The good, the bad and the ugly

It turns out that I completely agree with Jonah Goldberg. He states that the new Arizona immigration law is "ugly but necessary". I agree; many aspects of government fall into this category. Jonah mentions some:

I agree that there's something ugly about the police, even local police, asking citizens for their "papers." There's also something ugly about American citizens being physically searched at airports. There's something ugly about IRS agents prying into nearly all of your personal financial transactions or, thanks to the passage of Obamacare, serving as health insurance enforcers.

The way I see it, the Arizona law empowers police departments to fight crime. The criminals hate this more than anybody, so you will see them disappearing from the scene in Arizona, unless your eyes are fixated on protest mobs and Obama speeches. In other words, if you are concentrating on the bad and the ugly you will miss the good.

One of the reasons I'm proud to be a conservative is that most conservatives understand that something imperfect doesn't equal something evil. I don't want to spend four grand building a fence in my backyard. But I will so my 2-year-old doesn't run out into the street and get killed. So while the fence is an imperfect solution, there is absolutely nothing evil about it, and it's absolutely morally neutral for me to build it. Recently a friend of mine said the Obamacare plan is "evil". I don't like to say that because evil implies intent. I think it's wrong and wrongheaded and mainly because any good from it is drastically outweighed by its bad effects. But I resist saying it's evil because it opens a larger and less productive argument.

Michelle Oddis on Obama's Racism

Hard to argue against.

Earlier this week our post-racial president himself embraced race with the sole intent of influencing an election. Obama left out middle aged, white, male voters calling on "young people, African Americans, Latinos and women," to vote for Democrats in November.

"Post-racial" my butt!

Read the rest.

MCJ on Liberal Theocracy

Mr. Johnson comments on this mess.

What’s wrong with this?

In God’s eyes, there is no documented or undocumented, there is no legal or illegal, there are only his children. For evidence, look to the Torah, which mentions the importance of welcoming the foreigner in our midst more than 15 times.

Our inability to welcome the foreigner is creating division among us as brothers and sisters – among God’s children. As a result, people are hopeless, and there is injustice in our land – injustice that in our fear and ignorance we allow to happen.

I believe that God calls us to love all in the face of the fear and the injustice. We are people of faith, and we are called to sing the Lord’s song, and it is a song of hope. I am mindful of this call as our government engages in the debate on the future of immigration reform, which will affect an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. Take out the references to illegal immigrants and rewrite this thing to condemn abortion or homosexual marriage and you will be accused of inserting the Christian religion where it has no business. Imposing your morality, establishing a religion, call it what you will. And Uncle Sam don’t roll like that.

We are told over and over that the United States is not a Christian nation and never was. Fine. That being the case, either keep your reading of Christian principles out of public policy debates or keep your mouth shut when other people cite their reading of Christian principles in support of initiatives you oppose.

And that's why we like Mr. Johnson over here at Est Quod Est.

Why is he still Episcopal? Not that he'd get away from that kind of goofy thinking on immigration policy if he became a Papist. But we are Pro-life at least.

Eric Cantor argues that the GOP has reformed itself

Eric Cantor responds to the DCCC calls to step in line behind the Boss. Excerpt:

Perhaps the GOP of 2005 would have taken the bait and swallowed the administration’s bad medicine. After all, Republicans during that period were guilty of spending too much and growing government too much, both of which would become hallmarks of the February 2009 stimulus plan and the loaded agenda that would follow. That GOP became a bloated, go-along to get-along body that forgot how to lead. We blew it, and we were rightfully fired by our bosses – the American people.

After this admission of guilt, he goes on with the evidence for a "not so fast" argument. It's a good read; Cantor is a great communicator and hopefully will be a great future leader. And of course, we hope he's right about the party.

Is Bin Laden in Iran?

I don't know how much truth is in this article or the film it mentions, Feathered Cocaine, but it certainly is a fascinating read. It has that dark, otherworldly feel to it, and rightly so.

I make me laugh, part 3

Here's an old comment o' mine to go along with my continuing series on the dangers of "Living Out Loud":

I just got back from a trip to Pennsylvania and read that Hitting the Wall post. My first thought? A fat lot of good the HIPAA privacy laws do if your spouse blogs about your health conditions.

At some point this living out loud on blogs has got to stop. People who do it are going to regret it someday. My dad and I were just talking about how no one even knew FDR had polio. Now we've swung to the other extreme and we know every detail about some obscure blogger's life, if they are on sleeping pills, if they have diabetes, etc. merely because the blogger thinks everyone needs to know it.

I advise everyone to use email for personal things. If you want me to pray for you, I will, but send me a private email.

Don't blog your personal life! If you do, don't wonder why everyone is laughing at you. If you feel the need to tell the world how many hours you worked last week or the consistency of your last bowel movement, methinks you have a worse problem than constipation or diarrhea.

How many times can I post "I make me laugh" entries? How high can I count? My 6-year-old can count to one hundred, so he informed me yesterday and subsequently demonstrated. So if I get stuck I'll ask him.

A good question for so-called "moderate" Muslims

Pam Meister asks a good question in her article about "Draw Mohammad Day":

Where are those Muslims who are not part of the violent threats? Are they condemning those making them? If so, we should commend them. If not, we should ask why they are silent.

There is no voice of moderation in the Muslim community. No voice. If there are moderate Muslims they are scared and silent.

Sign up for ACT! for America's Free Email Newsletter

Everybody go here and sign up to receive ACT! for America's free newsletter. It will be a good first step.

This stuff is the final straw, for me.

Someone asked me recently if I had ever thought of starting a local chapter of the Chesterton Society in Northeast Ohio. I hadn't; now reflecting on it I know my reason―it's too late. Soon we will not be able to read The Flying Inn, then the rest of his titles will go on the bonfire lit for material that is not culturally sensitive enough, unless it is written by Muslims calling for the killing of Jews and infidels. Because that's what a lot of them seem to be all about―killing people.

It will be because we did not stop Islamic extremists before they threatened us, killed us, intimidated us, bullied us―basically did to us all the things that every other religion teaches against. And we gave them a freaking invitation to do it. And we were sitting around arguing about how to split the latest intellectual hair. Or we were listening to Bill Clinton scare us about the Tea Party movement, as I mentioned earlier.

So now I'm thinking of starting a local chapter of ACT! for America. I'll let someone else with more optimism start the intellectual stuff. It's time for action. It's time we start looking at what is going on around us, how these people just get their way like they are "Protected from on high by the Prince of Darkness himself," to borrow a line from Usual Suspects, and band together to fight back. Comedy Central, you are the real "Islamaphobes" because you are scared of these scumbags.

Living out Loud: Just Say NO

Here's a cautionary tale which could act as a companion piece for my earlier post about Social Media Addiction. It might also go with something which I posted a long time ago.

By the way, don't forget to vote in the new poll if you have any thoughts regarding this.

Erick Stakelbeck: "Kiddie Jihad"

If you are scandalized by Catholic church child abuse scandals, here's a little something to help you shy away from becoming a Muslim.

Strategies in the global war against Islamic terrorism are taking very different roads in 2010. The Obama administration hopes downplaying Islamic extremism may help when dealing with Muslim countries.

Terror groups, however, are taking extremism to new levels by indoctrinating Muslim children in the deadly art of suicide bombing.

"The state-sponsored illegal recruitment and education of innocent Muslim children to become suicide bombers and child soldiers is occurring throughout the Muslim and non-Muslim world," said Brooke Goldstein, founder and director of The Children's Rights Institute, an organization focusing on human rights violatios against children.

"In Pakistan, thousands of children are being educated in madrassahs," she said. "In Iraq, handicapped children are being blown up at polling stations. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is paying up to $12,000 per child, donated to them by their own families.”

Taliban leaders run training centers where boys as young as 11 years of age learn to be suicide bombers. Some are even younger.
A 6-year-old Afghan boy recruited in 2007 was told that his suicide belt would "explode into flowers."

Cute. Maybe the Muslims are worried that Heaven will run out of virgins if the martyrs are all postpubescent males.

The article ends with a glorious punchline: "In the meantime, she says international human rights groups like Amnesty International have shown little interest in the issue." That is because AI equals politics plus fundraising.

"I'm your snarly myrmidon."

Oengus Moonbones gives us the inside scoop about the meeting between death and the President of the United States. Boomers beware!

More Apocalyptic Standup from The Master

I was just remarking to a good friend that I tend to only read articles if I expect they will be funny, either intentionally or unwittingly. So naturally my brain's diet includes a hearty dose of Mark Steyn, like his most recent piece on those scary Tea Party folks. Excerpt:

Will it work? For a long time, tea partiers were racists. Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending,” that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.” Frank Rich of the New York Times attempted to diversify the tea-party racism into homophobia by arguing that Obamacare’s opponents were uncomfortable with Barney Frank’s sexuality. I yield to no one in my discomfort with Barney Frank’s sexuality, but, with the best will in the world, I find it hard to blame it for more than the first 4 or 5 trillion dollars of federal overspending. Eschewing such cheap slurs, Time’s Joe Klein said opposition to Obama was “seditious,” because nothing says sedition like citing the U.S. Constitution and quoting Thomas Jefferson. Unfortunately for Klein, thanks to “educator” William Ayers’s education reforms, nobody knows what “seditious” means anymore.

But then it gets even better.

Meanwhile, Comedy Central — you know, the “hip,” “edgy” network with Jon Stewart, from whom “young” Americans under 53 supposedly get most of their news — just caved in to death threats. From a hateful 83-year-old widow who doesn’t like Obamacare? Why, no! It was a chap called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, who put up a video on the Internet explaining why a South Park episode with a rather tame Mohammed joke was likely to lead to the deaths of the show’s creators. Just to underline the point, he showed some pictures of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director brutally murdered by (oh, my, talk about unfortunate coincidences) a fellow called Mohammed. Mr. al Amrikee helpfully explained that his video incitement of the murder of Matt Stone and Trey Parker wasn’t really “a threat but just the likely outcome.” All he was doing, he added, was “raising awareness” — you know, like folks do on Earth Day. On Earth Day, lame politicians dig a hole and stick a tree in it. But aggrieved Muslims dig a hole and stick a couple of comedy writers in it. Celebrate diversity!

Of course the conclusion is more serious than funny, viz., the media pretends Tea Partiers are a threat and won't say a thing bad about Muslims, of whom they are rightly scared to death.

The Blago Circus Sounds Like Fun

John Kass on Rod Blagojevich sending a message to President Obama. This may look like a circus to Kass, but I think Blago is playing a little bit of chess here. Excerpt:

[F]rom the moment of Blagojevich's arrest in December 2008, White House spinners loudly portrayed our former Gov. Dead Meat as some drooling, raving lunatic.

A lunatic is not to be believed, and Dead Meat will continue to be characterized as such by Obama defenders. But raving lunatics care little for their own survival. And in an amazing defense motion filed Thursday, Blagojevich proved once again that he is quite sane.

He wants Obama to testify in his federal criminal case. The feds allege that Blagojevich conspired to sell off Obama's old U.S. Senate seat, among other charges.

Obama's former patron and real estate fairy, the convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko, is a key player in the government's case. Blagojevich's aim is to undercut what Rezko has told investigators.

And now Blago wants the president to do the undercutting from the witness stand, with the nation riveted to his every recollection of his days in Chicago politics, hanging with Tony and the guys, with the midterm November elections approaching.

Ouch!

"President Obama has pertinent information as to the character of Mr. Rezko," the Blagojevich filing states. "President Obama can testify to Mr. Rezko's reputation for truthfulness, as well as his own opinion of Mr. Rezko's character. Based on the relationship that President Obama and Mr. Rezko had, President Obama can provide important information as to Mr. Rezko's plan, intent, opportunity, habit and modus operandi."

Those wiley lawyer-ers! Grab me some popcorn and save me a seat. This should be televised; they could get Monica Lewinsky to do interviews or something.