One more reason why I, a conservative, hate even conservative politics.

Even the "grassroots" movements are gross.

The Tea Party Federation (whatever that is) just expelled this guy from their ranks for his "coloreds write to Abe" letter, but that he was recognized in their ranks as a leading spokesman to begin with is just nutty. He's been saying off-the-reservation things for a while.

Here's something he wrote about Vermonters back when some town in Vermont wanted to issue arrest warrants for Bush and Cheney (itself a nutty move):


(I wonder if I can get "Retard CHUD from the Backwoods of New England" on a bumper sticker.)

More and more and more and more proof that in politics, the one with the loudest voice and pot-stirringest ideas rises to the top. Oh, and the most money.
I hate it.

A Texas pipeline tycoon who died two months ago may become the first American billionaire allowed to pass his fortune to his children and grandchildren tax-free.

Dan L. Duncan, a soft-spoken farm boy who started with $10,000 and two propane trucks, and built a network of natural gas processing plants and pipelines that made him the richest person in Houston, died in late March of a brain hemorrhage at 77.

Had his life ended three months earlier, Mr. Duncan’s riches — Forbes magazine estimated his worth at $9 billion, ranking him as the 74th wealthiest in the world — would have been subject to a federal tax of at least 45 percent. If he had lived past Jan. 1, 2011, the rate would be even higher — 55 percent.

Instead, because Congress allowed the tax to lapse for one year and gave all estates a free pass in 2010, Mr. Duncan’s four children and four grandchildren stand to collect billions that in any other year would have gone to the Treasury.

The bonanza in tax savings for Mr. Duncan’s descendants is sure to be unsettling to those who have paid estate taxes on more modest wealth — until Jan. 1 of this year, it applied to any estate valued at more than $3.5 million, taxing only the money exceeding that threshold, or $7 million for a couple’s estate.

The one-year lapse in the estate tax was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001, an accounting quirk in his package of tax cuts. Although Democrats pledged to close that gap and reinstate a tax for 2010 when they took control of Congress, they failed to reach an agreement last December.

The Treasury collected more than $25 billion in estate taxes in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available.

OK, so there it is. Super rich guy dies, and due to a loophole, his estate won't pay taxes this year. First time that's ever happened. Now what's your reaction?

A. Hmmmm. That's interesting.Can't believe the Democrats let that one slip by.
B. That's great! Good for his heirs! After all a loophole is just a right they haven't taken from you yet.
C. That's outrageous! That money could have fed the poor or paid for healthcare, and instead this fatcat's money is being passed on to his kids perpetuating American Aristocracy that stay rich and won't let anyone else have a piece of the pie.

Does answer C surprise you? Read on dear friend...

Advocates of the tax say it is unconscionable that Congressional leaders have allowed the richest Americans to reap a new tax break at a time when deficits are soaring and the income gap between wealthy and poor citizens remains near historic levels.

“The ultrawealthy in this country will still be able to pass on enormous wealth to the next generation,” said Chuck Collins, who studies income inequality and has worked with billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to promote an estate tax. Mr. Collins argues that the tax is a “recycling program for economic opportunity.”

What?!?!?! A recycling program for economic opportunity? Seriously? What is Mr. Collins thinking? That as long as a wealthy person is hoarding money, poor people don't have access to that same money, so when the gazillionaire dies, estate tax is the way that the hoi polloi have a shot at it?

You've got to be kidding me. It's like the image that people who think like that has is like a desert island, where there is a limited supply of food. And one guy has 90% of it, and the rest of us have 10%. And so when he dies, it would be wrong for his son to get all that food. It should be redistributed to the rest of us. (After the jump at the bottom you can read how stingy Mr. Duncan was with his wealth.)

Except that's not how money, the economy or how opportunity works. Because someone else has a lot, does not mean you automatically can't. It's as though Collins thinks that Mr. Duncan had all of his money buried in the back yard somewhere, and now that he's dead, we all want a shot at it.

They are acting like the dwarves, elves and men fighting over the gold stash after Smaug dies in the end of "The Hobbit". Everybody wants what they think is their rightful share of the gold now that the dragon who was hoarding it is dead.

But that's not how money works. Other than pile it under the mountain with a dragon guarding it, or put it in the vaults at Gringott's Goblin Bank, wealthy people can only do one of three things with the their money:

A. Spend it.
B. Invest it.
C. Give it away.

That's it. There are no other choices.

Both of which helps the economy and spreads the wealth around. Why can't people understand that?
Read the rest of this entry . . .

And some liberals might actually be figuring that out, and of course, some just want more regulation.

The liberals' fury at the President is almost as astounding as their outrage over the discovery that oil companies and their regulators might have grown too cozy. In economic literature, this behavior is known as "regulatory capture," and the current political irony is that this is a long-time conservative critique of the regulatory state.

The Nobel economist George Stigler of the University of Chicago was one of the concept's main developers, and it is a seminal plank of the "public choice" school of economics for which James Buchanan won the economics Nobel in 1986. Ronald Reagan warned about this in different words in one of his farewell speeches.

In the better economic textbooks, regulatory capture is described as a "government failure," as opposed to a market failure. It refers to the fact that individuals or companies with the highest interest or stake in a policy outcome will be able to focus their energies on politicians and bureaucracies to get the outcome they prefer.

Perhaps if liberals read more conservative economists, they might understand that this is a common consequence of the regulatory state that they have so diligently constructed over the decades. It is also a main reason that many of us are skeptical of the regulatory solutions routinely offered in response to every accident or business failure.

We should add that so far, based on the available evidence, we don't know if this spill really was a regulatory failure. But no matter, the same liberals who made oil drilling one of the most regulated activities on Earth are now busy deploring the energy bureaucracy and rearranging it so that (they promise) this will never happen again. Sound at all like the financial panic and the new re-regulatory remedy?

How remarkable it is to see a President who has put such exorbitant faith in the power of government being excoriated by his allies for a government failure. It's almost as astonishing as seeing Carol Browner, the White House green czar and long-time scourge of fossil fuels, being interrogated on NBC for excessive deference to Big Oil. Sometimes life really is fair.

What is "Regulatory Capture"? I'm glad you asked!

Regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called Captured Agencies.

For public choice theorists, regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. Regulatory capture refers to when this imbalance of focused resources devoted to a particular policy outcome is successful at "capturing" influence with the staff or commission members of the regulatory agency, so that the preferred policy outcomes of the special interest are implemented.

Regulatory capture theory is a core focus of the branch of public choice referred to as the economics of regulation; economists in this specialty are critical of conceptualizations of governmental regulatory intervention as being motivated to protect public good.

The risk of regulatory capture suggests that regulatory agencies should be protected from outside influence as much as possible, or else not created at all. A captured regulatory agency that serves the interests of its invested patrons with the power of the government behind it is often worse than no regulation whatsoever.

I apologize for the political tone of this post and the last one, but I believe Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt has made a great point here.

First, for background: Harrison Schmitt was the second to last man to leave the surface of the moon, and the first true scientist among the lunar-landing astronauts (he was a geologist by training, rather than a test pilot).

Here's an excerpt:

The response after an oxygen tank explosion in the Apollo 13 spacecraft on its way to the Moon illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled. It stands in sharp contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Solve the problem first; then investigate objectively; apply the lessons; and then, if absolutely necessary, worry about responsibility.

Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by NASA and its mission control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

Gene Kranz and his Apollo 13 flight controllers and engineers worked on the assumption that “failure was not an option.” In contrast, President Obama and those claiming to have been on top of the Gulf oil spill situation “from day one” assumed that failure is an option and, indeed, may want BP to fail for their own ideological reasons. Whatever their motives, the president and his cabinet officers, without any experience in real-world management of anything major, much less a crisis, have no idea how to deal with a situation as technically complex as the Gulf oil spill.

It has been left to BP engineers and managers and to Gulf state officials to respond as best they can in a regulatory environment that is politically charged, incompetent, fearful, and hesitant. Rather than allowing BP to stay focused only on solving the problems of the spill, Attorney General Holder now has launched a civil and criminal investigation!

I think he has a great point (though I don't think I agree with his charge that some in the current administration "may want BP to fail for their own ideological reasons"). I've read everything I can get my hands on about NASA history, and in particular the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. On this point Schmitt is exactly right: NASA endured two huge disasters during the Apollo project. The first was the terrible fire on Apollo 1 that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The second was the "successful failure" of Apollo 13 in which, thankfully, Lovell, Haise and Swigert returned to earth in one piece. In both instances, job #1 was to fix the problem. It really frustrates me that, in the midst of a huge environmental and human tragedy such as the out of control BP gusher, the Government is already diverting attention and resources by spouting threats.

I hate politics. Fix the problem. Then, once it's fixed, feel free to roll heads.

Via Abraham Piper I learned about Tea Party Jesus [language warning] this morning.

A sample:



The site purports to put words from Christians in the mouth of Christ, but I am not sure if these are all truly words from Christians or words merely from conservative politicians and pundits.

Abraham writes:

Could what you say be reprinted in a speech bubble on Jesus art without seeming ironic?

UPDATE: Since posting this, Tea Party Jesus has added at the top of the front page of their site a new "cartoon" with heavy profanity. It's a quote from some conservative politician, sure, but this is your warning that the language is graphic. And it's placed in a dialogue bubble coming out of an image of Jesus. This image was not there when I posted. Stealing the idea from Abraham, I have changed the TPJ link to an archived page with "tamer" examples. Sorry for any offense caused.

A (perhaps oversimplified) definition of postmodernism is this: "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe it sincerely."

Other Presidents have had to mouth these kinds of words acknowledging the value in other religions. But I don't recall any president being so religiously pluralistic in action.

President Obama hosted an Easter breakfast at the White House.

gathering Christian leaders from churches across the country to celebrate the holiday with him.

Speaking briefly to the group assembled in the East Room, Obama discussed his own search for meaning in the holiday and said he is particularly moved by the example of redemption that Christ's story offers.

"As I'm continually learning, we are each of us imperfect. Each of us errs by accident or design," he said.

Obama noted the last words spoken by Christ on the cross: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

He said those words could just as easily be spoken by the group at the breakfast.

"On this day, let us commit our spirit to pursuit of a life that is true, to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord," Obama said. "When we falter, as we will, let redemption through commitment, through perseverance, through faith be our abiding hope and fervent prayer."

The breakfast was the third religious celebration that Obama has hosted this year at the White House. Last week, he held a Passover seder at the White House. And during Ramadan, Obama held an iftar dinner to break the Muslim fast.

As I read about how he spoke of Easter above, I can imagine him speaking the same sort of "all religions can find value in all other religions" language when he hosted the Jewish and Muslim ceremonies.

And could he have misused Christ's words any more? Is committing ourselves to Micah 6:6-8 really what Jesus meant when he asked God to receive his spirit?

"Redemption through commitment"? If that ain't the Hollywood definition of redemption, I don't know what is. (Except maybe punishing yourself real bad.)

It's like he just strung a bunch of religious words together.

Oh, and what is "each of us errs by accident or design" supposed to mean?

Whose design is he talking about? God's design that we err? Or our own design? And if he's talking about our own design, how do you err by accident, if he's talking about sin, which I assume he is, but is he?

Through hosting these religious ceremonies, he seems to be making an effort to "unify in spirit" major religions. He's also done Diwali.

Mr Obama became the first US president to personally take part in a White House ceremony for the festival of lights, lighting a diya (oil lamp) inside the executive mansion and bowing respectfully before a Hindu priest.

I wonder what religion is next?

Did any other president's host religious ceremonies for other religions?

Is his hosting major holidays for different religions by accident or design?

What do you think?

I think he might be the first postmodern president.

This pretty much sums up my entire political philosophy (regardless of political parties and specific issues. Less hubris and more truth in Governance, please):

"We did not fully envision the challenges that we would encounter" says Herbert Allison, assistant treasury secretary, explaining to Congress why the Obama administration's lavishly-funded mortgage-modification program has gone nowhere. I salute him for his honesty and propose that "We Did Not Fully Envision the Challenges That We Would Encounter" should be engraved on every marble ediface in Washington, D.C. Translate it into Latin and put it on our depreciating greenbacks.

We are now in the ending "end-game" of the year-long healthcare debate and legislative brou-ha-ha. I think this time we really are getting near the end.

So, it's prediction time. Do you think that house will vote on the Senate version of healthcare reform this week? If so, will it pass? Finally do you think this will be a good or a bad thing?

Leave your predictions and opinions in the comments.

The general buzz is that passing this healthcare overhaul will be politically disastrous. It is the worst career moves they could make.

But they're still plowing ahead, either oblivious or bullheaded.

And while I think it's bad policy, and while I don't share their politics in general anyway, I kinda have to admire them for sticking to what they think is the right thing to do, consequences be danged.

I wish more politicians, including the ones actually doing the right thing, had that kind of stubbornness of conscience.

I know this event is old news now, but something happened there that deserved some reporting, I think...Did anyone else hear anything about this? In his hour-long discussion with Republicans Obama said:

The last thing I will say, though -- let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we've presented -- and there's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics (owned by Time Magazine) said:

If we take this statement at face value, President Obama is admitting the the health care bills passed by either the House or Senate (or both) contained provisions which were "snuck in" - presumably by Democratic members and perhaps on behalf of certain lobbyists - that would have in fact prevented people from keeping their current insurance and/or choosing the doctor they want.

This was one of the core debates on health care throughout last year: Would President Obama and the Democrats' legislation allow government to come between citizens and their choice of doctors and insurers? Obama promised it wouldn't. Republicans said it would, and this was one of the aspects of the legislation that led them to characterize it as a government takeover of health care - the same characterization that Obama chastized the GOP for today.

So it's a bit of shock to find out now - from the President himself, no less - that one or both of the bills that passed Congress late last year (the House passed its version in late November, the Senate on Christmas Eve Day) contained language that would have violated this pledge.

What do you think? Bevan's post title was "Obama's Stunning Admission", I took out the middle word for my post title because I really wasn't all that shocked...well, maybe I was surprised he admitted it. :-)

This is just an inquisitive observation, but I wonder if we haven't traded a listener for a talker between our last and current presidents.

All politics aside, with no reference to who's "right" or "wrong" or what-have-you, I think George W. Bush was never better than when he was on the ground in Mississippi, Louisiana, Ground Zero in New York, listening and hugging and consoling. Genuinely. The guy was a real people person. But he was never worse than when he had to speak, especially when he had to speak extemporaneously. He just sounded too often like a dum-dum. (Which is not the same thing as being a dum-dum.)

On the other hand, President Obama is a fine and dandy speech giver (usually; I think he's somewhat overrated), never better than when he's talking, which he does a lot. But he is, in my estimation, practically tone deaf to the American people. He might care a great deal about us average schmucks, but he doesn't seem like he does (which, again, is not the same thing as not caring).

Did we trade a listener for a talker?

I thought this post by Mike Potemra on Scott Brown (Senator-elect from Massachusetts) was pretty interesting.

Brown is a member of a church affiliated with the Calvinist-rooted Christian Reformed Church in North America. If you go on the website of his congregation, New England Chapel in Franklin, Mass., you will read the following testimony from an attendee: “I have found a home, a family, friends, and most importantly, begun the journey to a REAL relationship with God. It is not one based on guilt or fear, but rather love, hope, and mercy.” The rest of the website has a similar tone. This is clearly not the Calvinism that lives on today chiefly in anti-Calvinist apologetics: the Calvinism of Salem and Hawthorne, that continues to haunt America’s dreams with a God who is best understood as a cruel despot. This new Calvinism is a development of the post-Great Awakening era, a religion that’s not afraid of sentimentality — yet it remains recognizably Calvinism, in its stress on the Bible and on the sovereignty of God.

And then one reads that Mr. Brown helped raise $5.5 million for the Cistercian nuns of Wrentham, who pray for him daily. (Brown himself is quoted: “When you have nuns praying for you three times a day and you’re not Catholic, anything that anybody can do or say about me, it’s Teflon. . . . It bounces right off.”) A couple of years ago, I happened to be in the Wrentham area shortly after having read about this abbey in a book by Thomas Merton, so I dropped by — and I can tell you that Mt. St. Mary’s is a genuine survival of faithful Catholicism, in a time and place generally considered less than hospitable to its values. A beautiful place and one that I long to visit again.

This is the America Scott Brown is from, a place where Calvinists are cheerful and conservative Cistercians pray for their Protestant benefactor. Some on the Internet are upset because Senator Brown is pro-choice, but most are wise enough to realize that he is a friend to life in many ways that will actually count over the next couple of years. Brown, like the rest of us, is what religious folk like to call a “work in progress” . . .

Let me lay my cards on the table:

1) If you put overturning Roe v. Wade to a popular vote, I'm in line early ready to vote in favor of protecting the near half a million unborn babies killed each year, and if you're a politician, the best way to lose my vote is to align with the pro-choice agenda.
2) Nevertheless, I don't believe laws -- or the protests and petitions and politicking that seek to achieve them -- are how we are going to eradicate abortion.

The emancipation of the slaves was necessary. But it didn't end racism.

I am not proposing an either/or. What I'm proposing is that evangelicals take the harder route, adopt the harder cause, that we aim for Spiritual change of hearts more than we aim for legal stay of hands.

Here are some thoughts on how we may do this:

1. Gospel-centered preaching. You knew I was going to go there. :-) Here's the thing: Pastors who preach culture war receive Amens from the already convinced and almost nothing from everybody else. At its worst a steady dose of this creates an unhealthy "us vs. them" mentality that has us thinking of our enemies in ways the Sermon on the Mount strictly forbids. But pastors who proclaim the freedom from sin and abundant life in Christ lay groundwork for zeal for life, not just for winning political battles. A gospel-driven pro-life agenda means hating abortion because we love women and we love the unborn. That sounds like a no-brainer but so many of our evangelical countrymen just sound like they hate abortion. And preaching isn't just for pastors. In general, more evangelicals need to talk Jesus more than they talk politics, or else we unintentionally communicate that our greatest treasure is "getting our country back" and that our chief message is political. We are great with the good news of the kingdom of the founding fathers. Let's return to the good news of the kingdom of God.

2. Reframing the abortion discussion. Lots of others have said this better than I can, but I think we've dropped the ball on how we frame the abortion issue. It is a matter of human rights, which is a perspective I first heard from my deeply pro-life friend who voted for Barack Obama. (I know, figure that one out.) But this is how we will best win in the political arena, I think. In many cases, this involves merely shifting from arguing against selfish moms (or whatever) and arguing for an appropriate definition of when life begins and becoming advocates for the voiceless unborn, exploited and commoditized. We can steer the discussion into the same rhetoric of the abolitionist and civil rights movements and end up stirring more hearts, I think.

3. Creating cultures of adoption and rescue. Human trafficking is the emerging danger. It's been going for a long time, but the Church is recently (and awesomely) stepping up efforts to combat it, even here in America. My friend Justin Holcomb and his wife lead efforts of Mars Hill Church in Seattle to rescue sex workers, sex abuse victims, and runaways in their city. Others are working hard to rescue young girls from the sex trade. On the other front, the Church is exponentially embracing the beauty of adoption. It has become a bona fide movement, thank God. The reactive culture of rhetoric and protests must give way to these proactive missionary movements. We will begin changing hearts and minds on these matters of life and death as we create cultures of adoption and rescue. But only communities can create cultures, so churches have to buy in corporately. More families adopting, more families serving and taking in pregnant teens, more churches helping families do those things, more churches loving families and kids, more churches finding ways to minister to the exploited and marginalized and to support missions and organizations that already are . . . these are the pro-active, missional steps to creating truly pro-life cultures.

4. Prophets, not pundits. I don't know how else to put this. We need an MLK for the pro-life movement, a unifying and prophetic voice. We need intellectually strong but charming, powerful, winsome statesmen. We need people who aren't just jockeying for time on FoxNews. I don't even know if this is possible today, given the nature of media exposure and the divide between political parties -- whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans marched with King; I wonder if we haven't so aligned the pro-life cause with conservative Republicanism that that kind of unity would be impossible for our cause -- but we need a peacemaker with a powerful voice. The only guy I can think of who has access to black, white, right, left, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, Christian and non, U.S., European, and everywhere else -- and has the respect and listening ear of them all -- is Bono. And I think he's probably pro-choice.

5. Technology, technology, technology. Do you know why the abortion rate is going down? I think it's the increasing advances in technology, particularly ultrasound technology. Women are seeing their babies. Technology is catching up with abortion. Smart churches will support their local crisis pregnancy centers, which are often frontlines on the struggle for the unborn, and help them get ultrasound equipment. No, they're not cheap. But life isn't either.

6. Love. I'm coming full circle, here, but if we were to outlaw abortion tomorrow, we'd still have 500,000 women a year who didn't want their babies. You have probably already had unwed teenage girls get pregnant in your church, and if you haven't you probably will at some point, and besides all that, there are plenty in your community and city. Before and in addition to removing abortion as a legal option for them, we have to love them, welcome them, teach them, serve them. Only the love of God can change hearts. Let that be the ammunition of our war.

(Cross-posted at Gospel-Driven Church)

This MLK day please take some time to pray for LIFE!



Prayer makes a difference.

Pat Robertson says the earthquake in Haiti is just one more link on a chain begun when Haiti signed a pact with the devil to be free of the French. And he didn't mean "the devil" figuratively. He meant they literally signed a pact with Satan himself.
Not only is this untrue, it's silly.

But most of us have tuned Robertson out and did so long ago.

But I bet we still have plenty of Rush Limbaugh listeners. I don't mean to knock political radio or talk shows or what-have-you. But I do mean to knock Rush Limbaugh.

On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama's hands by allowing him to play up his "compassionate" and "humanitarian" credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to "boost his credibility with the black community."

As if that weren't enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we've done enough already for Haiti: "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

In terms of our attention, can we throw this guy under the bus yet?

It looks like the Senate is very close to passing a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.

Before I launch into this post, a few caveats: I know that salvation does not come through politics or human government, and neither does eternal destruction. I know that, whatever your stance on this issue, as a country we'll probably be OK. I'm not riled up or anything. But I am concerned.

So, what do you think? I am not a supporter of this (at all), mainly because I don't believe (and history is on my side here) our representatives' rosy scenarios and promises regarding the financial and societal impact of the laws they pass, especially laws that are this big.

I'm disgusted with the political horsetrading, threats, bribes (can we call them anything else?) that the leadership in the house and the senate have engaged in to bring along reluctant votes. I understand that compromise has to happen, and there's give and take in politics, but blatant pork-lading (bribes, again) should have no place in our process. I'm not so naive to think these things don't happen. I just wonder why we put up with them.

I also think the Democrats are just out to pass . . . anything, no matter how bad. Because once this is passed, it will never be repealed and can be tweaked and shaped at will.

I also think debt is really, really irresponsible. And our country is swimming in it. This will add lots more.

So, what do you think? Are you excited/hopeful about this coming legislation? Concerned? Those of you who voted for the Democratic party in the last election, are you happy with how things are turning out? Are we heading in a better direction now? Are ther better alternatives? These are not loaded questions . . . I really am interested.

Thoughts in the comments, please.

I am currently getting my first exposure to Glenn Beck.

He reminds me of the guy in classes at high school that we all didn't necessarily disagree with but we rolled our eyes when he started talking anyway. I think the word insufferable comes to mind.

I sort of want to punch him. (In the love of Jesus, of course.)

He's apparently about to tell us where god is. (Lower-case because his god used to be a man, and my God -- the real one -- did not.)

Update:
He's now talking about putting God back into whatever, and is saying that God told the Israelites if they'd only follow the Ten Commandments, they'd be free.

This is not only wrong, it leads to damnation.

But I'm willing to bet, that as he's appealing to the concerns about the Ten Commandments being taken out of national monuments, etc., that a lot of his evangelical viewers agree with him.

I'm not sure where on the spectrum most of our (small) readership finds itself. This post is a rare political one and I'd like to make clear up front that I don't speak for all the Thinklings, only for myself. I also don't believe that salvation will ever happen through politics. Neither do I believe that one political party is perfect while the other one is evil, and I'm not heartless: I understand that living without health insurance is not a good thing and it's not my goal to deprive others of insurance.

With those caveats out of the way, a short back-story: I started my professional career working for a governmental agency. After four years of demoralizing (but easy!) work and an eye-opening baptism into the inefficiency, unexcellence and non-productivity of government-work, I got a job at a private company. The difference couldn't have been more stark. Things in the new company I worked at actually . . . worked (and I had to work hard to do my part). This experience has shaped many of my attitudes, rightly or wrongly.

In other words, my tourettes starts acting up anytime I'm assured that the Government can take on a large, complicated public service and that they will keep costs and debt under control while doing so. I don't hate the government. I just wish it would stick to what it does well, as enumerated in the Constitution. I don't distrust the government. I just don't think that it's very good at taking on large projects such as health-care. But I'd be willing to give it a shot if, like a business, failure to perform meant the ending of the activity. But that's not how government works.

As he often does, Mark Steyn is astute in his assessment of the 220 to 215 vote passage of a 1900+ page health care bill in the House of Representatives last night:

I don't like to say I told you so, but I've been saying for months now that the trick is to drag this thing across the finish line with 50.0000000000001 percent of the vote as soon as possible. From my "Happy Warrior" column in NR back in July:

Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.

Right now, they can trade anything — abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush's show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he'd have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized "health care" puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.

Will the Senate stop it? And, if they don't, will a post-2010 GOP Congress reverse it? The way they reversed, say, the federal Department of Education?

Yesterday was a tragedy for America.

Jon Stewart parodies Glenn Beck.



HT: BHT

It ought to be well-known that one of the reasons that the Pilgrims came to this country was for religious freedom. After much persecution, they came to this country to worship according to their conscience and interpretation of Scripture.

What is not well-known however is that those first colonies sought freedom for themselves only. They instituted their own “state churches”. Residents of those colonies were required to practice the Puritan version of Christianity.
Even in this country there was not true religious freedom. One of the primary victims of this were the Baptists. Baptists in England in 1614 had declared, "The magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, this or that form of religion, or doctrine; but to leave Christian religion free, to every man's conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions."

Meanwhile a boy named Roger Williams grew up near the plaza where Puritans, who were seeking to reform the Church of England were burned, pilloried, mutilated, whipped and imprisoned. In Europe, some Baptists were drowned for their belief in believer’s baptism by immersion, the method being intentionally ironic.
Roger Williams followed the Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to minister among those who had themselves been persecuted. But when he was called to be a pastor at a church in Salem he discovered that people were not free to worship God as they chose there either. His preaching against this got him in trouble. He also argued that Indians should be paid for their land. This kind of talk made him a heretic and a threat.

Williams preached that “there was never civil state in the world that ever did or ever shall make good work of it, with a civil sword in spiritual matters.” He was labeled a rebel. Williams quoted the teachings of Jesus who said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” and “Give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God’s.” Williams argued that the Government should stay out of religion completely.

Authorities in Boston made a law declaring that everyone must swear an oath affirming the right of the magistrates to rule in religion. Williams was convicted of holding dangerous opinions. When Williams got word that the Governor had ordered that 15 soldiers kidnap Williams and ship him back to England, Williams said goodbye to his wife and newborn child and fled into the wilderness. He found refuge with the Indians.

Along with other persecuted Christians, Williams purchased land from the Indians and named it “Providence.” Those who believed in baptism of believers as opposed to infants were banished by the Massachusetts Government in 1644. The Baptists fled from Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island. There Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in America. People with different beliefs than his also fled there and he protected their right to worship as they chose.

Williams’ colony was an experiment in Religious Liberty. He opposed forcing anyone to comply with Christianity or any form of state religion. He believed that people should profess faith in Christ according to their own conscience and will, not by force.

For More Info - Of course, you can always Google "Roger Williams". I would also encourage you to google "Baptists" and "persecution". You'll find that Baptists endured much persecution in this country. This is part of the reason they were such staunch advocates of the seperation of church and state.

Williams' own words

We have Roger Williams and Baptists to thank for the ideas that led to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom for religion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

There will be more to come...