OK, I know this is pure grandpa pride talking, but here is my granddaughter looking like a living Cabbage Patch Doll.
Mar 27 2012
Christians in China
Here is a very interesting article on the state of Christianity and Christians in China.
Mar 26 2012
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet
From Jake Tapper:
At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”
The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.
The exchange:President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
When asked to explain what President Obama meant, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes told ABC News that there is room for the U.S. and Russia to reach an accommodation, but “there is a lot of rhetoric around this issue, there always is, in both countries.
A senior administration official tells ABC News: “this is a political year in which the Russians just had an election, we’re about to have a presidential and congressional elections, this is not the kind of year in which we’re going to resolve incredibly complicated issue like this. So there’s an advantage to pulling back and letting the technical experts work on this as the president has been saying.”
Translation: After Obama is re-elected, he will not be restrained by any concern for what the American people actually think…. about much of anything. He will try to do all the things he’s held back on so far, out of concern for the election. Since he hasn’t held back all that much on many issues, I think that means we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
In the meantime, how much play and followup will this story get in the major media? About as much as Obama’s other incendiary comments have gotten, i.e., not much. The major media know their duty when they see it, and it’s to get their man re-elected.
Mar 24 2012
Can anything good come out of Eloy? Apparently so
When I was a senior in high school, I lived in Eloy, Arizona. There was absolutely nothing happening in Eloy. The town’s idea of 4th of July parade was two or three horses and a guy blowing his trumpet out a pickup truck window as he followed the horses.
Really.
So, something exciting is finally happening in Eloy!
The biggest paper airplane I’ve ever heard of….
It looks just a little like the SuperSonicTransport, otherwise known as the SST, that doesn’t fly anymore….
Mar 24 2012
Conservatives are responsible for death?
MSNBC sinks to new low, starring Karen Finney.
This isn’t even “opinion journalism.” It’s just idiotic. By the way, the “30” she mentions in this abbreviated clip is probably the 30 states that have or are making some kind of “stand your ground” law protecting people who defend themselves from criminal prosecution.
I don’t know the facts of the case in question. The shooter may indeed simply be a murderer and not a person acting in self-defense. I have no interest in defending his actions if that’s the case.
But this conflation of conservatives protecting their constitutional rights with guilt for murder is not even risible…. it’s just complete, total hate speech, funded and disseminated by MSNBC, the hate speech network.
Mar 09 2012
G.K. Chesterton in “What is wrong with the world”
The great writer’s comment on disagreements about how society should be structured:
Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs. The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to restore it.
But social science is by no means always content with the normal human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social idealist will say “I am tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan,” or “Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I see the shining paradise of Collectivism.” Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want quinine; but he certainly wants health. No one says “I am tired of this headache; I want some toothache,” or “The only thing for this Russian influenza is a few German measles,” or “Through this dark probation of catarrh I see the shining paradise of rheumatism.” But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would rather have rheumatics.
This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each other’s eyes out. We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing. We should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would be a good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood; but some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one. Everyone is indignant if our army is weak, including the people who would be even more indignant if it were strong. The social case is exactly the opposite of the medical case. We do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise nature of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health. On the contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health . Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity. We forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things, we should differ very much about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad public house. It would be precisely in front of the good public-house that our painful personal fracas would occur.