If anti-abortion protesters threw stink bombs into abortion clinics, and threatened to demolish the building, what would happen to those protesters? Well, they’d probably get thrown in jail and decried in the media. (Perhaps get called a "Christianist" by Andrew Sullivan.)
But, change the cause, and those tactics become, as the LA Times says, "compelling" television. Yes, terrorize for the right cause, and you get your own TV show.
Jill Stanek has the details on "Whale Wars", a Discovery channel show documenting the life and times of an crew of anti-whalers. I saw an episode where they made it appear that they were going to ram the offending ship. If people trying to save babies tried this, they’d be pilloried (by, no doubt, the LA Times).
But do this in the name of animals, and the Left and the media put you on a pedestal. Priorities, folks.
Front-page Daily Kos writer SusanG is exuberant about the energy bill that recently passed in the House.
In an unprecedented move, the White House retracted yesterday the embargoed text for the president’s usual weekly address, which it generally sends to news outlets the evening before the official Saturday remarks are posted on the White House website. The first address sent was focused on health care reform; the replacement discussed—and praised to the heavens—the energy bill that passed the House yesterday afternoon.
Clearly, the measure’s passage prompted a nimble switch in presidential priorities for the address, which President Obama often uses as the first salvo in setting messaging for the coming week—and for putting friend and foe alike on notice about what’s on the administration’s upcoming agenda. In fact, he’s so adamant about pushing his slant on the energy bill that today’s weekly address is mostly a reprise of a speech he gave earlier in the day yesterday, with a framing he clearly wants to drive home:
It’s all about the jobs, baby.
In the very first sentence, in fact, the President doesn’t just refer to the measure as an energy bill—it’s a piece of legislation that "will open the door to a clean energy economy." In fact, this is—make no mistake, he says—a jobs bill.
Yup, he talked about jobs. He called it a "jobs bill". And merely saying that makes things all golden.
‘Cept he said the same thing about the stimulus package, and we all know how that turned out. A reminder:
Yeah, the President called the energy bill "a jobs bill". After the last "jobs bill", unemployment rose to a point higher that he said we’d hit if we did nothing.
But hey, he said this would be a "jobs bill". For the Left, it appears that’s all that really matters. Results? Meh. Intentions are everything.
Remember when candidate Barak Obama said that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year? That promise may not last 6 months into President Obama’s tenure. George Stephanopoulos reports:
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won’t rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike.
"The president had said in the past that he doesn’t believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We’ve gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year — despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.
"One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people — middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.
So if you expect Obama to keep his promises, you’re just a stick-in-the-mud. According to Axelrod, any line drawn stops the talks, and thus everything is negotiable.
Well, at least we know where the administration stands now. All the tough talk and "yes we can" talk were all just suggestions. Hope for change, and such.
You can’t engage in diplomacy with an enemy would simply will not be negotiated with. Case in point:
The [Iranian] government appeared to fall back on a familiar playbook: trying to rouse Iranians through populist appeals against outside interference and dark accusations of foreign conspiracy. Mr. Rezai’s aides said the authorities did not even bother to conduct the limited recount they had agreed to. Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped out of the shadows to lash out at President Obama, who said Tuesday that he was “appalled and outraged” by the crackdown on protesters.
On Thursday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: “We expected the British and European countries to make those kinds of comments. But we were not expecting Mr. Obama, who has talked about change, to fall in the same trap and follow the same path that Bush did.”
All Obama did was express his opinion on the treatment of protestors, and even that was too much for Ahmadinejad. And comparing him to Bush; that must have hurt. >smile<
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had authorized diplomatic posts earlier this month to invite Iranians to their Independence Day parties, sent out a cable rescinding the invitations.
“Unfortunately, circumstances have changed, and participation by Iranian diplomats would not be appropriate in light of the unjust actions that the president and I have condemned,” she said. Embassies that had already invited Iranian diplomats were instructed to disinvite them.
So the past 30 years of "unjust actions" were OK, but this crossed the line? C’mon, folks! This simply shows that the Obama crowd is far too naive to be in charge of the really important decisions. No Iranians had accepted the invitation anyway. They simply do not wish to be engaged, and no amount of mustard and relish, or strongly worded letter from the UN, will change that.
Don’t you just hate it when it’s the insurance company making your healthcare decisions rather than you or your doctor? Well, when it’s the government insuring you, this is what you can expect.
President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.
In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don’t unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
He added: "Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
Obama advertises that you’ll be able to choose your own doctor, but if neither of you have a say in your healthcare that’s just a bunch of misdirection. Indeed, sometimes that happens even now, but if you think that the government option will somehow be fundamentally different, you’re gravely mistaken.
And after the trillions spent on providing this, the desire to cut costs will be great.
British homeschoolers may no longer be able to teach independently. Children’s Secretary of Britain accepted a report in full last week that could change the face of homeschooling in Britain indefinitely. In the report, the author, Graham Badman, Chair of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA), argues for an end to homeschool freedom.
"While it’s disgraceful that the British government would even entertain this report it’s particularly troubling for American parents because the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was used as the justification for this action," said Michael Farris, Chairman of HSLDA and President of ParentalRights.org.
The Badman report uses Articles 12 and 29 of the UNCRC to justify registering the estimated 80,000 homeschooling families in Britain, forcing them to provide annual reports regarding their homeschool, granting government officials the right to enter the home and interview the children alone as well as reserving the choice of curriculum to the state.
HSLDA has been warning that the UNCRC could bring an end to homeschool freedom in the U.S., if the treaty was ever ratified by the U.S. Senate because Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says that treaties become the supreme law of the land.
OK, first I have to admit that I snickered a bit when I read the phrase "The Badman report". But getting beyond that…
I’m wondering if the UNCRC says or implies that children can be used as witnesses against their parents without a lawyer present. I mean, why would any government official be granted exclusive access to a homeschool child other than to find out what’s really going on? Somehow, without all this invasiveness, homeschool children are, on the whole, doing better academically than their public-schooled peers. Part of the reason people homeschool is precisely to avoid the problem with government-chosen one-size-fits-all curriculum.
Do people misuse the opportunity? Indeed they do, but it is such a small minority that this is akin to burning down the forest to kill the mosquitoes. Parents, on the whole, are doing just fine thankyouverymuch educating their own children. (One wonders how we learned anything prior to the 19th century.)
Betsy Newmark has a great write up on the issue of Iran in the President’s press conference yesterday. Essentially the toughest two questions were dodged. When asked if accepting the legitimacy of the election would betray what the demonstrators are trying to achieve, Obama said:
Well, look, we didn’t have international observers on the ground. We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country.
What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It’s not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.
And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.
And that’s why I’ve been very clear, ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.
What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with the peaceful dissent, that — that spans cultures, spans borders.
And what we’ve been seeing over the Internet and what we’ve been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.
I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that — that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.
Left unanswered was whether accepting the results of the election would betray what the demonstrators were trying to achieve; demonstrators that Obama appears to have common cause with. He hopes they take the peaceful path to legitimacy, but the question was, what if they don’t? Will that have any effect on relations with them?
Perhaps not. Betsy also notes that another exchange (and another dodge) suggests that it’ll be business as usual, regardless of the election outcome.
Remember that the Obama administration has broken with 30 years of tradition and invited Iranian diplomats to come celebrate the Fourth of July at embassies around the world in what is now being called "hot dog diplomacy." Here is Obama’s response to Fox News’ Major Garrett’s question about the invitation to Iranians diplomats.
QUESTION: Are Iranian diplomats still welcome at the embassy on Fourth of July, sir?
MR. OBAMA: Well, I think as you’re aware, Major, we don’t have formal diplomatic relations with…
(CROSSTALK)
MR. OBAMA: … we don’t have formal — we don’t have formal diplomatic relations with Iran. I think that we have said that if Iran chooses a path that abides by international norms and principles, then we are interested in healing some of the wounds of 30 years in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations.
But that is a choice that the Iranians are going to have to make.
QUESTION: But the offer still stands?
MR. OBAMA: That’s a choice the Iranians are going to have to make.
What does that mean? That the Iranians have to decide whether or not to accept the invitation or that the invitation is now contingent on whether or not the Iranians are abiding by "international norms and principles." It’s not clear whether or not he is thinking of rescinding the invitation. The State Department spokesman certainly thinks that the invitation stands.
Obama told Iran that "the world is watching". Well, lemme tell you, Iran is watching, too. If nothing changes as a result of violent crackdowns after sham elections, they’ll be empowered to just keep on doing it.
A new three-year study of the Top 25 movies released in 2006-2008 earning the most money overseas shows that international moviegoers prefer clean movies with strong or very strong Christian, moral and/or redemptive content and values.
This study is significant because it matches our annual study of the Top 25 Movies at the Box Office in America and Canada and the top home video sales annually, and because Hollywood now makes more money overseas than it does in the United States.
The Movieguide® study found that 20 of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006-2008, or 80%, contained strong or very strong Christian, moral, redemptive, and even biblical content, earning $8.39 billion out of $10.59 billion total, or 79.2% of the money among the Top 25.
That’s an average of $419.5 million per movie!
This is just another in a long line of studies showing the same thing. OK, then, so why do they produce so much junk?
SAN FRANCISCO — Marijuana smoke has joined tobacco smoke and hundreds of other chemicals on a list of substances California regulators say cause cancer.
The ruling Friday by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment likely will force pot shops with 10 or more employees to post warnings. Final guidelines are expected by the time warning requirements take effect in a year.
Your tax dollars at work, telling us the obvious. So then, all those on the Left trying to de facto ban cigarettes, will they now have the same view on marijuana? Listening…
No, it’s not the title of a new soap opera. Just some thoughts on the inevitable change all parents go through.
I had a "first" for Father’s Day this year; the first time one of my kids called me for Father’s Day instead of being here for it. She’s working at summer camp in this time between high school and college, so we’re getting a bit of a trial run of the whole "away at college" thing.
I remember when I went off to college and my parents wanted me to keep in touch. No cell phones then, never mind having free nationwide long distance, and they knew how often I wrote letters (almost never), so they gave me a tape recorder and asked me to keep in touch that way. They knew their son well. The recorded "letters" started out pretty sedate, but wound up like a radio show with its own theme music, and the tape recorder (about the size of a large paperback book) went with me all over the place and caught some very interesting moments.
At first, I found the chronicling of my college life for them rather tedious. When I made it fun for me, then it happened more often, but still; hey, I’m at college and I’m OK, so what’s the big deal about keeping in touch?
Now I know.
When we’d all come home for Christmas or Spring Break or a week in the summer, my dad would get all dramatic on us. "Isn’t it great to have the whole gang together again" and/or "How many more times will we be able to do this" would come up now and then. Early on, I didn’t quite connect with the sentiment.
Now I know.
So now it’s my nest that starts emptying. Since I was the oldest in my family, I never felt what it was like to have less than the full compliment around the dinner table, so this is going to be new for me, and not just because I’m the dad now. Family dynamics will change, I’m sure, and actually I’ll be interested to see how. But after all these years in pretty much the same situation year to year, what’s "normal" is now changing. This is the new "normal", and there ain’t no going back.
Yeah, I’m a little melancholy at the prospect, but hey, it’s time for a change, and I’m excited to see what’s coming.
Shire Network News #165 has been released. The feature interview is with Israeli historian Yaacov Lozowick, author of "Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars" and a former peace activist who found himself voting for (gulp) Sharon. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.
Below is the text of my commentary.
Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"
What do Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, G. Gordon Liddy and David Letterman all have in common? They’re all on NOW’s Hall of Shame. When the ladies in the Left wing calls a fellow liberal "sexist", it must be way beyond the pale.
And it was.
(The YouTube video is no longer available - CBS took it down - so here’s a blog post on the subject. Essentially he said that there was an embarrassing moment at a Yankees game that Sarah Palin attended; during the 7th inning her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.)
Yes, others like Leno and Saturday Night Live have done similar jokes and the Palins have had to laugh it off. But the campaign’s been over for 8 months now, and Letterman’s still doing teen pregnancy jokes? Guess he must be all out of vicious Obama jokes.
When I was asked if, for my segment on SNN, I’d like to take a crack at Letterman, I said "Yes … and I’d like to talk about him, too." >cue rim shot< Well the fact is, I tried to come up with a Top 9 list that could both have 9 items and yet say what I wanted to say about this.
The Top 9 Other Topics David Letterman Also Thinks Are Funny
9 - Hit and run drivers (as long as they hit a Republican)
Nah.
How about The Top 9 Topics David Letterman Thinks Aren’t Funny
9 - Jokes about President Obama’s daughters.
Nope.
The Top 9 Ways to Make the Joke Funnier
9 - Add a minister, a priest and a Rabbi walking into a bar.
8 - Toss in a few lines from "Who’s on First?"
Eh. I just couldn’t come up with 9 things that fit those categories without winding up in the same cesspool that Letterman jumped into. And I won’t go there.
In his first "apology", he said he meant to make the joke about Bristol, age 18, not Willow, age 14.
So he meant to ignore the 14-year-old daughter that was really there at the game, and instead say that the 18-year-old daughter she left home somehow wound up in New York and got … yeah, well, see, that extra 4 years of age takes (what passes for) a "joke" from "inappropriate" to "comedic genius". I mean, if he’d actually said "Bristol", why then we’d all be laughing.
Well, about a week went by, and he came to the conclusion that the "joke" was tasteless and the "apology" was inadequate; a conclusion that should’ve taken 7 milliseconds rather than 7 days. He finally took personal responsibility for the content, and the Palins accepted.
So what are the lessons we should all learn from this?
Lesson 1: If you’re going to tell a joke about statutory rape, don’t. Just don’t. It’s one of the cheapest of cheap laughs.
Lesson 2: If you haven’t learned lesson 1, then at least be sure you know what you’re talking about. If you’re going to attack someone’s reputation, at least get your facts straight.
And lesson 3: If you find yourself listening to someone who hasn’t learned lesson 1, laughter & applause is not the appropriate response. Hey, audience; consider this.
Imagine this statement by a some guy in DC bucking for a job in government:
I am a member of a private organization of male professionals from the profit, nonprofit and social sectors. The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Women are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a woman has never asked to be considered for membership.
Would this disqualify the fellow, especially in the eyes of Democrats? "Oh yeah, right. No woman has ever asked to become a member? Do you expect us to believe that?"
Well, here’s the actual quote, in the context of the news article.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Monday defended her membership in an all-female networking club, telling senators preparing for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing that the group did not discriminate in an inappropriate way.
Judge Sotomayor made the remarks in a cover letter for 10 documents the White House submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The papers supplement a trove of documents and videos, along with a response to a questionnaire, that she turned over earlier this month.
Her remarks indicate that some senators have taken an interest in her membership in the group, Belizean Grove, which she mentioned in the questionnaire response.
“I am a member of the Belizean Grove, a private organization of female professionals from the profit, nonprofit and social sectors,” Judge Sotomayor wrote. “The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Men are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership.”
Maybe this is why.
According to the Belizean Grove’s Web site, the group is a “constellation of influential women” who are building “long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.” It was founded as a counterpart to the all-male Bohemian Grove, a legendary club of elite politicians, businessmen and other leaders.
The group’s roughly 115 “grovers,” as members call themselves, include ambassadors and top executives of Goldman Sachs, Victoria’s Secret and Harley-Davidson. They meet each year for an annual retreat in Belize or another Central American destination, as well as occasionally in New York and other cities for outings described as “a balance of fun, substantive programs and bonding.” The group’s Web site does not appear to mention any roles for men.
Something tells me Democrats are about to suddenly get very tolerant of gender-based private organizations.
We got a tip at SCO about an article by Mike Rosen-Molina dealing with how churches can use and are using Social Media to get the Word out. While churches have had web sites for quite some time, the emergence of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter change the dynamic.
So while static webpages might be good for drawing in people already curious about a religion’s tenants, actually getting the attention of someone who wasn’t… that was a little more tricky without coming across as spam. That is, until the advent of social media, and its accompanying ability to build relationships online.
"Creating a web site is perhaps the most basic way to use the Internet for evangelism," agreed Rev. Michael White, a United Methodist pastor and author of Digital Evangelism: You Can Do It, Too!. He noted that newer social networking sites offered more opportunities for outreach because they could better enable conversation than a static page.
"People of faith can use such social media as Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. to reach out both to ’seekers’ (those looking for more information about religious faith) and believers alike to share the tenets of their faith, encourage deepening one’s religious faith, answering questions of doubt, and much more," he said.
With social media, more of a relationship can be built, which is a better foundation for sharing the gospel. Now, I would imagine that these online relationships themselves typically aren’t enough, but they are a much better launching point than even a blog. I have a blog (of course) and a Facebook account, and frankly unsaved friends of mine are much more likely to read my Facebook posts, notes and status updates than would read the blog.
The article also touches on specifically religious social media, like Christian sites for video sharing and Twitter-like communication.
While they may be good for uniting the faithful, some are skeptical of services that allow believers to segregate themselves from the wider world. Saddington said that both secular and religious services had their uses, but that people should keep in mind that they were unlikely to spread their faith if they confined themselves to online communities that consisted only of fellow believers.
"There’s no outreach when you’re talking to the already converted," agreed Coppedge. He said that religious social media might be useful for parents worried about their children being exposed to inappropriate content on MySpace or Facebook, but saw little use for them otherwise.
"The focus should always be on building community," he said, "If you limit yourself to only Christian communities, that’s not wise. Some people are afraid of using this technology, but you have to remember that technology is not inherently good or evil. It’s all in how you use it."
It’s the "in the word but not of it" philosophy. The article is a good read and I think a balanced look at the issues.
