At Home On Piety Hill

It looks as if a new president of the United States was elected, while Denise and I were taking care of business. It wasn’t much of a surprise. The Republicans fielded a weak candidate in McCain, Obama lied — raised and spent more money than any other contender in history and no one in the watchdog press was interested in vetting the Democrat candidate. Oh well, this should all make for plenty of opinion and wonderful satire as we embark upon the birthing of a progressive utopia here in the US.

From the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Don’t you love Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin? So do I. It was fun watching Palin on Saturday Night Live and it’s cool that she’s such a good sport about their spoofs on her and the family. Check out this response in her recent People Magazine interview:

Interviewer: Tina Fey plays you sort of bubble-headed. You obviously –

Sarah Palin: That’s funny, I play her bubble-headed, too, when I imitate her.

I’m still, um, looking, uh, forward to SNL’s political satire of, uuuuuh, the Obama Presidency and that whiney first-lady, Michelle Marie-Antoinette Obama.

UPDATE!
10/27/2008   This just in: The Obama-O’Biden campaign blackballs a CBS affiliate for asking tough, pointed, fair questions — treatment that conservatives routinely and courageously respond to daily!!! It seems like just yesterday that the jackbooted thugs silenced an Orlando FL station for asking appropriate questions that, frankly, should have been asked of Obama and O’Biden throughout the campaign. 

I haven’t seen a news anchor treat a Democrat like a Libertarian or Republican in a long time. It was kind of refreshing for a change, but it seemed odd to see someone with all the trappings of the progressive media asking O’Biden tough questions. Though the depth and thoughtfulness of the interview was surprising, the Democrat response was predictable:

Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

Get ready for at least four years of this sort of Stalinist retaliation against any dissenting voices. By the way, I once heard someone say “dissent is patriotic.”

Well, I’ve taken about all I can this election year. So, I’ll close out political week with a flurry of posts on a variety of issues for those with inquiring minds and plenty of time to peruse. I’ve done the footwork, so now all you need to do is click and enjoy. Let’s begin with this one…

Forget all that babble from Democrats and the automatons on the paleo-press about violence and hate at the McCain-Palin rallies. The real scary stuff is happening in neighborhoods across the land. Here we find progressives in New York expressing their tolerance during a recent march:

Meanwhile, in Portland there are some neo-hippies spreading their brand of peace, love and understanding through a creative use of fossil fuels:

Leslie Brockette Leudtke, 23, and Kevin Carl Robinson, 23, were held on at least eight felony charges of making a destructive device and possession of a destructive device. Leudtke also was charged with reckless burning.

Michael Barone sounds a warning about the potential for mischief if these jackboot thugs become emboldened when Obama sweeps to power in January ‘09. There’s a chill wind blowing across the land of the free:

That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign e-mails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Mr. Kurtz had been researching Mr. Obama’s relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago - papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Mr. Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One…

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio…

Then there’s the Democrats’ “card check” legislation that would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions’ strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees’ homes - we know where you live - and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard…

Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Mr. Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

The Promised One has come and the children sing His praises:

Others recite His creed:

Religious leaders say He’s the Messiah:

Would you like to host an Obama Camp at your school or in your living room? The Virginia Education Association may be able to assist you with the help of their dues paying members and taxpayers… whatever it takes to get the message out.

People are clamoring for change. Here are some fresh perspectives on Sarah Palin for a change.

First, this editorial from the UK:

In short, far from being a small-town mayor concerned with little more than traffic signs, she has been a major player in state politics for a decade, one who formulated an ambitious agenda and deftly implemented it against great odds.

Her sudden elevation to the vice-presidential slot on the Republican ticket shocked no one more than her enemies in Alaska, who have broken out into a cold sweat at the thought of Palin in Washington, guiding the Justice Department’s anti-corruption teams through the labyrinths of Alaska’s old-boy network. 

And, remember the Charlie Gibson interview, when Palin didn’t seem to know what the Bush Doctrine was? Well, the man who first coined the phrase, the Bush Doctrine, had his own gotcha moment when he pointed out that it was Charlie Gibson and the New York Times who fumbled and bumbled that one:

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong. There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration — and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, “Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?” She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, “In what respect, Charlie?” Sensing his “gotcha” moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine “is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.”

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

That’s not all. A real feminist, Camille Paglia, appreciates the appearance of Sarah Palin on the scene, even if she does not share many of the same ideas, politically:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist… Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

I’ve tried to explain this to people… From The Guardian:

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

The issue is not hypocrisy — everyone is a hypocrite, so that’s not news. The problem is that there are people around who set themselves up as the arbiters of who is responsible enough to enjoy the goodies and who’s not. Al Gore is just one such preachy, finger-wagging moralist, who is sucking the planet dry. Why anyone would pay any attention to that blow-hard is mind boggling to me.

Suddenly being green is not cool any more: As the credit crunch bites, environmental policies are being ditched. But oddly we are doing better at saving the planet

Julie Burchill can’t stand them. According to her new book, Not in my Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end of the world because they don’t want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, agrees. In an interview with Rachel Sylvester and me, he told us that the “nutbag ecologists” are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives than talk about hot air and beans.

So the salad days are over; it’s the end of the greens. Where only a year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence.

But the problem for the green lobby isn’t that it has been overrun by “toffs”: it’s the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.

Meanwhile, this article in the National Journal suggests that Americans are becoming smarter:

According to a survey [PDF] from ABC News, Planet Green and Stanford University, fewer than half — 47 percent — of Americans consider global warming an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007. Although a vast majority still think the planet is warming — 8 in 10 respondents — that figure is also down from last year, having dropped 4 percentage points. Furthermore, in an open-ended question, the number of respondents who called global warming the biggest environmental challenge facing the world fell 8 points from 2007 and currently hovers at 25 percent.

When the people lead, the leaders (and scientists) will follow:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science…. editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling… Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

Finally, we may have the answer to what’s been driving the environmental hysteria all these years:

MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. 

Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. VitaminB12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin. 

Why Are These Folks So Happy?

Conflict of Interest Anyone?

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Obama’s Financial Advisors Cleaned Up

Let’s say hello to Mr. Democrat James A. Johnson, who ran Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, served as vice chairman from 1990 to 1991, and earlier worked as a managing director at Lehman Bros. and for Vice President Walter F. Mondale. He currently leads the American Friends of Bilderberg and made news earlier this summer when he had to resign as vice-presidential-candidate vetter for Barack Obama “as new details emerged about loans Mr. Johnson received from mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.

Jamie Gorelick: A One Woman Wrecking Crew

From SLATE: Next up is Jamie S. Gorelick, whose official résumé describes her as “one of the longest serving Deputy Attorneys General of the United States,” a position she held during the Clinton administration. Although Gorelick had no background in finance, she joined Fannie Mae in 1997 as vice chair and departed in 2003. For her trouble, Gorelick collected a staggering $26.4 million in total compensation, including bonuses.

 

Well, a lot has happened since I began the draft of this post almost two months ago and photoshopped the images. Back then, Obama was on top and I thought he was the sure bet. Then, McCain came back with a surprisingly crisp campaign apparatus, but he quickly went into a tailspin and it looks as if it’s Obama by a nose. This go-’round I don’t have a horse in the race, so I’m enjoying this election a lot more. I don’t care for either of the candidates. I suppose Fred Thompson would have suited me.

Anyway, I think I’ll blog a lot of politics for the next week to sort of purge it out of my system and then get back to the fun stuff: Family and friends, Maine, art, books and music with some Krazy Kitsch thrown in for good measure.

Now, there’s plenty of talk out there about hope and change, but not much detail about what or who we’re hoping in and what kind of change we want to see. It’s as if the two words are floated out as empty containers and the audience is left to fill in their notions, their ideas about what kind of change each of the candidates is offering. Actually, I think that’s the strategy. Put out some reassuring, yet imprecise phrases to make people come away with an optimistic feeling about one candidate or the other.

So, which of our two presidential candidates presents us with the best chance to see some positive changes?

Thoroughly Modern McCain First, we have John McCain who has been in politics since I was a boy. He’s a bona fide war hero with a compelling story and I salute him for that. But, he was also one of the Keating Five, the gang of fourteen and he crafted legislation which limits my right to free speech under the First Amendment. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but he’s a deal-maker and I think he would get rolled by the Congress every time. So, under McCain I would expect to see government grow… not much change there. I’m  already bored just writing about a McCain presidency.

His Holiness Barak Obama All of the institutions came together and anointed Obama King of the World, so I suppose we’ll have to change some things around here to accommodate him after he makes the triumphal entry into Washington in January. Gwen Ifill, the vice-presidential debate moderator, wrote a prophetic book about Barak’s ascension, slated for release on inauguration day. In his case, not only will congress work him pretty good, but I expect Russia or China to test his mettle before Summer ‘09. I suppose the only real change I expect with an Obama presidency is a decline in US influence abroad. It didn’t take long for him to become a Washington insider… and fabulously wealthy.

Joey O’Biden What about Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for VP? He’s also been in the Senate since I was a boy and doesn’t show signs of change. During his failed primary, He joined Hillary Clinton in declaring Obama is unqualified to be Commander in Chief, but now Joe seems to see Barak as a regular George Patton or something. Of course, he did certify that Obama is an  ”articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.“ Same old beltway politics. Biden has, however, changed history, which is pretty slick. He said FDR addressed the nation on television in 1929 to calm the fears of the American people following the stock market crash. What a buffoon! You know what would be a change? If Saturday Night Live lampooned this clown for the most enormous verbal gaff of the entire political season.

Governor Sarah Palin Now, John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for VP has introduced some changes. She and her husband have a combined family income that’s down there in the normal range. She’s a Republican, running against the real enemy: snotty, east coast pseudo-intellectuals and pop-journalists. Man, that’s a refreshing development and I sure wish there was a real man at the top of the ticket, to watch her back. 

Oh, well… we’ll see what the next 30 days bring.

UPDATE: The video has been removed from YouTube, but I hope it will be back. Rep. Wexler and Chris Matthews double-team Rep. Wilson, hoping to beat up on a girl, but get their lunch handed back to them. Here’s the transcript.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Americans had the opportunity to vote in 2008 for a presidential candidate with strong convictions, who is able to articulate them without stuttering and stammering or flying into a rage, whenever challenged?  A military veteran and legislator with some depth in foreign policy and international business relations, who seems to have a grasp on history, would certainly be a positive addition to the slate of candidates already put forward. You know, the republican convention is still over a month away. Perhaps they may want to take a look at Congresswoman Heather Wilson. 

I think this Washington Post story puts its finger on the problem of declining network viewership, plummeting newspaper circulation and ad revenue.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

The US has devolved from a representative democratic republic to a two party system with a press that has a cult-like fascination with only one party and philosophy. From the many to the one. Yes, we get one perspective. That’s all. That’s it. One right way to think. One portrayal of how normal people ought to view current events, culture and public policy. 

It’s not as if I don’t understand their strategy. It’s all about being relevant and close to the power people. It’s not about profit and objectivity is definitely out of fashion. When you’re aiming your product to the lowest common denominator and the other guy is indistinguishable from the hip candidate, except for age and ethnicity, follow the buzz and go with the winner! 

One word from a serious news consumer — boring! 

Well, I’ve been busy lately but I should have some time to get some posts out there. Let’s start out with this complaint. We haven’t had a good speaker in the Whitehouse since Bill Clinton left office and, unlike the masses, I didn’t find him that compelling. But, he had an easy style, made me feel comfortable and did a good job of articulating his plans or policies, even when he was lying.

George Bush sounds like a high school public speaking student, which is strange because he’s really a good speaker in small, informal situations. I liked him a lot more in press conferences than in his formal speeches. 

John McCain can say less with far more words than anyone I know of. He is interminably boring. When you add his peevish, smart-aleky inflections we have the recipe for a demogogic train wreck. Please, no…

Then, we have Barak Obama, the star of the 2004 Democrat Convention. Well, he certainly can give a good stump speech or address. But, catch him without a manuscript or teleprompter and Barak is absolutely dreadful… worse that any of the aforementioned. If, um, he’s elected, ummmm… uh, I , uh, think I will, ummm, uh… well, uh, I’ll just have to…. have to, well, I think I will, um, just have to, avoid… um, avoid any of his, okay, well I’ll have to, um, not watch his press, uh, those press conferences he…. um, he will be giving from the, uh, well, from the rose garden. 

I was pondering this question the other day, after hearing that old chestnut about how the religious right is working tirelessly to impose their will on the rest of us (as if the religious left, scientific atheists, secularists, materialists, pagans and agnostics stand passively on the sidelines, while the great cultural and ethical debates rage).

So, what could we expect to see if Christians imposed their morality on others? Well, duh, it’s not like it’s a big mystery or something. We are standing on the shoulders of hundreds of years of western, Christian, democratic history. You don’t have to speculate. You also don’t have to wonder how the imposition of Christian morality would stack up against the imposition of socialism, atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism or progressivism on society, since there are plenty of those states or governments around to examine, many of which have been funcitioning for a good long time!

Under a dominant western Christian culture, I would expect to see liberals and progressives, scientific atheists and agnostics, as well as a good number of pagans and adherants to other streams of spirituality, along with Christians, at the highest places in government, educational institutions and social welfare agencies. At the same time, robust women’s, gay and minority movements would be thriving, imposing their values on the majority through the media, the arts, government policy and the academy. That’s because, historically and contemporarily, Christianity has proven to be very tolerant of others in promoting justice and fairness. Of course, I’m sure some would be quick to point to the relative few examples of Christian intolerance or bigotry down through time, but that would be… well, that would just be silly. The fact is, the levels of diverstity and tolerance enjoyed throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and others who have adopted western democratic and free market ideals is light years beyond Russia, China, the Middle East and repressive nations in the Pacific Rim.

So, back to the “what if” scenario: In western nations built on Christian notions of fairness and tolerence, Christians would be alternately vilified or lampooned in the dominant media and pop culture, yet slavery would be abolished, while it flourishes in Muslim societies and Africa. Every sort of sexual practice and gender confusion would be allowed or even celebrated, while homosexuality is once more being considered a capital crime in socialist Russia, as it was until 1996. Gays, pornographers and others would be brutally treated in atheist China and majority Buddhist nations. And, what about censorship of the internet and the press? The scientific atheist utopias are the biggest offenders. When it comes to the environment and fouling one’s own nest, I’d say the atheists, pagans and Buddhists win hands down.

No, the fact is that, when it comes to imposing values, morality and ideology on others, Christians are probably the last people in the world we should be fearing. When you look at the propaganda poster at the top of the post, I think you need to ask yourself why all those pagan, Buddhist, Islamic and atheist utopians are walking away from their lands and out into the rest of the world with clenched fists and AK-47s. It doesn’t appear as if they are ready to engage in a dialogue… they don’t seem to be rooting for their favorite on American Idol… and, I doubt if they are heading to their local community college to sign up for Anthropology 27 Gender, Sex and Culture.

Cal Thomas penned a sober and pragmatic assessment of the typical conservative, Evangelical Christian, pro-family voter (if there is such a specimen): The Maturing of the Right.

After a factual and fair rundown of the candidates for President on the Republican side, Thomas concludes with this analysis:

That substantial numbers of conservative evangelical voters are even considering these candidates as presidential prospects is a sign of their political maturation and of their more pragmatic view of what can be expected from politics and politicians. It is also evidence that many of them are awakening to at least two other realities — (1) they are not electing a church deacon; and (2) government has limited power to rebuild a crumbling social construct.

I think Mr. Thomas has it right here, which would explain why Giuliani is polling so well among social conservatives. But, he doesn’t stop there and points out that, perhaps rather than simply voting “right,” professing believers need to live “right.”

Until this election cycle, most social conservatives supported candidates and policies based on the married with children “ideal” family model. It may be the ideal, but it is no longer widely practiced, including by many conservative evangelicals. Researchers have found many conservative Christians live in states where divorce rates are highest. These states overwhelmingly oppose same-sex marriage. Too bad they don’t do a better job supporting opposite-sex marriage in which they claim to believe.

Thomas interjects a potent dose of pragmatism, when he writes:

While “character issues” can overlap with other concerns when considering for whom to vote, conservative evangelicals are beginning to see them as less important than who can meet the multiple challenges faced by the nation. Put it this way: if you are about to have major surgery and your only choice was a church-going doctor with a high mortality rate, or an agnostic with a high success record, which would it be? I’d choose the agnostic.

I think this would square well with Paul the apostle of Jesus, who recognized the God-given role of secular government and who appealed to his rights as a citizen on a number of occasions. He never seemed to care if he was heard by a pagan, a Jew or a Christian. He simply sought basic human and civil rights.

What does Thomas’ column have to do with LDS week here at PietyHill Press? He seems encouraged that some Evangelicals will overlook Romney’s peculiar beliefs, and consider his position on issues.

Romney, a Mormon, is the poster boy for family values: one wife, handsome children, and no apparent personal skeletons in his closet, but some, not all, evangelicals can’t get over the Mormon belief that Jesus once visited America.

In a previous post, I identified Camille Paglia as my favorite feminist, lesbian, atheist humanities professor. Her latest opinion piece, Hillary vs. Obama: It’s a drawl!, is another splendid analysis of poilitics, pop culture and media. Camille rarely disappoints, so if you’re not a regular reader of her salon.com column, perhaps you should be. Here are some of her gems:

On Hillary Clinton
Hillary didn’t help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should get a Razzie Award for Worst Performance of the Year. At times, it approached the Southern Gothic burlesque of Bette Davis chewing up the scenery in “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”

The Fossilized Media
Of course, any Salon readers who still follow the mainstream media out of numbed habit will never have heard Hillary’s most extreme flights of faux gemutlichkeit. All that Sunday, network radio news, for example, betrayed its liberal bias by running clips of only her noblest phrases. Heaven help any Republican who had made so lurid a gaffe! Fortunately, alternative media now exist: On his radio show that night, Matt Drudge ran huge, hilarious swatches of prophesyin’ Hillary camping it up.

Fox Right Wing Bias
But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd “fair and balanced” motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can’t Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line?

Thumbs Up On Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein is far more presidential than Hillary Clinton, who alternates between smugness and defensiveness before pulling out that tiresome middle-aged mom card. Feinstein, even when maneuvering strategically, always seems genuinely focused on the idea at hand, while Hillary isn’t really there — she’s just riffling mentally through her team’s cue cards.

A Sober Take On Ann Coulter
Coulter is a smart woman with formidable energy, and whether liberals like it or not, she is a high-profile feminist role model in her appetite for aggressive debate. But Coulter seems to be regressing rather than growing intellectually and sharpening her analytic skills. She evidently leaves no room in her life for study and reflection… Her books may rake in millions but won’t last because they are shoddily constructed. Coulter should be using her syndicated column for her topical opinions but her books for more considered contributions.

Cheney and Bush
The relationship between Cheney and George W. Bush is also perplexing. Despite the nearness in their ages, Cheney acts like Bush’s father (no coincidence since Cheney served in George H.W. Bush’s administration). There’s something creepy about how Cheney, after heading the candidate search, insinuated himself into the vice presidency. He locked onto Bush like a limpet… It’s an unsavory, toxic relationship, a vampiric pseudo-marriage like that of the shadowy, Machiavellian Roger Chillingworth and the impressionable, waffling Arthur Dimmesdale in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”

A Diversion
I had a diverting experience last Saturday… While my family was at the Camden Aquarium for a special appearance by a SpongeBob impersonator, I walked around the once ravaged and still patchy and economically struggling neighborhoods, where Hispanic immigrants have settled. Suddenly, there was a stream of African-American men cutting across the streets and heading toward the Beckett Street Terminal for what was clearly the start of a work shift. I followed from a distance and gawked at the great warehouses of the South Jersey Port Corporation, which were stacked from floor to ceiling with tens of thousands of burlap bags containing a mystery product. As I approached the main security booth, beyond which only authorized workers could enter the dockyard, flatbed trucks with bright yellow cabs were emerging, one after the other, all laden with fat burlap bags. It was a phenomenally precise and synchronized procession, as each truck swept to a warehouse, was offloaded, and then circled back through the gate to the ship. I was full of admiration at this demonstration of the beauty and efficiency of the modern distribution system, which I extolled in the first chapter of “Sexual Personae” as a male-created artifact of civilization. It is one of the many gifts of capitalism that are invisible to academic leftists, who nevertheless expect the light switch to work, their cars to start, and the grocery store to be constantly stocked with fresh milk, orange juice and produce… I asked a guard what they were: “Cocoa beans”… With great delight, I spent the next 15 minutes dodging the trucks and filling my pockets with the best beans (to send with our son to preschool science class).

What About Capitalism?
Capitalism, which spawned modern individualism as well as the emancipated woman who can support herself, is essentially Darwinian. It expands any society’s sum total of wealth and radically raises the standard of living, but it leaves the poor and weak without a safety net. Capitalism needs the ethical counter-voice of leftism to keep it honest. But leftists must be honest in turn about what we owe to capitalism — without which Western women would have no professional jobs to go to but would be stuck doing laundry by hand and stooping over pots on the hearth fire all day long.

Britney Spears Gets A Break
I’ve commented on Britney’s travails and tacky exhibitionism for Us magazine and for the March issue of Allure (”A Case of Exposure”). The final question (from a lively young woman) after my lecture [video link] on religion and the arts at Colorado College last month was about Britney. My circuits began visibly to sputter and fry, like the overloaded mega-computer at the end of “Desk Set,” because as a public speaker I, unlike Ann Coulter, believe in tempering one’s witticisms out of respect for one’s hosts. Despite her current descent into squalor, I still see Britney as animated by a flame of original energy. Great stars make comebacks. Let’s see what Britney’s got!

Once in a while you may happen upon something you wish you’d written, but in my case that happens, oh, about fifty times a day! I found this poem by journalist Steve Turner at PoemHunter.com and was impressed by his perceptive wit. Often, we deny verities and creeds so vehemently that our persistent dissention becomes dogma which, ironically, congeals into a creed of our own — a positive confession of our contrarian attitude, systematizing the tenets of our rebellion against any form of alien correction or restraint that might hinder us in our pursuit of pleasure and self-interest. In the end, we may become the bigoted haters that so excited our righteous passions in the first place.

Steve has done the contemporary humanist the favor of canonizing his negation of traditional values in this memorable confession:

Creed

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there’s something in horoscopes,
UFO’s and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds.

Steve Turner

The Prince of Wales is getting to be a royal pain, flitting around the world, wagging his self-important finger, lecturing the commoners on everything from nutrition to the environment. If you will remember, he consumed thousands of pounds of precious aviation fuel to fly into New York, in order to receive an award for his decades of work promoting environmental sustainability and to raise awareness of global warming. As I remember it, the ceremony was postponed due to a blizzard.

Now, according the Telegraph UK, Charles is doing what he can to deny people the right to eat what they want by targeting certain eeeeeeevil foods and the capitalist pigs, who set up shop on the street corners and in the malls to deal the stuff to kids:

As nutritionist Nadine Tayara told him they discourage children from eating fast food, he retorted: “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.”

This guy is truly a useless appendage. I used to have a different opinion of the monarchy and, though it weathered the Diana debacle, this incident cinches it for me… these people need to hit the streets and earn their own bread. As it turns out in the article, his kids love burgers.

I suppose the real insult came with the graphic shown above from the article. It seems that the readers of the Telegraph like Cornish pasties almost as much as we do here in Nevada City and Grass Valley. In order to put MacDonald’s and the Big Mac into perspective, the journalist compared it to Prince Charles’ favorite country fare, the humble pastie, and sullied the reputation of our esteemed meat and potato pastrie. As you can see, the pastie is deadlier than the Mac. Does this mean Prince Chuck is going to begin calling for a boycott of pasties? Well, if he does, he’ll start a second American Revolution right here in Nevada County. They can have my pastie when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.

I suppose the United States will have to work hard to catch up to these nations, mostly socialist atheist materialist, leading the way in fouling our nest (some of the same nations that scold us for not signing on to the Kyoto Accords).

Here they are:
1. Chernobyl, Ukraine
2. Dzerzhinsk, Russia
3. Haina, Dominican Republic
4. Kabwe, Zambia
5. La Oroya, Peru
6. Linfen, China
7. Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan
8. Norilsk, Russia
9. Ranipet, India
10. Rudnaya Pristan, Russia

Jen Phillips at The Smithsonian slaps America-bashing, awareness raising, eco-prudes with a bit of common sense:

It’s great that there are no North American cities on the list, but it also poses a question: even if the United States does get its emissions under control, will it even matter in the light of pollution from rapidly industrializing nations like China?

But, she shows her true colors as the KoolAid drinking anti-free market, human rights blind, lemming she is:

The answer is yes, because China plans to abide by the Kyoto protocols, as their vice-chairman of development told the World Economic Forum this weekend. An Indian representative also vowed to cut emissions, although he said his country is turning more and more to nuclear power to do so.

As Wayne Campbell would say, “Shyeah, right! When monkeys fly…” Well, nevermind. You and I both know that’s never gonna happen. It also begs the question: ” Why is nuclear power the key to halting global warming in China, but not in Europe or the US?” I dare say the answer is more philosophical and ethical than environmental.

Meanwhile, over at Scrappleface Scott Ott is reporting record sales of Global Warming Shovels and other must-have items for the seasonal thaw.

Addressing the Suicide of Thought, G.K. Chesterton cites the French Revolution as an example of modern man’s inability to truly be revolutionary (in a good way), because of his self-imposed prison of “objectivity” and open-mindedness — euphemisms for an unhealthy and paralyzing skepticism. This degradation of thought, weaving its way through the 20th century and terminating in 2007, may explain why so many Americans (and cloistered, postmodern epicurean, hedonistic European socialists) will trouble themselves (and, the rest of us) over the genocide in, say, Darfur, while villainizing the liberation, in process, of vast numbers of victims of a large, totalitarian regime. I suppose if a genocide is taking place in relatively close proximity and you are not profiting economically from the status quo and the fighting could spill over and threaten your personal peace and affluence (say, in Bosnia), then that’s a genocide we (meaning a small contingent from our countries and a substantially large contribution from the United States) need to shed blood over. Now, if there’s another genocide in a distant land, which the UN, Germans and French are profiting from and has little chance of upsetting their domestic peace, well that is not a genocide, but a civil war and that nation’s domestic problem. And, if the dictator of that faraway place can keep a lid on things through torture, murder, biological agents and other brutal means, while the skeptics are enriched through their relationship with him, well, they won’t be troubled by that, as long as the press doesn’t publish any disturbing images. Here’s the quote that explains the history behind that sort of odd, self-serving, short-sighted logic:

…an historic example may illustrate it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing… But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn “revolutionise” from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore, he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus, he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, and in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I read this substantive, relevant article in, of all places, that creaky ol’ Rolling Stone Magazine. The writer puts the spotlight on China’s new, innovative and virtually unstoppable Chinafication strategy in Tibet, expected to wipe out the last traces of traditional culture there in fairly short order. So, you can peel the Free Tibet! bumper sticker off of your Subaru or bio-diesel Mercedes, because the war has been lost — it’s time to shift your “compassion-of-the-month-club” energy to some other lost cause. But, don’t even think about Darfur or the Congo or any other hellhole on earth, where people are committing genocide, fratricide or even polka-cide, for that matter. The people of the US are fed up with such high falootin’, JFK fantasies about “making the world a better place” and, as everyone knows, “if the US won’t go, nobody will go (read UN, NATO, SATO, etc).” I suppose the world community could whip out some sanctions or something… that’s been real effective with Iran, North Korea, China… oops. No, the fact of the matter is that socialists and progressives in those countries will do whatever it takes to subjugate and rule the masses, just like they will in the US.