 8 years enacting further meaningful and long lasting change in the Courts, in policy, in the War on Terror, and in America’s economy

The stakes are high and the cost of failure is something I will not even begin to consider.

Huckabee is not the man for the job.

A friend of mine supports Ron Paul for president. Admittedly, his libertarian views are very appealing to many people feeling as though the Republican mainstream has hung them out to dry. However, there are deep issues that I have with Ron Paul, very deep issues.

My friend and I got into a discussion regarding Ron Paul, and they have graciously given me permission to post it here:

Matthew:

Please tell me you only joined the group supporting Ron Paul as a joke.

Friend:

No, I wasn’t joking. Why should I? Go ahead and convince me! =] I’m game.

Matthew:

His political platform is mostly appealing, I do agree with that. However, he supports pulling us out of a war that, regardless of whether you agree with the necessity of the war or no, you must understand to pull out is to give a victory to an enemy who will not accept our defeat graciously but who will next bring the war to our doorstep again. His consistency on the issues he is most vocal about on the campaign trail is also less than stellar, with a marked propensity for bringing “pork” projects to his district.

Finally, and I know he himself does not espouse these beliefs, but white supremacists have jumped on his campaign, contributing money and support. Ron Paul has not repudiated these supporters or returned their money or prevented their support.

He is not a leader in the sense America needs. And while the the pickings are few in the field, I think of all the candidates running with an (R) after their name, Paul is least qualified.

Friend:

We are in a war that can’t be won. Don’t you remember that Bush declared victory over 4 years ago? Since then, 3,735 American soldiers have lost their lives. If that is victory, then we can’t win this war.

Do you remember Vietnam? We lost that war, and had the common sense to get out of there, (although it wasn’t until we lost 58,000 of our guys) and now? We trade with them! Our relations with Vietnam are as they should be with any country!

If a forthcoming attack is your concern, think about this. When Ron Paul talks about bringing our troops home, he’s talking about bringing home ALL of the troops from over 700 military bases, in over 160 different countries, all over the world. We would not no longer be growing resentment in any of these countries, who all deserve, as much as we do, to run their countries how the want, and not have a bigger, more powerful government come and tell them how to live. How would you feel if China or Russia came over here, and built 15 military bases or more, and started telling us how to run our lives? Would you sit back, and let them? I wouldn’t… I would do everything in my power, (which isn’t much=]) to stop them!

So, who would you stand behind for the next president of the US?

Matthew:

First, what about the war we are currently in is failing so very badly that there is no way the war can be one? Have you followed the news beyond what has been force-fed us by the media? Read the post here to see one side of the new growth of freedom in Baghdad. Even the New York Times, a paper arguably more invested than any other in our defeat in Iraq, last week published on the front page an article telling of the good that is occurring there.

We lost Vietnam because the politicians (the revered but Clintonesque JFK and the worst president in history Lindon Baines Johnson) would not allow the military to prosecute the war as it needed to be. The president selected the military targets, micromanaging far beyond what any true and wise leader would have or should have done. There was a small but vocal contingent at home which proclaimed the injustice of the war, getting their faces (and other body parts) smeared all over the evening news as our country fought for it’s soul. Public figures such as Jane Fonda openly consorted with the enemy while our soldiers, not allowed to fight as they should have, were captured and imprisoned and tortured. We still do not know the fate of many of those imprisoned, as the Vietnamese Communists who gained power through the pride and ineptitude of our leaders at the time, persecuting and killing many of their own countrymen as well as our servicemen.

Comparing that just but unjustly-prosecuted war with the conflict we are currently in, the times when the current was going poorly coincide with times when the military leadership has taken away responsibility and power from their field-level commanders, much as in the Vietnam war. One of the the reasons freedom from tyranny is succeeding right now and we are experiencing success in our military operations is that the generals are giving direction and responsibility and allowing the people under them to work and decide and wage their battles as they know best.

And regarding the justice of the war. Who do you believe attacked us in 1992, attempting to topple the trade towers? And again in 2001? The same people made both attempts. And regarding specifically the portion of the conflict in Iraq, yes, we have not found weapons of mass destruction. But operating on the intelligence we had then, all the leaders, not just Bush, not just Republicans, not just ‘hawks’, and not just Americans, but the UN security council (regardless of the morality of their position) supported us in our use of force to depose Saddam Hussein and protect the world from any furtherance of his tyranny, either on his own people or on others through his state-sponsoring of terrorists and their weapons systems. Important to remember in this is that while we have not found any actual WMDs we have not found evidence that they were not or never there. Instead, the consensus is that they were trucked across the border to Syria and Iran, both countries with despotic governments who are not shy about broadcasting their intentions of world domination by their religion by their leadership.

As far as defense goes. The worst defense is the kind where all your assets are kept close by. With the world getting “smaller” as technology and transportation move more and more people further and further more and more quickly, and with weapons capable of striking anyplace from anywhere in mere hours, being “on-site” and in the region of conflict is a much more effective defense.

Regarding the bad feelings we are breeding by our presence in the regions. First, America is the only superpower in the history of the world which has neither forced it’s culture upon those it is around as superior, nor have we failed to relinquish sovereign control of the nations we’ve fought in to legitimate governments of those nations in most cases (several islands in the Pacific being the only exceptions to that). Instead, we fight alongside indigent warriors to free their nations, then we spend billions upon billions of dollars to shore up those nations economies and social structures. The hotbeds of hatred spring up wherever they will regardless of our presence. And to remove from the area would only grant unwelcome power to an unworthy underclass of malcontents and misfits.

I am not sure who I’m supporting for the nomination. I will support any Republican nominee in the main presidential race because: 1, they are all and each morally and pragmatically superior to any of the Democrat nominees, and 2, third party candidates are never a viable option except to take votes away from one of the two main party’s candidate (yes, liberal third partiers… keep up the good work, grin).

As far as the nominees, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Rudy is bad news, and his promises to set up conservative judges are likely to be empty. Romney, I think most of his detractors are picking at straws in their critiques of him, but I do not think I’ll vote for him in the nomination for his lack of history to his moral beliefs regarding abortion. Thompson is (little) talk and I think he’ll fade away soon. Huckabee looks good but I’ve heard those close to him call him a pro-life liberal. I think he’d make an excellent VP if given a position of counsel and some authority. I’m not sold on him.

Of all these, I think Huckabee, if he shows strength continuing into these upcoming primaries, is my preferred choice, pending a bit more investigation.

We didn’t continue the conversation further mainly due to busy-ness.

Huckabee is looking to be less and less of a man I’d want to lead this country. He’d make an admirable vice-president, but his fiscal and many of his social programs are not good. He does not see that the best way to help people is to remove all government-sponsored assistance and as much government-required hindrance and and encourage as much private assistance as possible.

Instead his proposals include large amounts of money to be given to people by the government. Government money is never free and it always comes with strings. And it costs you and me. Why not just take less to start with?

But Ron Paul is the last person this nation needs. He does not appreciate the necessity of remaining in Iraq to bring it to a place of stability. A process in which much progress has already been made. He is not a man of his word.

Read the story on the far side of this link. Mitt Romney is acting Presidential, very Presidential.

I’m leaning towards Huckabee in my vote in the nomination, but I’m less than happy with his lack of fiscal responsibility and faith in government programs.

Guiliani is a strong man who is honest and truthful, but his social and moral views are very different from my own and I cannot support many of his policies.

Thompson will not be a factor, unless lethargy is a quality.

Paul can keep spinning his little wheels as long as he stops once the primary voting is over and his nuts see just how few of themselves there really were.

McCain is a politician, not a man. He gets ideas in his head and nothing shakes them loose, especially when they are incorrect. Think Campaign Finance Reform, the worst thing to happen to American Politics since the invention of the lie.

The others are also-ran’s. Egotistical or misguided or just unable to recognize they are at the margin of the margin. And incapable of pulling beyond single-digit support, counting their own families.

Halloween. Bugbear of knee-jerk non-involvists and new ‘favorite holiday of the religiously atheistic media and cultural leaders’. Where did it come from anyway? And can and should a Christian participate in it and to what extent?

I make no claims to historical accuracy in this article, merely stating what I’ve heard over the years and researched myself, all thrown into a big puddle and stirred until I get this… mess.

It is common to hear that Halloween is a night dedicated to the worship of Satan, the prince of evil and darkness. The favored decorations are dark on the nice side, and hideous on the bad side. Tales of ancestor worship and demon calling are frequent and true. Yes, it does happen.

The current version of Halloween borrows, as do most holidays we celebrate, from a plethora of traditions and belief systems. First we shall visit the Christian roots. The early Christians celebrated days when brave Christians laid down their lives as holidays. As persecution grew and the number of martyrs rose, it became impractical to even celebrate only your regional martyrs, and one day, the 1st of November, was dedicated to the celebration of the lives of those who gave their lives for Christ’s glory. Eventually, the rumor grew that on All Hallows Eve (Hallowe’en) God allowed the saints one day to walk the earth, visiting and comforting people and their loved ones and doing good deeds. This of course fueled the imaginations of people, feeding ghost stories and our natural fear of the unknown, the dark, and the dead.

The primary pagan roots of Halloween are Celtic. Druidism is an earth-worshiping, animistic, pan-theistic, evil religion which practiced, at various times, human sacrifice and erected marvelous structures facilitating it’s domination of the superstitious Celts. An brief but accurate description of the Druid’s hold on early Britain can be read in the early chapters of Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England (an excellent book for family and table reading). Around the time of Halloween has always been a time of harvest festivals, as the last of the summer and fall crops have been stored, the fields and woods were full of fat, lazy animals to hunt and kill. The storehouses of the industrious young civilizations were stuffed and the people were ready for one last wild fling before being confined to their hovels and huts by inclement weather. The Druids had convinced the populace that they were responsible for the success of each year, and that the god’s must be payed with ritualistic sacrifice in order to procure their blessing for the long winter and hope for the coming spring. The spiritism and human sacrifice and overall dark tone of the Druid religion permeated this time of the year for the pagan Celts. With the arrival of Saint Patrick in Ireland and other missionaries and conquering cultures such as the Romans, Druidism gave way to a hybrid Christianity, much as it did in South America, where a pagan reverence for the Dead mixed with a Christian knowledge of eternal life and an entirely human desire to see one’s loved ones again.

Halloween retains it’s Christian name: “All Hallows Eve”, and for most of us it retains a good theme, going into the neighborhood one last time to knock on all the doors and receive gifts and give greetings before the cold of winter chases us all indoors again. For a few it retains the pagan trappings of animal sacrifice, for others it involves getting drunk and/or high and naked, making pentagrams, lighting a fire, and chanting loudly at midnight and waking the neighbors.

For the vast majority it means walking your kids around the neighborhood worrying about razor blades in candy and never finding any (kids will digest ANYTHING) and waving hi to the neighbors who fuel your children’s sugar rush for the next 2 weeks.

For some Halloween is a time of remembering Luther’s 95 Theses, which he nailed to the door of the Wittenburg Cathedral on this day 490 years ago. His 95 arguments against the teachings of the Roman Catholic church set fire to the revivals of spirit and social and cultural upheaval and growth which started immediately thereafter and have continued to some extent even to this day.

Some even still remember the martyrs for the faith, whose numbers are growing at an ever greater rate as many nations seek to expunge the redemptive work of Christ from their borders.

But it is important to note that evil has not, cannot, and will not ever create anything new for itself. Evil is only capable of perverting things that are good, taking them out of balance and propriety, assigning more of less significance to them. That is all evil can and will ever be able to do.

God is capable of redeeming all things because He first created all things. Just as man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man, days and times and seasons have no inherent control over us, and can only affect us to the extent we allow ourselves to be controlled by them. The only thing we as Christians should allow to control us is Christ, and through His power we share in His overcoming the world. Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world. We are not given a spirit of fear, but of power, of strength, and of a sound mind. Our God has overcome the world, and nothing occurs without His knowing it and His plan and purpose directing it.

Halloween, for me, is a time to enjoy the change of season, to remember the faithful who have given their lives for Christ, to visit the neighbors while enjoying costumes and goodies. These are pics of my costumes for Halloween 2005 and 2006. I went to work in these. The English Lord included poofy pants and leggings and THE most uncomfortable shoes ever, and I went trick-or-treating with several of my friends that night. It was fun. The other one is, obviously, Mr. Clean, and yes, I shaved my head. It was the first time ever, and it felt weird.

The important thing to remember is that we are called to be light in a dark world. The culture’s current view of Halloween reinforces very strongly the fact that we are indeed in a very dark world that desperately needs light. We are also called to do whatever we do for Him and His glory. If that is not our goal, whether we participate or not, we’re doing it wrong.

EDIT: Scott over at Verum Serum has his own response to kids he teaches and knee-jerk non-involvists.

Social conservative Christian leaders meetings are being trumpeted by the media. The talking heads crowing that the current crop of Republican presidential contenders are not conservative enough on certain issues and that movers and shakers such as Dr. James Dobson are planning on voting for a third party or not at all if the eventual chosen nominee of either of the two main parties does not support traditional family values such as opposing abortion and support marriage for one man and one woman exclusively.

I agree with these leaders that we desperately need strong leadership, morals and values in our President, without them we really do not have a chance as America. It has been rightly noted that the next President may very well nominate several more Justices to the Supreme Court, and with the current balance of ideology in the Court, the next Justices will direct the Court firmly in either direction.

Things we know for sure:

Hillary will appoint Ginsburg’s and similar justices. Men and women whose moral compass is screwed wrong. This is not a question or a chance, it is a known and acknowledged fact. She is not ashamed to say it. These Justices will direct the court towards the globalization of our legal authority, the affirming and legalization of abortion, the normalization of homosexual “marriage”, and the legal protection of terrorists and the aiders, abettors, and sympathizers, among other things. The Justices will practice judicial activism and will deny the will of the people and their elected representatives and the original intent of the constitution. They will hasten the destruction of America in immorality, wickedness, and the blood of our children.

The front runners of the Republican race, Guiliani and Romney, would appoint justices similar to Scalia and Thomas, who believe in the rule of law and the strong original intent of the Constitution. As such, the will of the people and their elected representatives when codified in law, is the law to them and they would not change it or define it into oblivion. They would deny the constitutionality of Roe V Wade, they would uphold the rights and protections of American citizens and the entire world by denying the supposed “rights” of enemy combatants and terrorists. They would uphold the will of the people in their laws and constitutional amendments protecting marriage between one man and one woman.

I have serious disagreements with the social ideas of Guiliani and qualms about the religious view of Romney, but when the option is Hillary, I will throw my whole weight of support behind them for our Country’s sake.

Of the two, I support Romney right now. He has changed his mind on social issues, but in the right direction.

So what of Thompson, McCain, and the others? Thompson has not done much since he announced his candidacy, wowing few and wooing fewer. He is not consistent in cutting spending or on social issues. I’d support him just as heartily if he were to be the nominee, but I will not support him in the primary. McCain is not good for America. His highest aim is his own preeminence and he can only be trusted to to what is expedient for himself. A selfish man is not a man to whom one gives authority.

Huckabee is trying too hard to be all thing to all people, the funny man, the cool man, the smart man, the right man. He is all things to all, and nothing true. This is sad. I had hoped he’d be a good man for the job, but he would be polling and focus-grouping as much as the last President from Arkansas. And with a name like Huckabee, how can he be elected?

As for Paul, to (mis)quote a bastion of English (French?) literature: “I fart in (his) general direction”. There is neither honor, honesty, nor leadership potential in that man. He tickles the ears of his listeners with good ideas mixed with bad. With false libertarianism and fake posture. His listeners and adherents are as enthusiastic as they are deluded and I pity them, and have little patience for them.

Do I wish there were a strong Christian man with history and depth, with values and strength? Yes. It is a sad commentary on the state of the lazy and bloated, idle Christianity which defines our Country that we do not have a strong man leading the way, an obvious and unimpeachable choice, a shoo in who no one can say wrong about because He is right and good.

We do not have such a man, and to search elsewhere for one is to run the risk of finding ourselves lost in history as those who forsook the good hoping to find the impossible.

Okay yeah I understand that we vote for our representatives but honestly how good is this Bush-Clinton legacy for our Republic?

Yahoo LINK

I honestly think Hillary will pass through the Democratic primary and that’s something to be concerned about. And though I doubt she’ll be our next President it’s kinda scary to think of her being that.

What do diet food and brilliant babies have in common? Or more accurately, what do a recent study finding that people who eat diet food are more likely to become (not just be) overweight and another recent study which finds that letting your very young children was the Baby Einstein and other such “intelligent children” video programs diminishes their vocabulary development have in common?

The two studies are the latest in what I like to call “why is everyone worrying” section of life. The first study regarding fat kids found that it is likely that the nutritional deficits of “diet food” cause the body to not recognize high-calorie food when it is ingested and therefor the person is prone to eating significantly more than they need. I would add that eating diet food also makes it easier to eat more, assuming that because it is diet it is better, therefore getting the body accustomed to more food than it actually needs. Diet food, when used as a replacement for a “regular” item in conjunction with self-control and basic common sense can indeed be part of a healthy lifestyle. But so can regular food. The Subway spokesman who famously lost significant weight while eating their sandwiches really only regained self-control, taking smaller bites, chewing more slowly, eating more slowly, recognizing when he is full, recognizing when he is actually hungry, being satisfied with reasonable portions, etc. These are tips that can bring any appetite into control and any body into a healthy weight.

Next we have babies whose parents have stuck them, for the few hours they see them at home, in front of a TV to be faced with images of objects and colors and music of Mozart, in hope that these miracle DVD’s will insure their child’s future brilliance. Apparently these children, compared with children whose parents spend time talking with and around them, suffered a significantly reduced vocabulary. Vocabulary is a primary tool the child uses to understand the world around it, without vocabulary the child cannot grasp concrete concepts and has difficulties communicating those concepts to it’s surroundings. Turns out that the best thing a parent can do for a very young child is to spend time with them, communicating, even if only in “parentese” as one of the articles defines the sing-song way parents often talk to their parents.

So what do these two findings have to do with each other? No it’s not the children. It’s personal responsibility. We want to have something we can just plug in, some philosophy we can subscribe to that fixes our problems and allays our fears. We want the baby to be smart without working really hard. We see a DVD that says it’ll make our babies smart, proven. We buy it and we’re happy. We want to eat without guilt, we want to be thin without trying hard, without changing ourselves. We are constantly searching for the silver bullet that will make our problems go away without effort on our part.

This is part of the reason for our consumer culture: we’d rather buy a solution than build one.

This is part of the reason for the success of the lottery: we’d rather bet that someday our luck will turn and we’ll be set for life without having to scrimp and save and not buy every last thing that catches out fancy.

The list of societal ills that can be directly, primarily, and even just significantly linked to our aversion to personal responsibility is long.  Instead of drinking diet soda and eating diet food, lets start exercising and working out and eating less. Instead of wanting out children to be smart, lets start investing in them and feeding into their small minds such tools as they can use to tackle the world they inhabit and will inherit. DVDs of pictures and colors and music are not Mom and Dad. I do not doubt that classical music of such complexity is vastly superior to a persons’ development than some of the garbage which passes for art in our poor modern time, but it is not magic wand of brains, filling out child with calculus and verbiage, no that is left to you.

So take control, you can make change. You alone are capable, you alone are responsible.

Loud noise, large crowds, the unwashed masses of todays’ global-warming zombies all gathered and listened to washed up acts playing washed up noise, all in the name of cooling the earth. Funny thing is, most people there probably thought cooling the earth meant giving it a drag on a reefer, and were hoping the “mouth” of the earth would open near their particular venue, and were vaguely concerned that the even organizers might have trouble finding enough of the precious stuff to give the earth a big enough hit that it would actually make a difference.

What is of particular interest to me is the bureaucratic red tape and restrictions placed by unthinking public entities on the construction of Nuclear power plants. Liberals and their ideology are the primary reason why Nuclear plants are considered taboo today. Nuclear energy is safe, clean, does not salmon runs or kill birds, uses a common natural resource, and have not been built in decades. Chernobyl, the skull and crossbones of the anti-nuclear-idiots society, has not turned out to be the ecological or even medical disaster it was warned of becoming. Three mile island “radiates” less energy than a person gets during a normal day from the sun. Nuclear meltdown is a bugaboo, not a fact. To those who it exists as a fact, there are many other “facts” which have similar import and veracity.

Daily Mail: Live earth a massive, hypocritical fraud

Conversations with Brit & Grit: Live Earth, Early Death

Radioactive Communist Zombies: Live Earth Even Snowed Out?
-also- ContacMusic

Joobo: Just a word on the fraud…

NationalReview: Living Through Live Earth

The Global Warming Heretic: Live Earth: CO2 For Me, But Not For Thee

Washington Times: Latest Crusade Is Going Green