Random Thoughts

Trick or treat…

The Anchoress reminds us that, politics aside, Halloween can be a lot of fun.

If you are looking for a suitable Halloween costume accessory, Fausta has unearthed a perfect Obama button at GAP stores–particularly suitable for those in the Chicago area; dress as a dead person and you’ll have the perfect Chicago Democrat voter costume!

Two nights from now our children will be trick or treating, but tonight we get treated to All Obama TV. Really, couldn’t he have scheduled it on October 31; that at least would have been amusing. They’ve spared no expense to bring us this messianic infomercial, full of pomp and pretense, but when you’ve got $600,000,000 to spend, what’s $3 million to lock up a half hour of prime time TV air on four major networks?

In honor of their being the only network to exhibit any sense whatsoever, I will be watching Pushing Daisies on ABC.

As if this election cycle isn’t creepy enough, some people are determined to make it even creepier. They hang an effigy of an Obama ghost from a tree, and properly get condemned for it by their community leaders.

Note how the media photographer made sure the McCain/Palin sign would be prominent in the foreground.

Not to be outdone, a North Hollywood couple (reminding me once again why I’d rather move to North Dakota than North Hollywood) hung an effigy of Sarah Palin from the chimney of their house.

And they become a stop on the Hollywood bus tours; It’s “art.”

According to the “artist,” because of the history of lynching in the US, we’re not supposed to feel the same way about seeing a white woman being hung as we do about a black man being hung. Its much worse to hang an effigy of a black man.

Great logic there: Some hatred is funny, some is not.

Apparently hating Jews is funny, or at least acceptable. Then again, why is the MSM determined to hide the video of such a fun event? Perhaps it might genuinely scare the voters. It ought to terrify them. Can’t have this right before the election, can we?

Offering a reward might shake that video loose. Then again, that video might be what it takes to pry the mask off Obama, and the MSM can’t have that. Little Green Footballs reminds us that they’re awfully good at making things disappear.

Each day closer to November 4, I am reminded more and more of the fictitious character Nicolae Carpathia.

Trick or treat indeed.

Things that make me go “HUH?!”

There a few things lately that I just can’t quite get my head around. They frustrate me, baffle me, and they just plain make me go “Huh?!”

One of them is people who use Christianity to argue on behalf of, or against, a political candidate. Specifically those who think that a candidate defining themselves as “a Christian” means anything more than “I want people who call themselves Christians to vote for me.”

Anyone can say “I am a Christian.” Having as one’s pastor and intimate friend for two decades a fellow who asks God to “damn America” and who preaches hatred and anti-semitism from the pulpit makes for an interesting sort of Christianity.

This is the sort of sermon Barrack Obama enjoyed for two decades.

We’re not talking occasional church visits. This is the man who married the Obamas, who baptised their daughters, whose church they attended for twenty years. You want to believe they didn’t agree with his teaching? Yet they stayed in his church for twenty years? Obama even dedicated one of his books to the man. And his embracing of Wright’s philosophy runs deeper than just attending a church; it’s part of his entire political background.

There’s another thing that makes me go “Huh?!”: People who “love” a candidate. As in, “I love Senator Obama.” For pity’s sake, Obama and McCain are politicians. You do not know either of them personally. Unless you equate it with “loving” ice cream, you can not possibly “love” a particular candidate. If you are a Christian of any serious depth, then perhaps you can strive to have a Christ-like agape love for ALL the candidates, but to “love” one candidate and not “love” another?! That’s right up there with a fan who “loves” Britney Spears or Clay Aiken.

For those who are really trying to be Christians, attempting to genuinely follow the third and fourth commandments might be useful, particularly when you are tempted to adore a political candidate.

What else makes me go “Huh?!”: People who think that they actually can tell, based solely on the lavish $600 million public campaign of a candidate, that

…he is brilliant and I relieve [sic] do believe he wants to elicit real change in our government. He wants to help the middle class and all the folks who are struggling… His morals are exemplary, his family life is solid and his spiritual beliefs are intact. He goes to church and loves JESUS, wears shoes with holes in them …He is a GOOD MAN.

I guess that $600,000,000 has been well spent, if it’s convinced voters that Obama is the most godly man on the planet. Unbelievable. I can not fathom people who think they are being intelligent in making an assessment of personal character based solely on top-notch marketing techniques. And at the same time they think support of the McCain/Palin candidacy is not intelligent.

If forced to label myself, I’d pick something between “Baptist” and “Evangelical Christian.”

I did not vote for Huckabee, just in case you’re wondering. I am not sorry that I voted for the current President Bush. Both times. I did not do so because of his profession of Christian faith; Jimmy Carter made a similar profession, even stating that he was “born again,” and I did not vote for him.

I have no intention of voting for Obama, and even if he was baptized in the Jordan River, and told Larry King on CNN “Jesus Christ is my personal savior” I would not vote for him. Voting for any politician because you think “He loves Jesus” is, in a word, stupid. Please note I did not say “You are stupid;” it is a foolish action I am condemning, not the person performing it.

Something else that makes me go “Huh?!”: People who say that abortion isn’t an important issue.

I have no desire to see the Supreme Court packed with people who will not permit any limits whatsoever to abortion. That includes partial birth abortions, where a baby is delivered alive then killed just before it completely emerges from the mother, a procedure Obama has politically supported and extensively championed, and the deliberate killing of babies who survive an abortion. Obama has stated that permitting such babies to continue to live would be a burden.

He doesn’t even want to answer the basic question, “At what point does a baby get human rights?”

Abortion certainly is not the only issue, but it IS an issue. And just because you don’t care about it doesn’t make it less of an issue. Just because you only want to focus on the minute percentage of abortions done in cases of rape and incest (13,000 out of 1.3 million, do the math, it’s 1%), and not the vast majority of abortions that are completely elective (75% of aborting women do so because “having a baby would interfere with work, school, or other responsibilities”), doesn’t make it less of an issue. It certainly is a significant one to Obama, and his postion–and McCain’s–could not be clearer.

If you consider yourself a Christian, let’s not even go into what Jesus would think of aborting a baby, or refer to that inconvenient passage from the 139th Psalm to try to figure out if He cares about unborn babies at all.

And another thing that makes me go “Huh?!”: Believing that Obama will end the war, and that he’s going to end it singlehandedly the year he takes office.

Newsflash. Obama–or any president–is not capable of solely and abruptly ending the Iraq war, any more than the current president was solely capable of starting it. That took congressional support–and that of a Democrat controlled Congress, mind you. Ending the war will take cooperation and planning, and it’s not going to happen overnight, nor in a few months. Unless you really don’t care to preserve what our soldiers have already fought and died for; if you want to turn Iraq into Vietnam, then by all means, pull every troop out of there immediately. And it will be done by the Democrat dominated Congress, making them and Obama the ones to bear the failure throughout history. This will very likely in turn ensure that the next election brings a Republican “revolution.” So hey, let’s do it! <<that’s sarcasm, for those of you in the blue states

And while we are on the topic, please do not tell me about your teenage boy whom is turning 18 soon and whom you hope will never have to go to Iran. We do not have a military draft. Your kid is safe. He can go about his life without any fear that he will ever have to serve his country. My son IS in the military, and will be serving for your kid, and you, and everyone else in this country. Spare me the retro anti-Vietnam draft rhetoric. Considering the fact that Joe Biden predicts an international crisis as soon as Obama takes office, leading to “tough, unpopular decisions,” I’d be more worried that a draft could be reinsituted under Obama than McCain.

There is one final thing that makes me go “Huh?!”: The idea that somehow Obama is going to unite us all and we will finally have a country where everyone shares the weath, where it will be a Good Thing to have the “rich” forced to give more of their income to the government for redistribution to the “poor,” however you define “poor”; probably any household making less than $250,000 a year. Please note it’s not individual, it’s household, so if you and your spouse make more than $125,000 each before taxes, guess what, under Obama your taxes are going up.

I have no desire to see the United States led by a Marxist. I think it will be an unmitigated disaster should it happen. Obama’s mentors are Marxist and his policies are Marxist to the core. “Spreading the wealth” isn’t even code, it’s a in-your-face promise that socialism will be advanced under such a president.

Most people are ignorant of the fact that pure socialism was attempted in the earliest days of this country, in as close to an ideal setting as possible. It failed miserably. Read Of Plymouth Plantation, it’s an eye opener. Bottom line: A small community of people, dependent on each other for safety and security, sharing the same political philosophy and the same religion–Christianity–signed a contract agreeing to cooperate in a model socialist environment. The problem was (as it always is) some people did not want to work. They were fed and clothed anyway. Those who did all the work began to resent those who did little or no work. The workers came to feel that they’d be better off outside the settlement, where they would be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors. They were willing to brave a hostile and dangerous environment if it meant having the freedom to keep what they worked hard to achieve.

How utterly American of them.

Ultimately it became obvious that the community was on the edge of falling apart, and people were going to starve. The system of forcing those who would work to provide for everyone else was going to destroy the entire colony. Governor Bradford wrote:

At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves … This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression. The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst Godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times, that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God. For this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could, this was thought injustice.

When people get to keep what they work for, they work harder. When it’s taken away and redistributed, when their wealth is taken away and “spread around,” they grow bitter, disenchanted, and ultimately they rebel.

The Anchoress reminds us that socialism only works when it is voluntary, not forced. As the Plymouth colony proved, and Russia reinforced, lasting voluntary socialism is virtually impossible to achieve. It was was a failure in North America in the 1600s, it was a failure in Russia in the 1900s, and to think that somehow it’s going to be a success if Obama institutes it is idiotic.

I have no idea how this election will play out. I just know that there are a lot of well meaning but amazingly emotion driven people out there, and far too many of them have given up what passes for reason and are now operating solely on feelings (aka “what I feel in my heart”).

For such people who consider themselves Christians, I suggest paying close attention to 2 Peter 2:

…there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping…These men are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

We see a pattern here…

Is there any hope for a truly unbiased media? A media that at least makes more than a tiny token effort to be impartial? I can’t help but think it is a Quixotian endeavor, but maybe, just maybe, there are journalists out with a shred of old fashioned reporter left in them.

I’ve never had a very high opinion of journalism, perhaps because I’ve never seen much to admire in that profession. It doesn’t surprise me to see the deliberate manipulation and supression of information in order to elect the media’s favored choice. As far back as I can remember, newspapers endorsed particular candidates, televised reporters were anything but subtle about whom their favorites were, and I just figure that coverage of the 2008 election is a logical progression in a long chain of bias.

I know that’s not the ideal. I know that a free press–a truly free press–is able and willing to report on all sides of any issue, to present not just part of the story, but the whole story, all the information, all the facts.

A noble goal. One they could at least attempt to reach. Or at least give some token gesture toward.

Orson Scott Card points out,

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

In light of the way the media is treating this election, he asks, Would the last honest reporter please turn out the lights?

The Achoress reminds us

That Liberty lives where people can speak freely, without fear of injury or reprisals. That Liberty lives only when the press is free and unencumbered - when it is detached from events instead of entwined in them.

Despite their articulate and urgent entreaties to reason, until I read Michael Malone, I didn’t really understand what we’ve lost in the selling out of the media. And I couldn’t figure out why journalists had become such puppets.

Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay-out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway - all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

More than anything I’ve heard or read about the causes of media bias, that makes perfect sense.

I suspect we are too far gone as a nation to take heed. We’ve been conditioned to be entertained by the media, to let go of discernment and to not question what we’re told and shown. Reality TV–which is anything but unscripted–has lulled us into believing that we’re in control of what we’re shown, and we completely ignore all the manipulation going on right before our eyes.

Tonight I took my youngest son to Blockbuster to rent a movie. As we went to pay for our movie, we walked past a display of Obama dvds, and a rack of magazines, four of which had Obama’s face on the cover. This was front and center:

Third time this year Rolling Stone has done an Obama cover. At least he doesn’t look like the Archangel Gabriel, backlit halo and all, on this one. I wasn’t surprised to see it, nor the other magazine covers; the entertainment industry in general welcomed Obama as Messiah the minute he announce his bid for office.

Youngest son, who may be only 12 but is not stupid, commented “Mom, Obama is everywhere. It’s like he’s watching us.”

Indeed. Someone is certainly is watching us, and controlling what we see and hear about Obama and McCain.

Vladimir Lenin once said,

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses”

Wow, was he ever accurate. Thomas Jefferson is no doubt rolling in his grave, because he believed

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

What would he make of today’s “free press?” Well, Jefferson also said,

“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”

In a lighter vein…

From the intensely important to the sublimely satirical…

Sometimes you just have to love The Onion for its sheer irreverance.

That commercial is almost as good as their recent radio report.

It is not all about the economy.

Some things really do matter more than economics in this election. And some differences between the US Presidential & Vice Presidential candidates could not be clearer.

I am not Catholic (though both my daughters graduated from a private Catholic girls high school, so I know a thing or two about Catholicism). Whether one is Catholic or not, truth is truth.

H/T The Anchoress, and the “eleventybillion people” who emailed it to her.

Doing whatever it takes to steal, er, win the election.

I keep wondering what it’s like to be an Obama supporter. I mean, what’s it really like to be so enamoured of a politician, that you do not care what it takes to put him in office. You’ll do it, or you’ll turn a blind eye to it, figuring that the end justifies any and all means.

Were I an Obama supporter, I personally would have a very difficult time with this sort of crap going on. It’s no surprise that Obama’s camp will take money from anyone in anyway they can get it, and it’s also no surprise that they’ve found a way to avoid dealing with those pesky donation limits. But to be so in-your-face about it, to have your online credit card system set up to take blatantly fraudulent information, that takes brass ones.

As Mark Steyn points out,

In order to accept financial donations from “John Galt” and “Saddam Hussein”, whoever runs the Obama website would have to modify the default security checks required by their merchant processor…the Obama site appear to have intentionally disabled not only all the address checks (thereby facilitating overseas contributions) but the most basic criterion of all: the card name match (thereby enabling entirely fake contributions).

Of course, the media is too busy figuring out how much Sarah Palin spent at Saks to care about from where Obama gets his campaign funds.

I’m trying really hard not to envision what life in the US will be like under this sort of “leadership.” Honestly, it scares me. I’d feel much better if there were a modicum of humility in Obama, if his campaign reflected something other than an arrogant desire to control the United States, and all the citizens within it. But then, that is socialism, it’s about controlling the masses, and goodness knows the writing has been on the wall about what sort of government Obama intends to run. The “spreading the wealth around” kind.

Obama’s political philosophy is clearly socialist. His tax plan makes that clear.

Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly…

Distributed, of course, by Obama’s government. Karl Marx would be so happy. It’s only taken 160 years for his dream to be realized in the United States.

I’m being inordinately pessimistic, but unchecked and unchallenged corruption does that to me. I grew up in Chicago, where dead people vote two or three times. I know how hard it is to win against the Machine.

It’s all about the clothing…

We’ve got thirteen painful days left until Election Day, and what is the MSM focusing upon?

The cost of Sarah Palin’s campaign wardrobe.

It’s hard to match this sort of “journalism” (using the word loosely) for sheer bitchy jealousy:

Can a candidate who portrays herself as a woman of the people spend this much on clothes and remain credible?

“She presents herself as Josephine Six-Pack, and I’ll tell you this, Josephine Six-Pack wouldn’t spend $150,000 on her wardrobe,” said Lesley Jane Seymour, editor-in-chief of More magazine. “I’m all for ’shop ’til you drop.’ But to be spending profligately when you’re saying you’re just one of the people — well, that’s just bad marketing.”

“Listen, you can walk into H&M and get three wardrobes for $500 to $1,000, and you’re done,” Seymour added.

That rings true to another hockey mom, Adina Ellick of Chappaqua, N.Y. “If I spend $1,000 on clothes in a year, it’s a lot,” said Ellick, 43. “Usually I’m sitting at a freezing hockey game in fleece pants and a pullover sweat shirt and a blanket over my head!” She said she was “offended” by news of the expenditures.

Right. We want a woman running for Vice President of the United States to be wearing clothing from an upscale version of JC Penney. And nothing says “Leader who can command the respect of foreign powers” like a pair of sweatpants.

Comparisons are being drawn between Palin’s campaign wardrobe and John Edwards’ infamous $400 haircut. Conveniently, the media are forgetting that John Edwards’ presidential campaign focused on eliminating  poverty, while the man himself had quite the reputation for spare-no-expense personal vanity.

There’s something really self absorbed about a man making so much fuss over his own hair.

About a woman being dressed well for a long series of public appearances? Not so much.

With the serious economic and foriegn policy issues facing the candidates, a wardrobing expenditure that even the bitter media grudgingly admits is legal becomes the issue to discuss?

Of course, Mrs. Palin’s not the first prominent Republican to draw the liberal ire for an expense.

The new china, White House renovations, expensive clothing, and [Nancy Reagan's] attendance at the wedding of Charles and Diana, Prince and Princess of Wales,  gave her an aura of being “out of touch” with the American people during an economic recession. This and her taste for splendor inspired the derogatory nickname “Queen Nancy”.

Hopefully, Sarah will find her own way to deflect the hate, just as Nancy eventually did.

In an attempt to deflect the criticism, she self-deprecatingly donned a baglady costume at the 1982 Gridiron Dinner and sang “Second-Hand Clothes”, mimicking the song “Second-Hand Rose”. Nancy Reagan reflected on the criticisms in her 1989 autobiography, My Turn. Reagan describes lunching with former Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Strauss, wherein Strauss said to her, “When you first came to town, Nancy, I didn’t like you at all. But after I got to know you, I changed my mind and said, ‘She’s some broad!’” Nancy responded, “Bob, based on the press reports I read then, I wouldn’t have liked me either!

Funny how being dissed on for legal, legitimate expenditures has a way of backfiring on the haters. Jealousy ain’t a pretty thing.

Next up: Joe Biden claims “Mark my words, this election is all about a three letter word, “Me.”

Okay, I made that last bit up.