Perfectly stated by the gentlemen from Texas.
What else needs to be said?
Of course, now this same Chris Matthews (Left apologist and agenda jockey) has become devoted cheerleader for Obama in a very monogamously romantic way… remember, he “felt this thrill going up [his] leg” as Obama spoke.
Here’s a link to his op-ed piece in the Washington Times that started all of this. Here’s an excerpt…
The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.
Those same leaders who were in the streets in the ’60s are very powerful today in their work to bring down the Iraq war and to attack our president, and they have found their way into our schools. William Ayers is a good example of that.
Thank God, today, we have a strong generation of young soldiers who know exactly who they are and what they must do to protect our freedom and our democracy. And we have the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, who has brought hope and stability to Iraq and prevented the terrorists from establishing a base in that country. Our soldiers are lifting us to an example of patriotism at a time when we’ve almost forgotten who we are and what is at stake.
Thank you for speaking out John!
Obama speaking of his mother’s beliefs in The Pompous Agent of Fiction, er, The Audacity of Hope…
“For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness. “This isn’t to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.
“In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.”
It was clearly a moral-relativist upbringing. A “working knowledge of the world’s great religions”? Not sure how religion could get a serious shake, or any sort of moral compass instilled, in a home of two atheist parents. Speaking for myself, had I grown up in such moral flexibility/ambiguity, and political confusion, would likely lead me to join a religion only for the society of it, or perhaps for the ability of that organization to get me where I want to go. That established, it’s not a stretch to believe that Obama chose Christianity with calculation because it might get him the farthest politically with, first, other black Christians in Chicago and then (should he dare to dream) rising to various levels of power within the most Christian country in the world.
Scary to think he might have planned this; that he might have methodically picked a religion like a country club to get gain in the world, but being a believer myself I will refrain from measuring another’s faith as much as possible. I just mention the circumstances as food for thought.
Another interesting quote…
What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy demands is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
There’s so much round talking on the Left that one can hardly question whether we’re playing children’s games with conversation. Broken down to the core message, without the spin and lack of resolution, Barack Oblivious is saying “you can’t just use the Bible justify being anti-abortion, you have to use a reason that everyone will agree with” (based on what set of morals he’s thinking I don’t know, but I’ll bite. How about using the secular B.S. he espouses not far before this passage (bold added)…
And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I’ve ever known. She had an unswerving instinct for kindness, charity, and love, and spent much of her life acting on that instinct, sometimes to her detriment. Without the help of religious texts or outside authorities, she worked mightily to instill in me the values that many Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work. She raged at poverty and injustice.
Most of all, she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and its precious, transitory nature that could properly be described as devotional.
Wouldn’t his secular mother then have instilled in him the “reverence for life” that would conflict with the convenience of liberal abortion? He seems to have difficulty reaching obvious conclusions when they conflict with the liberal voting block.
He continues…
In a sense, my dilemma… mirrors the broader dilemma that liberalism has faced in answering the religious right. Liberalism teaches us to be tolerant of other people’s religious beliefs [does it?], so long as those beliefs don’t cause anyone harm [like a defenseless unborn baby?] or impinge on another’s right to believe differently. To the extent that religious communities are content to keep to themselves and faith is neatly confined as a matter of individual conscience, such tolerance is not tested.
But religion is rarely practiced in isolation; organized religion, at least, is a very public affair. The faithful may feel compelled by their religion to actively evangelize wherever they can. They may feel that a secular state promotes values that directly offend their beliefs. They may want the larger society to validate and reinforce their views.
And when the religiously motivated assert themselves politically to achieve these aims, liberals get nervous.
I would be glad to keep specific religion out of the public square (mostly because I wouldn’t have the patience to listen to Mulsims and VooDoo practitioners trying to get equal time) but certainly in all cases my belief that a person who believes in any brand of monotheism is a good thing. Cards on the table, anyone who thinks we’re an accident, or that there is nothing/no one behind all of this, gets no respect from me (and frankly they should be granted a pair of spectacles and a quiet place to think until the obivous occurs to them).
So that said, I will clarify that I don’t want religion systematically installed in the public square for the above reasons, but conversely it should not be forcibly withheld from the public square either. The desires (not rights) of the godless (12% of the U.S. population) should certainly not have the power to silence and suppress the desires of the many (85% of the U.S. claims Christianity).
Evangelism is a good thing. If any of us has found an eternal truth, the greatest thing we can do is share it with our fellowmen. I have a very clear set of beliefs of which I’m certain and confident, yet I see the evangelical efforts of those with different beliefs as a positive thing. My thinking is that anything that causes a man to believe in God is a good thing. Even if the belief system doesn’t mesh with mine, at least that person is now thinking about spiritual things and the importance, purpose, and meaning of this life a little more. That kind of thinking leads to prayer. Prayer leads to more personal revelation about eternal truth and the cycle continues. It’s a beautiful thing.
So no, I think we should all preach to each other always, and not be offended at the differences but take those things that touch the heart and soul and add them to our beliefs. Having the faithless keep me from exercising mine in public is against everything this country should and did stand for. The atheist activists can go pound sand for all I care. The arrogance of believing everything’s an accident is where my Christian patience ends. But I love them anyway, as best I can, and hope for their comas to end. Perhaps we should shake them harder.
If unions existed to actually do what they claim, it wouldn’t be so bad. But the fact of the matter is that, these days, they exist simply to extort and postpone the inevitable free market.
Scary thinking about wealth redistribution and removing self-reliance from the poor to make them dependent on the government (from March ’08)…
John Mistress-and-Love-Child-As-Cancer-Treatment-Comfort Edwards: “People want to know why I continue this campaign for president, why Elizabeth and myself are so committed to this cause, to this crusade. I’ll tell you why. Because I want everybody in this country to have the same chances that I’ve had. I came from a place of having nothing, to having everything. And in today’s America, it is so hard for people to work themselves up. People no longer believe that their children are going to have a better life than they’ve had.”
Sanity break: Uh, if he “want[s] everybody in this country to have the same chances that [he’s] had.” then his subsequent comment “I came from a place of having nothing, to having everything” doesn’t make the case. Did he have systematic hand-outs, socialist healthcare, and union bargaining when he was struggling through law school? Didn’t think so. Much as I think he’s an idiot and a hillbilly, Edwards coming from nothing and being filthy rich now very likely took some doing, and I’m surprised he doesn’t value or subscribe to the path of hard work and determination in crafting a person for success. I think it would be hard not to if you truly went from nothing to everything on your own sweat and hand-built resources. It seems to me that there can be only two reasons why a nothing-to-everything would want others to get a government instituted shortcut (and handouts in the mean time, even if you never get off your tail and take the shortcut).
If he succeeded so much from ambulance-chasing to have a mansion where 14 families could live, I’m not sure where he gets the stones to preach to others about giving to the poor.
For the sake of a rounded argument… here are my reasons not to give shortcuts to the poor…
Now the scariest, transparent, and most flatly dishonest lie I’ve heard Obama spew to date…
Barack Hussein Obama: “We are at a crossroads in this country. We are facing some challenges as great as any generation has faced. And we have some fundamental decisions to make about the kind of America that we’re going to build for, not just us, but for our children and for our grandchildren. The notion that we have no responsibilities towards each other, they call it the ownership society in Washington. But in our past there’s been another name for it, it’s been called social Darwinism; every man and woman for him or herself. And it allows us to say that, you know what, if your health care or your tuition rises faster than your wages life isn’t fair. It’s a bracing idea, it’s a tempting idea, it’s the easiest idea in the world to say that we’re all on our own. But here’s the problem, it doesn’t work. It defies our history. It ignores the fact that it has always been government research and investment that’s made advances possible in this country from the railway to the internet. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class through decent wages and benefits, and good public schools that’s allowed us to prosper. It’s been the ability of working men and women to join together in unions that’s allowed our rising tide to lift every single boat.”
You are a very scary human Obama… totally clueless and very very dangerous. We’re sorry for your messed -up childhood and your lack of any sort of identity, but trying to persuade the country toward an irresponsible end is reprehensible…
He says “It’s the easiest idea in the world to say that we’re all on our own. But here’s the problem, it doesn’t work.” Let me take that in two parts…
1. “It’s easy.” Really!? What’s easy is to rob from the upper-middle class and give to the poor and take credit for it in the form of political power. Just a little clue on the taxation in this great land for Obama’s audience who might read this pulled together by Glenn Beck’s researchers…
According to the Tax Foundation, the top 1% of wage-earners in this country pays nearly 40% of the burden (an 11% INCREASE over 1999, when WHO was President? Oh that’s right…Bill Clinton). Not fair? Well, you may be saying, ‘that’s because they have ALL the wealth!’ Wrong again. The top 1% of earners account for just 21% of the total adjusted gross income. Hmm. Come to think of it…you’re RIGHT! That really isn’t fair. They’re paying DOUBLE what they should be. By the way, the top 10% of earners pay 70% of the load. When you get all the way down to the top 50% of earners, they account for 96.4% of the entire tax burden. The next 10% pays 3.6%. And the bottom 40% of wage earners…pay NOTHING. That’s right, nothing. In fact, they pay nothing, and then often get a “refund” (handout) at years end.
2. It doesn’t work.” Regardless of what distorted ideas free-loving mommy and green-card-seeking free-education aspiring daddy instilled, it doesn’t make it true. The free market is what works. Socialism does not, and can not, without a unification of religion. Even then the people must be extraordinarily interdependent and mature. They ALL must be interdependent and mature or it doesn’t work. We’re so far from that (particularly most of the people currently on welfare) that I’d consider it impossible until the Savior returns to round up and take names. Should we try to recreate the Soviet Union in the mean time, thinking maybe it’ll work this time? Let’s not. I guess you were asleep in your Ivy League classes (or simply spoon-fed by radical liberal professors while you were there) but hand-outs create an entitlement society, not accountability. These principles are so basic I can’t seem to wrap my head around how unbelievably ignorant someone would have to be to not understand them. I feel sorry for Obama. He’s truly blind and in the wilderness. Hillary and Edwards are just political opportunists who polarize for power. They manipulate intentionally. I think Obama genuinely thinks he’s right about these things and that makes him most oblivious and dangerous, because his sincere stupidity is going to persuade some of those who don’t think for themselves.
Not that I ever pay attention to so-called “urban struggle” music*, but I thought the Ludicrous performer** Ludacris*** was supposed to be cutting edge. Instead I read the attempt at lyrics to this recent track about Obama “painting the White House black”.
* I say “music”, not to disparage the medium but because “awkward rhythms, the odd attempt at melody, with terribly juvenile rhyming and schizo-syllabic partial sentences cussed and yelled over them” is too long to write frequently.
** Had to think about that too for a minute because he’s not an artist, he’s not a musician, he’s not a singer, and he’s certainly no writer, but he does perform as I understand (like a two-year-old in a toy store).
*** Wow, clever, the pinnacle of hip-hop “talent”, integrate your name into some random word or phrase, and certainly don’t look it up, why would you want to know what ludicrous means?
We should encourage him to continue trying to write, no matter the subject. After all, 1) writing leads to thinking and education, 2) he may someday realize that lyrics should include meter as well as rhyme, and 3) that rhyme, too, should actually be considered and not just desperately grasped in the first word you can think of that sounds similar. This is a common practice that seems to be a rampant hip-hop standard.
I guess we should count our blessings, …anything to keep a little scratch in his pocket to keep one more self-proclaimed “gangsta” somewhat off the streets.
From the BBC UK News service…
“Ludacris is a talented individual but he should be ashamed of these lyrics,” said Mr Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton.
The rap star’s publicist initially declined to comment, reported the Associated Press.
‘Great talent’
The musician used a misogynistic term to describe Mrs Clinton and urged Mr Obama against appointing her as his running mate, saying that she “hated on you”.
Mr McCain, the Republican candidate for the presidency, does not belong in “any chair unless he’s paralysed”, according to the rapper.
Mr Burton added: “As Barack Obama has said many, many times in the past, rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he doesn’t want his daughters or any children exposed to.”
During my own reading of the lyric, I imagined Chris Bridges (his name) sitting on the floor of a studio, a fully clenched fist wrapped tightly around a crayon connected to a sheet of construction paper, and tongue straining against the corner of his mouth, toward a grape jelly stain on his t-shirt. Subject matter aside, it’s perhaps the worst writing I’ve ever read. I kept reading because I thought it must be a parody of inner-city educational systems, as an argument for electing Obama, who will drive more social welfare programs that keep inner-city families from the difficulties of self-reliance and accountability.
Hmmm…. maybe it was a parody after all. Did he sneak it by me? Very subtle satire of “where he at” and “where he come from”, delivered in character. Now I’m actually impressed. Or not.
I don’t know about you, but all of this fawning over the sock puppet makes me snicker. I’m not the least bit concerned about it frankly. The dust will settle and the many and varied analyses will be done on the dangerous positions his ill-informed and naive statements have taken, and reality will set in as we near November.
The intelligent, good folks of these United States will thoughtfully consider the issues and matters at hand.
With any luck…
Rest assured, both very good and very bad things will be said and done between now and November, but I choose to have faith that God still blesses this country and that we’re not too far gone to merit the promise of prosperity. I believe enough good people will actually consider the issues and vote like it matters. Because, while the democrats who want any ignorant vote they can bribe with food, illegal voter registration, and a drive to the voting center, for very different reasons I DO care who you vote for. I wish knowing the issues was a requirement to punch the card (as well as biometric IDs for all to prove citizenship). But so goes hope, oh, and desire for change!
Good article on IBD, entitled “Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1“.
The left apologist bias in the mainstream media is not news. We all know this. But at the same time, we’re surprised that they would let such easily quantifiable a metric as contributions tell the same tale in plain numbers that their “journalism” does in a far more foggy and sinister way on air.
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.
Again, no surprises, but yet another pleasant confirmation.
The L.A. Times gets another surprising blessing from this site for at least being more “democratic” with its editorial pages by publishing a straightforward piece by John Bolton (former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations). An excerpt worth pointing out, though you should read the whole thing, follows.
Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn’t see all these “walls” as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that “walls” exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side — our side — defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively “tearing down walls” with our adversaries.
Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a “united” world.
For my own credit, this dovetails with my post last week on wide-eyed, but blinder-clad speechwriter they’ve chosen.
McCain…
“Fortunately, Sen. Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it.
“Sen. Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.”
No wonder all of his speeches are shockingly naive and uninformed.
I just stumbled on an article from back in January that Newsweek did on the 26-year-old toddler who writes Obama’s speeches, Jon Favreau (no, not that one). Not that I’m biased against youth (being a little over 10 years older), but when so many important issues rely on having experience — and frankly more knowledge of history than what was freshly force-fed by reliably liberal professors — and when precious votes hang in the balance, I want someone with the seasoning of their own perspective to be putting ideas in people’s heads. Much as I wish this country could be full of the well-read and the historically-perceptive, oh, and the reality-tactile, it isn’t.
It follows, obviously, but should be pointed out, that this is precisely why Obama’s speeches are empty of ideas and perception of the real roots of these issues, and full of wide-eyed child-like liberal cluelessness (uh, when in doubt, put “change” down a lot, my professors said Bush was bad, so “change” will sound good).
By the way, in case you hadn’t read it in class, socialism doesn’t work (and frankly can’t without theism). I’ve lived in it and seen the bright awakening as the socialism turned to capitalism. When you live in it, and everyone around you is living witness to the rotten stagnation of it, you gain that valuable judgment experience I was discussing earlier. Thanks Jon, but page 457 of whatever textbook you’re working from only provides enough information to fool the uninformed. It’s not enough on the reality of peoples and governments to write intelligent campaign speeches to the knowing. Perhaps that’s the point. Sucker the suckers, their votes spend just as well, sadly.
When asked…
“What got you into politics, what got you interested?”
Favreau told him about the social service project he started in Worcester, defending the legal rights of welfare recipients as the state tried to move people off the rolls and into work.
Your witness.