Considerettes

Carrie Prejean, who was essentially fired as Miss California after a politically incorrect answer to a Miss USA pageant question, insists she did not break the conditions of her contract, and is going to court to prove it.

Miss Prejean was fired from her role as Miss California USA in June of this year, following several months of controversy over her answer at the Miss USA pageant regarding same-sex marriage. Lewis claimed Miss Prejean’s termination was due to a violation of contract.  Miss Prejean’s complaint will refute that allegation, and demonstrate that both the chronology and factual evidence clearly show she lived up to all her contractual obligations, but was fired, harassed and publicly attacked solely due to her religious beliefs.

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Shire Network News #169 has been released. The feature interview is with Professor Ian Plimer, author of "Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science". 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!"

This is a tale of two countries.  Both have what they call "freedom of religion".  But one imprisons people for converting to a religion that is not the official one.  The other does not. 

Now tell me, which country would you believe if it told you something?  OK, one data point does not a trend make.  Fair enough, then, let’s continue.

Clearly, simply writing something down on paper does not necessarily mean that a country will abide by those things written.  Let’s take a look at a recent event by the country that has freedom of religion but doesn’t, and see the manner in which it practices it.

Two women were arrested on March 5th and later "convicted" of converting to … well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?  Let’s just say, converting to "a non-approved religion", and we’ll let your imagination get to work.  Into the slammer with them.  [I’m sorry, but I know I’m going to mangle their names.]  Maryam Rustampoor, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, were tried on August 9th and told to recant their faith, which they did not.  Back to the slammer, this time with a death penalty on their heads for daring to practice "freedom" of religion.  Oh, and by the way; medical attention for these young ladies?  Not gonna’ happen.  Injury, meet insult.

The other country?  Well, let’s just say that nobody gets sent to prison for simply believing.  Sometimes doing based on believing can land you in hot water, but just believing?  Well, not even the guys at Gitmo, not even the ones who were shooting, and then released to shoot again, were incarcerated for believing.

Oops, I think I slipped up there a bit.  Well, just pretend I still have you pondering about that particular country, just for a bit.

Now, let me ask you; who comes to the defense of these poor women, still in the hoosegow, awaiting their sentence, for believing?  Not some astroturf organization trying to boost an overall image of their religion, but a group dealing specifically with Christian persecution worldwide.  The web page of International Christian Concern lists place after place where Christians are not the most welcome folks, and indeed this incident is currently mentioned on the front page.  They’re not drumming up feigned offense at perceived slights.  Bodies rotting in slums, rape, murder, physical assault; all for believing. 

The countries mentioned in the current articles on the front page include Somalia, India, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan, Burma, Iraq, and one of our mystery countries, Iran.  Are you catching a trend here?  Most of these are Islamic countries with the occasional Hindu and officially atheist country thrown in. 

But Iran gets the Oscar this week for Best Persecution in an Official Capacity for sentencing to death two young women for believing.  For them, there will be no Brian De Palma movie made.  (That broad brush is reserved for the military.)  The United Nations will not pass a resolution on their behalf.  (That remedy is reserved for when Israel so much as blinks.)  The media will not report on them.  (They have better things to do. Michelle Obama’s outfits must be investigated.)  No, Iran gets a pass because Iran knows the world, and so far, the world is ignoring these potential martyrs.

And by the way, these are martyrs; people who could die solely because of what they believe.  If you go on a shooting rampage and get killed in the process, or if you get captured and sent to the Guantanamo Hilton, with 3 squares a day and your every religious requirement fulfilled, buddy, you ain’t a martyr.  I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

And finally, the other mystery country is … well, it’s any of the many countries in this world that was founded on New Testament and/or Old Testament principles — that old-time Judeo-Christian ethic — in which Western civilization is steeped.  Now, none of them are perfect because, so far, they’ve been run by imperfect humans.  But people don’t get incarcerated simply for believing, no matter the religion they’re coming from or going to.  So if you think that one culture and its religious foundation is just as good as any other, and if you think that one country’s word is as good as the other, well then I think you need to take just a bit more time to Consider This.

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Is this responsible; saddling future generations with mountains of debt so that we don’t have to suffer ourselves?  Is this moral?

The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago.

Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy.

Obama economic adviser Christina Romer predicted unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and begin a slow decline next year. Still, she said, the average unemployment will be 9.3 in 2009 and 9.8 percent in 2010.

"This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter," Romer said.

Fine, the recession may have been worse than your experts predicted, but you can’t possibly escape the fact that the "exploding deficits" and "mounting debt" are directly attributable to the administrations own programs, Ms. Romer.  You didn’t inherit TARP.  "Cash for Clunkers" is not a Bush administration program.  And it’s not entirely clear whether or not all this indebtedness has been a remedy.

Our current indebtedness is making foreign investors skittish, even if we do come out of the recession fairly early.  We have to pay this money back at some point, but Obama is going to foist it off on whoever’s President after him.

If this was a private citizen doing this, Dave Ramsey would be having an intervention.  Millions of (otherwise) fiscally responsible Christians would, too, but this crisis has turn some of them on their heads.

Here’s an article from March by Tony Campolo, where he says that he is repenting from being the "older brother" in the story of the Prodigal Son by complaining how irresponsible others were with (in this case) the money taken from him in taxes.

That, I am sad to say, is much the same attitude that I, along with most of my conservative evangelical brothers and sisters, have had in reaction to President Obama’s announcement that taxpayers’ dollars, earned by hard-working, responsible citizens, would be given to help those irresponsible Americans who bought houses that they couldn’t afford, while embracing a lifestyle that was beyond their means. With resentment, I, along with most of my rugged individualistic Christian friends, now sound like that older brother in Jesus’ story, and call for those irresponsible spenders to get what they deserve. With an air of self-righteous indignation, we declare, “They didn’t do what’s right and now we’re being asked to rescue them from the financial mess they’ve created for themselves!”

The gospel is about grace and we all know that grace is about us receiving from God blessings that we don’t deserve. But now, I, having received grace, find that my voice is blending in with a host of other older brother types who are reluctant to grant grace to those desperate home-buyers who were seduced into lavish living they could ill afford.

I’ve got some repenting to do. I doubt, however, that those who have wedded Christianity with laissez-faire capitalism will see things this way. I can just hear them saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

I have no idea what conservative Christians you’ve been talking to, or perhaps imagining, Tony.  I am my brother’s keeper.  I am, not my government.  And my neighbor is not my brother’s keeper either, so forcing them via taxes to pay for my brother is wrong.  When God is separating the sheep from the goats, the Bible does not say He’ll ask me if I voted to make sure others paid to help the poor, He’ll ask if I fed the hungry, clothed the naked and visited the prisoner. 

Charity money I give directly, or through the organization of my choice, is grace.  Forcing me, with threat of incarceration, to pay for anything, no matter how well-intentioned, is most decidedly not charity or grace.  Campolo seems to suggest that God’s grace consists of always letting us keep the fruits of our foolishness and bad decisions. 

But in the story that he references, the younger son, while welcomed back into the family, does not get a windfall or a bailout.  He’s forgetting one of the last lines of the story, where the father says to the older brother, "’My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.’"  Yes, the younger brother came back and, instead of being a servant, was restored to his place as a member of the family.  Yes, he had a party thrown in his honor.  But, as Jesus points out through the words of the father, he no longer is entitled to half of the inheritance anymore.  That ship has sailed.  If he did have even that restored to him — if there were no consequence for his actions — the temptation later on to repeat the same mistake would be very great. 

As in that story, rewarding poor choices is not something we should have our government in the business of doing.  The father did take the younger son back into the family, which means he gets his 3 square meals a day and other benefits, and we, with our charity dollars (as opposed to forcibly taxed dollars), should be helping out those who made poor choices, or who find themselves in circumstances not of their own making.  Absolutely true, and I’d wonder where Mr. Campolo is finding Christians saying otherwise.  Certainly not in the disagreeing comments to his post.  They’re worth reading as much as the article itself.

Part of the issue with toxic mortgages is something Campolo alludes to; the government contributed to this problem by relaxing the rules on who could qualify for a mortgage.  This action was urged by liberals likely with the same mindset as now, who thought that encouraging home ownership, regardless of the ability to pay the debt, was also gracious.  Never mind the hindsight we now have, just the idea that doing anything and everything for the poor without thought for the potential consequences is irresponsible.  What we wound up with was a program to allegedly help the poor, that encouraged irresponsibility, funded by taxpayers, which, when it foundered, was then bailed out by taxpayers.  This, I believe, is the source of the frustration that Mr. Campolo is hearing; the same mindset that helped cause the problem claims that it can now solve the problem.

So the question from a Christian perspective is not whether we are our brother’s keeper, as Mr. Campolo’s straw man insists.  That’s a cheap shot at best.  I think the question is; what is the proper role of government in dispensing grace?  Jesus didn’t speak to the Roman government, nor did he speak to the local civic leaders (though He did have some strong words for the local religious leader).  He spoke to individuals.  To those outside the church, He said to repent.  That’s it.  To those inside the church, however, He had many things to say, including how to treat the poor.  Our civil government does not speak or act for the church, so it is not the job of the government to carry out the instructions to the church.  And given that churches and church-goers are, generally, the most giving and charitable people, I don’t see a rebuke of Mr. Campolo’s type is in order; simply an admonishment to continue to do more.

(This is not to say that we shouldn’t want the government to act morally in its proper spheres.  This is a question of what those spheres should be or how extensively it should penetrate those spheres that it is in.)

I grew up in the Salvation Army, and when giving out food to the poor, there was sometimes a concern that such giveaways might be scammed.  Perhaps a father comes in and gets groceries for a family of 3, and then later the mother comes in to do the same.  Is it moral to question whether or not the food program is being properly administered to avoid this?  Is it fair to the family in need who comes to our door only to be turned away because their bag of groceries went to a family that double-dipped, or didn’t really need it?  And so, wouldn’t it valid for those who give money to the Salvation Army, in hopes of helping the needy, to be frustrated if they find that the program needs more money because it was improperly handled in the first place?  And if it’s OK for the Salvation Army, how much more so for a government dealing out billions and trillions of dollars!

Don’t we expect good stewardship?  Or if the intent is good, should we ignore all the problems with a program and instead force our neighbors and future generations to pay for it?  How in the world is that moral or responsible or, if you will, sustainable?

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Remember Cindy Sheehan?  Well if you don’t, that’s OK.  Neither do here one-time comrades-in-arms who sat with her outside Bush’s Crawford ranch trying to get an 2nd meeting with the Commander-in-Chief.  She’s up in Martha’s Vineyard protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but she doesn’t have much company.

And neither does the media, who covered her so extensively, remember her, either.  It’s so bad that in order for the Huffington Post to even link to a story on her, it had to resort to quoting that stalwart national news organization the Cape Cod Times.

It was a media circus during the Bush years.  Now, suddenly, it’s gotten very, very quiet.  What a difference an administration makes.

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No, you read that right.  It’s not Fox News reporting this; it’s CNN.  Even if you believe Fox News Channel is the broadcast arm of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, you don’t have that excuse to hand-wave this away.

The article is here, but here’s just the main list of items:

1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
5. Freedom to choose your doctors

CNN details how these freedoms will be lost, in spite of protestations from Obama and his backers.  These freedoms would be lost in either of the two main bills; one in the House and one in the Senate. 

This is not just about covering folks who don’t have insurance, and millions of whom indeed don’t want insurance.  It’s about government control of the industry.

(There’s a word for that.  Can’t recall it just now.)

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For those that continue to say, "Well, Bush spent a lot during his presidency!", a little perspective from Greg Mankiw:

Before you read this story, here is one number you need to know: the U.S. federal government’s debt is now about $7.4 trillion. That is the accumulation from past budget deficits.

With that number firmly in mind, here is a story from the Washington Post about the path of future fiscal policy:

The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.

The projection is that in 10 years we’ll more than double the debt our country has accumulated up to this point.  Dubya and the Republicans continues to look more and more like coupon-clipping penny-pinchers compared to Obama and the Democrats. 

Or, if you prefer automobile analogies:

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I have always though that the US as a whole leans conservative, but now I have a Gallup poll to back up that impression.

The strength of "conservative" over "liberal" in the realm of political labels is vividly apparent in Gallup’s state-level data, where a significantly higher percentage of Americans in most states — even some solidly Democratic ones — call themselves conservative rather than liberal.

I like the accompanying graphic.

Now, why party affiliation doesn’t quite match this, or why we elect such liberals as the one currently in the Oval Office, or heck, whether or not these folks even know what "conservative" means, is an open question.  But the fact that they at least believe themselves to be it is heartening to me.

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That was then.

Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party’s most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led protests at Bush’s Texas ranch.

This is now.

The news that emerged is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually fallen off the liberal radar screen. Kossacks (as fans of DailyKos like to call themselves) who were consumed by the Iraq war when George W. Bush was president are now, with Barack Obama in the White House, not so consumed, either with Iraq or with Obama’s escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, they barely seem to care.

As part of a straw poll done at the convention, the Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg presented participants with a list of policy priorities like health care and the environment. He asked people to list the two priorities they believed "progressive activists should be focusing their attention and efforts on the most." The winner, by far, was "passing comprehensive health care reform." In second place was enacting "green energy policies that address environmental concerns."

And what about "working to end our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan"? It was way down the list, in eighth place.

Perhaps more tellingly, Greenberg asked activists to name the issue that "you, personally, spend the most time advancing currently." The winner, again, was health care reform. Next came "working to elect progressive candidates in the 2010 elections." Then came a bunch of other issues. At the very bottom — last place, named by just one percent of participants — came working to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only principle it seems that the vast majority of the Left stood for was partisan politics.  Their righteous indignation was so much veneer for their simple hatred of Dubya. 

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Y’know, maybe that whole profit motive thing and competition wasn’t so bad after all.

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

We already know that American private health-care delivery already has a role. 

And this is hilarious.

He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

Heh.  That "activity-based funding" is something like what we capitalists call "pricing".  We’ve found out that it’s a more efficient way to deal with supply and demand than government dictate. 

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Over at "Stop the ACLU", a bullet list of times that Sarah Palin won the debate on the end-of-life care issue she brought up.  Biggest win; the provision was removed from a Senate bill.  (A provision that her critics insisted was pure fantasy.)

Y’all just go on underestimating her.

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This is what passes for a "Middle East peach partner" these days.

Palestinian militant Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five consecutive life sentences for the murders of five people in terror attacks, has been elected to serve on Fatah’s Central Committee, and that is sparking new calls by left-wing Israeli politicians for his release. Freeing Barghouti would bolster the “moderate” Fatah organization, left-wing Israelis say.

Fatah’s recently-concluded congress in Bethlehem, its first in 20 years, elected Barghouti to fill one of 18 available places on its top decision-making body. Provisional results show that he received the third highest number of votes cast by delegates.

Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, is the Palestinian faction backed by the U.S. as a potential Mideast peace partner. It is engaged in a continuing feud with Islamist rival Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Despite the rift, Hamas has been demanding freedom for Barghouti along with hundreds of other prisoners in exchange for releasing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas more than three years ago. He is still being held in Gaza.

Barghouti was a leader of the Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, factions within Fatah which have been linked to – and in many cases claimed responsibility for – lethal attacks including suicide bombings. American citizens were among their victims.

The Fatah congress last week endorsed the Al-Aqsa Brigade as an official Fatah organ.

If this was something Israel was doing, the UN would be all over them with 8 Security Council resolutions.  But Fatah gets so many passes it’s amazing.

And the irony is, Israel will still be papered in UN resolutions.

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Shouting at congressional leaders is getting the Left all upset.  "This is not an appropriate form of protest!", they insist.  Fine, then.  Let’s use a form that the Left was all in favor of; throwing shoes at them.  (I’m sure a demonstration of this sort would be lauded as "patriotic", eh?"

(Hat tip: NRO)

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Former President George W. Bush walked a fine line between science and morality/ethics when he decided that existing embryonic stem cell lines, at the time, would be the only ones available for Federal grants.  Federal money would not be available to any new lines.

Contrary to some misinformed, partisan critics, he did not ban embryonic stem cell research.  Companies using private money were not restricted in any way.   Bush simply said that Federal money would be given out in what he believed was as moral and ethical a way as could be done at the time. 

The LA Times reported this week that a Stanford University study was done to determine the extent of this restriction.  The results show that the loudly-complaining scientists have put even tighter restrictions on themselves, making their protests disingenuous.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Shire Network News #168 has been released. The feature interview is with SNN contributor Meryl Yourish about the "Obamacare" debate. 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!"

This just in: Religious texts are not universally revered.  Liberal ministers shocked.  From the AFP article:

Christians voiced anger and dismay Tuesday after a Bible, which was part of an exhibition inviting viewers to add their reflections, was defaced with offensive and foul-mouthed scrawl.

Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art has decided to put the Bible in a glass case after the exhibit, called Untitled 2009 and part of a show entitled Made In God’s Image, was vandalised.

Artist Jane Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with stories and reflections, as a way of making it more inclusive.

But visitors to the gallery took the invitation a bit further than she had anticipated.

"This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all," wrote one person, while another described the Bible as "the biggest lie in human history" and a third wrote: "Mick Jagger and David Bowie belong in here."

The oh-so-easy point to make here — one made innumerable times on this podcast — is that if this were the Koran, then the phrase "voiced anger and dismay" could very likely be the mildest thing you’d read, especially if this took place in, say, Denmark, and included a few cartoons.  We’re repeating ourselves, but it’s worth repeating.

Now, Breibart.com has a link to other articles about the Metropolitan Community Church, and they are, unsurprisingly, a very liberal church.  I part ways with my SNN brethren and "sistren" on the issue of same-sex marriage.  I’m against it, and thus I am on the opposite side of the debate from Metropolitan as well.  They have, in my opinion, ignored what the Bible says on the subject of homosexuality.  And so it comes as no surprise to me, frankly, that the general public around the Metropolitan doesn’t take the Bible seriously; the Metropolitan doesn’t.  Thus this church may actually be having an effect on their community, though likely not in the way they planned.  Its irony in motion.

In addition, the display was rather self-serving.  Clarke said, "Writing our names in the margins of a Bible was to show how we have been marginalised by many Christian churches, and also our desire to be included in God’s love."  Oh please!  What do you mean by "marginalized"?  Thieves, murderers, guys who cheat on their golf scores and, yes, homosexuals are welcome in any church.  No one’s being marginalized.  Ya’ wanna’ come to Jesus?  Then come on down.  Ya’ just wanna’ find out what this whole "Christianity" thing is?  Pull up a pew and we’ll let you know.  Ya’ wanna’ be coddled and told you’re not really doing anything wrong?  Wellll, that’s not going to happen because we all do things wrong, and it would be lying to tell you otherwise, and that would also be wrong.  (Can I have an "Amen"?)

I would hope that the folks running the Metropolitan believes that theft is a sin.  If they do, then saying so is no more marginalizing thieves than saying what my church believes about homosexuality marginalizes gays.  We’re both doing the same thing, so this "holier-than-thou" attitude, so often attributed to conservative churches, seems to have a nice enough home at Metropolitan.  Irony is now becoming rampant.

Finally, this "desire to be included in God’s love" that Clarke mentioned is, for someone who knows their Bible, a given.  How well she knows it is her business (though she is a minister, the church’s former pastor), but here’s a quick refresher.  Most folks, churched or not, know the line, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  This is Jesus standing with an adulterer and against some religious leaders.  Without asking, she’s already included in God’s love.  No need for liner notes with her name, no parades, no fanfare; it’s there.  Clarke’s own words seem to call that guarantee into question.  There’s no reason why her community would think any differently. Instead of salt and light, it sounds to me like the Metropolitan is presenting bland shades of gray.

Oh, and by the way, there is another line in that same Bible story that isn’t repeated as often as the "first stone" line.  The last thing Jesus says to here is, "Go and sin no more."  Can you believe it?  By calling what she did a "sin", He was marginalizing her!  Consider this!

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Growing up in the North, school never started until after Labor Day.  Living now in the South, it comes much earlier.  Today is the first day of school for most districts around metro Atlanta, and I have 2 in high school; one a freshman and one a junior.  For the freshman, it’s his first day of public school, and he’s looking forward to it.  All our kids have been home schooled through 8th grade.

One reason (of many) that we do this, relates to this article talking about Delaware schools.  It repeats a statistic that I’ve highlighted in the past, and think now is as good a time as any to repeat it.

Across the country, it was estimated in 2003 that nearly 10 percent of American students — or more than 4.5 million — were targets of sexual harassment or abuse by a public school employee between kindergarten and 12th grade, according to a study by former Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft.

The study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, said those numbers could be low because inappropriate behavior by educators is likely under-reported, Shakeshaft wrote.

Emphasis mine, as I emphasize them again.  Know your school district.  Home schooling is always an option.

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