Feb 28 2009

Deficit reaction deficit

Category: Congress,economy,left,media,Obamaharmonicminer @ 9:27 am

Powerline points out, in an absolutely fantastic article, how the Left’s reaction to Bush deficits was panic and accusation, but its reaction to 4 or 5 times bigger Obama deficits is ho-hum, when it’s not out and out cheerleading.

Power Line

It’s no secret that there is no intellectual integrity on the Left, but it’s still hard not to be a bit shocked by liberals’ reaction to the budget proposal that Barack Obama unleashed yesterday. Let’s take the example of the New York Times, probably the most prominent voice of the Far Left in the U.S. Throughout the George W. Bush administration, the Times’ editorial board waxed eloquent about the terrible consequences to be expected from the Bush deficits.

There is a deficit in the Left’s reaction to the Obama deficit.

Read the whole thing at the Power Line link above.

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Feb 27 2009

Obama announces how long terrorists should hide

Category: Iraq,Islam,Obama,terrorismharmonicminer @ 4:04 pm

Obama sets firm withdrawal timetable for Iraq

President Barack Obama consigned the Iraq war to history Friday, declaring he will end combat operations within 18 months and open a new era of diplomacy in the Middle East. “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” Obama told Marines who are about to deploy by the thousands to the other war front, Afghanistan.

Just bide your time, boys, bide your time. Store ammo and explosives. Recruit mentally ill and developmentally disabled “bomb mules.” Rest up. Memorize some more hadith.  Take a vacation in Iran for explosives training. 

It really isn’t that long, and you’ll be able to do whatever you want without US interference.

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Feb 27 2009

Early abortion is not contraception

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 11:21 am

Obama wants to restrict the ability of medical personnel and pharmacists to refuse to provide abortion-related services for non-medical reasons, on the grounds of conscience.  This is one inevitable outcome of the Freedom of Choice Act he intends to pursue with the Congress, but in the short term, he intends to reverse a Bush administration ruling extending conscience protections for health-care workers to so called “emergency contraception.”

During the last months of the Bush administration, the feds adopted a new rule that could allow health-care workers to refuse to provide birth control on moral grounds. Now the Obama administration is moving to reverse that rule, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Existing federal law allows health-care workers to refuse on moral grounds to provide abortions. The new rule strengthened and extended those protections. While some groups, such as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, supported the move, many others, including several state attorneys general and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposed the rule.

There have been recent reports of women being denied emergency contraception, which is federally approved for use within 72 hours of intercourse, the Trib says.

The Obama administration will start the process of reversing the rule today. Final action won’t be taken until after the public is allowed a 30-day comment period.

The problem with this, of course, is that it is simply a lie to call an early abortion (by drug) merely “contraception.”  Either way, it’s just a preview of worse things to come with the Freedom of Choice Act, which, among other things, will have the effect of voiding ALL conscience protections laws, state and federal, that now allow health-care workers to refuse to participate in non-medically necessary abortions….  meaning virtually all of them.

Do you have a bright child who is interested in medicine?  Better make sure you teach them that there’s nothing wrong with abortion, at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, because that will be the rule under the Freedom of Choice Act, when it reverses slowly achieved, hardwon gains in many states to put even minor restrictions on late-term abortion, institute parental notification and informed consent laws, etc.  Look your brilliant young child in the eye, and say, “Repeat after me.  It’s OK for women and their doctors to kill their unborn children for any reason whatsoever, at any point in the pregnancy, and I promise to always do that for women whenever they ask.”

Keep saying it to yourself.  Maybe you’ll even believe it some day.

And your child will simply not be allowed to be a physician in the USA unless they agree with this horror.

Put up a sign over the medical school entrance:  “Only conscienceless future physicians need apply.”


Feb 25 2009

Why the peaceful majority is irrelevant

Category: Islam,terrorismharmonicminer @ 10:50 am

Here is an excellent article which I hope you’ll read in its entirety at this link.  This is the concluding paragraph, but this paragraph is twice as powerful after the ground laid in the full article.

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

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Feb 24 2009

The Pope instructs the Speaker, who pretends not to have heard

Category: abortionharmonicminer @ 10:41 am

Were They at the Same Meeting? by George Weigel on National Review Online

He [the Pope] told Pelosi, politely but unmistakably, that her relentlessly pro-abortion politics put her in serious difficulties as a Catholic, which was his obligation as a pastor. He also underscored, for Pelosi, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Mikulski, Rose DeLauro, Kathleen Sebelius, and everyone else, that the Church’s opposition to the taking of innocent human life, at any stage of the human journey, is not some weird Catholic hocus-pocus; it’s a first principle of justice than can be known by reason. It is a “requirement of the natural moral law”, that is, the moral truths we can know by thinking about what is right and what is wrong, to defend the inviolability of innocent human life. You don’t have to believe in papal primacy to know that; you don’t have do believe in seven sacraments, or the episcopal structure of the Church, or the divinity of Christ, to know that. You don’t even have to believe in God to know that. You only have to be a morally serious human being, willing to work through a moral argument, which, of course, means being the kind of person who understands that moral truth cannot be reduced to questions of feminist political correctness or partisan political advantage.

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Feb 23 2009

The speech Obama should have given to the Muslim world

Category: Islam,Obamaharmonicminer @ 10:29 am

Here is a link to the speech Obama should have given to the Muslim world, instead of the one he gave, written BY an American Muslim.

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Feb 22 2009

The Next Great Awakening, part 5: God the Egotist?

Category: theologyharmonicminer @ 10:17 am

The previous post in this series is here.

There’s an old saying that, “It’s only a brag if you can’t do it.” That is, if you claim something for yourself, or about yourself, that is not yours, or is not true, then it’s “a brag”, or a manifestation of arrogance, or power-hunger, or even megalomania.    Al Mohler has a nice article on the question of The Divine Egotist — Is God Arrogant, Selfish, or Megalomaniacal?

When a human glorifies himself, he robs others of joy. Self-aggrandizement and human megalomania cause hurt and harm to others, not blessing and joy.

But when God displays and exhibits his glory, he shares joy with his creatures and wholeness with all creation. Put most directly, without the knowledge of God’s glory, we would be robbed of true joy. God would be less than perfect — even selfish — if he did not display his glory and allow us to share in the divine joy and fulfillment.

Is God a megalomaniac . . . the transcendent Egotist? Of course not. In the truest sense, this is an arrogant and irresponsible question. How can God be other than he is in his perfection? But in another sense, the question is helpful, for it directs our thinking to the essence of God’s glory and resets our theological framework. God shows his love for us in the display of his glory and in his jealous concern for his own name and reputation. Our greatest joy is found in beholding his glory and in glorifying the triune God for all eternity.

This is all true, of course.

But I’d like to rephrase it in another way, for those people, like me, who took way too long to understand just what it meant. I’d like to rephrase it without emotionally loaded or “churchy” language.

It’s really very simple.

The Ultimate Reality is God, the Creator of everything that is, other than Himself.   There is no fact or conceptual framework that is “truer” than God Himself, because the very meaning of “true” is that a “true” thing is “real,” or “the way things really are,” and there is no reality more basic than God, who underlies, supports and holds together everything in Himself.

So when God says, “I want you to give ME all ‘the glory'”, He is inviting us to participate in the realest of the real, the truest of the true, the highest of the high, namely, Himself.     In inviting us to recognize Him for what He is, to seek Him, to know Him, he is giving us the greatest gift he could possibly give to His Creatures (us), a connection to the Ultimately Real, which is not a thing, or a concept, or a principle, but a Person.

A very weak analogy might be that of a composer explaining a piece of music to performers who will play and/or sing it.   The explanation might include some of the “meaning” of the composition to the composer, the nature of the musical structures, the types of expression that are appropriate in its performance, the ways the composition reflects the musical personality of the composer, etc.   Now imagine that a human composer could create a piece of music that so perfectly reflected the composer’s own nature that the only way to really perform the piece correctly is to get to know the composer as well as possible, understanding the “meaning” of the notes on the page in the context of that relationship to the composer.   Imagine that the composer, out of sure and certain self-knowledge, knew himself to be the “composer of composers”, the one whose musical personality and musical output were perfectly intertwined and harmonized.   When the composer asks the performers to “do it my way” and to “get to know me as the composer” so that they will better perform the music, and indeed, so they will better understand the very nature OF music, is it an expression of ego, or is it a gracious invitation to participate in the deepest possible musical experience?

Scientists sometimes say things that indicate they nearly worship Nature, or Mathematics, in the sense that, to the scientists, these things are the ultimate reality of things.   While Nature is beautiful, the Universe is awe-inspiring, and Mathematics is intricately woven through it all (and just why is that again?), these things are just manifestations of the creative power and intelligence of the Person behind it all, who invites us to know Him, to go on the journey of life in seeking Him as He reveals Himself to the extent we are able to receive, somewhat differently for each of us.   It is odd that some people can express rhapsodic awe at the amazing intricacy and scale of the Creation, even appreciating the apparent intelligence and intention behind it all (inventing phrases like “the anthropic principle“), but still deny the Creator.

God is not a manlike being with supreme power, intelligence and goodness.   God is in a category by Himself, with no other referent, and no adequate analogy.   He is the “I AM.”   To some extent, being made in His Image means that it sometimes is helpful for humans to analogize themselves to God for the purpose of self-understanding.   We are intelligent because He is Intelligence, we want to be “good” because He is Goodness, we desire relationship with each other and Him because He is Relationship within the Trinity.   But it is almost never helpful, or true, to analogize God to humans, because He is utterly Other, yet calls us to be in relationship with Him, out of His great love and desire for his creatures to know Him, a desire and love so great that He became one of us to show us the way back to Him.

Forget the silly anthropomorphisms that are expressed in the phrases of skeptics, like “Divine Child Abuse,” “God is a megalomaniac,” and so on.   All such flow from the first error, analogizing God to humanity, the utterly wrong direction for the analogy to work.   Very simply, God is prior to everything else, and every other consideration.

Giving him the “glory” is not giving in to an egomaniac, it is the necessary prerequisite for a rational understanding of who and what God IS in relation to us, and the essential first step to relationship with Him.   The child must know and acknowledge its Parent, who cared for the child before it knew it had a Parent.   “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Praising God is the only intelligent thing for a creature to do, and a fine thing it is to be one of God’s creatures.   Indeed, the only thing.

The next post in this series is here.

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Feb 21 2009

Media Malpractice: New Film Released

Category: election 2008,mediaharmonicminer @ 6:39 pm

The new film, Media Malpractice, has just been released.   It details conclusively the unprecedented level of media bias that existed in the last election cycle.  You’re guaranteed to see footage you never saw during the election season, because you don’t watch TV 24/7 on seven channels at once, but John Ziegler has done that for you, and put together a documentary of what may be the most amazingly one-sided coverage on the part of the major media in any election in American history.

I paid a lot of attention to the media during the election, and even so I was stunned at some of the things I’d missed…  much of it in daytime TV, of course (I do have a job), as well as evening.  In aggregate, I can’t think of another film quite like this one, simply because the situation in the last election was more extreme than any we’ve seen before.

Mr. Ziegler’s biggest problem in the film was in winnowing the number of clips down to a manageable length, but the film moves along quite snappily, and I think will keep you interested right up to the end.  It does a particularly good job of providing context for certain things that were stressed in the media, but for which the media itself provided little or no context, to their shame.

The music is especially good (!), and helps frame the various scenes and video montages.

And now, full disclosure:  I composed the music for the film.  But don’t let that stop you from ordering a copy!

Watch for John Ziegler to appear on TV and on radio in the next weeks, discussing his film with the very people it’s about.

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Feb 21 2009

Agenda journalism meets agenda science

Category: global warming,higher education,media,scienceharmonicminer @ 10:40 am

In a typical profanity laced diatribe, the Daily Kos accuses George Will of lying or ignorance, fielder’s choice:

George Will — “According to the University of Illinois’ ACRC, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”

University of Illinois’ ACRC — “We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows … [the] decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined. It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.”

This is a reference to a column in the Washington Post by George Will.

And despite all the eco-pagan handwringing, wailing and nashing of teeth, it appears that Will was correct, and the ACRC was engaged in a certain amount of spin in its disingenuous statement.

It’s got to be tough when the public spokesperson for the ACRC can’t read a graph.  Check it out yourself:  you’ll see the values go up, and the values go down, but they consistently orbit around the same general center.

I share one bit of frustration with the Daily Kos, though for different reasons.  I wish WAPO would respond a bit more vigorously to false allegations when it’s one of their few conservative columnists being attacked.  But, for now, I guess this will have to do.

The University of Illinois center that Will cited has now said it doesn’t agree with his conclusion, but earlier this year it put out a statement
(http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf)
that was among several sources for this column and that notes in part that “Observed global sea ice area, defined here as a sum of N. Hemisphere and S. Hemisphere sea ice areas, is near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,”

It would seem that ACRC’s spokesperson doesn’t read their own website.  And it would seem that the eco-pagan global warming panic-mongers simply believe spokespersons without checking the facts themselves…  which makes it especially funny that they accuse George Will and WAPO of not doing adequate fact checking.

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Feb 21 2009

The ad NBC and CNN would not run

Category: abortion,Obamaharmonicminer @ 10:17 am

If you have any doubt about the viewpoint discrimination in the major media, here’s more proof:

Imagine Spot 1 – Rejected by NBC and CNN

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