I'm trying to figure out why Norman Lear with a 26 car garage insists we cut our driving and Barbra Streisand from her well-staffed mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean advises her fans to air dry their laundry outside. And Teresa Heinz and John Kerry, who use a private plane to travel to their 5 mansions and SUVs, warn us all to cut back on our energy use.
Of course, it is laughable.
It is unworkable for most people. We use a lot of energy because it makes us a more productive society and a more productive society is one which makes a higher standard of living available for more people. The technologies we invent make life easier and more productive for the less fortunate of the globe.
Goat herders in the Sahal use little energy but their lives are hard and their way of live unenviable. And they contribute nothing to the rest of the world's welfare and progress.
I think I've figured it out what this naked hypocrisy is really about. It's not just scientific and economic illiteracy on their part: It is a narcissistic desire to widen even further the gulf between themselves and those beneath them on the economic and social ladder, while clothing their desires in some moral purpose. This is nothing new of course. At various times and places throughout the world, what one wore-including colors, fabrics, length of swords, how much the tips of your shoes could curl -were set by law to make sure no one mistook the milkmaid and yeoman for the lord and lady.
Apparently I had some old Day by Day code. I went to Chris Muir's site and downloaded the code currently available, and it seems to work fine. If you have any trouble with the page formatting correctly in your browser, please let me know.
I have converted this blog over to the new Blogger. The software is nice and cool widgets are available for me to play with later, but it would not format the Day by Day cartoon correctly, so I have to remove it. If I can figure out a way to get it to work correctly, I will reinstall it.
Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser, fired off e-mails expressing bewilderment over the agreement and demanding to know why North Korea would not have to first prove it had stopped sponsoring terrorism before being rewarded with removal from the list, according to officials who reviewed the messages.
John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the agreement -- in which North Korea would freeze its main nuclear facility in exchange for an initial supply of fuel oil -- "a bad deal" that violated principles that were closely held in the beginning of the Bush administration.
And the National Review, a conservative bastion, yesterday slammed the agreement as essentially the same one negotiated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 -- a charge the Bush administration rejects. "When exactly did Kim Jong Il become trustworthy?" the magazine's editors asked. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, normally a Bush supporter, also condemned the accord yesterday as "faith-based nonproliferation."
Make no mistake, the monsters know that if they wait long enough, we will cave.
More specifically, conservatives said, they worry that the administration's willingness to bend on North Korea does not bode well for hard-line policies toward Iran, the Palestinians or other issues. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday called on the United States to demonstrate "the same flexibility, a sensible flexibility" toward Iran's nuclear program.
Read it all to learn what went on in the Bush administration as well as the concerns of Japan.
In an effort to befuddle American Christians into voting for Democrats with whom they share no values at all; Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and their minions are trying to convince you that they are Christians to, or at least respectful of Christian beliefs.
Megan Basham at The American Spectator points out that the recent events in the campaign of John Edwards puts the lie to that.
Now that the hiring and subsequent retiring of John Edwards's two anti-Christian bloggers is over, conservative commentators from all corners of the internet have started bidding good night to the Edwards campaign. The public "nyah nyahs" demonstrate that many are still missing the larger picture of the incident: while this may or may not mean the end of the coiffed one's bid for president, it does not mean the end of unhinged hatred for Christianity from a growing faction on the left.
The blogging mischief made by Edward's staffers reveals more than his inept hiring practices and more than that secularists don't like evangelicals and Catholics expressing their faith through their politics. What we are witnessing is a loathing of Christ and of his followers that has never before been expressed so openly from such a large segment of one of our major political parties.
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How do Democratic candidates contend with a base that would treat Christianity's most basic doctrine so sneeringly, as Marcotte did when she wrote on her blog Pandagon: "What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?"
Reveries about the potential abortion of the Messiah go far beyond the bounds of simply not liking right-wing believers. So did her revelation that Rick Santorum's public expressions of his religious beliefs make her want to, "go to a born-again church and scream about how God loves to come in our backyards for our milkshakes." (For those too innocent to untangle that web of putrid pop-culture metaphors, I'm afraid you're on your own.)
What Marcotte wrote wasn't just a complaint against conservative Catholics or evangelicals, it was a screed against God himself. Amongst the secular intellectual crowd, she is hardly alone.
Slate is running a weekly "Blogging the Bible" feature, ostensibly intended to retell portions of the Word in hip, modern lingo -- a caustic Cliff Notes for the Old Testament, if you will. But the flippancy used to characterize God's actions leaves the sneaking suspicion that it's more an attempt to patronize Scripture. As I write, today's entry describes the Lord of Hosts as being "Like a crazy girlfriend, [who] plays a confusing I-love-you-I-hate-you game..." Months ago in Columbus, Ohio, Moveon.org held a rally in front of a church by singing anti-Christian songs, blocking the entrance for the faithful. Hard to get more hostile than that.
Marcotte's partner in prejudice, Melissa McEwen, might have been slightly less wild-eyed in her treatment of believers, but she echoed the feelings of thousands of liberal blogs and websites when she referred to pro-life Christians as "wingnut Christofascists."
Megan Basham goes on to remind those of us who are Christian of something very important that I myself often forget, that Christ said that He did not come to unite, but to divide. We are to separate ourselves from evil, no matter how close that evil is to us if we wish to be one of God's people. That includes our practice of sacrifice, in however small a way, for others (but not for evil).
It is not an act of love to allow innocent people who are going to the market, or to the Church, or even to the Mosque, to be randomly murdered by terrorists. Yet, we now see our own Congress supporting exactly that. It is not an act of love to allow our fellow countrymen to to be threatened by madmen such as Saddam, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong-Il. We have not done wrong to do what we did and are doing in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Bosnia. I only wonder why we are not defending Serbs and their Churches and Monasteries in Kosovo when they are now the object of ethnic cleansing.
Actually I do not wonder about that at all. The (leftist) UN as well as European and American liberals will not tolerate support for Christians, be they Serbs or Sudanese, or Iraqi. The terrorists are for them the "freedom fighters" (an argument that is a perversion of an idea of President Reagan). Liberals use the language of love and peace to support exactly the opposite. Love women? Then support abortion. Don't think of the child who is being killed because he is inconvenient to the mother. Feel sympathy for the difficult lives of prisoners? Then work to set them free. Think nothing of the people who will be victimized by recidivist criminals.
34"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36and a man's foes will be those of his own household. 37He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
40"He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me. 41He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. 42And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."
Loving others does not prevent us from identifying evil when we see it, and separating ourselves from it.
What began as a slow murmur in film, art, and academia has now progressed to a full-tilt caterwauling on the Left: "We hates him, we haaaates him" (to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkein's most vivid creation).
At least those of us who take Christ at his word can find comfort in the idea that their very reaction validates his claims -- that he did not, as the milquetoast peace-activists are wont to claim, come to be a unifying presence, but a divisive one. As for what's to be done about this irrational hatred of us and our Savior, there's nothing we really can do. Except what has always been our commission: start fishing.
And perhaps we should pray that Ms. Marcotte experience a Damascus moment -- after all, in God's infinite humor and mercy, the greatest Christ-hater of all time wound up being the very man who planted the faith plaguing her today.
All one needs to be able to do to understand the strategic situation with respect to North Korea is remember just a little history. That, and a bit of pattern recognition will clarify everything.
John Podhoretz has this ability and notes that while Kim Jong-Il is a monster, he is not a lunatic.
Since 1985, North Korea has used its reputation for insanity to manipulate not only the United States, but even the Evil Empire to its West. In that year, the Soviet Union agreed to provide the North Koreans with light nuclear reactors if the Norks agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Showing stunning sangfroid against the ruthless bunch in Moscow, Kim's father signed the treaty and then simply refused to abide by any of its provisions. He spent five years refusing to allow a single inspector into the country, and when he did finally allow their entry in 1990, he deceived them and lied to them.
And how did North Korea pay for its recalcitrance? It didn't. In 1991, the United States agreed to remove its short-range nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in exchange for a promise from North Korea (and South Korea) not to do anything nuclear.
Our weapons were pulled. The South abided by its word. The North Koreans continued to develop their nuclear program regardless - until 1993, when Kim the Elder announced his nation was pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Why? Because, in complete contravention of its deal with the Soviets in 1985 and its deal with us and South Korea in 1991, it had built a nuclear reaction in Yongbyon.
At this point the Clinton administration took over, and at the end of 1994 announced its bribe - the so-called "Agreed Framework."
We know how that whole "Agreed Framework" thing worked.
Read the whole piece for the rest of the history.
UPDATE: Just for your amusement, here is a propaganda video about Kim.
Christians in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who actually believe in the teaching of the Church have long been frustrated with the refusal of the PCUSA to hold to or teach any basic Christian doctrine. You can listen to a hundred sermons and services and not once hear anything about the trinitarian nature of God or the dual nature of Christ much less the (to them politically unacceptable) teachings about faith and life in the New Testament. I know, I have done it. I used to be in the PCUSA. Paul's Letter to the Romans - Chapter 1? Forget about it.
Many lament the continuing troubles of the Anglican Church. The same is coming to the PCUSA. I do not lament them at all. Orthodox Christians, including small "o" orthodox Christians cannot be in communion with evil. We cannot be in communion with a "church" that holds that abortion, homosexuality, or any other sin is good. We all are sinners, and I have sinned badly only recently. We do not try to make ourselves feel good by denying that we have done wrong, but by confessing our sins and repenting of them. We promise to try not to commit sin again and we beg God to forgive us that we may be able to be with him in eternity.
If you to not acknowledge that you have sinned and confess it, then you cannot ask forgiveness of it. This is spiritually very dangerous.
I sensed the lack in my own experience in the PCUSA without really knowing why, and found my way to the Orthodox Church with the help of my friend "Vinnie the Catholic". Now, many others are also planning to leave.
Dissident Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations were invited to join a new presbytery within the conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC).
At a winter convocation this week, the New Wineskins Association of Churches - a network of over 120 evangelical churches discontent with the PC(USA) but not yet separate - considered the future relationship with its parent denomination and a way out possibly through a merger with the EPC.
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New Wineskins churches are considering leaving the PC(USA) because of the denomination's departure from doctrinal integrity and scriptural authority, especially around the issues of homosexuality and abortion. At the height of the controversy was the denomination's approval of an "authoritative interpretation" of the church's Constitution, which granted more leeway for the ordination of homosexuals, at the 217th General Assembly.
The PC(USA) boasts over 2.3 million members as the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States. Theological differences and debates over the last several decades, however, have brought membership down with the exodus of congregations.
The PCUSA is failing because they will not adhere to any belief, and have abandoned any sense of morality. When I was there membership was over 4 million. It is now 2.3 million. In the meanwhile, membership of the Orthodox Church has grown significantly.
The PCUSA needs to stop confusing the teaching of social policy with worship. Christians help the poor and suffering because that is who we are as a result of what we believe and live by. Helping those who suffer is not the Faith or worship, it is a result of having the Faith and worshipping.
Questioning Israel's right to exist is one of the most abhorrent means of delegitimizing the Jewish state. Why, after all, should Palestinians and others reconcile themselves to peace with a country that is illegitimate in the first place?
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, John Whitbeck, an international lawyer based in Saudi Arabia and a former advisor to Palestinian negotiators, advocates just that.
Twisting the terminology behind "recognizing Israel", Whitbeck employs the peverse equation of the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering:
There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba - the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 - is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely.
Whitbeck reveals his unwillingness to recognize Israeli and Jewish rights in any context, regardless of borders, when he refers to "the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad."
Is Whitbeck unaware of thousands of years of Jewish history in the region as well as the existing Jewish communities resident before and during the period of the British Mandate to which he refers?
Read it all, it gets worse. Mr. Whitbeck holds that the major roadblock to peace in the area is Israel's insistence on her right to exist. He completely ignores the fact that Israel alone tries to avoid harming civilians, has given up the Gaza strip, and has behaved in a generally humane way. I am waiting for the moonbats to bring up the "Jenin Massacre" and Mohammed al-Dura.
And, if that is not enough, he goes on to attempt to delegitimize the existence of the United States.
There are places where a strong faith is expressed and where people who speak or write of beliefs not in accordance with the prevailing faith are shouted down and punished. This is especially true if the heretic has factual evidence to back up his heresy.
These places are called Universities and Colleges. There are no places on Earth with the same level of intolerance towards deviation from orthodoxy. Examples include numerous cases of conservative speakers being shouted down and not allowed to speak.
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?
Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.
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Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.
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No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.
I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.
Read the whole thing, there is very much more - such as this sadly true observation;
I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.
It would be nice to have an honest discussion for a change, but that is not possible in a University setting.
When you are in a fight with an enemy, seeking to hamstring that enemy and cause him to fail, you get to take credit when that enemy does fail.
The Democratic Party in the U.S. has set the President up as an enemy and has for years been doing whatever they can to hamstring him in the conduct of war, not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan and against terror in general. Should we fail in these, the Democrats surely get to take some credit for that.
If Iraq is stabilized this side of chaos, the congressional Democrats will be remembered as the people who fought to prevent it, who tried to kneecap the commander and demoralize the armed forces, and all in all make the mission more difficult. If, on the other hand, the surge is seen to fail, they will be the ones who made it more difficult, demoralized the armed forces, kneecapped the commander, and telegraphed to the enemy that our will was cracking, and we would shortly be leaving.
The Democrats have also given Bush a partial alibi for a possible failure--he tried, but at a critical moment they threw in the towel. This argument would be plausible enough to attract support from a great many people. Had they let the surge play itself out, with best wishes but grave reservations, the Democrats could have gained a reputation for good will in any event, and for genuine prescience in the case of failure. But there is a difference between warning of failure and seeming to want it or cause it, and this is the line they have stumbled over. They have cut themselves off from all share in a victory, bought themselves a half-share in a loss, should one develop, and given the president they so despise an excuse he did not have before this. If a failure ensues, it is no longer his fault, in its entirety. Now it is his fault--and theirs.
General William Tecumseh Sherman is one of my great heros of history and one of the most widely quoted figures of the Civil War. Some of them are here. I will at some time be using many of these. For now I have chosen one that illustrates an idea that I fear few in the United States, or the World, understand.
I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer and a freelance performing 'cellist who brews his own beer. I am an Orthodox Christian. I am NOT a professional journalist, therefore nothing prevents me from writing what is true. I am now working as an Engineering Technician at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
