Mike's Noise

Democrats owe America and President Bush one heck of a big apology

From Instapundit, who writes: " A screenshot from Memeorandum last night (Feb. 21)":

We're officially one month into the United States of Obama, and as a Republican who voted for John McCain/Sarah Palin, I can say that my expectations for the Obama Administration have been met -- but not in a good way.

I expected that Obama would to find governing much more difficult than campaigning, but I had no idea that it would only take weeks for the Obama White House to come across as a bunch of clueless dolts.  And their attempts to marginalize the press and conservative media figures have been nothing but immature.  Really -- can you imagine President Bush telling Democrats to stop listening to Keith Olbermann and stop reading MoveOn.org and start cooperating more with Republicans?

I expected that Democrats would be revealed to be no more virtuous than Republicans, but the sheer number and scope of Democrat scandals -- lobbying, pay-for-play, influence peddling, and especially unpaid taxes -- (Caroline Kennedy, Timothy Geithner, Hilda Solis, Bill Richardson, Tom Daschle, Charlie Rangel, Jack Murtha, Roland Burris ... did I forget anyone?) has been staggering.

I expected the Democrats to be somewhat drunk with power now that they control both Congress and the White House, but I never thought that they would have the audacity to stuff fourteen years worth of pork barrel spending into a single bill!

I expected that Barack Obama would have difficulty implementing all of his ethics and accountability reforms, but I never expected that he would break every single transparency and accountability promise with the passage of his first major bill.

And finally, I expected that Barack Obama would eventually vindicate most of the Bush Administration's War on Terror policies simply by continuing them, but I was stunned that it happened so quickly.  It seems that the Obama administration is much more frightened of the political consequences of a domestic terror attack than they are of a deep and lengthy economic recession.

It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that most of the "antiwar" hysteria during the past six years was simply anti-Republicanism.  It was about smearing the Bush Administration, ensuring the failure of their policies, and destroying Bush's legacy.  It was all about hatred and partisan politics, and it had more to do with Bush's narrow win in 2000 than with anything related to Bush's foreign policy or use of military force.

I'm convinced that history will be kind to President Bush, particularly in light of the Obama Administration's quiet continuation of his War on Terror policies.  And perhaps forty or fifty years in the future, our grandchildren will shake their heads at the unhinged Bush hatred that so dominated newspapers, television, movies, music, and other entertainment media during the first decade of the twenty first century.

But here and now, I think President Bush is owed a major, feature-length, show-stopping, banner headline apology.  Go ahead, liberals and progressives, yellow dog Democrats, Hollywood, and the Ivy League.  You're all so much smarter and wiser than George W. Bush.  Admit you were wrong.  Go ahead, just admit it.  You all said Bush was a cretin and an evil-doer for not admitting his "mistakes."  You wouldn't want that judgment hanging over your heads, now would you?

Speaking of which, here's one more thought.  How many times will the American people be duped by a bunch of elitist twits into believing that the only path to leadership is through the political and cultural environment of the Ivy League, and any Ivy League golden boy (or girl) is therefore smarter, wiser, and more qualified to lead?  How many times will we fall for this?  And how much will we be willing to suffer politically and financially because of our folly?  

I've become a huge fan of the blog Car Lust.  This month, they featured automotive "epic fails," and they just ended the series with the biggest automotive epic fail of them all, the 1958 Edsel.

In spite of a lot of good ideas and a metric boatload of money spent on market research, design, and an exhaustive advertising campaign, the American people walked away from the Edsel.  The moral of the story?

The tale of the Edsel is fascinating because it's an instance of a large organization full of talented, competent, well-intentioned people setting a goal that seemed perfectly reasonable, marching confidently toward that goal--and going straight off a cliff. There was no one big colossal mistake ... so much as there was a long series of minor to moderate miscalculations that all added up to an idea that not only didn't fly, but crashed and burned on takeoff and left a great smoking hole in Ford's corporate treasury.

Remember that the next time someone tries to convince you that they are so smart, and their ideas are so good, that they always know what is best for you and cannot possibly ever be wrong about it.

A final Christian argument against socialism as the cure for everything that ails us

This will be my last post dealing with election politics.  I just wanted to make one last retrospective argument concerning wealth and class envy.

It seems that Barack Obama has been hit hard by the McCain camp's charges of socialism.  His latest rebuttal (after unsuccessfully attempting to denigrate "Joe The Plumber" Werzelbacher as a loser who could never possibly earn $250,000 a year) is that anyone complaining about tax rate increases is selfish.

There is anger and frustration among ordinary Americans over tax increases, but it is not because of selfishness.  It is because of reality -- only an idiot would believe that the minority of taxpayers taking home $250,000 (or is it $200,000 or $150,000 or $120,000?) or more will be the only group of people to bear the cost of Obama's colossal government expansion.  And it is because of resentment.  We don't resent those with wealth per se, but we certainly resent an erudite cadre of wealthy, elitist lawyers, tenured professors, political consultants, and politicians telling us what to do with our money.  The Anchoress summed it up perfectly some years ago:

Every weekend I meander through the New York Times [...] And every weekend I finally close the paper and think, this is a publication which editorializes on the evils of capitalism while it praises European-style socialism, and foments class resentment between the rich and the poor…and it disdains middle-class Republicans like me…and yet it is chock-full of people so rich I have never heard of them, people who breathe such rarified air and move in such insulated little conclaves that I would only be likely to encounter them face to face if I rammed into them on the Long Island Expressway as they moved back and forth between Town and Country, between Sotheby’s Manhattan and Sotheby’s Southhampton, so to speak. The paper prostrates itself before the public-education devotees who send their children to private schools and the illegal immigrant sympathizers who have bought up the last private beachfronts in Montauk, inviting those brown-skinned Catholics onto their property only long-enough to erect the high walls of their fortresses or to stain their decks.

She continues,

I, in my middle class world, with my callused-handed husband and my Eagle Scout son, and the friends with whom we volunteer at church and in the community, do not begrudge the hyper-rich their riches.

What we do begrudge them is their “superior” disdain for our values, and their hectoring that we are somehow less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just LESSER people because we believe in giving a hand, rather than a hand-out.

I mind gazillionaires like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, Jon Corzine and Hillary “we’re going to have to take some things away from you for the common good” Clinton pretending that our yearly income, our solidly middle-class income (and very modest emergency fund) is too, too much for us, unfair to others, undertaxed, greedy, ignoble and selfish. I mind people who are bouncing on fluffy pillows of honest-to-goodness wealth shaking a rhetorical finger at us for daring to try to get comfortable on our foam rubber mats of hard-earned wages. (emphasis added)

And do you know what really gets under our skin?  I'll let Peggy Noonan handle that one:

Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than non-elites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

I think that many of us know, deep down inside, that people like Michelle and Barack Obama, who earn a combined annual income comfortably in the 7-figure range, are more or less insulated from the financial affects of the public policies that they support.  We know that any "solutions" proposed by Ted Kennedy to our current health care problems ultimately matter little to Kennedy himself, because his family connections, political connections, and personal wealth ensure that his personal medical care will always be the finest available, regardless of location or procedure or cost.  We know that the opinions of billionaires like George Soros or Warren Buffett or Bill Gates on tax policies are essentially meaningless because they will still be billionaires, regardless of what the tax code says.  Likewise with Hollywood celebrities.

We also know this because this select group of people, with rare exception and seemingly in inverse proportion to both their physical health and their publicly-expressed concern for the poor, are themselves embarrassingly weak benefactors of charity.  They are also notorious for exploiting every possible tax loophole, all the while complaining that the rich don't "pay their fair share" in taxes.  What did John Edwards, champion of the poor, do during the 1990s when his lawsuit windfalls began to roll in? He formed an S-corporation in order to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.  Why did Ted Kennedy probate his mother's estate in Florida, even though she had been a lifelong resident of Massachusetts?  Florida has no state inheritance tax.  And neither John Kerry nor Ted Kennedy pay the optional higher 5.85% Massachusetts state income tax rate.  And so on and so on.

We know that the super-rich will not really be affected by income and payroll tax increases, simply because such increases do not affect their principal wealth.  Even if the very rich were income taxed at a rate of 100%, they would still be able to live very, very comfortably off the value of their enormous reserves of stocks, bonds, precious metals, cash, real estate, fine art, and other investments.

Perhaps they'll owe a little more under Obama's plans, but they've got theirs, and the enormity of their fortunes means that most of their money will be securely tucked away in tax shelters.  And what happens to the rest of us really doesn't matter to them as long as they've paid just enough to assuage their slightly-guilty consciences.

The people who really get nailed under the high marginal taxes and estate taxes of "spread the wealth" schemes are the professionals and successful business owners who have just barely crossed over the $150,000 to $200,000 per year earnings threshold.  These people will find themselves working harder to earn substantially less, permanently stuck with enough money to live comfortably, but never really earning enough to fund a retirement account that will allow them to continue to live that way after they retire, or able to accumulate enough to afford their children a comfortable inheritance.  And they are the ones whose children will never have enough cash reserves to pay both extended/elderly care costs (such as nursing homes) for their parents, and estate taxes on real property or a business.  This is the scenario that hits farmers and ranchers particularly hard.  If a son or daughter inherits a farm valued at $2 million, where are they going to come up with the $500,000 or $750,000 in estate taxes for the government?

You may ask, what's so wrong with that?  There are tens of millions of people in this country who spend their lives mired in poverty.  Why should anyone support the idea that some people should be free to grow rich while others struggle from day to day?

I think the answer is two-fold.  First, our nation has never enforced the principle of redistribution of wealth by the Federal government.  Our Constitution was written in order to specifically define how our government would function, and to enumerate specific rights of citizens that could not be infringed by that government.  The Constitution creates a Federal government that, for the most part, is limited in its ability to interfere in people's lives.  It also implies that what is yours is yours, not the government's (or euphemistically, "the people's").  Under such a system, some will prosper and some will fail, but their failure cannot be attributed to persecution or limits on their individual freedoms imposed by the Federal government.  In fact, under our system, state governments have more direct control over the rights of their citizens -- it was the state governments in the South that enacted "Jim Crow" laws; yet it took action at the Federal level to ultimately overrule state's rights on that issue.

Barack Obama was exactly right when he said that our Constitution "doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."  He wants to see that changed, of course, but such a major Constitutional overhaul would give the Federal government an unprecedented and ultimately dangerous amount of power over our individual lives.  I believe that the potential for the abuse of that power far outweighs any benefits to be gained from it.

Second, as a Christian I strongly object to other Christians attempting to use the government as a strong arm in order to enact their vision of social justice.  Many Christians read about the equal partition of the Promised Land among the Israelites, and the communal nature of the early Jerusalem church as described in Acts, and conclude that God's plan for mankind is the equal distribution of wealth among all people.  They then propose to task a benevolent centralized government with the administration of such a distribution plan.  Unfortunately, the Bible contains no passages that support such a scheme.  The New Testament teaches that Christians should peaceably co-exist within the framework of secular governments, and give generously to those in need, but it never teaches that Christians should co-opt those governments as a means of achieving their own ends.  (Admittedly, the Church and much of Christendom has repeatedly failed in this regard.)

And in the Old Testament, God does indeed partition the land equally among the tribes of Israel, but He also clearly establishes that the land belongs to Him; the Israelites are merely tenants.  They are forbidden from selling land in perpetuity, and whatever land is sold or mortgaged is to be returned to its original owners every 50 years.  Therefore, whenever land is sold or mortgaged, its value is to be prorated according to the proximity of the 50 year Jubilee.  The Israelites are also required to pay the Temple (i.e. God) an annual tithe of 10% of everything they own.  (The Old Testament narratives indicate that the Israelites also failed to honor these commandments, just like the Christian church throughout the ages.)  And God specifically requires His people to be generous with the poor and to refrain from profiting from their misfortune.  Yet outside of these requirements, the children of Israel are allowed to honestly earn whatever they can, and -- with the previously noted exception of possessions that have been borrowed or purchased from others -- God never commands His people to redistribute their own personal wealth.

There is also one other thing.  Redistribution of wealth schemes will do little to solve the primary affliction suffered by the poor in this country -- civic poverty -- which is the belief that they are irrelevant to the course of events in their communities.  Civic poverty is most prominently displayed among African-Americans, who suffered persecution and loss of basic civil rights in this country for over a century after they had been freed from slavery.  Even though civil rights laws have been amended, and even though academia and the professional workforce has striven to provide affirmative action and equal opportunities for Blacks during the last 40 years, there is still (particularly at the lowest economic levels) a basic distrust of America, its government and its financial systems among Blacks.

So far, all of our attempts to fight poverty have involved material solutions.  And honestly, our poor enjoy a much better standard of living that average working-class citizens in many nations.  But no one has been able to explain to me how a massive, materially-oriented redistribution of wealth scheme will somehow make the lives of the civically impoverished any better.  Theirs is an emotional and spiritual deficit, and money will not make the hurt and distrust disappear, nor will it mend broken families or dysfunctional communities of any kind.  In fact, I believe that such a scheme would make the lives of the civically impoverished even more miserable, because receiving free money with no required interaction could very well create an even greater temptation to stay disconnected from society at large. 

So how do we fight civic poverty?  The same way that Jesus taught us to spread his Gospel -- through relationships.  By listening.  By lending a hand whenever people are truly in need.  By teaching others self-worth and self-respect.  By helping people overcome addictions and hangups.  In short, by getting our hands dirty, making ourselves vulnerable, and doing it all voluntarily, without coercion or intimidation from the government.  

Such a solution is difficult, frustrating, painfully slow and seemingly hopeless.  You can't accomplish it simply by writing a check or creating a government bureaucracy and then hoping everything works out OK.  Is America capable of such a task, right now?  Probably not.  Certainly not without a spiritual awakening and revival, which is what I pray for daily for my own life and for our nation.  Shouldn't we do something in the mean time, then?  Yes, but only if our stop-gap measure is not worse than the problem at hand.  I believe that socialism -- even non-violent, "democratic" socialism approved by voters -- is not the answer, because it only alters behavior by force of law; it does not fundamentally improve the character or spirit of its subjects.  And it takes our allegiance away from God and lessens our responsibility for each other, since socialism recasts government as the ultimate owner of all wealth, and, subsequently, the sole source of our livelihood and well-being.  When we turn the state into a God, we are not doing His will.

That's what I believe, and that's why I cannot support redistribution of wealth as a solution to America's current financial and spiritual problems.  Please join me in praying for a better way.

We Surrender! "Bailout" plan is now law

Well, now we know.  Nothing makes a Democrat smile like the intoxicating combination of pork and power.

The House of Representatives passed an amended version of the "bailout" bill on Friday -- a bill that is now over 450 pages in length (as opposed to three pages when it was first presented by the Treasury Secretary) and includes a staggering $100 billion+ in targeted special-interest tax breaks and pork barrel spending.

As I said before, this bill is our 9% confidence Congress at its worst.  It gives Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose monumental misjudgments in part kept us from addressing the problem sooner, an unprecedented amount of unchecked power.  There are compelling arguments why it could fail spectacularly, just like Hoover's depression-proofing plans did in 1930.  And really -- if we are on the brink of disaster, how in God's name can we afford all this new government spending?  My feeling, obviously, is that we are not at the brink of disaster, and that the current crisis was manufactured -- after years of Democrat stalling and opposing any measure that would reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- solely to justify the biggest government power grab in my lifetime.

And again following what I wrote in an earlier blog post, the bill still completely fails to address the underlying cause of the problem -- the ever-increasing number of loans that banks were forced to make to un-creditworthy borrowers.  But in an effort to sugar-coat that critical defect, the "bailout" bill increased the FDIC insurance limit on bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, and was further amended to include a mandate requiring health insurance coverage "parity" between psychotherapy and treatment of mental disorders, and physical therapy and treatment of physical disorders.  Neither of these things are bad (they are both good, actually) but they do not make up for this fundamental shortcoming.

Mickey Kaus made an interesting observation about the bill:

Actually, the thinking behind the push for "parity" and the now-questionable decades-long push to extend mortgages to "underserved" groups seems eerily parallel: 1) Stodgy/greedy old bankers say they can't afford to lend to minorities who don't meet traditional mortgage criteria. But we have a noble social goal to fulfill and we know they're wrong! ... 2) Stodgy/greedy old health plan administrators say they can't afford to cover hard-to-diagnose mental problems (e.g., anxiety) and substance abuse to the same extent that they cover easy-to-diagnose physical problems. But we have a noble social goal and ....

The article, written by Steve Malanga, to which Kaus links with respect to the "noble social goal" of loans for low income and minority borrowers, is so good that I'm going to excerpt it at length:

In the early 1990s I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions of the conference explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and the Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analysis based on government loan data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty, too.

Although academic researchers leveled substantial criticisms against these newspaper efforts (namely, that they relied on incomplete data and did not take into account lower savings rates, higher debt levels, and higher loan defaults rates for many minority borrowers), bank lending to minority borrowers still became an enormous issue—mostly because newspaper reporters and editors in this pre-talk radio, pre-blogging era were determined to make it so. Editorialists called for the government to force banks to end the alleged discrimination, and they castigated federal banking regulators who said they saw no proof of wrongdoing in the data.

... One economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who looked more deeply into the data, for instance, found that the difference in denial rates on loans for whites and minorities could be accounted for by such factors as higher rates of delinquencies on prior loans for minorities, or the inability of lenders to verify information provided to them by some minority applicants.

Ignoring the import of such data, federal officials went on a campaign to encourage banks to lower their lending standards in order to make more minority loans. One result of this campaign is a remarkable document produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1998 titled “Closing the Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending”. 

Quoting from a study which declared that “underwriting guidelines…may be unintentionally racially biased,” the Boston Fed then called for what amounted to undermining many of the lending criteria that banks had used for decades. It told banks they should consider junking the industry’s traditional debt-to-income ratio, which lenders used to determine whether an applicant’s income was sufficient to cover housing costs plus loan payments. It instructed banks that an applicant’s “lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor” in obtaining a mortgage, even though a mortgage is the biggest financial obligation most individuals will undertake in life. In cases where applicants had bad credit (as opposed to no credit), the Boston Fed told banks to “consider extenuating circumstances” that might still make the borrower creditworthy. When applicants didn’t have enough savings to make a down payment, the Boston Fed urged banks to allow loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward a down payment, even though banks had traditionally disallowed such sources because applicants who have little of their own savings invested in a home are more likely to walk away from a loan when they have trouble paying. (emphasis added)

Of course, the new federal standards couldn’t just apply to minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, in other words, these became the new standards in the industry. [Perhaps this is where one could make the case for corporate greed among lending institutions and bond traders. -ed] In 1999, the New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were easing credit requirements for mortgages it purchased from lenders, and as the housing market boomed, banks embraced these new standards with a vengeance. Between 2004 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the biggest purchasers of subprime mortgages from all kinds of applicants, white and minority, and most of these loans were based on the lending standards promoted by the government.

Meanwhile, those who raced to make these mortgages were lionized. Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies even invited Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the lender which made more loans purchased by Fannie and Freddie than anyone else, Countrywide Financial, to give its prestigious 2003 Dunlop Lecture on the subject of "The American Dream of Homeownership: From Cliché to Mission.” A brief, innocuous description of the event still exists online here.

Of course Mozilo is now the disgraced former CEO of Countrywide, who resigned after it was discovered that he not only massaged his company's books in order to pay himself and his cronies undeserved bonuses, but he also gave sweetheart mortgage deals to influential members of Congress. 

The hero worship of Mozilo reminded me of the way that Franklin Raines, former OMB director under Bill Clinton and former CEO of Fannie Mae, was praised for his "outstanding leadership" by Rep. Maxine Waters in 2004.  The criterion for her lavish compliment?  "The GSE's have exceeded their housing goals."  Apparently it didn't matter one whit to Rep. Waters that Raines' accounting shenanigans caused Fannie Mae to eat nearly $10 billion, or that he received at least $50 million in undeserved bonuses -- none of which has he ever offered to pay back, or give to his precious struggling low-income mortgage-holders.

Unfortunately, such irresponsibility is often part of the whirlwind of populism that accompanies broad-based "we're helping the little guy and sticking it to the system and everyone knows we're doing the right thing" policy efforts.  And in the case of loans for minorities and low-income borrowers, a crusade against "racial discrimination" became the primary motivator.  And no one -- NO ONE -- dares to challenge a crusade against "racial discrimination" because any such challenge would be labeled a de facto case of racism.  Because if you want a career as a civic leader or politician, or if you want your business to be successful or have a non-adversarial relationship with the government, then you will avoid being smeared as a racist at all costs, even if it means the abdication of common sense.

So far, only one Democrat has admitted his party's failure to objectively study the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  And characteristically, the Democrat leadership has announced, in completely unambiguous terms, that they bear absolutely no responsibility for the current banking mess.  Their willingness to lie about this issue is surpassed perhaps only by the willingness of Republicans to say anything or sign anything in order to avoid being labeled as "racists." 

And guess who's left paying the bill?  That's right -- us.  The American taxpayer.  We will pay for it through outright taxation.  We will pay for it through higher mortgage fees, higher interest rates, and less available credit.  And really -- is anyone expecting this $700 billion to actually "fix" the problem?  Of course not.  This bill only sets a precedent for request after request after request for bailouts to come.  Joe Biden is already talking about giving courts the power to reset the principal amount for mortgage loans.  What kind of financial insanity will be next?

Elizabeth Scalia, "The Anchoress," is by far my favorite Christian blogger.  Over the past few weeks, she has been praying and fasting.  Really doing it.  Really.  She had this to say a few days ago:

My prayer is not for victory. It is for the very best outcome for the country, and for God’s will to be done. Our ways are not God’s way, nor our minds God’s mind. To us, the “best” outcome might seem obvious, but really, when you think about it, when does God ever do the “obvious” thing?

... I’m thinking we’re in the middle of a mystery, that this whole, odd, unpredictable and too-long election season has been run along one of those threads connecting things seen and unseen, and we are so disoriented today that we do not really know which outcome is the outcome pleasing to God, and meant - by Him - to draw us into Himself.

The Holy Spirit, of course, uses whatever He chooses, to bring things about. Who knows if we are meant to be shaken, soundly, in order to be roused from our complacency and the status quo?

The sense I have is that the status quo won’t do any longer. That we are stagnant, too deeply comfortable in too much of the muck and mud of materialism, and we’ve lost sight of what and who we are meant to cling to.

So, let us not worry. Let us not wring our hands. For the Christian, anyway, I believe we are in a moment where the rubber meets the road. How do you respond to that? With trust that no matter what things seem like, that “all things work for good and to the Glory of God” or with wringing hands, depression and doubt?

If you are doubting…if you are thinking that only electoral victory - as defined by the world - will be a validation of either the existence of God, or His Intent, then you need to hunker down into scripture and get out of your own head. Do you believe that Christ is the Son of God, or do you not? If you do, do you really think that this election is all there is, and that a loss here is somehow static, and works to nothing in God’s purpose?

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the heaven.

You either believe that, or you don’t. 

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

You either believe it, or you don’t.

But if you’re calling yourself a Christian, and you’re not believing it, then question what you say you believe.

I'm going to close this post by saying that over the last few months, God has been steadily dealing with me over the subjects of materialism and money.  Without going into a lot of details, my immediate future contains a disturbing amount of uncertainty, and like all of us, my first reaction is to worry obsessively over how all the bills are going to get paid.  I don't solicit prayers for myself very often on this blog (perhaps I should do it more often!) but the events of the past week have made it abundantly clear to me that my previous faith in financial systems and markets and government was grievously misplaced.  Please don't misunderstand -- I'm not giving up on hard work or sound investing, or throwing everything I have to the wind and hoping for some far-out miracle.  But now I realize how much I should have been trusting God rather than relying on my own skill and luck.  Please pray for a spiritual transformation that gives me the strength to place everything in God's hands first.

Pint-size Propaganda

Everyone is talking about this "grassroots" video, linked this morning by Drudge.  It is a "We Are The World"-type production featuring children praising Barack Obama:

The video was produced by Kathy Sawada, a a teacher at the elite Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles.  Here is how Sawada describes the making of the video:

As Sunday approached, a neighbor volunteered a home. Production wizards got wind of the project and offered their help in recording it. The likes of Jeff Zucker, Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate. Holly Schiffer was able to get three High Definition cameras (Panasonic HVX250's), and an AVID editing facility. When Jeff Zucker went to pick up the camera package, Ted Schilowitz happened to be there and offered a RED camera set up on a Steadi Cam.

What we accomplished in a few hours on a Sunday afternoon embodies the nature of the Obama campaign: its grassroots inspiration, its inclusiveness, its community building. People pitched in quickly for a cause that resonated with them. There were not many conditions: "Think this is a good idea? Want to help? Great. Sunday at 12:00." At the heart of the project were 22 children and their music. The willingness of all involved to come together for them was a testament to our hope, unity, courage, joy and belief in the future represented by these children.

Bob Owens asks, "Does a concert-quality musician in an elite school in the middle of the most ego-centric city in the United States count as a "grassroots" effort?"  Owens also provides some brief bios of those involved:

Here's a partial list of those who helped produce this "grassroots" effort:

• Jeff Zucker — American television executive, and President & CEO of NBC Universal.
• Post-producer (former choreographer?) Holly Shiffer.
• Motion picture camera operator/steadicam specialist Peter Rosenfeld (appropriately enough, worked in "Yes Man," a movie about " a guy challenges himself to say 'yes' to everything for an entire year."
• Darin Moran, another motion picture industry professional, who just finished filming — how appropriate — Land of the Lost.
• Andy Blumenthal, Hollywood film editor.

Grassroots all the way, baby

(UPDATE: The Politico is reporting that NBC has denied that "the" Jeff Zucker was "involved" with this video.)

But of course!  In the elite Hollywood circles of the mega-rich, these folks are just your average next-door neighbors.  It's kind of like Sen. Christopher Dodd thumbing through his Rolodex and calling Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo personally when he needed a home loan.  Doesn't everybody have those kinds of connections?

What this is, of course, is astroturfing, an effort by a group of professionals to simulate grassroots political involvement.  What you're really looking at is the brainwashed progeny of some of Hollywood's richest, most talented, and most powerful players in a carefully orchestrated demonstration of Orwellian goodthinking.

Brainwashed, you say?  Read some of the hopey-changey-syrupy-smothered-in-rich-creamery-butter lyrics the kids sing:

Now's the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!

Sure, one of the kids wrote a little ditty called "We're Gonna Change The World" that appears in the video, but come on -- do you think for a minute that the Colburn School held a contest for songs praising John McCain as well?  This has nothing to do with "22 children and their music."  It's a group of well-connected Hollywood elites rehearsing the kind of propaganda that we will be forced to endure on TV, radio, movies, and online for the next four years if Barack Obama wins.

And for many of us, watching children performing propaganda engineered by wily adults is a bit disturbing.  Captain Ed Morrisey says that the video reminded him of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" from the movie Cabaret.  If you don't know it:

I was reminded of this page from a German children's coloring book, reproduced in Time-Life's Prelude To War, p. 114:

Translation -

My Leader!
(the child speaks:)
I know you well and love you, like father and mother.
I shall always obey you, like father and mother.
And when I grow up I shall help you, like father and mother.
And you will be proud of me, like father and mother.

I'm sure that many people will be reminded instead of Jesus Camp, and the religious indoctrination of children offered by various sheltered fundamentalist sects around the world.  The difference, of course, is that religious fundamentalists pledge their allegiance to God, not to a man.  They also believe almost universally that mankind is broken and lost without God's guidance.  And their indoctrination is generally a private matter, taught in churches and private schools, not the kind of global effort that accompanied Stalinism, Naziism, or (I shudder as I write this) Obamaism.

The Anchoress was quite broken up by this video, and wasted no time encapsulating the efforts by Obama forces and Democrats to silence their opponents, which have been projected onto conservatives and President Bush:

To paraphrase Mark Steyn: when this many people I don’t trust are telling me something must be done for my own good…I don’t want it. I want to be far away from it.

We’re being sold a bill of goods, I think. I look at that beautiful child, with her lovely, lilting voice and her open mien, and I see lines for bread, lines for shoes, lines for meat, lines, lines, lines. I see the privileged few driving by the lines and giving the raised fist, encouraging the proletariat to “keep it real.”

There are extremists who behave in extreme ways - and with extreme hate - on both sides. The truth is the far right and the far left are so alike in their excesses that they are mirrors of each other, or twins of hate.

But we have never had such an extreme “leader” so close to the White House. Oh, I know, we’ve heard for 8 years about “the fascist Bush” but reasonable people know it’s hooey; they know that Bushbots have not actively organized to shut down liberal talk radio, they have not tried to intimidate, harass or suppress the many who have told lies and untruths about him.  For all of the preening rhetoric about “Bushhitler” the ones spouting it have known full well that Bush was no fascist; that he was not going to shut them down, or make their ideas and films unavailable. They’ve known it. They know, too, that they’ve been projecting their own instincts to silence “patriotic dissent” on a guy who would never do it.

I think they won’t have to project for much longer.

She closes her post with an excerpt from Michael Radford's film version of Orwell's 1984.

God help us if that is our future.

Others blogging:

Michelle Malkin
WizBang (Kim Priestap)
Roger L. Simon

What, we're biased? -- And Christians Are Still the Haters, not "US"

From MichelleMalkin.com:

Two cover stories from the same magazine.  You be the judge.

Once again I must confess my utter amazement at the herculean effort launched by major media publications to completely suppress any news about a possible affair between John Edwards and Rielle Hunter (except for The National Enquirer, which broke the story), when compared to the gargantuan dogpile of rumors, speculation, gossip, half-truths, and personal attacks that was dumped on Sarah Palin and her family this past weekend.

Major news outlets and blogs have managed, I believe, to dredge up more dirt on Sarah Palin in four days than they have on Barack Obama in the past two years.

...

ADDED:  check out this fawning profile of Janet Napolitano and Sarah Palin published by Newsweek in October 2007.  Newsweek even used the hallowed word "post-partisan" to describe their new approaches to solving their state's problems.  (*sigh*)

...

Liberals smeared Sarah Palin as "Dan Quayle in a dress."  A more accurate comparison, as Rush Limbaugh pointed out yesterday, would be between Palin and Clarence Thomas, who was forced to endure what he described as an "electronic lynching" because he committed the grave, unpardonable sin of being black and conservative.

There's also this -- the Thomas nomination and the subsequent depths to which liberals sank in order to destroy him galvanized conservatives around him and elevated him to the position of cult leader within the ranks of conservatives.  The same thing seems to be happening now with Sarah Palin.  The McCain-Palin campaign is reporting that they received $10 million in contributions this weekend alone.  McCain is playing it smart and letting the Democrats and their acolytes in the press run wild with their Palin smears.  When they've had their fun, and the conservative base has solidly rallied in defense of Palin, then McCain will unleash a devastating attack on the character of liberals and on the leadership abilities of Barack Obama, who -- so far -- has been either unwilling or unable to stop the Palin smears.  Just you wait and see.

Finally, this incident is yet another in a long string of tell-tale episodes proving that feminism's professed support for strong, career-minded women, and the Democratic Party's perpetual lip service in support of those values, is nothing but an outright lie.  I don't regularly link to Michelle Malkin's syndicated columns (although I am a regular visitor and commenter on her blog) but this time she hits it out of the park, providing example after example of feminists and liberals smearing conservative women as bimbos, sock puppets, and bad mothers.

Oh -- here's one last thing to chew on:  Liberals regularly smear conservatives and Christians and accuse us of using the threat of sin and hell and guilt and scandal to repress and dominate and victimize our children, thus depriving them of a normal, happy, care-free experience of adult sexuality.  But now, when we stand by a family going through a pregnancy crisis and support them rather than offer condemnation -- we're the bad guys again!  Liberals should be congratulating us for finally seeing the light and accepting youthful sexuality as a wonderful thing.  Instead, they don't understand why we aren't joining them in smearing this family -- after all, they seem to be asking, isn't it the "Christian" thing to kick "sinners" when they are down?  They promote love and peace and accuse us of hate.  But when we choose grace and refuse to feed their hatred, we are liars and hypocrites. 

I give up.  We just can't win.

...

UPDATE: Snort!!!

"Palin Derangement Syndrome" illustrates the Left's poor comprehension of Christian ethics

(This post has been bumped and updated.  Make sure you read it all.)

A couple of days ago, I wrote about "the slime has already begun to ooze from the fever swamps of the left," with respect to Vice Presidential pick Gov. Sarah Palin.  It got worse over the weekend, with left-wing kooks deliriously celebrating the extraordinary "truth" they discovered -- Sarah Palin's baby boy Trig was actually the illegitimate son of her oldest daughter Bristol, and Palin wore a "pregnant suit" in public in order to pull off the ruse.

In response, the Anchoress pointedly asked,  "How much do you have to love your hate in order to surrender your reason, and your humanity, to it?"

(Added: This much.  God help us.)

Today Sarah Palin publicly announced that Bristol is, in fact, unmarried and pregnant.  But she plans to marry the father, a young man who has been her high school sweetheart for over a year now, and the couple will keep their baby.  This is simply yet another example of the rugged ordinariness of the Palin family, and why they resonate so deeply with middle America.

Desperately looking for anything hypocritical that could drive a wedge between Sarah Palin and likely voters, liberal bloggers and MSM reporters were quick to note that Palin supports the teaching of abstinence in schools.  Unfortunately, the much-anticipated reaction from Dr. James Dobson was not the outburst of righteous indignation and disapproval that they certainly were expecting; nor was the reaction of the Evangelical community at large, and the left is currently going crazy.  Read the comments here.

Observing the continuous, glittering string of failures suffered by the Left as they attempt to attack Sarah Palin's character, one might ask, how can the Left be so mistaken about the core values of Sarah Palin's supporters?

Let me reintroduce you to this propitious quote from Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism:

[Margaret] Sanger's genius was to ... [argue] that motherhood itself was a socially imposed constraint on the liberty of women. It was a form of what Marxists called false consciousness to want a large family.

Sanger believed -- prophetically enough -- that if women conceived of sex as first and foremost a pleasurable experience rather than a procreative act, they would embrace birth control as a necessary tool for their own personal gratification. She brilliantly used the language of liberation to convince women they weren't going along with a collectivist scheme but were in fact "speaking truth to power" ... Sanger's analysis was surely correct, and led directly to the widespread feminist association of sex with political rebellion.

Margaret Sanger's anti-morality (further expanded by contemporary radical feminists) resulted in hard-core progressives completely losing touch with traditional teachings about sexuality, marriage, and child rearing. This is the reason for all of the incredibly crude and ignorant comments from hard-core Leftists.  They are totally out of touch with normalcy as the rest of us would define it and, as is typical for human beings, they react with fear and hatred toward things that they do not understand.

Here's the deal -- we traditionalists teach abstinence to our children primarily so that our sons and daughters won't end up being gigolos, whores and tramps. There, I said it. We understand that abstinence will not result in a 100% cessation of pregnancy. After all, God designed human beings with the desire to procreate. But it will teach our children to respect their bodies -- girls should not use sex as a tool to subordinate men, and men should not use sex as a tool to dominate women.

On the other hand, pills, condoms, and the like may prevent pregnancy if used correctly and consistently, but they cannot help a teen learn about self esteem, self control, and the sanctity of their own body. Ditto for abortion on demand. The loneliness, emptiness, and utter despair that plague sexually promiscuous men and women is well-documented (e.g. Looking for Mr. Goodbar).  And then there are the problems with STD's, particularly hepatitis and HIV.

None of the support for Sarah Palin and her daughter has anything to do with Evangelicals suddenly "approving of" or "ignoring" the promiscuity of a seventeen year old simply because her mother is a Republican.  Rather, it has everything to do with what the family has chosen to do next.

As human beings we all have the ability to make choices.  Sometimes we make choices -- bad ones --  without clearly thinking about the consequences.  But it is in dealing with those consequences (and more importantly, the consequences resulting from events that we cannot control) that we undergo true spiritual growth. The mark of Christianity is not the rabid observance of puritanical legalism, nor is it the brutal humiliation of transgressors; rather it is the ability to overcome difficult circumstances through love, hope, and grace.

Traditional Christian ethics teaches that even if the conditions surrounding its arrival are less than absolutely ideal -- even if they may be traced directly to an act of evil -- new life is always a holy event, a cause for thanksgiving, even if that life is not "perfect" in our eyes.  The imperfect arrival of life, or the arrival of imperfect life, both give ample opportunities for the Holy Spirit and the Body of Christ to impart love, hope, and grace, each upon the other.  We do not seek out sin or imperfection so that God's grace may be celebrated; rather, we seek to better understand how to celebrate grace when we are faced with adverse circumstances.

Abstinence goes hand and hand with responsibility.  If two people make the decision to enter into a sexual relationship and then they make a baby, they are expected to be responsible for their actions. Initially, the grandparents-to-be may be shocked, angered, and disappointed. But through the work of the Holy Spirit, love and grace will eventually triumph over these emotions, and then the new life will be celebrated.  This seems to be the situation with Bristol Palin.

Unfortunately, too many teenage mothers come from broken homes or families void of any kind of real spiritual guidance. It is always a shame to see runaway sexuality in those situations -- those girls seem to have latched on to the "pleasurable experience" aspect of feminist sexuality, without bothering to trouble themselves with the birth control part. Understood in those terms, progressive sex education is certainly as much -- probably more -- of a failure than abstinence education.

Progressives claim to have the perfect solutions to the problem of teenage pregnancy  -- designating children and families as punishments or obstacles in the pursuit of an enriched life, then promoting guilt-free promiscuity balanced by medical birth control (including abortion).  Yet these are really nothing more than shallow appeals simply designed to satiate our most youthful desires for immediacy and personal satisfaction.  They are not designed to promote responsibility.  They are not designed to freely allow the propagation of grace from one individual to another, nor are they designed to allow the propagation of grace freely from the Holy Spirit to each of us.

We believe that depriving our children of such responsibilities and experiences will severely impede their spiritual growth.  This is why we teach our children abstinence, rather than promiscuity and birth control.

...

Added 9-3-08:  Here's a lovely gem from feminist icon Sally Quinn (via RushLimbaugh.com):

I've been a working mother for 26 years and practically every friend I have is a working mother and works full time. So, uh, I think we are so far beyond that issue of whether women should work or not, in -- uh, certainly in your world and my world.  But in the world of evangelicals, that's not the case.  Women are supposed to be subservient to their husbands and they are meant to be stay-at-home moms.  And women, in fact, are not allowed to be pastors in the Southern Baptist church. (emphasis added)

Well goll-dang - we's all just a buncha redneck chauvinist pigs, us Eeeeeevangelicals, that is.  Here's a news flash -- the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches both disallow women from entering the priesthood too.  Sheesh.  Another glittering leftist/secularist jewel of colossal ignorance.

__________________________________

Welcome Anchoress readers!  And thanks for the link, Elizabeth.
And welcome WizBang readers.  Thanks for the link, Lori.
Aw, what the heck - a hat tip to Mr. D Aristophanes from SadlyNo.com.  Welcome aboard.

__________________________________

Post script:

I want to make two brief additional points.  First off, blaming only the Left for the misunderstandings of the Church that exist today would not be telling the whole truth.  Certainly, through political pressure, excommunication, inquisition, witch hunts, and other means of coercion, the Body of Christ has damaged itself by failing to deal gracefully with those who depart from its teachings.  We have only ourselves to blame for that, and we are still struggling with spiritual shortcomings.  Today, we seem to have no problem being gracious toward those who commit sexual sins -- unless those transgressions involve same-sex relationships.  Homosexuality is still a serious stumbling block for Christian grace.

Second, Christianity teaches that God's standard of perfection is not the same as ours.  We screw up this message as well, choosing to skip over the process of perfection (sanctification) that develops as the result of our spiritual formation through the work of the Holy Spirit, in favor of simply pillorying those who fail to live up to our human ideal of absolute sinlessness. 

No one is responsible for these distortions of the Gospel except Christians themselves.  This should give us pause whenever we see ourselves portrayed as rabid puritans who humiliate the imperfect.

The lineage of Jesus Christ himself shows us that God can use anyone, regardless of how "impure" we may think they are, as a vessel for His divine will.  Matthew's lineage of Jesus specifically includes four women -- Tamar (who disguised herself as a prostitute in order to become pregnant by Judah, thus ensuring the continuation of his lineage), Rahab (a prostitute and an ethnic Gentile), Ruth (an ethnic Gentile), and "Uriah's wife," Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon and the object of King David's greatest moral failing.  The commonality that links these women, besides their lack of moral and ethnic purity, is that each of them were involved in an open confession of sin and a public repentance, and afterward, they remained close to the LORD.  This is what He truly desires of us as well. (Updated at 12:35PM
9-2-08)

What's wrong with Sarah Palin?

I've never seen the Democrats more thoroughly panicked than after yesterday's announcement that Gov. Sarah Palin is John McCain's choice for Vice President.  It was like they suddenly realized that they might actually have to work at winning the election this fall.  For a group who expected an easy cakewalk into the White House, such a realization has got to be causing a lot of indigestion.

And you know what must be really driving the far left nuts?  Sarah Palin is the closest thing to a real person -- someone who might actually be your neighbor or a friend from the PTA or someone you work with or a fellow congregant at your church -- than anyone who has graced a Presidential ticket in some time, at least in my lifetime.

Star high school athlete and beauty pageant contestant?  Check.
Married high school sweetheart?  Check.
Adorable family?  Check and double check.
Immediate family in the military?  Check.  (Buh-bye "chicken hawk" argument ...)
PTA member?  Check.
Loves hunting and fishing and belongs to the NRA?  Check.
Loves moose burgers and snowmobiling?  Check.
Married to a blue collar union member?  Check. (Wow, a real live union family.  The liberal elitist crowd must have really pissed their pants over that one.)
Someone who regularly attends church, and who could probably espouse a simple, direct explanation of her faith that most Americans could also understand and identify with?  Check.
Became involved in politics after tiring of local bureaucratic fumbling and corruption?  Check.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Of course the slime has already begun to ooze from the fever swamps of the left -- the first crude MILF/naughty librarian/Vixen jokes; rumors that Palin actually adopted her youngest child, who is really the product of an unwanted pregnancy from her oldest daughter; accusations that Palin is just pandering to the "Right To Life nutbags" by deliberately carrying her defective pregnancy to term instead of doing what any sensible, intelligent woman would do; questions about her fitness as a mother, since she is obviously abandoning her poor, mentally retarded baby in order to join the McCain campaign; speculation that because Palin entered the Miss Alaska pageant, there must be compromising or embarassing photos of her somewhere.  And liberal women?  They'll be a perpetual fountain of rudeness, vulgarity, and cattiness.  (PS - If those swimsuit photos ever do become available, you can rest assured that I'll post them ASAP.  Hubba-hubba!)

But you can't use that kind of unhinged lunacy in a national campaign.  So Obama is left with the standard complaints -- "She's inexperienced/She's not qualified/She didn't earn this" and so forth.  This will be the thrust of the national message against Palin, but it will be like walking on broken glass for Obama given his nonexistent list of real accomplishments as a leader.

So what's wrong with Sarah Palin?  In order to really understand this, we must ask "What is right about Barack Obama?"  And here's the answer: he was raised by a free-spirited agnostic mom, he went to Harvard, he studied community organizing, he studied civil rights law, he read John Dewey and Saul Alinsky and James Cone and Ghandi, his leadership skills were mentored by some of the left's leading radicals and he became a star pupil, his potential as a leader was recognized and he was given "guardian angels" by the Democratic party and fast-tracked through the Chicago and Illinois political machines.  In other words, he was hand-picked and groomed by the liberal establishment to be President. This is not a flattering metaphor but it is an accurate one: Obama is the top stud from the progressive leadership stud farm, and all his adult life he has been bred to sire the new Democratic Socialist States of America.

Compare that pedigree to Sarah Palin's: Who has mentored her? Has she studied Alinsky? Cone? Gustavo Gutierrez? Pauol Freire? Chomsky? Cornel West? No Ivy Leage degree? No community organizing skills? No experience in civil rights advocacy? Her "accomplishments" as mayor and Energy Commission chairwoman and governor mean nothing next to the void of her poorly trained and sadly underdeveloped intellect.

But again, average people would find those arguments completely non-compelling, if not outright silly.  So we're back to "She's not ready/She's not qualified" etc. 

The next two months are going to be a lot of fun.  I'm heading out to buy the popcorn right now.

The promises of Barack Obama

Well here it is: The speech of the century.  The new Sermon on the Mount.

Not many surprises, really.  America is in trouble.  Americans are in financial peril.  We've failed to defeat al-Qaeda.  Republicans have left everyone "on their own."  (Nice steal from HRC, by the way ... and say, when did our trillion-dollar-plus social safety net suddenly disappear?  I must have missed that one.)  And of course, everything is George W. Bush's fault.  But in Barack America, things will be different. 

Here is what Barack Obama promised to accomplish as president, if he is elected; with commentary, of course.

I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

Vague.  What kind of tax breaks?  I remember learning four years ago that the H. J. Heinz company (provider of the wealth that Tereza Heinz and John Kerry enjoy) had 57 of its 79 manufacturing facilities located overseas; this revelation came at a very inconvenient moment, when John Kerry was also pushing the stale Democrat theme of punishing companies who profit from sending jobs overseas.  A web page sympathetic to the Heinz-Kerrys says the following: " ... sixty percent of the sales of the company are overseas and that the foreign plants allow them to serve local customers with fresher ingredients.  In other words, their foreign operations are for the purpose of doing business on foreign land, which is not the same, for example, as an American factory firing its workers and having the same work done in another country by cheaper labor."  Exactly.  So, how will the Obama Administration distinguish companies that "ship jobs overseas" as opposed to companies that do business overseas and therefore need overseas operations.  And what about businesses HQ'd in foreign countries that employ hundreds or thousands of Americans?

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I guess that means that if you are a "large business" you are SOL.  I also wonder what kind of crystal ball Obama will be using to divine which companies "will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow?"  Tech start-ups during the late 90's paid their employees obscenely high wages ($85k for an entry-level network tech, etc.) and they did this because they were flush with venture capital.  Yet they eventually pissed away billions, with most of them never showing a profit.  I hope that Obama has a better set of criteria for judging start-ups than the Clinton administration.

I will cut taxes for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

The last thing we should do now is raise taxes on anyone, period.  And Obama doesn't mention his proposed capital gains tax hike, a tax that will be paid by anyone who sells property or securities that have increased in value since they were purchased, regardless of how much other income they earn.  Over half of Americans now own investment portfolios including stocks and bonds.  Far more than that own real property.  A capital gains tax hike will affect all those people, not just some elusive "top 5%" of households.

I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less -- because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

I'll believe that when I see it.  Any government program that pays or subsidizes the salaries of workers belonging to the American Federal Government Employees union or the AFSCME "works."  Trust me on this.

I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

What does that mean?  No Middle Eastern oil at all?  75% of what we now use?  50%?  10%?  What?  There are going to be a lot of unhappy Arabs who will do everything they can to prevent that from happening.   If poverty inspires terrorism, how will eliminating a major chunk of the oil money of Middle Eastern nations affect the potential for unrest and violence in the region? 

As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power.

But no more new oil wells - EVER!  Actually I'm glad to see nuclear mentioned, but good luck getting that past the enviro-nuts.

I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

Um ... so does this mean that government will take over the car industry?  Does this mean that government will design the cars, pay auto manufacturers to build the cars, and then subsidize the cost of those cars to consumers?  Sounds like a prescription for a nation driving the equivalent of Yugos and Trabants.  No thanks.

I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

I guess it takes a lot of workers to scrape bird guts off those giant propellers.  Seriously -- large-scale power generation via wind and solar systems has been the wet dream of bureaucrats for over thirty years, probably because they continually fantasize about drawing up the massive government regulations for those industries and imbuing them with a kind of progressive feel-good moral character that the eeeeevil "Big Oil" industry never possessed.  But don't be fooled; wind and solar are still pipe dreams -- unreliable, grossly expensive -- and nobody wants the panels or windmills in their own back yard.

I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability.

We keep doing this stuff.  We invest and invest and invest, to the point that some districts spend over $10,000 per child each year, and yet things don't seem to be getting any better.  Sure, the government could set aside a massive chunk of money to subsidize teacher salaries, but how exactly can the government give teachers moral and emotional support?   And if you think you're going to get the NEA to change criteria to make it easier to dismiss poor teachers, even those who sexually abuse students, then you've got another thing coming.

And we will keep our promise to every young American -- if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

We already do this; it's one of the evil ploys used to seduce poor, ignorant, innocent young men and women and turn them into cold-blooded killers in the US military, or so says the anti-war Left.  Democrats, do you really want more of this?  We already have Americorps, VISTA, the Peace Corps, etc.  This is just a meaningless promise made for the benefit of those who don't know any better. 

If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

Wow, that's a biggie.  Is he going to subsidize insurance premiums, or enact a Federally-mandated set of price caps on medical procedures, to which all insurers and providers will be forced to to adhere?  And how is forcing insurance companies to "stop discriminating" (in other words, pay every claim without question) going to lower premiums?  I see private health care going only to the young and healthy, with everyone else being gradually squeezed out as "high risk," into a bloated, inefficient government supervised and subsidized program.  When that happens, I doubt that John Q. Public be afforded the kind of first-class medical treatment that Ted Kennedy is receiving right now.

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent.

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect Social Security for future generations.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

Whew, another set of big promises and another set of vague platitudes. 

I thought Bill Clinton fixed the family leave crisis.

How will Obama "protect Social Security?"  After the stink that Democrats raised when President Bush wanted to place Social Security in the arena of the free market, we can be sure that there will be no private investment of Social Security monies and no attempt to make it into a true pension plan.  Instead, there will be massive payroll tax increases; only on "the rich" for now, but once that precedent has been established, it will not be difficult to keep expanding taxes in the future. 

And now "equal pay" again.  Argh.  We have equal pay laws out the wazoo already.  And when you compare apples to apples -- young single men/women just out of college with identical degree/GPA applying for the same entry-level jobs -- pay scales are pretty much identical.  There are dozens of different factors that go into setting employee salary levels (previous experience, married/single, number of children, single or double income in the household, career goals, better negotiating skills etc.) and we are never going to have perfect equality of outcome.  Never.  Even if we start with a level playing field, it will be pretty torn up at the end of the day.

As Commander-in-Chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

Yup, and I can't wait to see the first round of massive military budget cuts that a Democrat congress and a Democrat president will pass.  And since Obama obviously wasn't paying attention five years ago, we did go into Iraq with a clear mission: to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from power, and to establish a free government with democratically-elected officials, equal justice for all, and a free market economy.  Overall, we have been enormously successful at achieving those goals.  Speaking of "clear missions" (har!) get a load of this next promise:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan ... When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell -- but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.  

Hoo-wee, I'd love to see Obama's "clear mission" for sending special forces carrying excessive firepower (perhaps tactical nukes) into disputed regions of Afghanistan, or across the border into Pakistan, a nation not only with nukes, but a government that is currently very unstable.  Please, describe that "clear mission," including a complete set of contingencies for everything that might go wrong.

But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

Look, diplomacy is great, but what do you do when it doesn't work?  Jimmy Carter couldn't come up with an answer that question, and it probably cost him the Presidency.  And here, at last, is the great moral equivalency statement of tonight's speech. It seems that in Obama's view, the likes of Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc. won't work with us unless we cop to causing climate change, promoting poverty, and encouraging nuclear proliferation, and subsequently beg for their forgiveness.  Again, we tried this approach to foreign policy 30 years ago and the results were disastrous.  And ten years ago, Bill Clinton sent Al Gore to suck up to the international Convention on Climate Change, yet he sat by helplessly as the Kyoto Treaty was rejected resoundingly by the US Senate.  It just doesn't seem like this is the direction that the majority of Americans want to take.

...

Well, there you have it: Barack Obama's vision for a better America.  Next week we'll be able to compare it to the vision that John McCain outlines.

Pelosi's abortion distortions

Our own Grandmother Superior appeared on Meet the Press this weekend, and was asked to respond to the Saddleback Forum question, "At what point does a baby get human rights?" You'll recall that Barack Obama punted, explaining that making such a determination was "above [his] pay grade."

Apparently such a determination was also above Grandmother Superior's pay grade (I'm actually thinking Peter Principle) considering the rambling, nonsensical answer she managed to produce, including this howler -- "The doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition."  The doctors of the church??  WTF???  Yet her response can be accurately condensed to three words: "We don't know."  That's Grandmother Superior speaking for herself primarily, and because of her political imminence, presumably the Roman Catholic Church as well.

First off, let me be clear about this.  I think Pelosi was being honest.  In her post modern, progressive worldview, we don't know.  We can't know, because we are incapable of inerrantly judging any situation to be "good" or "evil."  Such is the heart of contemporary post-modern philosophy -- there can never be certainty about anything, save for the fact that nothing is ever certain.  But such uncertainty cannot be projected upon the Roman Catholic church, which remains a most profoundly un-post modern institution.

In response to Madame Speaker's hazy recollection of Roman Catholic church history, "Captain Ed" Morrisey posted a nice compendium of ancient Church teachings on abortion, which succinctly illustrates that the early church fathers were in unity with regard to the sinfulness of abortion.  Even though Protestants have grown rather squishy on the issue, nothing has changed during the last 2000 years with respect to Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox doctrine.  Nothing. 

Yet Pelosi can't -- or won't -- recognize this because, as a progressive, her primary agenda is saving the world (a job that the rest of us usually trust God to accomplish).  And for over 100 years, the doctrines of progressivism have taught that the unfettered practice of abortion will be able to accomplish what the doctrines of the Church seemingly have not -- the elimination poverty and the restoration of humanity to a proverbial "Garden of Eden" state of health and prosperity.  Thus to progressives the practice of abortion has become an ultimate expression of morality not to be hampered by such trivialities as "human rights" for a fetus, and in challenging this viewpoint, the Church is simply ignorant.

I believe that this episode perfectly illustrates the necessity of the concept of separation of church and state.  We usually study this issue from the viewpoint of organized religion attempting to coerce government, but Pelosi's remarks should remind us that dimwitted, morally wobbly politicians can also pose a threat to the free expression of orthodox religious thought if they are given too much power.  Ask a Canadian Catholic if you don't believe me.

If Nancy Pelosi believes that moral absolutes do not exist, or that she is better equipped to define morality than the Church, that's fine, and she should have the freedom to publicly joust with her mythical "doctors of the church" as often and as vigorously as she wishes.  But those of us who simply think she is a fool should always have the right to challenge her foolishness without fear of recrimination.  In a free society, that's the way it should be.

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ADDED: Throughout the week, Catholics from around the nation have slapped Grandmother Superior's wrists repeatedly with regard to her sloppy personalized interpretation of the Church's abortion teachings.  The Anchoress has a good roundup of commentary and, as always, an opinion worth reading.

Quick - name all your investments!

Here's a great example of the kind of eye-rolling stupidity we are forced to endure during Presidential campaigns.

The press, still smarting from The Chosen One's crummy performance at last week's Saddleback Forum tried to trip up John McCain (and insinuate that he is an "elitist," whatever that means) by asking him how many houses he and his wife own.  McCain didn't know, and said that he'd have to check out the answer.

For the informationally challenged, here is a little background.  Cindy McCain (née Hensley) is the daughter of James Hensley, who owned and operated one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributorships in the United States.  When John McCain married Cindy in 1980, they signed a prenuptial agreement, whereby she retained control of her family's assets.  When her father died in 2000, Cindy became chair of Hensley & Co, which is currently valued at around $300 million; before that time, she was not involved directly with the family business.  Because of their prenup, John McCain doesn't manage her money or her investments.  And it's pretty obvious to me that these homes are investments, not residences. 

Naturally, John McCain doesn't know all the details of his wife's business.

Now if you want to make a big deal out of this, here are fair questions to ask, if you want to compare McCain and Obama on this issue:

1.  How many of McCain's homes were purchased at 15% below list price, in conjunction with an adjacent land purchase made by a future convicted felon?  The press wants you to forget this little inconvenient fact about Barack Obama's residence on the south side of Chicago.

2.  Since these homes are investments and not residences, maybe we should ask Obama about his investments.  Could he lay out his and Michelle's entire portfolios from memory for us?  Could he tell us, without review, what all of the sources of income on his and Michelle's 2007 income tax returns were?  I doubt it; I also doubt that anyone in the press would ever ask this of him.

Now, how many of you "average" people out there had a shady real estate developer join you in the purchase of your homestead and its surrounding property?  How many of you have so many sources of income that you probably couldn't name them all off the top of your head?  Is Barack Obama really "one of you?"  Is anyone, once they reach the level of Presidential contender?  By the way, the closer you inspect the Obama money trail, the dirtier it looks.

Further, how many homes do John Kerry and Tereza Heinz (Kerry?) own?  And isn't it interesting that no one asked John Kerry how many homes he owned during the 2004 campaign?

For that matter, how many homes does the Kennedy family own?  Or the Rockefellers?

And for those of you who keep missing the irony, here it is.  You see, Republicans are supposed to be rich, evil snob bastards.  But Democrats, well they are the friends of the downtrodden, the advocates of the poor, the protectors of starving children, etc.  They eat, sleep, and drink the plight of those mired in poverty.  Yet four years ago, the Democrats nominated a haughty, arrogant playboy married to a gazillion-heiress, who then chose a sleazy millionaire trial lawyer as his running mate. 

Solidarity with the poor?  I don't think so.