NOVATOWNHALL

Brokaw: “Do you think that health care is a priveledge, a right or a responsibility?”

McCain: “It’s a responsibility.” Maybe.

Obama: “It’s a right.” 

Really?  It’s in the Constitution?  They call what you want an entitlement, Barry and that is NOT in the Constitution!  When elected officials and others in the government-especially the president-lay their hand on that Bible (in your case Chairman Mao’s Red Book) and swear to “uphold the Constitution”; it does not mean circumvent with entitlements.

I have been alive for most all of the Cold War. A generation exists that has no understanding of what socialism is or does to a populace.  It has infected our system slowly and, like a cancer, continues to fester out of control.  The legislative branch of our government is just about terminal.  The Executive branch is very close and the Judicial branch is teetering.  Time and again it has been proven that once you allow your freedoms to be eliminated, it takes a hard-fought uphill battle and a great length of time to get SOME of them back.  Do you really think the Russians are happy with their lives?  The old USSR is not dead.  Do you really believe that all Germans loved Hitler and what he had done to their country?  Do you people who think that Osama-bama is the next Messiah really believe that he will deliver what he promises?  If so, what do you think that YOU will have to give up and sacrafice?  At what point will you begin to fight back?  When he dictates the car you drive; the school your children go to; the curiculum they are forced to learn and ingest; the type of house and its size; etc.  How about “community service”?  He wants to double the Peace Corps.  What he might really intend is to MANDATE community service, where dictated, for all.

This campaign, in any sense of the imagination, is not a joke.  This philosophy is DANGEROUS to a democracy.  You can say later you made a mistake but you know what they say about hindsight.  Don’t be selfish and don’t be conned.  Think of the U.S. as a whole and tell this guy NO OBAMA!!!

Last Monday when Pelosi got in the well of the house and suffered a bout of political Tourettes Syndrome it may have killed the Bailout Bill that day.   The stock market had fallen over 350pt up to that point, and fell another 350+ after the bill failed.  This was chalked up as proof that the bill was needed.

The bailout bill, from the time of its inception,  ballooned in size from 3 pages to 450+ pages, as all sorts of sweeteners were added.  Another term for sweetener is pork-barrel spending.  This is the spending that is partly to blame for the mess we are in.  The patient is bleeding, please apply leaches.

Here is the punch line.  After the bill passed and each of us is a another $2300 in debt, the stock market dropped 350 pts.  These are people we want to hand the entire medical industry over to?

UPDATE

The Dow just dropped another 500+pts.  Yup those guys in the guv’mint sure know what they’re doin!  How did Reagan put it …

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

I watched it and saw a draw.  McCain missed several opportunities to score on the economic front in the beginning and that is huge.  Obama’s risible “95% of the public will not see a tax increase” is false.  First of all, the bottom 40% of income earners pay no federal income tax.  This is redistribution of wealth pure and simple.  Face it, the people pay the “rich guys‘” taxes anyway.  The extra cost is added to the price of the product, then paid for by the suckers, a.k.a the electorate.

The other shoe is the increase in tax rates on investment income, which will impact everyone who has a 401(k), not just those making over $250k per year.  In case you are wondering, over fifty million Americans have 401(k)’s.  If investment income tax rates are increased, the entire market will be depressed.  Obama makes the classic liberal mistake of treating investment income the same as wages.  Such a tax increase would lead to a decrease in investment in our domestic economy, a flight of foreign investment, and an acceleration of corporate flight overseas.  The end result would be a smaller 401(k) portfolio.

Why McCain did not address this during the debate is a mystery.

Obama spent the next 5-6 foreign policy questions getting a scolded by McCain on his gross naivete, and rightly so.  Nobody expected otherwise, except for the fact that one round of economics in this climate balances five rounds of foreign policy.  The sad thing is that Obama, while pummeled in this arena, did not appear to learn a damned thing.

Here are some polls regarding the outcome of the debate:

At PolitikerWA:

A Survey USA poll conducted after tonight’s presidential debate found that Washingtonians are nearly split on who won. Forty percent said McCain won while 38 percent said Obama.

According to CNN: Obama 51, Mcain 38.  This was reported in paragraph two; in the second to last paragraph of the article, one reads this:

The results may be favoring Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tuned in to the debate. Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents.

Oh well.  One day CNN might finally ‘get it’.  Over at the Drudge Report, on 9/27/08 at 10 a.m., based on a sample size of 272,471 the results are:

McCain 67, Obama31. 

I wonder what the sample percentages (Democrat v. Republican v. Independent) are here.

At the Kansas City Star, George Harris sites the MSNBC, CBS, CNN and Insider Advantage polls are reported.  The MSNBC, CBS and IA polls are shown below, the CNN poll was discussed above.

CBS Insta Poll shows Barack Obama won 39% to John McCain’s 25% with 36% saying the debate was a draw.

Insider Advantage reports those polled Obama won 42% to McCain’s 41% with Undecided 17%

…

The MSNBC on-line (non-scientific) poll showed Obama winning the debate 52% to 33%. (But this is what one would expect from such a poll at MSNBC because of the nature of its viewers.)

A sample size tally and sample breakdown would be helpful here.  The author of the article did not bother to provide insight in this regard, instead Harris was interested in further ripping into McCain.

The FoxNews text message poll taken last night of the debate showed:

McCain won 84 to Obama’s 16. 

This was based on a sample size of 20K+.  Again it was unscientific as it did not check the mix of voters.  The poll taken on the Fox News site shows:

McCain won 51  to Obama’s 49. 

This is a tie. At the site Townhall.com the poll shows:

McCain won 70 to Obama’s 21. 

This site is heavily republican, It does not even provide a sample size.  At the Mercury Newsin silicon valley

Obama won 69 to McCain’s 24. 

based on a sample size of 1644. The disparate result only confirm my suspicion that the pols have become opinions formers, not opinion measurements.  How to undo this sad result is beyond me.  We are a nation of people with many news venues to choose from.  The news is biased depending on where you go, the degree of bias at each venue can be debated.  The end result is we sit in echo chambers of our choosing.

Lehrer allowed the two candidates to mix it and that made it one of the better debates in recent memory.  Both candidates tried to talk over each other, interestingly despite McCain’s reputation for having a temper, it was Obama who appeared more agitated, with McCain taking the role of gad-fly.  Kudos to Lehrer for allowing this meeting to actually become a true debate.  It would serve the county well if others took Lehrer’s example to heart.

The end result was Obama survived, that is all he needed to do.  I am predicting an Obama presidency at this point.  The winds are blowing in his direction, McCain missed a big chance to go after Obama and land a real blow.  I plan to get numb November 4th and stay that way for several years.

Currently when you are 18 you can get married, sign a contract, enlist in the military, have an abortion, go sky diving, and donate your body to science.  But you can’t have a beer?  These are all important decisions.  The above list of decisions are certainly life changing and possibly life ending decisions.  Still, you are not capable of handling the impact of having an a drink and still be trusted?

There is a logical disconnect here that any 18 year old, or 12 year old for that matter can see.  One can argue that a human being is either an adult or they are not an adult.  So either they are an adult at 18 or they are an adult at 21.  Which is it?  Or, is it possible that some decisions while adult in nature are easier, and therefore can be granted to minors.  The founding fathers set the voting age at 21. Thy also set the age of participation in the militia at 16.

My respect for the founding fathers is such that if we as a society want to set the age of majority for everything to 21, and no one under 21 could legally  participate in any adult activity that would be fine.  Intellectually lazy, but fine, it would make things simple.

Grandfather those engaged in adult activities such as the military in, but in the future no joining the military until your seniority at 21.  Furthermore, no marriage till 21.  Sound good?  To be consistent no signing contracts, drivers licenses, getting abortions, joining political parties, engaging in political activism or getting a job.  At least none of the above without a signed note from mommy and/or daddy.  Go to school, go play X-box that is all we trust you to do, till 21.

The founding fathers did put in a slidding scale for adult behavior.  One had the maturity to join the military and fight, but one could not vote.  The ‘drinking age‘ as we understand it, probably did not exist.  Certainly minors could purchase liquor.

There are questions regarding maturity with respect to age.  Some mature faster than others.  Is maturity a function of circumstance? If so how big is the impact?  Will delaying the age of majority allow those who lag behind the rest to finally get the chance to grow up?  Or will this policy simply delay the inevitable and instead lead to an extended period of infantile and immature behavior?

The other night, Joe and I were sharing some excellent wine, Smoking Loon, a wonderful Pinot Noir while discussing the sad state of affairs in our country. Looking at the label the term ‘loon’ of course turned my thoughts to the Democrat presidential candidate. Originally, about a year ago, before I got to know him I figured new, well spoken who knows. Now, after Alinsky, Ayers, Wright and a few other pals of his turned up I see that the guy has strange tastes.

I still think this election is Obama’s to lose, but I think the more we get to know him, the more he has to define himself, the less the pablum of buzz words like hope and change will be able to carry him. I have read his Web site, there are no specifics there either. So I realize the more discussion regarding this man the better. Obama is a teleprompter reader extraordinaire: he gives a great speech. I am not at all sure that a senator who worked 5 months in the U.S. Senate before going on to campaign for president is ready. Maybe 2012 or 2016. His short resume is backing him into a corner and he is looking less like something new and more like the standard small minded political hack. He can do better. We need better.

This is an invite to all who have a blog post on Obama to send us a link for quoting here. In return we ask that our Obama-related missives be quoted/linked on the participating blogs. If it is a post about Obama, good or ill, we’ll quote it, provided it is well written and thought out. The purpose here is to increase dialogue and hopefully engender a civil debate. Use the section comment under this post to contact us, or email this blog at jacob@novatownhall.com .

When the government is lazy and dull,
    It’s people are unspoiled;
When the government in efficient and smart,
    It’s people are discontented.
–Lao Tsu

The Economist has a couple of articles about the funk America is in.  One concludes with this paragraph:

Americans have grown accustomed to extraordinary prosperity. Poor Americans today are more likely to have fridges, dishwashers and air-conditioning than average Americans were in 1971. Young voters have no memory of a serious recession, since the last one was in the early 1990s. Some do not even realise that cyclical downturns are normal. Only 18% of Americans think they are worse off than their parents were at the same age. But elections hinge on shorter-term concerns. Four-fifths of Americans say it is harder to maintain a middle-class lifestyle now than it was five years ago. That probably means the election is Mr Obama’s to lose.

Some of the explanation is in the penultimate paragraph:

The depth of gloom varies by age. The baby-boom generation (people aged 43-62) are glummer than the young or the elderly, according to Pew. Some 55% of boomers think it unlikely that their income will keep pace with the cost of living in the next year, compared with 44% of 18-42-year-olds and 43% of those aged 63 or more. Many boomers look after children and crumbling parents simultaneously.

Yes, the babies are crying again.  Boo freaking hoo.  We haven’t even had one quarter of negative growth yet, much less the two consecutive quarters required for a recession.  The article quotes two boomers:

“We were always optimistic when we were young. We thought that every year, things would get better,” says Mrs Brende. But now: “The bubble has burst. I think my generation [will be] the last to see a great America.” Her husband agrees. Standards are falling in schools, he frets. Young people are finding it harder to get ahead. “We’ve all been so greedy for so long and it has caught up with us,” says Mrs Brende. She hopes that Mr Obama may be able to do something about the national malaise, but fears that “It’s too late. The slide is on.”

Asked about their own lives, however, the Brendes are rather more cheerful. “We’re OK, financially,” says Mrs Brende. She is a travel writer; her husband is a doctor. They live half the year in Missouri and half in Mexico. They have 24 grandchildren and another on the way. Life could be a lot worse.

Phil Graham was right — we’ve become a nation of whiners.  When things are bad, people are too busy trying to live to bitch about the government.  When things are good, and they actually are pretty good right now, people are discontented.  When people’s biggest concerns are the Global Warming Myth and Animal Rights, life must be pretty damned good indeed.

Obama energy policy page offers some rhetoric, and no solutions. Empty, fluffy word, pablum read below or go see for yourself.

Well, I don’t believe that climate change is just an issue that’s convenient to bring up during a campaign. I believe it’s one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation. That’s why I’ve fought successfully in the Senate to increase our investment in renewable fuels. That’s why I reached across the aisle to come up with a plan to raise our fuel standards… And I didn’t just give a speech about it in front of some environmental audience in California. I went to Detroit, I stood in front of a group of automakers, and I told them that when I am president, there will be no more excuses — we will help them retool their factories, but they will have to make cars that use less oil.”

Why is global warming a moral challenge? Assuming anthropogenic exists, and the science is still weak, is this not instead a technical challenge? This could be an issue of survival for the species, culture or nation, depending on how deep the impact of the warming. This is not a moral issue. Stealing from you neighbor, killing your neighbor, sleeping with his wife are moral issues. Failing to insulate you house, or sleeping in the road, while dumb, are not moral issues.

Note that Obama’s ’solution’ is to attack the domestic auto manufacturers. This coupled with his plan to increase taxation on investments and to treat them as income will quickly have us remembering the good old days under Jimmy Carter. Furthermore, since when does the constitution empower the government to meddle in factory design. For shining examples of government lead industrial policy see any one of the Soviet Unions five year plans.

Then there are Obama’s disastrous cap and trade ideas as espoused on his website …

Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Obama’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away to coal and oil companies. Some of the revenue generated by auctioning allowances will be used to support the development of clean energy, to invest in energy efficiency improvements, and to address transition costs, including helping American workers affected by this economic transition.

So we are to be limited to creating one fifth of the CO2 we generated in 1990? We are to do this without nuclear power as well. Windmills people, we are tilting toward windmills, except when they are to be built anywhere within 40 miles of Ted Kennedy’s summer home. The economic dislocation wrought by this policy will make the great depression look like an era of prosperity. The energy policy is less about energy than it is about reducing CO2 regardless of the social impact. This is not an energy policy but a hysterical global warming policy. Al Gore would be proud.

Our country is growing, our economy, despite George Bush, will continue to grow as well. There is no science that even remotely suggests that we can meet our future needs and cut that much CO2 production. The science concerning the link between warming and CO2 emission is immature. Most critically the impact to our economy given worst case scenario from the U.N. documentation in this issue will be less destructive than this policy.

This is a policy born from one end of the political spectrum. If Obama is about change, as he alleges ad nauseam, if he is about reaching across the aisle then where are the practical aspects of the policy that take into account: the current need for a greater oil supply; the need for a transitional energy source that will keep the economy going as opposed hand outs for the unemployed; a willingness to investigate the deployment of proven as opposed to hoped for (mythological) energy sources?

Obama’s campaign site contains a laundry list of pie in the sky list of wants. This is not a plan but a long drawn out slogan with partisan anti business, anti-growth overtones. It is demands the current energy providers fund their future competition. Such behavior only happens willingly in totalitarian junta;’s or in the mythology of the environmental left.

The backlash at the New Yorker is typical.  The left wing’s sacred cow has been defiled and the shrieking, designed to silence and instill fear, has commenced in earnest.

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

The countless cartoons depicting George Bush as an ape are not tasteless?  Or Bush Hitler connection?  The MSM did not rise up on its collective hind legs over this tasteless humor.  But the orthodoxy surrounding the tale of the Chicago Messiah must be protected at all costs.  So in this case a stalwart ally is savaged.   That’s OK, the New Yorker will crawl out from under the bus, and soon a cartoon depicting Obama in the correct ‘lite’ will be proffered as penance.

It appears that since the fear campaign known as Political Correctness, or PC has not managed to shut down the pajamahadeen then the boys at Google decided to do it themselves as reported in the NYT ‘BITS’ section.

Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service.

The number of sites was seven, not several, but the gray lady has been suffering from journalistic senility the past 20 years, so I chalk it up as remarkable that the water carriers for the Democrat party reported this at all.  The claim that these sites were not targeted is laughable as this kind of thing requires human action.

Seven blogs run by Democrats who oppose Obama’s nomination for the presidency were incorrectly flagged as spam sites by Blogger, the hosting service Google has owned since 2003. Google says it was an automated response from a spam filter.

But the bloggers believe that Web surfers who support Obama took advantage of a loophole in Blogger’s system that allows readers to report spam blogs, the artificial Web sites that abound on the Internet and are used to promote other sites.

“It appears that [Blogger’s] policy can be manipulated by people determined to shut down the free exchange of ideas,” said Carissa Snedeker, whose blog, BlueLyon, was among those that were frozen.

This is classic.  The left wing, typified by the likes of  is shouting ‘censorship’ when they are called on being the windbags like Rosie O’Donnell. The interesting thing is the ongoing censoring of good news from Iraq and Afganistan.  Nothing to see, move along.

More typical of left wing censorship is on going intellectual pogrom on college campuses.  Hate speech is defined as anything that annoys or offends some left wing loon.  The banning of reading of books that have scary words is another pastime of the left wing campus thought police.

Sampson’s troubles began last year when a co-worker complained after seeing him reading a book titled “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan.”

It appears that study of American history can be more radical than one would imagine.

Sampson, a 58-year-old white janitor and student majoring in communication studies, said he tried to explain that the book was a historical account.

I have an interest in American history,” Sampson said. “I was trying to educate myself

But Sampson says his union official likened the book to bringing pornography to work, and the school’s affirmative action officer in November told Sampson his conduct constituted racial harassment.

You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers,” Lillian Charleston wrote in a letter to Sampson.

I guess its OK to get hysterical over nothing when dealing with a middle age white guy, a.k.a. a redneck.   Harassment of the non-protected class is okey dokey.

If the bloggers who got targeted where Obama supporters the story would have appeared on the NYT’s front page not the BITS section.  If a member of the LBGT community where targeted for reading something, the story would be a lead on the 6 O’clock news.  Because the websites are against the DEMOCRAT presidential candidate and because this guy is some uneducated middle aged white guy (who can’t jump) the media is giving these stories short shrift.  Now, that is not censorship?

You do not have to burn down the building with the printing press or have a bonfire of books to engage in censorship.  The two acts I mentioned where brought to you by the Communists and the National Socialists. All you need to do is silence through intimidation and kangaroo courts, or have a left wing media establishment with an agenda.

Other left wing types who support censorship, like the Communist Chinese, currently still have a state run press.  Chavez, the self appointed Castro of the 21st century, also shut down the free press in his country.  I am not sure why the left feels it cannot win in an open forum.  Still, we have no real worries, its not like it really can happen here.  Ask Nancy Pelosi, she is a champion of free speech.

Is it not enough that 90% of all of MSM votes Democrat? Is it not enough that NPR is socialist? The Democrats still feel the need to juice up the propaganda machine some more by silencing the only market driven segment of the media market … talk radio. The(Un)Fairness doctrine will kill this medium and the power hungry socialists in the Democrat party know it.

Who wants to put Al Franken on after three hours of Rush? At one point when the AM630 put Sam Donaldson after Limbaugh for a couple of hours, the station manager said, “The audience may experience some cultural dissonance.” Oh, thats what you a reaction akin to Blutarski’s when he saw Flounder’s picture on the wall. Got it.

Nancy Pelosi the other day made some incredible statements regarding this infringement upon the first ammendment …

“Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’” I asked.

“Yes,” the speaker replied, without hesitation

OK, so censorship of the media is a good thing because? This cuts both ways people, at some point it will be your opinion that could get the ax in the name of ‘fairness’. This bill is being called the ‘Hush Rush’ bill so those on both the left and right know who is targeted. Since Al Franken flopped despite millions in seed money, the left has decided to simply end the discussion. Such courage deserves scorn to say the least.

A petition has been organized by the Media Research Center to help move ‘The Broadcaster
Freedom Act’ to the House floor. Pelosi said that The Broadcaster Freedom Act “wouldn’t see the light of day”. This coupled with the strong Democrat Speakers support for a revival of the “Fairness Doctrine”and the government censorship of our free speech rights brings me to ask all to sign this petition BEFORE FRIDAY.

http://www.mrcaction.org/r.asp?u=8578&PID=16865463

The idea is to do to the speaker what conservatives did to the amnesty mess and overwhelm Pelosi with a message from the grassroots that even she can’t ignore. Signing this petition can make a difference, our free speech rights are under attack due to naked partisanship.

UPDATE

On Friday, over 100,000 of petitions were delivered to each of the following members of Congress:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY)
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY)
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)
Rep. Robert Wittman (R-VA)
Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH)
Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV)

Copies were also delivered to Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) who taken the lead in the fight to end government censorship over the radio airwaves once and for all.

Your petitions were all the more timely and relevant, coming on the heels of Speaker Pelosi’s remarks stating her intentions were to keep the Broadcast Freedom Act in the dark, while working to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine.”

Why are country folk, who are from my personal experience by and large the salt of the earth, often depicted in popular culture as embittered losers who do not understand that their interests lie with the benighted liberal Democrat party? The label used is Redneck. It is the only politically correct racial epitaph, whitey turns red when working in the sun. Even when not used expressly you can still here it echoing of the walls of the room. Barak Hussein Obama, when he addressed his elite fellow travelers in San Fransisco, said:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Pennsylvania has been described as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama up the middle. For those living under a rock the past 50 years Alabama is synonymous with Redneck-Land. Obama’s view of Rednecks is not unusual. Barak is not the first liberal to not get it. It is a common blindness. For instance Thomas Franks in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” stumbles in the same way:

In its implacable bitterness Kansas holds up a mirror to the rest of us. If this is the place where America goes looking for its national soul, then this is where America finds that its soul, after stewing in the primal resentment of the backlash, has gone all sour and wrong. If Kansas is the concentrated essence of normality, then here is where we can see the deranged gradually become normal, where we look into that handsome, confident, reassuring, all-American face . . . and realize that we are staring into the eyes of a lunatic.

That Rednecks do not vote for the left is, in the minds of Franks and Obama, prima facie evidence that they are ignorant, bitter, and crazy. I can only wonder if there is any projection going on.

Read the rest of this entry »

First, I believe there are those that are peaceful Muslims. But just as Christians have sects that fight each other, Muslims have violent types as well.

Yesterday, a video was released that depicted violence juxtaposed with text of the Qur’an and quotations of spectacularly non-peaceful Muslims. It was placed on LiveLeak.com, but after they received many death threats, the video was pulled off. The removal statement byLiveLeak is rather chilling. What is sad, is that those that find it offensive I can understand, but those that threaten to kill people because of the offense only prove that the video is at least partially true.  Those Muslims that are reasonable, that find the video offensive yet share no values with people that perform the acts perpetrated on the video should find at least as much offense at those that have committed these acts in the name of their religion as those that point out these criminals.

If the Muslim world had as many protests with people rioting in the streets over the despicable actions of those that desecrate  the idea of Islam being a religion of peace then this kind of video would hold no traction with anyone. That there were fewer Muslims demonstrating against the criminals that flew airplanes into the World Trade Center than there were people celebrating gives the makers of this kind of video credit.

When people defame the Christian religion, you generally do not see rioting in the streets, and there is nearly universal protest against those that resort to violence in the name of Christianity. If the same were true for Islam, perhaps this video would never have been made, and if it were, it would not have gained any attention.
It does appear to be counter intuitive to say “We are a religion of peace, and if you say anything we don’t like, we will kill you!”

Now this is interesting.

She commonly reported information about the relatives, household composition, family deaths and illnesses, etc., of members of our team, without ever having observed or been informed about them. As an example, she knew the personality and precise manner of death (i.e., the exact type of cancer) of a relative of a team member that no one could conceivably have guessed. She once spoke about the strange behavior of some inexplicably frenzied animals beyond her direct observation: Though residing in another city, she commented, “So those cats really went berserk last night, didn’t they?” the morning after two cats in a team member’s house uncharacteristically had violently attacked each other at about 2 AM….

You’re going to want to read all of that one - it leaves quite a lot to think about.

Jacob already noted this, and of course it’s the big story of the day in the conservative blogosphere: But for the record, I’ll miss William F. Buckley and I am grateful for all he did for me.

As a college kid in the early 1980s, still trying to figure out what I thought, I religiously read The Nation, The New Republic and National Review, basically unconsciously covering all parts of the political spectrum (New Republic was a middle of the road publication back then). If there was a “truth,” it definitely seemed like it would inhere somewhere within this troika of magazines.

By 1986, National Review had become my philosophical home, in large part because of Bill Buckley’s commentary. At age 25, I became a “conservative” for life. My first vote for a Republican was for George H.W. Bush in 1988. (Then, my first vote against a Republican was for Ross Perot in 1992, but that’s a story for another day).

Apart from his fantastically helpful idiosyncrasy of including in every op-ed column a single word I would need to look up in the dictionary (a mantle since picked up by R. Emmett Tyrrell), and the fact he was right about so many issues back when “conservatism” was by no means assured a place at the table of policy respectability (the Reagan Era was not judged a success until long after the Reagan presidency was over), Bill Buckley’s work ethic was the stuff of legends. He wrote extensive commentary in the magazine on a weekly basis, maintained a nationally syndicated 2-3 times a week column, did the weekly Firing Line television show for a decade or three, and of course wrote all the books and ancillary essays.

He penned op-ed pieces in the limousine on the way to the airport, for crying out loud. It took me an entire weekend to write a 5-page, double-spaced paper at the time.

While trying to overcome laziness and my own wide-ranging stupidity, having WFB as an example of what a human can do was immensely valuable. I never met the guy, but throughout my 20s he was one of my few mentors, at a time I needed all the help I could get.

I didn’t go to Yale. I wasn’t rich. My forebearers - back to the beginning of time, as far as I could tell - were blue collar. I started a family during college and consequently we were not well off. But I never got a whiff from all of WFB’s writings that he was in any way intrinsically different from me. I eventually learned that he was wealthy, but in the miles of column-inches I never read anything that set him apart.

And what a legacy he left! I have a ton of his essays and my stock of NR magazines, but there are gems like the Firing Line interviews with Malcolm Muggeridge discussing Catholicism and other topics - such important cultural artifacts.

The specifics of WFB’s contributions in the ideological arena are not within my range of expertise to discuss, simply because the content was, in essence, the content of the conservative revolution which took place in America from the 1980s on. There are much better informed people out there who can limn out the details of what Bill said and when, and what followed.

(And be sure to dig into the writings over at NRO, where the folks who know are spelling it out.)

But here is one I can do.

Many years ago, I think back in the early 1990s, Bill wrote a column reporting on his and his wife’s struggles to quit smoking. The gist was they both had decided to quit smoking cigarettes, and after some time in the project they - two life-long smokers - were at each others’ throats. They sat down to discuss it, and recognized they could not both go through the ordeal and live in the same house with each other. The physical and mental stress of overcoming the addiction was too much - you could not have two baskets of crazed atoms in close proximity at one time.

So they had to decide - either we both keep smoking or only one of us can quit, if we want to stay together. Bill quit, and Pat resumed smoking and became the stabilizing force while he overcame the addiction to nicotine.

This story had an impression on me, both because I have my own addictive tendencies and because self-sacrifice seems to be such an essential part of life particularly manifested in our most immediate relationships. The decision Bill and Pat Buckley made was one I had never even thought about, but after I read his column I never forgot it. Throw aside all the levels of analysis that could be brought to bear on the question: It’s a pretty stark expression of life - human life, relationship reality - is it not? It makes you think, What would I do? What decision would I and my spouse make to preserve the relationship if it came down to that.

Pat Buckley died in April, 2007. Honestly, back when I read about the poignant story above, I assumed Pat had consigned herself to a much earlier demise to preserve the relationship. But they were only off by ten months. I hate it that Bill Buckley died; I hate it that Pat Buckley died. But I am glad they got almost the full time together. I think God looked kindly on their difficult decision.

I am curious, all of our left leaning friends here declare fascism to be anathema, but do they really know what fascism means? Here is a set of current laws, enacted for the public good, or some well meaning official tried to enact them.

1. You are required by law to sterilise your pet

2. You are not allowed to smoke in public

3. You are not allowed to own a gun

4. Fast food companies are required to put calorie information next to the item

5. Tobacco companies are liable for people using their product correctly

6. The government sets the temperature in your home

7. You are not allowed to smoke in your own home

8. You are not allowed to serve your own 18 year old son having a beer at your kitchen table

9. You are not allowed to park an SUV on the street

10. If you are obeise you can be denied government health benifits

My question is are these fascist in nature or not? Any and all are welcome to answer.

I am about to give you an example of apples and oranges and show how they can be different yet mix well together and become compatible.

I was recruited for jury duty in a capital murder case.  To make this short, this person killed their spouse.  The defender presented a wonderful case and suppressed gobs of incriminating evidence.  The prosecutor was espousing facts without producing evidence or substance.  This was sad.  3 of us on the jury got it.  2 copped out because of job hardships (that’s why there are alternates) and the other nine were individual fixated on one (and different) piece of evidence.  After days of fact finding and discussion I realized that it is like conservatives and liberals.  Not much gets done.  Well, compromises were made to keep the jury from being hung and starting over on a lesser charge.  The jury presented its verdict to the judge for 6 and one half years.  3 of these were mandatory by state for using a firearm in the commision of a felony.  Thank the law for small favors.  The judge at sentencing did not reduce this sentence.  We later read that a piece of evidence was omitted where the defendant admitted killing his spouse (non-chalant as it was) for making aspersions of his manhood.  How utterly pathetic.  The defendant got away with murder and it only cost 6 and a half years.  Why?  Compassion.

We have lived thru the last local elections and we are already talking about more schools and higher taxes.  We pay our local officials higher salaries and they give us social programs that they want to fund.  Loudoun is looking to build ANOTHER new government center.  Isn’t this a recession?  State government has faired no better with there wants.  They want to build a new general assembly building (temporarily) with funding to study a permenant location.  How to pay for this when we are strapped for cash and the governor (little g for a little gov) can’t get his socialist programs enacted?  How about an extra 5 cent state tax per gallon of gas!  What?  Gas is over three bucks; what’s another nickle.  Next in line are the candidates for the White House.  Socialists with promises of freebies for everyone.  What about the illegals you say?  No big deal.  There are bigger fish to fry like getting our soldiers home and insurance for everyone.  How about college anyone can afford and handouts to those who are not rich (including 12 million illegals) so that they may feel like americans too.  How does this happen?  Compassion.

Americans are very compassionate people.  They give to charities and come to the aid of the world when ever the call goes out.  We will go out of our way to help those in need that can’t do it all on their own.  Where we stop is when it is againest the law.  We aren’t compassionate with those that use and abuse others.  What am I saying!  The examples above prove different.  The landscape has changed.  There are no more rules or barriers.  Anything goes.  Be compassionate for that drunk driver that just killed a family.  The priest that fondled little boys for 20 years.  That gang member that killed his rivals because they killed his brother gang member.  Are you kidding me?

I would rather see sympathy and empathy towards these types of people.  Then let the law handle the rest.  That is why we have laws.  Compassion is for the dog that got hit by the car.  Or the homeless guy looking for a meal.  How about a mother trying to take care of 3 kids while working 16 hours a day.  The children that need cancer research.  It seems that compassion (the apples/oranges mix) is being predominately used to harm the innocent instead of helping them.  Remember this when you start voting in the next election.  If you vote compassionately it may severely harm the country.  Try using research and logic to know what to do.  Don’t let compassion get in the way.