politics
The last thing Jesus needs...
"The last thing Jesus needs is the State. Stupid Christians like James Dobson and Pat Roberton like D.C. more than grace ... sad."
Happy Constitution Day
"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes -- rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." -- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton, Frisch, ed. (511) Oh, how far we have fallen...
"It is at least excellent."
Jeff Jacoby, in "The brilliance of the Electoral College", on the latest attempts to abolish or skirt the Electoral College:
Actually, in no more than four of the nation's 54 presidential elections since 1789 has the electoral vote winner not been the candidate who won the popular vote...
[...]
Such concerns didn't trouble the framers of the Constitution, who did not believe that political contests should be decided by majority rule. They rejected "pure democracy," as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 10. They knew that with "nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual," blind majoritarianism can become as great a menace to liberty as any king or dictator. The term "tyranny of the majority" was coined for good reason.
That is why the framers went to such lengths to prevent popular majorities from too easily getting their way. They didn't concentrate unlimited power in any single institution, or in the hands of voters.
[...]
The Electoral College (like the Senate) was designed to preserve the role of the states in governing a nation whose name - the United States of America - reflects its fundamental federal nature. We are a nation of states, not of autonomous citizens, and those states have distinct identities and interests, which the framers were at pains to protect. Too many Americans today forget - or never learned - that the states created the central government; it wasn't the other way around. [Bold emphasis added. --R] I encourage you to read the whole thing.
I don't want to be at war a hundred years from now, either, but...
Clifford D. May, A Hundred Years of War?:
A hundred years from now, Americans might still be fighting militant Islamists in Iraq and other places. What could be worse than that? A hundred years from now, America and the West could have been defeated by militant Islamists.
Al-Qaeda, Iran’s ruling mullahs, Hezbollah, and others militant jihadis have told us what they are fighting for. The well-known Islamist, Hassan al-Banna, described the movement’s goals succinctly: "to dominate...to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet." He said that in 1928. Who would have believed then that his heirs would acquire the wealth, power, and lethality they enjoy today? Who can say where they may be 100 years from now? Who can say where the West will be? Survival is not an entitlement. Freedom must be earned by every generation.
"Insight"
I don't know about you, but I prefer my candidates to come equipped without the "High Octane Marxist Cant" option. Indeed. [Wave of the phin to Dom.]
"Let's 'Surge' Some More"
It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators -- on both sides of the aisle -- who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today.
I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war -- and our part in it -- at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.
The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers.
[...]
We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.
Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory -- and a democracy in the Arab world -- is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.
Regarding those nasty unintended consequences...
One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time.
Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out and the government intervention can create new problems.
More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes.
Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price.
People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders.
Just a few years ago, people who went out on that limb made money big-time in a skyrocketing housing market. But now that they have been caught in the ups and downs that markets have gone through for centuries, the government is supposed to bail them out.
Solving short-run problems, especially in an election year, often means creating long-run problems. Pumping money into the economy can help many problems, but do not be surprised if it also leads to inflationary pressures and financial repercussions around the world. In other words, people should bear some personal responsibility for their choices and actions. The government should leave well enough alone. Better yet, perhaps the government would like to admit to some responsibility in the matter, and perhaps rather than bailing out people from their own mistakes, rectify it's own? (Yeah, I know, fat chance of the latter.) [Emphasis in the quote added. --R]
When is a recession not a recession?
The Patriot Post, 08-06 Digest:
Traditionally, however, Wall Street defines a recession as two consecutive quarters of falling Gross Domestic Product. By this definition, even the one-quarter "recession" in 2001 was hardly that. The National Bureau of Economic Research says a recession involves "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months," and Congress' Joint Economic Committee, which boasts a 60-year track record of successfully predicting recessions, ranked the probability that the U.S. was in a recession in December at 35.5 percent. In January, a mere six percent. [Emphasis added. --R]
Guess which way we're going to go
One of the reasons that house prices got so high here is that people could get crazy financing for huge amounts without adequate resources to pay it back. So “dumb money” bid the price too high, and now no one can buy or sell because they can’t finance their homes.
So there are two ways to fix this - the healthy way would be to let the market forces bring the prices down to what people can reasonably pay. This is the best for everyone long term as it levels out who can live in California.
The second way would be to use the government backed entities, Fannie and Freddie, to prop up these insane prices. This is akin to providing an alcoholic with discount coupons for the corner liquor store.
All in a day's double standard
[T]he world seems to have all but forgotten an Israeli town situated on the border with Gaza that has been under withering and nearly non-stop attack. Sderote has actually been hit with more than 100 Palestinian terror rockets and mortars this week and with more than 1,500 rockets since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June. Yet where is the outrage? Where is the international condemnation of the terrorists and the states who support them? How can either side -- the Israeli people or the Palestinians who do want peace and security for both sides -- ever make peace until these radical Islamic jihadists are stopped?
"That word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
In between the yummy dinner of homemade chicken fajitas, and the Jello-provided chocolate pudding for dessert, I perused the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. Above the fold was a puff piece on Al Franken's senatorial run* in Minnesota, and it included this tidbit, "... the bane of conservative talk-radio" in describing Franken. Webster's defines "bane" as "a source of harm or ruin; curse". Such is what I always held "bane" to mean as well. So I sat and thought, after having read those words, that while one might be able to argue that Franken has harmed conservative talk radio, I cannot imagine it has been to the extent of earning the the moniker of "bane". He certainly hasn't brought conservative talk radio to ruin, not now when it is stronger than ever. Therefore one might surmise that writer June Kronholz and her editors at the WSJ either, (a) don't have a twelth-grade education, or (b) don't know how to type "www.m-w.com" in to their web browser address bar. A better description of Mr. Franken's relationship to conservative talk radio might be "source of material", or, if one were feeling generous toward Mr. Franken, "adversary". (Mr. Franken can thank my friend, Mr. Lawson, for that one.) One might also note Ms. Kronholz's mention of Mr. Franken's short-lived career at Air America: "He left that gig in February." She fails to include words to the effect of "...due to lack of ratings and lack of revenue." Mr. Franken may be a lot of things to conservative talk radio, Ms. Kronholz, but "bane" is not one of them. Please choose your words more carefully next time, noting that Webster's also has a thesaurus.**
*Subscription may be required to read. ** (A "thesaurus", Ms. Kronholz, is a volume used to find words of similar or antithetical nature.)
Some food for thought
No political slogan or hand-held sign has ever changed someone's convictions. Protests, shouting, and political battle will only polarize people on an issue. Regardless of which side wins or loses a political struggle, people will continue to believe what they did before. If you want to change your community, your nation and your world, the most effective action you can take is to introduce people to Jesus, and to demonstrate His love and compassion to them. Through His death and resurrection, all of us can be free from the effects of sin, and enjoy unlimited and joyful relationship with God. This is where changed lives come from.
It is a good thing to participate in politics as God leads. Vote your conscience. Respectfully voice your convictions in the political arena. But don't expect the election of a politician or passage of a law to change people's minds and hearts, much less their lives. Political power and law rule only through fear of consequence, not love. Let's make our focus the same as Jesus'. People are transformed when they experience love in relationship with Him.
One of many things I love about our town
I bet you didn't get offered homemade carrot cake by the workers at your voting precinct today. You did vote, didn't you?
The Patriot Post at 10
One of my favorite online publications turns ten years old this month, The Patriot Post. (Formerly known as The Federalist Patriot, and for a long time before that, simply The Federalist.) Publisher Mark Alexander has overseen a redesign of the publication's web site, and it's a big improvement over the previous design. You can now get notices of each new issue via RSS, and all issues since 2003 are archived online, with prior years to come. A subscription to The Patriot Post is free, and the publication is solely supported through reader donations.
The Anti-Semitism Story No One's Talking About
Jeff Jacoby has a great piece on he disparity in reporting regarding Mel Gibson's drunken racial slurs, and Naveed Haq's murderous rampage at a Jewish center in Seattle. The latter is yet another example, as Jacoby points out, noting other such type attacks which have taken place over the past few years, of members of the "Religion of Peace" suddenly developing "Sudden Jihad Syndrome". A Christian, who is such a rabid anti-abortionist that he begins killing doctors who perform the operation, is news fodder for weeks. But if a Muslim walks up to the counter of the Israeli-owned airline El Al, killing two people as he sprays the ticket area with bullets, it's quickly swept under the proverbial rug. What is the media's reluctance to point out what we know to be true: that the so-called "Religion of Peace" shows, day in and day out by the behavior of its adherents, that it is anything but.
Shilling for Hezbollah
It does not require much observation to understand that there is a large faction on this planet that lives only to see Israel's destruction. But to stand up in public and declare that Hezbollah is anything but a terrorist organization demonstrates how this deep this hatred runs, and how oblivious to truth these minds have become. I keep thinking no politician can be as looney as Howard Dean, but then George Galloway keeps popping up to snatch the title.
A thought on taxes and wages
There's a movement afoot by the Democrats to get the minimum wage raised again. Despite historical financial evidence to the contrary, raising the minimum wage does not help those at the low end of the wage spectrum, as our nation's leftists would like us to think. Raising the minimum wage means businesses are less likely to hire more workers, due to their increased costs with the raise in the minimum wage. Contrast this with the fact that, according to today's Political Diary, Germany is set to cut its corporate tax rate to thirty percent, down from thirty-nine percent. Once it does so, the United States will have the highest corporate tax rate of the industrialized world. How does this affect the minimum wage? I'm glad you asked. It seems high corporate tax rates, according to a "new study by American Enterprise Institute scholars Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur...is for the most part paid by workers in the form of lower wages." Ergo: cut the corporate tax rate, workers' wages will rise. You can not get even odds in Vegas that the Democrats would sign on to such a policy.
On flag burning
I admit to having varied thoughts with regard to the free speech versus protecting our national emblem from being burnt aspects of the "protest" burnings of the American flag. Men and women have bled and died for our flag, from the time when our fledgling nation did not have a single standard, but several, to the present day and the present conflicts of the Long War on Terror. Yet it was not a scrap of red, white, and blue cloth these men and women sacrificed, but what that cloth represents. For anyone to burn a flag of the United States of America, except as the proscribed method of taking said flag out of service, dishonors the memory of those men and women. The other side of my mind, however, screams that the protest burning is the kind of freedom those sacrifices were made for. Quite the contest of ideals raging in my grey matter. Yet another reason to love the Internet: if you wait long enough, someone's going to come along and say what it is you want to say, only better. Tod Lindberg:
To tell you the truth, I'm not that crazy about such a constitutional amendment, for the simple reason that flag-burning is unique in the annals of protest for the way in which it perfectly encapsulates what a jerk the person burning the flag is. It is auto-discrediting in a way that no placard or chant, however idiotic, can equal. To set fire to the national emblem of a country that allows you to say and do as you please, including burning the national emblem, is to make the point that your freedom is so visceral a part of your nature that you are oblivious to it. It doesn't reflect well on you to be oblivious in this fashion, but it reflects well on your country for how deeply it ingrains the spirit of freedom into those lucky enough to live here.
That said, the last thing that a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning strikes me as is a slippery slope toward broader restriction on freedom of expression. Besides, our nation has more important things to worry about, like stopping radical Islamists from popping a nuke in one of our major metropolises. I don't think a majority of voters, while perhaps concerned one way or the other on the flag-burning issue, have it ranked as a high priority. It's more of a "when the jihadists are all dead or in prison" sort of issue.
The always popular double standard
It's nice to see anti-Semitism alive and well at the Guardian. Then again, at least it's nice to see a major media source wear its bias on its sleeve, rather than pretend it's purely neutral. Will Hutton decides to rebuke Israel for its recent incursions into Gaza, which netted eight cabinet members, thirty members of parliament, and thirty other officials of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, calling these acts, as well as the bombings of infrastructure targets in Gaza, a declaration of war by the Israeli state. Memo to Mr. Hutton: Well, duh. Hutton notes "Missiles from Gaza are regularly fired at Israel." Yet in Hutton's world, this apparently does not constitute an act of war against Israel by the Palestinian state, despite his earlier statement, "The Hamas government has not yet renounced its commitment to the elimination of Israel or to the use of terrorism." The "elimination of Israel" as a tenant of what Hutton claims is a legitimate and sovereign government is not a "declaration of war"? I'm not sure how much clearer Hamas, and thus, the Palestinian people, who put Hamas in power, have to be in their declaration of war against Israel to satisfy Mr. Hutton. Far from being, as Hutton claims, an inexcusable act of war, Israel's bombings of and raids in to Gaza are more of what Israel needs to be doing to stand strong in the face of an enemy which seeks its utter annihilation. There may be a sliver of hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, if Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas were not being undermined by the Hamas majority in the government. But when a majority of a nation seeks not only the defeat of its neighbor, but the elimination of that nation's people, there is little reasoning that can be done with such persons to secure peace. Israel must project strength to protect itself, to assure the Palestinians and any other group or nation that it is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure "Never again." Writers such as Mr. Hutton would do well to pack away their double standards for the Israeli state and, well, "remain silent" would be the polite term.