It Can Now Be Revealed

Ted Kennedy died and made the long trip South. After his many years in the Senate, he expected as much. Beelzebub greeted him, and asked which sector of Hades he would like to enter.

“Whichever one has the hottest women and the coldest Scotch”, answered the Lion of the Senate.

“OK, but that’s a long way away, in the circle for Envy”, replied the Father of Lies.

Unfamiliar with the territory and unaccustomed to making his own arrangements, the liberal royal family member ordered “Call me a car”.

“Of course, Mr. Kennedy,” Satan said, and dialed his phone. “Oh Mary Jo … our bargain is complete. Your fare is here.”

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Hosanna! Crucify!

Right now, two days past his inauguration, the media are all shouting hosannas at Barack Obama.

But I wonder how long it will be before the shouts of "Hosanna! Glory to Obama in the Highest!" turn to "Crucify!" or "Impeach!".

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Happy Christmas

Is Christmas about Christ, or is it about reindeer?

Yes.

Christmas is a celebration of the virgin birth of Jesus the Christ, Yishua the Messiah, in a manger in Bethlehem. It's a tale of wise men (who weren't there) and shepherds (who were).

It's also a celebration of the dead of Winter, a memory of the cold days of the Little Ice Age in Europe and of even colder days past in a real Ice Age. The last warmth of Summer is gone by the time of the solstice, and we have time to gather together in our little hovels and share the fruits of our year's labor with those we love.

And to those who find a dichotomy in the dualism, who see a conflict between magical reindeer and frankincense, I say: quit being humbugs. Sing about Rudolph, enjoy your stocking stuffers, blow your wad at Wal-Mart, and give shelter to needy travelers.

Because Christmas is Christmas, and there's no need to pin it down more than that.

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Giving Thanks

I started out to write about Pilgrims and Indians, Mayflowers and Compacts, and how we really ought to be thankful for their courage, their cooperation, and above all, for their faith. But I realized that's been done, and overdone, and deconstructed, and reconstructed already. I mean, we've had Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, and this very year, it seems every blogger and pundit has some kind of message today.

For instance, Ken Taylor does a fine work writing at The Minority Report.

And it occurs to me why there is so much blogging about this holiday: despite its origins as a government-approved religious observance, everybody likes Thanksgiving.

Even angry vegetarian Pagans can grit their strident, protesting teeth and get behind the idea of a feast at the end of a harvest. Usually in North America the summer grain crops are all but totally harvested by now, though this year cool, wet weather has delayed that in some areas.

But it would be very difficult to plan the start of the Christmas marketing season if we had to wait until the crops were actually brought in before we were to give thanks. Cynicism aside, Thanksgiving itself remains remarkably uncommercialized. Only the NFL, Macy's, and Ocean Spray have had any real success with it, though the people who make turkey friers are giving it a push.

The politically incorrect holiday is Christmas, with its parallel traditions of Christian Virgin Birth on the one hand and elvin, reindeerish images evoking the diversity-challenged Northern Europe of the Little Ice Age on the other.

On Thanksgiving, everyone seems to take a step back, reflect, and exhale a bit. We see siblings, or not, gorge on big, slow birds, or not, and watch the Detroit Lions lose a football game, or not. The Lions will lose, that is, but not everyone will force themselves to watch them do it.

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Barack Obama, Christian Heretic or Unbeliever?

Hot Air:

Obama: There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.

Falsani: You don’t believe that?

Obama: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.

Faith alone, Christ alone.

"Surely the Lord your God knows you will not die."

It's a hard thing, Mr. Obama. And yet, it's what Jesus said.

You may reject Jesus, but don't claim Him as something less than He is.

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Would Jesus Want Rape Legalized?

Over at Classical Values, Simon asks:

A Question For Christian Social Conservatives

Did Jesus promote government solutions to moral problems?

The answer I gave there doesn't stress enough the obvious point that He did promote the Commandments, and not just the Big Ten. He just wanted us not to lean on the Law for approval.

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No, Obama Is Not The Antichrist

Of course not.

w/t Mark Steyn

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The Ultimate Primer on Barack Obama

Courtesy Ace and some heavyweights.

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Shorter Hitchens

Vote Obama - he's not as much of a Christian as Sarah Palin.
(w/t: Mark Levin)

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Advice for the Would-Be President

Barack Obama continues to counter rumors the campaign claims it hears that he is a Muslim.

First, let me say that the only place I'm hearing these alleged rumors is from the Obama campaign. The cynic in me is led to believe that the campaign is trying too hard to keep these alleged rumors alive, because A) they are easily refuted and B) they can make it seem to the casual, non-partisan voter that the only reason not to like Obama is that he's a Muslim (which he's not), even though there are plenty of actual reasons not to like him.

So I think that if the campaign were really trying to quell these alleged rumors, and not merely wanting to be seen quelling the alleged rumors, that they should simply drop the alleged matter.

But if it is deemed necessary to put down these alleged rumors, Barack Obama should now be giving pressers to say "I do not wish to alienate peace-loving, mainstream American Muslims, but rather we Christians should be reaching out to all people of faith to build blah blah hopey, changey blah blah.

If he were really interested in dispelling all of these alleged rumors of his allegedly alleged Muslimicity, then stridently insisting on reaching out to Muslims would be the clearest way to do that. Embracing non-terrorist Islam is also good policy, regardless of the motivation for it.

If I, mere political hobbyist, can think of this strategy in 15 seconds, why can't the junior Senator from the great State of Illinois?

At the risk of arguing circuendo, let me suggest that perhaps the campaign finds greater value in swatting straw rumors of its own propagation, and appearing to be the victim of some alleged whispering campaign, than in behaving as would the President of the United States.

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Obama: Government as Hand of God

Hot Air has the campaign image of Obama the Christianist, his Kentucky campaign thrust with "Faith. Hope. Change." above a picture of a cross composed of spotlights shining on Obama at the pulpit, as if giving a sermon. The caption reads:

My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do God's work.
- Barack Obama

But there are disconnects here:

• Where does Senator Obama, now running for President, occupy a pulpit? He is not supposed to campaign from a pulpit, yet that is what the picture shows him doing
  
  
• From a theological point of view, the statement is simply wrong. God does not always wish us to go out and do; sometimes He wants us to wait for Him to do the doing by some other means than us
  
  
• I thank the Senator for the unsubtle accusation that those who do not vote for him are not real Christians, or are not in God's will
  
  
• Senator Obama may want to do God's work, but that doesn't mean he has the divine authority to conscript the rest of us into doing his

I do not deny Senator Obama his right to his faith, nor to give evidence of that faith by his actions.

I deny him the authority to speak for God.

[Oh, and w/t: FrankJ]
-

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Obama Just Sat There

While Reverend Jeremiah Wright was preaching that the US got what it deserved on 9/11
for its "terrorism" around the world, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Jeremiah Wright preached that the government of which Barack Obama was official representative and would be chief executive created AIDS to kill black people, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Jeremiah Wright lauded and praised antisemite Louis Farrakan, Barack Obama just sat there.

While Oprah Winfrey left Trinity United Christian Church because of Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks, Barack Obama just sat there.

And he claimed later never to have heard all of this stuff. He affirmed his tolerance for Reverend Wright's preaching as much as for his own grandmother's racial nervousness.

And yet the videos are on the Web, in full context, showing the snippets to be not isolated remarks, but the central point of the sermons.

And still, he just sat there.

He cannot explain this one away. Because Oprah leaving Wright's church should have been a signal to Obama that there was something wrong with the Kool-aide. It shows that leaving the church was not a hypothetical action that only a typical white person would have taken, but a real option that Obama must have weighed and rejected.

While Winfrey was leading, Obama was not even following. The winds of Change were blowing. The evidence was clear, and the course of action outlined, political cover given by one of the most powerful and influential people in media.

Barack Obama just sat there.

w/t: Robert A. Hahn

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The Great Divider

We quasi-conservative, sorta Republican types make the mistake of thinking that Democrats are all liberal atheists who are afraid of guns and want illegal immigration. It's not so. There are lots of Democrats who are gun totin', church goin', law-abidin' citizens who will be insulted by Obama's elitism almost as much as we are. Or maybe more, because he assumes they're in the bag for him, and they're explicitly who he's talking about.

OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

He's trying to say that his popularity among black voters and lack of popularity among some white voters has nothing to do with race, but he's wrong. It has everything to do with race. But it's not that his opponents are all racists and his supporters are not; it's that his supporters think voting for a black man, electing a black man President, will allow us to put race behind us, will show that we're not racists.

It's the same old affirmative action argument: we've mistreated other blacks in the past, so now we owe this black man special favor.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.

That's just incorrect, as many people have pointed out. Americans suspect government because it defines us. It's the definition of American to distrust government.

"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."

So add betrayal to our outrage, and you have an idea how some Democrats will now feel about Obama.

Obama is trying to spin his remarks as caring for the people at their subject, understanding their pain.

Even so, it's a pack of paternalistic lies.

"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."

After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:

"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to."

Even granting that people in general are bitter, which I do not, and even granting that he used the wrong word in "cling", which I do not, because it's clear from context that it was the intended word, he's still wrong, and it doesn't spin.

Becuase Obama claims to be a Christian, and a Midwesterner, and he's probably as much one as the other. It's simply false to say that people, even the specific Jacksonian Democrats about whom he's specifically talking, adhere to traditions in the face of bitterness. They adhere to the traditions because that's what they do. The alleged bitterness makes them leave the traditions, because that's what people do when what they've been trying doesn't work any more.

So Obama has insulted the people he has ostensibly been trying to reach, and insulted them, us, in a way that makes it clear he doesn't understand us. Not only does he not understand us, but worse, he thinks he does.

And believing oneself wise is the first sign of not being so.

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Philadelphia Freedom

Just a bunch of typical white people in Pennsylvania, clinging to their guns and religion.


In not bitterness but resolution.
w/t BBK

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Stupid, Lying Obama.

It almost hurts to watch.

Not content with throwing his longtime pastor and "mentor" under the bus, Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner gets in, runs him over, and backs up to be sure, saying:

Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church.

You sat there for 20 years without so much as a peep, but now you want us to believe that you would have left the church entirely?

You can tell a liar when his story keeps changing.

But even if the statement were true, accurately reflecting how Obama currently feels about Wright and his church, it says very little for Obama's character that he would respond to public opinion in such a way. I don't want a President who governs according the latest media frenzy. Say what you will about George W. Bush, but governing by opinion poll is not among his faults.

w/t: Moe

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Lunactivists Take Part in Easter Mass

From Moe Lane of Redstate and the Gateway Pundit comes this poor use of of leverage: six adult brats disrupt a Catholic Mass in Chicago on Easter Sunday. I don't care why, and hesitate even to say "Iraq war", because they don't deserve it. The important part to me is that they were there to compain about something the Church and probably the congregation is against, to gain for themselves some measure of attention.

This has all of the elements of lunactivism, all rolled into a nice little package.

They call it "raising awareness", but it's an attention-getting device no different than a toddler's temper tantrum.

The setting chosen for the idiocy ensured the brats' phyical safety.

They wasted leverage. Catholic Mass, like almost all church services, is open to everyone, and a disruption like theirs was sure to result in blog stories like this one. I feel dirty and ill-used even giving them the attention they were after, but I feel compelled to note the absurdity of it all.

The lunactivism is shown most clearly because they were preaching to the choir: most of the cathedral goers are probably against the war, but the act of lunacy drives a wedge between the activists and their audience. All of the worshippers were aware of the war. were The only awareness they raised was a negative perception about those opposing it.

And guess what: despit the best efforts of anti-war leftists in Congress and nursery schools, Iraq is becoming a country again: it's own country, not ruled by a thug and not run by our enemies. In time, we will leave there, too. But for now, our armed forces are giving terrorism a bad name in Iraq.

And so there is this from Michael J. Totten:


Meanwhile, "Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War" and the Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice are giving anti-war activism a bad name in America.

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He Lives!

Yay, we win!

Absent the resurrection, Jesus would have been forgotten in a lifetime, and probably not even have made it into the history books.

As it happened, however, He managed to get some ink.

His victory over the grave means that we can believe his words. All of the forces of Hell and Darkness arrayed against him could not defeat him, for even in their supposed triumph on the cross is the genesis of His revelation: obedience and faith overcome sin and failure.

Thank God.

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Missing Dissent

According to the mythos of the Inclusive Victims Movement™, dissent is patriotic. In fact, dissent is often said to be the highest form of patriotism, and for those who hold to such a view it seems to push all other forms of patriotism aside.

But conservatives can not and need not dissent, because (so the narrative continues) they are the ones in power, desperately clinging to their white picket fences. For a liberal to fail to dissent is a character flaw.

And from what would a conservative need to dissent? Since liberals only do Good Things, there is never any reason, according to the Inclusive Victims Movement, for anyone to dissent. Who can quarrel with going to church, or giving money to a hospital, or taking money from crooks, or lying about it afterwards?

Well, maybe a person wanting to be President shouldn't take money from crooks or lie about stuff willy-nilly.

Therefore, a person who wishes to be elected President of these United States by running on a platform of getting past race and coming together should do more than sit there when someone preaches things contrary to that platform.

If that person cannot stand up to the crowd in church and decry the wickedness, it is not, as Obama has falsely claimed, because he didnt know about it. Pastors do not long preach sermons with which the congregation is at odds, and congregations, unless they're dead, discuss what the pastor says in his sermons.

And men audacious enough to hope they can be President do not sit idly by while vile things with which they disagree are spoken. On friendly terms with a pastor, they will at least in private exercise their voice in dissent. Either Obama didn't disagree with the content of the pastor's message or he was to cowardly to dissent. We are left with one sad conclusion.

Obama knew about the content of the sermons because that's why he was there.

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I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free.

--- William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) in Up From Liberalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1961)

(I should note that this entry is, by complete coincidence, almost identical to this National Review post.)

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Why McCain? Why Obama?

It appears that the two major American political parties have chosen their candidates for President for the same reason.

The Republicans appear to have settled on John McCain as being a good compromise for their coalition of religious conservatives, war hawks, and free marketeers. The Democrats appear to have chosen Barack Obama as a good compromise for their coalition of religious liberals, doves, and socialists.

But I'm not being fair to either party with those descriptions. The Republicans are split between the country club elite and the church supper volunteers. The country clubbers want business stability, while the church supper volunteers want to see America stay true to its Christian heritage. Both sides of that split realize that they share a common enemy in Islamic terrorism, and that John McCain, American patriot, is the best man to deal with that threat.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are divided between the rich/intellectual posers on one side and the poor/uneducated mob at the other.

The Democrats for the last 100 years have been in love with socialism, but that is only a symptom of their true problem, which is an inability to face reality. They are in love with the fantasy that human goodness is all we need to have peace, love, and prosperity for all. Well, human goodness empowered by the State. But the leadership of the party know, in their elitist little hearts, that their socialist, pacifist pandering won't get them anywhere with those who have been freed from the clutches of the government-run education system.

That is why the Dems have this superdelegate business. They know that if they let their base choose, they'll always get an Obama, which would be a disaster for the country. It's patriotism, in other words.

So the answer for why McCain and why Obama is the same.

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