Obama said that the huge electoral loss last Tuesday was essentially a failure to communicate, and not a vote of no-confidence on his policies.  The policies are sounds, so he says, but they’re not working fast enough.  Except that countries like Germany, which adopted austerity policies rather than spending ones, is going gangbusters coming out of this recession.  And we’re not.  That’s what the voters were saying.

And apparently, blaming stupid voters and their anger, rather than facing facts, is an international problem.

ObamaCare price controls will raise health care prices.  We know this because that’s what it has always done in the past.  Joseph Antos, who oversaw a study that created the Medicare reimbursement system, knows of what he speaks.  Americans are already seeing some of this, and voted out those who supported it.

Is the electorate getting more conservative?  The New Republic seems to think so.

Fox was more fair and balanced than MSNBC in covering the election.  That’s not some right-wing claim; it’s the opinion of Time magazine, NPR, Mediaite and US News.  No card-carrying members of the vast right-wing conspiracy among that group.  Of course, being less biased than MSNBC is like saying that you are located somewhat south of the North Pole, with the network having exclusively liberal commentators on for the coverage.  America apparently noticed, since Fox beat the ratings of CNN & MSNBC.  Combined.

(Still, it’s Fox that Obama chooses to do battle with.  He doesn’t want fair coverage, he wants favorable coverage.)

Sorry, no cartoon this week.  Nothing really stood out.  Try again next week.

With apologies to P. J. O’Rouke for the title, last night was a historic night for the GOP, but I have a feeling this was more the voters saying "Stop!" to Obama than it was saying "Go!" to the Republicans.

Still, there were other things at work here than a Democratic smackdown.  Witness the shift of so many state governments to the Republicans. These folks weren’t the ones who bailed out banks, took over car companies or squirmed a health care bill through Congress.  And yet, for example, for the first time since Reconstruction, Georgia’s major state offices will all be held by Republicans.  While the wave last night certainly helped, this is a shift that has been going on for years.  The state legislature shift is, I think, the underreported story of the night (though Erick Erickson gives us a good view of it).  It’s important because in many cases it is so historic ("not since the 19th century" historic, in a few cases), and because reapportionment is happening this year due to the census.  This is big, and I think it’s more than just coattails.

But if you look at things like how well Democrats did who had voted for the health care reform bill, it’s clear that there was, indeed, a significant portion of the vote that was a referendum on Obama and the Democratic Congress.  Complaining from Democrats that the bill wasn’t explained enough, over the course of 6 months, is simply a refusal to face facts; the American people generally did not want this behemoth.  There was a price to pay for all the shenanigans done to get it passed.

Another big repudiation of the evening was of the media.  (Hmm, repudiation of Democrats and the media.  Why do these two groups keep getting mentioned together, I wonder?)  Uniquely labeling the Tea Party "extreme" by mainstream reporters and pundits alike, and spending so much press trying to make Christine O’Donnell the de facto face of the Tea Party, the voters have apparently decided for themselves what is or isn’t "extreme" and who’s endorsement (rather than the press’s) they’ll listen to (i.e. Sarah Palin’s picks are currently running more than 2 to 1 in the win column). 

Other interesting highlights:

No to recreational pot:  Californians voted No to make marijuana more available than it already is.  

Arizona governor re-elected: Jan Brewer got a vote of confidence from her state.  Apparently, enforcing laws that the feds refuse to enforce hasn’t been the economic meltdown her detractors claimed it would be.

I’ll close with some words from Don Surber, but read the whole thing.

This is not a normal midterm election in which the president’s party typically loses seats. In the last 10 midterms, a president’s party has averaged a loss of 12 House and two Senate seats.

That includes 1994’s tsunami, as then-Congressman Bob Wise put it.

President Carter lost 15 House and three Senate seats in his midterm.

Obama lost 59+ and 7+.

This was a big deal.

But I say to Republicans: Great, kids. Don’t get cocky.

The battle has just begun.

Who said this, after hearing that "Muhammed" was now the #1 baby name in Britain?

“Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that?  Because I am. And it’s not because of the race, it’s because of the religion. I don’t have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?”

No, not Juan Williams, who said something similar and got fired for it.  No, not Mark Steyn, who’s written a book on this subject.  In fact, it’s not a conservative at all.

It’s Bill Maher.

Conservative Margaret Hoover replied, "If you’re with NPR, you’d be fired."  I disagree.  Nina Totenburg has been spouting opinion for years and that hasn’t jeopardized her job. 

You’ll not hear much of this, if any at all, from the media or the left-wing bloggers because Maher is still extremely useful to them in a host of other areas.  For them it’s not about principles, it’s about politics.  If you have the right stance on the issues, a few minor indiscretions will be tolerated.  (Or even major ones; see the NOW crowd’s muted reaction to Bill Clinton). 

Just another double standard.

Nina Totenberg is an NPR news correspondent.  She’s supposed to report the news straight and without bias.  This has not kept her from offering opinions over the years anyway.  She went so far as to wish AIDS on Jesse Helms or his grandchildren. 

So Charles Krauthammer wanted to know the difference between what she’s been doing for at least the past 15 years, and what Juan Williams did that got him fired.  Juan is, or was, an NPR news analyst, which Krauthammer argues might have less of an appearance-of-objectivity standard than a correspondent.  So he asks, what’s the line that Juan crossed?

No one can give him a straight answer, not even Totenburg herself.

NPR’s long history of liberal bias answers the question itself.  You don’t get a second look if you wish death to a Republican or his grandchildren.  But express your honest fears, even acknowledging that they are irrational, and you’re out the door. 

There should no longer be any question whatsoever of the overwhelming bias of the NPR news organization.  Intellectual honesty demands an accounting of the Juan Williams firing, after which that is the inescapable conclusion.

I’ve been on the road this week, and by the time this posts I’ll be heading home.  I haven’t done much blogging as a result, but I have collected a few links.

Remember all the riots, protests and violence when the US military burned Bibles?  Or when Muslims blew the doors off churches, burned Bibles and destroyed every cross they could find?  Yeah, me neither.  Define for me “religion of peace” again?  The actions that the Left calls “Islamophobia” in America don’t hold a candle to what gets done to Christians by Muslims elsewhere, but somehow “Christophobia” hasn’t entered their vernacular yet.

The amount of money the United States now owes is more than all the money in the world.  That’s how bad it is.

Christians protest abortion, the media yawns.  One pro-abortion protestor hits the streets, you get an article with pictures.

Gun owner ship goes up.  Violent crime goes down. If the Left was right about poor economic times causing crime, and that more guns cause more crime, there ought to be more heads exploding on that side of the aisle, if they’re being intellectually honest.

The return of no-money-down mortgages.  Um, that’s what got us into this mess in the first place!

The disappearing homeless.  Well, they’re still there, and likely there are more now that the housing bubble popped.  But the media has gone silent on them.  Guess they’re waiting for a Republican President, like they did before.

And finally, from Chuck Asay, some advice about getting your religion hijacked.  (Click for a larger version.)

Media Bias Dept.:  The Left got upset when Rupert Murdoch gave money to right-wing groups.  No mention, of course of the 88% of TV network donations go to Democrats.  And how much coverage did you hear about the BBC’s Director General admitting that the state-run news organization has had a “massive” left-wing bias?  Yeah, me neither.  Also, Patterico explains how the media has shaped the national discussion by selective coverage.

Market Watch:  The market is doing more for troubled homeowners than the government it.  CNN is, apparently, shocked to discover such a thing can happen.

“Recovery” Summer Dept.:  Germany’s recover has been fueled to a large extent by private sector consumption and growth, as opposed to the graph I posted earlier showing most of our jobs went to the government.  And irony of ironies, a French bureaucrat had to tell the US about cutting spending spurs growth.  Why can our own guys understand that?

ObamaCare Dept.:  After helping pass the health care bill, one Democratic Senator, using language he helped craft in the bill, is trying to use it to exempt his state from the individual mandate.  “Yeah, it’s a great idea … for everyone else but me.”  Also, reality is putting the lie to the promise that nothing was going to change for you if you like the health care you have.

Film Corner:  The trailer us up for “Blood Money”, an expose of the abortion industry.

Government (In)action Dept.:  The Justice Department is refusing to enforce voter fraud laws, and they’ve plainly said as much.  So one lawyer is using a provision of the law to file the lawsuits the Obama’s Justice won’t.  Our President respects the rule of law insofar as it furthers his own agenda.  No good can come of that.

Gossip Column:  Fidel Castro himself admits that the communist economic model doesn’t work.  It “works” only insofar as you get influxes of cash from, say, a beneficiary either internally (the “rich”) or externally (the USSR).  But on its own, it is an abject failure.  Would that the Left would hear this and stop trying to move us closer to it.

And finally, the last word on the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the burning of Korans, from Rick McKee.  (Click for a larger image.)

How come when a small group of Muslims kill innocent men, women, and children (e.g., 9/11, Bali, African embassies, Spanish train, British train, etc.), we’re reminded that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the murderous acts were those of fanatics; but when a small group of Christians decide to burn the Koran, there’s nary a word of Christianity being related to peace or that such a wacko group of self-proclaimed “christians” are fanatics?

He was a rabid environmentalist.  He considered babies "parasitic human infants", and wanted all "pro-birth" programs to push "stopping human birth".  He was extremely anti-war, and equated having more humans with more war.  He considered civilization "filth", and its religious roots "disgusting".

And ThinkProgress, an extremely popular liberal blog, calls out the Right over this guy, James Jay Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel, because one of his eleven points refers to immigration. 

Really?  Is this what passes for intellectual honesty on the Left these days?  A guy who said Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth" woke him up is a product of the Right?

None other than President of the United States Bill Clinton blamed conservative talk radio for Timothy McVeigh, and recently brought that back up in light of the Tea Party.  Conservatives against the "Ground Zero Mosque" were blamed for the stabbing of a Muslim cabbie (until it was found that it was a GZM supporter who stabbed the cabbie who was against the Mosque).  And Caleb Howe reminds us:

Lee acted irrationally. His environmental extremism was likely a function of his derangement, rather than the source of it. He latched on. He took it to the extreme, to say the least. Lee was not, by any measure that I would choose, a sane man. The story told by his brother-in-law – one of temper, erratic behavior, and irrational views – recalls Jerry Kane.

Jerry Kane, and his son Joe, killed two police officers and were killed themselves, in a shoot-out precipitated by a simple traffic stop. Jerry Kane, too, was an unstable man. His hometown mayor said of him that “You were always looking over your shoulder to make sure he wasn’t there. You never knew what he was going to do. I always thought he was an unstable individual.” Like Lee, the aftermath anecdotes painted a picture of paranoia and fear. But that didn’t stop liberal sites like Crooks and Liars from laying him at the feet of the conservative movement. Or Joseph Stack. Or Richard Poplawski. Or Byron Williams. It didn’t stop them from suggesting that Erick [Erickson] was responsible for a census worker slaying.

In fact, every time someone is shot in a lone gunman scenario, the right, and the tea parties and talk radio in particular, are virtually instantaneously blamed by the left at large for “violent” rhetoric and instigation.

Stop me, again, if you’ve heard THAT one before.

We never stop hearing from the MSNBC left how the Fox News right is stirring up violence. But when someone clearly basing his murderous intent on the idea that humans are going to destroy the world, and soon, acts on the dire prophecies of Al Gore … well suddenly you can’t blame rhetoric for crazy people.

Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz will simply not take responsibility for this guy.  I don’t think they should, but they should then not require the Right to take responsibility for the acts of other nuts.

But they will, as will Bill Clinton.  This is what passes for intellectual honesty on the Left.

1.    Crisis in the Environmental Community: The climate lobby has declined dramatically from its days of high confidence after the 2008 election and it is scrambling to determine the next steps:  

A year ago, these groups seemed to be at the peak of their influence, needing only the Senate’s approval for a landmark climate-change bill. But they lost that fight, done in by the sluggish economy and opposition from business and fossil-fuel interests.

2.    God, the Gospel, and Glenn Beck:  Southern Seminary’s Russ Moore writes about relying on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads.

It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.

3.    Advertising Parasites: Ads that follow you from site to site.

“For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes,” said Ms. Matlin, a mother of two from Montreal. “It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.”

4.    Jim Wallis Apologizes: Sojourners’ Jim Wallis apologizes to World’s Marvin Olasky.

“I was wrong, out of anger at the insinuation about the dependence on these foundations, I was wrong to imply that like Beck, Marvin lies for a living,” Wallis said. “Glenn Beck does lie for a living. Marvin Olasky doesn’t lie for a living; that’s not something I should say about a brother in Christ.”

5.    Crooked Afghan Partner?: Another Diem? Karazi fires his corruption fighter.

“What he was doing was very important,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said of Mr. Faqiryar. “Those charged with pursuing corruption need to continue their work without political interference. It’s something we are watching to make sure the Afghan government lives up to the pledges it has made in battling corruption.”

6.    America’s Creativity Crisis?:  For the first time, research shows American creativity declining.

What’s driving the drop? According to Newsweek, technology and education are particularly nefarious culprits. At home, kids are spending more time watching television and playing video games; at school, our educational system is evaporating the creative juices. Neither of these criticisms is particularly new, but they are informative within the context of the creativity discussion.

7.    Baseball Replay Confirms Walk-off Homer:  For the first time, the limited replay rule is used on a play that ends game.

McCann capped a stunning comeback with a replay-assisted homer that gave Atlanta a 7-6 victory over the Marlins on Sunday – the first time a game ended on a call using video. Without it, McCann might have only gotten credit for a double and the game would have continued on. Instead, he was jumping into the arms of his teammates after the umps took a second look, taking advantage of a limited replay rule that went into effect two years earlier almost to the day – Aug. 28, 2008 – to make sure they got these sort of calls right.

If you had information about local organized crime activities, and were contemplating giving this information to the police, would you be more or less willing to be an informant if you knew your name might be associated with that information?  Would you be willing to take that chance?

Yeah, me neither.

NewsBusters, in a post regarding all the classified information dumped to the public via the NY Times and, more recently, by Wikileaks, noted Jim Miklaszewski discussing this on MSNBC.

Not only are those named put at risk, but those who might potentially cooperate with the Americans are probably not going to do it now. You know, often allies, U.S. allies, have told the Pentagon, State Department, why should we cooperate with you, because whatever we tell you is going to end up on the front pages of the New York Times.

That’s one of the complaints, actually, specifically from Pakistan.  Every time U.S. officials travel to Islamabad to sit down and try to gain increased cooperation from Pakistan, inevitably, we are told, they complain about press leaks that jeopardize anything they’re going to do in conjunction with the U.S.

(Emphasis supplied by NB.) 

While Pfc. Bradley Manning may have had a legitimate beef with how portions of the Afghanistan War have been run, his implication in this massive document dump to Wikileaks far overshadows his initial charges.  If he’d kept the dump relevant to his whistleblowing, I’d think much better of him (aside from the fact that he didn’t go through the normal channels the military has set up for whistleblowers). 

But this dump, purporting to merely foster transparency, has damaged our credibility with potential sources, and given our enemies a boatload of late summer reading.  Just as there were other, proper ways for Pfc. Manning to get his point across, there are better ways to foster transparency than giving aid to our enemies and discomfort to those who might help us defend ourselves.

I’ve been on vacation for about 10 days, so I have some catch-up to do here.  Here are some stories I noticed over the break.  Others will get their own post.

"Young Men’s Christian Association" to be renamed "Young".  This is ostensibly to remain more inclusive, but it’s not like folks have been staying away in droves or anything.  Just some more political correctness, removing even the hint of anything Christian in our culture, even if only ever referred to by its initial.

Handing out the Gospel of John is now "disturbing the peace" in Dearborn, Michigan.  Four kids from a group called Acts 17 Apologetics face jail time for handing out the text and talking to people at a Muslim festival.  The link on their name goes to their YouTube channel.  I’ve watched some of the videos, and I just don’t see "harassment" or "disturbing" going on.

Christian beliefs are now "unethical" when it comes to counseling, according to Augusta (GA) State University.  They want Jennifer Keeton to agree to a plan that includes "diversity sensitivity training" and changing her beliefs before they will allow her to graduate.  Read the article and, even if you disagree with her, tell me that this doesn’t sound like Soviet Russia.

The "JournoList" situation really blew up while I was out.  Oh, that liberal media.  Kenneth Anderson said it best, "To all you non-JournoLister reporters out there, please be aware that your credibility has just taken a big hit, because we, your faithful readers, don’t actually know who is or who isn’t.  You can thank JournoList for that, you can thank Ezra Klein, and you can thank the Washington Post, which has done its outstanding professionals absolutely no favors in any of this."

When even Democrats are poised to revolt over taxes (however temporary that might be), you know there’s a problem

And an appropriate cartoon from Chuck Asay:

From the New Mexico Independent,

You know that lady Shirley Sherrod? The black USDA worker in Georgia who was forced to resign after a conservative website (the one behind the mostly debunked Acorn videos) screamed reverse racism while peddling a misleading clip of a speech Sherrod gave on race?

Hmmm. I’d say a rewrite is necessary. How about?

You know that lady Shirley Sherrod? The black USDA worker in Georgia who was forced to resign after an incompetent White House rushed to judgment, and threw her under the bus, even though their only evidence was an obviously incomplete video posted on a conservative website?

Since even the infamous FoxNews did not play the video clip until after the resignation, one has to wonder: Just how paranoid, of conservative websites, is the White House? Evidently, this paranoid:

On a sidenote, if we’re bending over backwards to claim that the Acorn videos are “mostly” debunked, then let’s at least note that Tea Partiers are “mostly” not racist.

A typical reason couples live together before getting married is that, supposedly, this will allow them to find out if they are compatible and thus ensure their marriage lasts longer.  But a new study says, nope, they are less likely to stay married.

Read my lips; no new taxes on those making $250,000 or less.  Well, we may soon add to the many exceptions since that promise was made, “unless you own a home”.

The revolving door between the MSM and the Democratic Party.  Oh, that liberal media.

If the Gulf oil spill had happened on Bush’s watch, do you really think the environmental groups would be as virtually silent as they are now?  (Me neither.)

Remember how the UN climate change panel was supposed to be the result of boatloads of scientists in agreement?  Turns out the boat was a dingy.

And from the “Beware of Governments Bearing Gifts” department:

Churches and other faith-based organizations that receive government funds, beware. In an agreement that will be enforced by a federal court, government agencies in New York have agreed to monitor the Salvation Army to ensure that it doesn’t impose religion on the people its serves through its tax-funded social services.

The agreement just effects the Salvation Army’s social work in New York, but it’s more than a cautionary tale for religious groups in this era of government-backed faith-based initiatives. “With this settlement, government is watching out,” co-counsel Deborah Karpatkin of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. “It will not fund religious organizations to proselytize to recipients of government-funded social services.”

The Salvation Army’s social services are intended to be an expression of faith in God and love for fellow man, but if they are prevented from doing the former while performing the latter, they’re being hobbled.  My suggestion has always been to avoid government money at all costs.

 [I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time. Who should be on this list?]

#44. Philip Anschutz.  Media mogul  b.1939

 The most influential and effective evangelical Christian in Hollywood (he actually lives in Colorado) is zealously private and one of the richest men in the world. Oil magnate and multi-faceted entrepreneur Philip Anschutz has done three interviews in the last four decades and his company releases virtually no information on sales or strategy related to his relatively recent foray into media.

Almost a decade ago, Anschutz decided to do something about the moral decline of mainstream movies. He now owns two production companies—the family-friendly Walden Media and the more broadly focused Bristol Bay Productions.

“My wife and I now have a number of grandchildren who are growing up surrounded by products of this culture,” Anschutz said in 2004. “So four or five years ago I decided to stop cursing the darkness.”[1]  He added: “Hollywood as an industry can at times be insular and doesn’t at times understand the market very well. I saw a chance with this move to attempt some small improvement in the culture.”[2]

The companies’ creative teams have produced films as Amazing Grace, Charlotte’s Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Ray, and, most prominently, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, two of seven planned movies based on C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Walden is partnering with 20^th Century Fox to produce The Screwtape Letters, based on the novel by Lewis, due for a 2010 release. Fox is also a partner for the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader .[3]

Recently, Anschutz has provided the funding for television advertisements, billboards, and Regal Cinemas ads for his “For a Better Life” campaign. The campaign, while not explicitly Christian, promotes “faith” and “integrity,” using dramatic vignettes, and characters such as Shrek and Kermit the Frog.[4]

In addition to the film production companies and Regal theaters, Anschutz owns Qwest Communications, the premier provider of high-speed Internet, home phone and cell phones–and some 100 other businesses. Among them: railroads; oil companies; cattle ranching; wind farms; national park concessions; professional hockey [LA Kings], basketball [owns stakes in the LA Lakers and the Sacramento Kings] and soccer teams [co-founded Major League Soccer and owns multiple teams, including the LA Galaxy, Chicago Fire, Houston Dynamo, San Jose Earthquakes, New York / New Jersey Metro Stars, and the Kansas City Wizards]; the Staples Center and Kodak Theater in Los Angeles; the 02 Dome in London. He recently purchased the conservative journal, The Weekly Standard.[5]

One Narnia fan wrote:

“At the start of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we find C. S. Lewis’s mythical world of talking animals, satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and dwarves trapped in the Hundred Year Winter – a time where evil reigns and creativity has given way to cruelty. And so it remains until a mighty lion messiah roars onto the scene to awaken warmth and hope. Philip Anschutz is no messiah, but he has made it his ambition to lead Hollywood out of a cynical and amoral ice age. Will this self-made Colorado billionaire become modern entertainment’s rescuer, a lion-hearted savior of American film?” [6]

[2] http://old.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=218

[3] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/may/24.46.html

[4] http://old.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=218

[5] http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/28/anschutz-weekly-standard-business-media-examiner.html?feed=rss_business_media

[6] http://www.narniafans.com/archives/660