Sep 12 2009

You can’t make this up, #2

Category: societyharmonicminer @ 9:38 am

It seems that Planned Parenthood is getting interested in modern art, with condoms as the media:

As kids across the country are going back to school, meeting their new teachers and seeing their old friends, Planned Parenthood will continue to target these young people with its contraceptive and pro-death mentality.

I won’t even mention what Planned Parenthood is trying to do in kids’ classrooms; the Planned Parenthood facility in Binghamton, NY will be celebrating the killing of more children and destroying more young peoples’ lives by looking at condoms as “art”. Seriously, Planned Parenthood is that stupid.

This organization will display a “prom dress,” made out of condoms and will be placed on a backseat of a car and an “evening gown” made out of condoms will be placed next to a bed. This is Planned Parenthood’s vision of healthy behavior for our young people.

Hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s teach our kids about respecting their bodies and the bodies of others through something called common sense, AKA chastity. Kids are not looking for sexual relationships, they’re focused on their friends, their homework, sports, Planned Parenthood wants to rob our children of their innocence and make it into some kind of joke. In the meantime, this organization kills 289,750 preborn babies each year.

A prom dress made of condoms, displayed on the backseat of a car….    because every high school girl’s dream is to lose her virginity in the backseat of a car on prom night, and Planned Parenthood just wants to help.

What a commitment to public service.


Sep 11 2009

Courage, squared

Category: freedom,militaryharmonicminer @ 9:17 pm

Only a few comments to make.

General Petraeus is a great general, in a dozen different ways.

The injured serviceman, and his family, are incredible examples of why the USA is still free.

But that is no guarantee for our future, if a time comes when such people are no longer to be found among us.

It would be more likely that we would find such people if the media reported more stories like this, instead of the constant anti-military drumbeat that is all too common.  The media has reported on precious few of the heroes of the last 8 years…  to its great shame.


Sep 10 2009

Conservative take on Obama’s speech to schools

Category: education,Obamaharmonicminer @ 9:13 am

In an attempt to “accentuate the positive,” the guys at Powerline detail exactly what they liked about Obama’s speech to school kids.

I ridiculed the Department of Education materials that accompany President Obama’s speech to American school children here, and I stand by the view that any self-respecting American schoolkid could only respond to such lameness with rebellion. But now I want to address the speech itself, which will mostly be good, if Obama sticks to the script. Consistent with this post’s theme, I’ll only mention the good parts.

Read their take on the positive aspects of the speech, with which I broadly agree.

And I have to say, Obama should be using his bully pulpit nearly every week to encourage poor inner city minorities to do the things that would improve their lives, and do less of the things that hurt them.   What if, instead of making a speech, he actually went to a school and talked on camera to a group of students who were getting ready to drop out?   Imagine if he supported inner city ministries whose entire mission is keeping black families with mothers AND fathers together?  Then he would be acting like he actually believed some of the things he said in his speech.   It would take courage for him to appear with someone like Jesse Peterson at an event to encourage black fatherhood.  He might offend Jesse Jackson, who hates Peterson.  But if Obama really wanted to “reach across the aisle,” that would surely be a very positive way to do it.

But I suppose he’s afraid of being compared to someone who has actually achieved something, like Bill Cosby.


Sep 09 2009

Black Christians and political leaders

Category: politics,race,religionharmonicminer @ 9:07 am

When color trumps Christianity

How can black Christians allow race and color to trump Christian principles in driving their support for a leader?

Read it all.


Sep 08 2009

Honor Killings on the Rise?

Category: Islamharmonicminer @ 8:14 am

Just to clarify, I don’t think Spencer is saying that US judges give light sentences (or none) to “honor killers,” but it is a fact in many Islamic nations.


Sep 07 2009

Crystal ball redux

Category: Islam,media,Obama,societyharmonicminer @ 9:35 am

Someone asked me the other day how my post-election predictions were turning out, regarding press coverage of Obama and other matters.

It’s a bit early to know.  But one thing is becoming apparent:  the electorate is significantly less happy with the reality of Obama than the hope and change they thought they voted for.  So far, the press has not begun to savage Obama in the ways I thought might happen.  But Obama is finally beginning to be criticized for his sheer incompetence, the biggest evidence of which is his mismanagement of the process and the message surrounding his attempted takeover of US healthcare, though his astronomical deficit plans are a close second.  And, of course, the matters are related.  Those enormous deficits are the projections of Obama’s plans if the government takeover of healthcare is NOT passed.   If it is, everything is worse.  Far worse.

To be fair, it was bound to be a hard sell.  Americans are a cantankerous lot when they see (though they are a bit slow) that their freedom is about to be stolen.  But Obama’s twin errors were: 1) leaving it up to Pelosi and Reid to craft a bill and 2) telling obvious lies that could be checked (“You can keep your current health insurance if you like it, even if this plan becomes law.”)  Pelosi and Reid are so far inside the beltway that they simply had no concept of how bad it was going to look to Americans that congress-critters hadn’t read the bill, didn’t understand it, couldn’t defend it based on facts about its contents, but wouldn’t themselves be willing to live under “the public option” as a matter of course.   Obama was foolish to trust them in this.  Of course, Obama’s lack of experience in national politics, and in managing a political situation not in control of a Chicago-like machine, is what really betrayed him.

He compounded it by doubling down on obvious lies.  Nothing in the bill would stop any employer from throwing employees into the “public option,” and plenty in the bill would provide them with motivation to do so.  Americans began to see that the promises were mutually incompatible, which included coverage for the “uninsured,” lower prices, freedom to choose your providers, no tax increase, and no rationing.  It was as if someone tried to convince them that you really CAN have it “good, fast and cheap.”  Americans know better, when they start paying attention.

Many Americans felt robbed by the arbitrariness of “cash for clunkers,” knowing that it was a straight government giveaway for which THEY could not qualify, but would surely pay.  Twinned with this is the planned trillion-dollar-deficits-per-year for the next decade, even if the Obama, Pelosi and Reid are NOT able to extend government’s already partially accomplished takeover of healthcare.  And that’s probably optimistic, based on current projections.  Americans got numb to billions….  but trillions is something else entirely.  And they simply don’t want to pay it.  To be blunt, they’re terrified of it.

Regarding another prediction I made, I continue to believe that if the terrorists want Obama to be president for two terms, they’d be wise to just hold off attacking the US until his second term.  Such an attack, in the face of Obama’s prosecution of those who would protect us, namely the CIA, would surely result in yet more support peeling off from him.  He might try to regain that support by taking some dramatic action… but it would probably be of no more worth than Clinton bombing aspirin factories in the Sudan.

Support is also peeling off on Obama’s left.  In particular, the anti-war types who were seduced by Obama’s Iraq pullout plans have to be disappointed that he is adding troops to Afghanistan, and seems relatively serious about following the advice of his generals….  nearly the only thing Obama has done right so far.  Peaceniks are getting off the bus in droves, apparently having signed up for the wrong tour package.

In the meantime, I think one aspect of my predictions is right.  The press is STILL not seriously criticizing Obama’s policies, but it is starting to criticize Obama the man and president for his failures to carry them out.  As disdain for the puerility of their annointed choice begins to grow, some of that may yet lead to the investigative journalism that should have been done before the elections.

There is such a thing as a need to survive.  As the public distrust for Obama grows, if the press continues to support him and/or his policies unrealistically, its credibility gap will only grow.  At some point, the people who own the newspapers and networks that are hemorrhaging readers and viewers will start to count the cost.

When and if major media outlets start reporting on how other outlets sat on stories that would have damaged Obama during the election season, you’ll know the world has shifted.  There are probably a lot more of these than we know.  The dynamic will be simple: reporters share info over drinks.  One lets slip that his editor sat on something damaging to Obama.  The other reporter, desperate to salvage a sinking career and job prospects (and there are a LOT of people in that situation), talks his similarly desperate editor into publishing or broadcasting.  And the feeding frenzy begins.  There’s a LOT of that stuff out there.

I wonder how many more job losses NBC and MSNBC will have to have, how many more major newspapers will have to cut jobs or worse, before simple survival instinct sets in.  It’s a toss up… are they just loopy, or are they lemmings?

But no one believes them anymore.


Sep 07 2009

What’s up with this? #1

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 8:48 am

India seizes UAE arms cache bound for China

Indian authorities have detained a UAE military transport aircraft after it was found to be carrying weapons and explosives without declaring them, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported on Monday.

Why would the UAE be shipping arms to China, when the UAE does not manufacture much of any military hardware to speak of, while China is a gigantic exporter of same?

Speculations:

1)  There are some things China doesn’t make, but wants from the West, which seems happy to sell them to the UAE, and the UAE doesn’t mind re-selling them to China.
2)  China is planning some operations it wants to carry out with Western weapons….  to maintain deniability?
3)  The weapons weren’t even going to make it to China, that was just the name on the manifest, and were in fact headed for someplace else…  like maybe Al Qaeda or the Taliban, or?  In this case, it probably wouldn’t be the UAE goverment, just someone using UAE as a transhipment point.

There is something behind the curtain here, that’s for sure.


Sep 06 2009

Jack Webb explains things to Obama

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 11:21 pm


Sep 06 2009

The Next Great Awakening part 9: God, music, and the limits to analogy

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 9:00 am

The previous post in this series is here.

As I’ve written elsewhere, God is the Being who exists alone in His category…  whatever that might be.  We know a little.  We are tempted to say that God is infinitely present, powerful, intelligent, and good.  These ideas are more Greek than anything, because they were in love with philosophical absolutes.  But using those categories can deceive us if we are incautious, because it allows us to pretend that we know more than we do.  In His initial communication with humans, God seems not to have tried to “name” Himself, or describe Himself, or apply adjectives to Himself in an attempt to make Himself known to His people.  He said, “I am who I am,” or, “I will be who I will be,” or, “I am that I am,” depending on whose translation you believe.  He made Himself known by His deeds more than by His self-description, though there isn’t necessarily a rigid line between the two.  Start reading from Genesis 1, and notice how long it is before God applies adjectives to Himself.

Continue reading “The Next Great Awakening part 9: God, music, and the limits to analogy”


Sep 05 2009

What slogan would Jesus use?

Category: religion,societyharmonicminer @ 2:24 pm

Having become recently weary with claims made by various folks about how Jesus would do this, or wouldn’t do that, or just the very silly WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) line that some people seem to think is the all-time discussion ender, I have a few to propose myself.

What baby would Jesus abort?
What mother would Jesus tell, “It’s your body and no one should tell you what to do”?
What person would Jesus rob to provide for someone else?
What child would Jesus fail to protect?
What person would Jesus make helpless by stealing her only weapon?
What person would Jesus send federal marshals to, in order to collect unpaid taxes to be used to support other people?
What school system would Jesus sue, for allowing prayer to Him?

Some will say these are unreasonable questions, and that others are just as fair.  I’ve heard a few.  Here goes:

What person would Jesus allow to starve? Answer:  many hundreds of thousands during His lifetime and ministry, based on likely world population at the time and known economic conditions.  “You will always have the poor with you.”  It is simply impossible to make the case that Jesus’ life and death were mostly about “taking care of the poor” in an absolutist, goal oriented sense, where that goal is understood as transcending almost all others, because He did not Himself live that way, nor did he demand that others do so.  He spoke against “injustice” in relation to the poor.   You may argue about what that means, but only in the light of the fact that He did not Himself attempt, even with his human abilities, to spend every moment and every resource in taking care of the poor, let alone His divine power, which could have been used subtly in very many ways to essentially end poverty in Palestine…  and elsewhere.  We have no reason to think there were not still plenty of hungry people when he left one town for the next, and scripture gives us no reason to think otherwise.

What person would Jesus arm?
Answer:  Shepherds.  “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”  Who is responsible to protect sheep, and themselves, so they can protect the sheep?   Who ARE the sheep?  You decide.

What would Jesus drive?
Answer:  Whatever would get him where he needed to go, within reason.  I don’t suppose he’d have driven a semi-truck.  Maybe on food deliveries.  Probably not.

Who would Jesus bomb? Answer:  See above about arms and shepherds.  Sometimes, life is hard.  But Jesus would surely not have suggested that Britain allow itself to be bombed without self-defense, which, sadly, often means “bombing back.”  Response question:  Which British child would Jesus have selected to be killed because British forces didn’t return fire on German factories and infrastructure, even admitting the limited accuracy of then-current technology, and knowing innocents would be killed?  Secondary question:  Which Polish Jewish child would Jesus select to be gassed because the Allies were stupid in their prosecution of the war, starting with when Hitler occupied the Rhineland with military forces?  It is safe to say that all of Europe could have done with better “shepherds” than Chamberlain and Daladier.

The point: very few slogans are up to the job of telling the truth.  And particularly, I am very suspicious of slogans involving the name of our Lord.


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