During the 2004 election, I wrote (here and here) that a candidate’s character should be a key factor in deciding who to vote for in an election. Four years later it’s still true: a candidate’s character should be carefully examined before deciding who to vote for.

Character is exactly why Hillary Clinton’s support is crumbling among Democrats and why Mike Huckabee’s support is rising among Republicans.

If you look at the positions of the candidates of each party, it’s easy to see they are fairly similar within their respective parties. Policies and voting records are certainly important to consider, but when it comes down to the final decision, it’s a candidate’s character that will matter most. When voters fail to consider a candidate’s character, they do so at their own (and ultimately) the country’s peril.

Critical articles of Senator and Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are nothing new. On any given day, you can find a number of columns outlining all the reasons she is unfit to be President. I couldn’t agree more. But I don’t normally pay attention to such articles. I realize that most conservatives like myself have no intention of voting for her. But this article at Blogcritics caught my attention mostly because it came from one of her own supporters. I wonder if there are many of her other supporters who are now rethinking their position especially in light of these new polls?

My question to liberal voters is this: in light of her recent debate performance and the issues raised in this article are you still willing to support her in the upcoming election? I have the feeling that the nomination that was thought to be hers may not be so easy to obtain as the media has made it out to be.

Over the course of a 162 game baseball season, the best teams will lose about a third of the games they play. The Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians both had the best overall records during the regular season and both lost 66 games apiece. The worst teams will also manage to win about a third of their games. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays had the worst overall record in the major leagues this year and finished 30 games out of first place in their division and yet still managed to win 66 games. The key difference between being a World Series Champion and finishing in the basement is how the team does in the other third of their games.

Presidential politics is similar in that both the Republicans and Democrats manage to each get about 40-45% of the overall votes in a given election. Unless there is a viable third party candidate capable of siphoning off large amounts of votes from one or both parties (think Ross Perot in 1992) or someone who can alter the outcome in a key state or two (Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000) someone has to be able to capture the majority of the 10 to 20% of the votes that are routinely up for grabs. These are the so-called independent or “swing” votes because they do not consistently vote for a single party regardless of the candidate that party has put forward.

Already we see the dynamic of party politics at work. For many Democrats, it doesn’t matter who their nominee is as long as the Republicans are defeated. By the same token, the priority for Republicans is holding onto the White House and has less (at least at this stage) about who the nominee will be. When the Republican candidates started focusing on Hillary Clinton as the target of criticism rather than their fellow Republicans, it was clear that this dynamic was at work.

This begs the question of what it will take to win the 2008 election. What will be the issues that will decide who is victorious next November? In reviewing all the issues that have been discussed so far (and as Michael Barone points out a debate about issues has definitely been lacking to date) it seems to me that this election will boil down to three major areas of concern.

1. The Global War on Terror

According to the Democrats, the 2006 Congressional election was about changing the direction (i.e., withdrawing) in Iraq. But after no fewer than 40 attempts to cut off funding the war, Democrats have failed to change the course. Instead, the President changed the military strategy and as a result the situation is improving. But other threats such as Iran loom on the horizon. Americans seem to have a better understandng that this war is unlike any other that we have previously fought. In order to remain safe, we have to continue to remain on the offensive. Therefore, any President is going to have to have a coherent strategy for continuing to prosecute the war on terror beyond the stabilization of Iraq.

2. Immigration

As Hillary Clinton learned the hard way, immigration is a big issue. It goes hand-in-hand with the war on terrorism as we need to know who is in the country and why. It’s also a thorny issue as voters are becoming touchy about whether to offer government benefits and services to immigrants especially if they are here illegally. Neither party has fully developed a comprehensive position on immigration and this is one area where there is tremendous opportunity to appeal to swing voters.

3. The Role and Size of Government

This has been an area where the two parties have traditionally been able to stake out differences. But recent big spending by President Bush and the Republican Congress (when they were in charge 2000 to 2006) has made Republicans as much the party of big government as Democrats. But there are still a wide range of issues (taxes, climate change regulation and government role in health insurance, to name a few) that the parties have an opportunity to stake out positions on that will provide a sense of choice for voters. With the recent debates within Republican circles over federalism it is clear that they are still trying to map out a coherent vision of what the role of government should be.

It may not be until after the nominations are sown up that we start to see a real debate over issues. But don’t be surprised if these issues aren’t at the top of the candidates’ agendas by next summer.

As I’ve noted over and over and over again, adult stem cells are a win-win situation; they have amazing curative powers and have none of the ethical issues associated with embryonic ones. Well now, we hear of yet another source of stem cells that fit that category.

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It’s a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

The “direct reprogramming” technique avoids the swarm of ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

The fact that adult stem cells have been reprogrammed and used successfully isn’t mentioned in the article. You’d think the didn’t exist or were still very experimental by reading it. It’s unfortunate that these successes don’t get more play from the media, but then again, it’s a liberal media, and liberals have a fixation on embryonic experimentation, so that’s to be expected, claims of objectivity notwithstanding.

Still, it’s wonderful to hear the press acknowledging that there are indeed ethical considerations and that this new research could very well remove the need to wrestle with them. This kind of research is something we can all get behind, I believe, regardless of political and/or religious pursuasion.

There are still some issues to be worked out, notable the cancer risk, but this quote is incredibly promising.

“People didn’t know it would be this easy,” [James] Thomson [of the University of Wisconsin-Madison]said. “Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow.”

Let’s hope so.

[tags]science,stem cells,cloning,direct reprogramming,ethics,morality,James Thomson,University of Wisconsin-Madison[/tags]

Given this statement…

“There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda.”

…what subject is it referring to? Global cooling in the 1970s? How about global warming of the 2000s? Don Sensing has a poll going about what people think this refers to. One of the seven is the right answer, but the statement applies just as easily to the other six. Alarmism spurs research grants, “carbon credits”, and all sort of cash transfers,so it’s no wonder that there’s a tendency to make things worse than they are.

In this case, the statement is referring to the AIDS epidemic. While there’s no doubt it is a scourge, the UN is revising it figures down; way down.

The United Nations’ top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year’s estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

“There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda,” said Helen Epstein, author of “The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS.” “I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way.”

But…but…I thought the scientific community didn’t work this way. If the science is settled, it’s settled, not bought. Right?

Right?

[tags]AIDS,global warming,United Nations,Helen Epstein[/tags]

Mike Huckabee, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, says that states shouldn’t be given the chance to determine their own abortion views.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rejects letting states decide whether to allow abortions, claiming the right to life is a moral issue not subject to multiple interpretations.

“It’s the logic of the Civil War,” Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. “If morality is the point here, and if it’s right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can’t have 50 different versions of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can’t simply have 50 different versions of what’s right,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

As much as I like Huckabee’s positions, I have to take issue with this. Government’s job is not to say what is right, but what is legal. Sometimes those two coincide, and sometimes they don’t.

I don’t believe that government should be the leading indicator of what’s right and wrong. It is very unfortunate that, for too many people, if it’s legal then it’s right. However, we can’t use that situation to then say that the government should pass laws against all that is immoral. This may sound funny to some, coming as it does from this evangelical Christian, but there are a couple of ideas at play here.

First is the idea that any set of rules made by men as to what is right and wrong is, by definition, going to be flawed. We can’t do it, and that’s taking on a job that God has exclusive rights to. Passing a low solely because it fits my moral code is, therefore, not a good idea. (Bear in mind that I’m emphasizing “solely”. We’ll come back to that.)

Second is the idea that my personal morality can inform what I want government to do. So based on my reading of the Bible, I may be against state-run gambling. My concern over taxing the foolish and government-sponsored co-dependence are moral stances, and they contribute to my opinion of laws regarding them. The Civil Rights laws of the 1960s were largely informed by a religious view of equality among people, equal in the sight of God. The laws were both morally right and a proper use of government in that they promoted liberty, equally, for all. For example, gambling promotes slavery to an addition.

So, while writing a pure moral code into a man-made document is doomed to fail, there is still a place for the Christian (and any religious person) in the creation of laws for the state or country. And while I appreciate Gov. Huckabee’s stance on the issue of abortion, I’m a little leery of him suggesting that the federal government should do it solely because it is right. That suggestion opens the door to abuses by more well-meaning politicians, and can result in less liberty as the government encroaches on the individual.

Now, having said all of that, I’m going to spin you in further circles and say that I do agree that the matter of abortion should be decided at the federal level. The reason is that protecting the right to life is a primary function of government, and without the right to life, no other rights can be enjoyed. Further, the Roe v Wade decision did nothing but muddy the waters as to what the Constitution really says about privacy. So yes, I think it should be overturned, and indeed I think abortion, as a matter of liberty, should be a matter of federal legislation.

But to do it because it is “right”, from a political standpoint, invites abuse. Government has a specific purpose and it should be used accordingly.

[tags]Mike Huckabee,abortion,gambling,church and state,morality,liberty[/tags]

All that negotiation and all those harshly worded reports from the UN have brought us to this point.

Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium – enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN’s nuclear watchdog reported last night.

The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will intensify US and European pressure for tighter sanctions and increase speculation of a potential military conflict.

The installation of 3,000 fully-functioning centrifuges at Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz is a “red line” drawn by the US across which Washington had said it would not let Iran pass. When spinning at full speed they are capable of producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium (enriched to over 90% purity) for a nuclear weapon within a year.

The IAEA says the uranium being produced is only fuel grade (enriched to 4%) but the confirmation that Iran has reached the 3,000 centrifuge benchmark brings closer a moment of truth for the Bush administration, when it will have to choose between taking military action or abandoning its red line, and accepting Iran’s technical mastery of uranium enrichment.

Those who wish to avoid war at any cost are seeing the fruits of their, er, labor. Given their behavior up to this point, why do we think they’ll change their minds after another resolution or IAEA report? If you want to complain that Bush is driving us to war, the reality of who is doing the driving may come as a surprise to you. Not that it should, but I’m sure it will.

[tags]Iran,Mohamed ElBaradei,United Nations,IAEA,International Atomic Energy Agency,Natanz[/tags]

If you ask the average Christian what it means to evangelize, who should evangelize or even why evangelize, you’re likely to get a wide range of answers that may or may not line up with what Scripture has to say. it’s a safe bet that many Christians don’t fully understand what evangelism is or what role they play in spreading the Gospel.

Thankfully, there is a terrific new resource available that will help churches, pastors, and individual Christians better understand what evangelism is all about. It is a new book by Mark Dever called The Gospel and Personal Evangelism.

In this slender volume, Dr. Mark Dever seeks to answer the most basic questions about evangelism that most Christians are likely to ask. His answers are clear, concise, and, most importantly, based on Scripture.

As I was reading this book I was both challenged and convicted as I realized that many of the assumptions I had made about evangelism were false. I also realized that my past efforts at evangelism simply didn’t match up to what Scripture requires. Dr. Dever methodically addresses our misconceptions and points us to the New Testament truths that will help us develop a lifestyle of evangelism.

The Gospel and Personal Evangelism is a tremendous resource. If you are a church leader or simply someone who wants to have a better grasp of what Scripture requires of you in evangelism, be sure to pick up this book.

Gov. Sonny Perdue attended a prayer vigil last Tuesday that other state legislator attended.

While public prayer vigils might raise eyebrows in other parts of the nation, they are mostly shrugged off in the Bible Belt, where turning to the heavens for help is common and sometimes even politically expedient.

“Christianity has more of a place in the culture here than in some other region,” said Ray Van Neste, a professor of Christian studies at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “And it’s only natural, in a way, for the public to pray for rain.”

But politicians, according to some on the Left, are not allowed to express religious convictions. (Those folks would have been very uncomfortable during our nation’s founding, that’s for sure.) The inappropriately names Atlanta Freethought Society doesn’t think those thoughts should be aired.

The loudest opposition to Perdue’s move has come from the Atlanta Freethought Society, a secular group that is expecting about a dozen of its 125 members to protest at the vigil.

“The governor can pray when he wants to,” said Ed Buckner, who is organizing the protest. “What he can’t do is lead prayers in the name of the people of Georgia.”

Because that impinges on their civil liberties…how, exactly? Does the AFS worry that God may get the wrong idea? The governor can pray when he wants to, except when those espousing “free” thought don’t think he should. Needless to say, the Founding Fathers (you remember them; the guys who wrote the Constitution that this protest is based on) would see things quite differently. The guys who created a chaplaincy for Congress and opened every session with a word of prayer welcomes religious expression in government.

[tags]Georgia,Sonny Perdue,drought,Christianity,Atlanta Freethought Society,church and state,Constitution,Ray Van Neste,Union University,Ed Buckner[/tags]

Hollywood is finding out.

The public isn’t going to Hollywood’s antiwar movies – and it’s not just the hicks if you look at the amazingly-consistent comments on Breitbart.com beneath the article: “Hollywood is casualty of war as movie-goers shun Iraq films.” It’s everybody and his brother from Tacoma to Tallahassee, not to mention a large number from abroad. As of last Saturday night, the Agence France Presse report had over 500 comments and counting.

The article itself, not surprisingly anonymously written, is filled with the usual shopworn explanations for the audience’s disinterest. For Lew Harris of Movies.com, it’s the canard that movies are escapism only. Serious films are just too heavy for the great unwashed. For Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com, it’s that audiences don’t want to pay for what they already see for free on television (Iraq). Veteran television producer Steve Bocho says it’s hard to gain audience interest in a “hugely unpopular war.”

These liberal folks just can’t believe that anyone disagrees with them. You’d almost expect to hear, “But everyone I know thinks like me.” But, as the comments note, there is another explanation.

The audience members themselves – that is the Breitbart commenters – are having none of this nonsense. The third one down, “Extremely Bored,” puts it this way: “Let me correct this point – I am not weary of war news at all. I am shunning these movies – and many others- because I am tired of Hollywood’s anti-American stance on absolutely everything. However we got into the war, and whatever mistakes were made up to this point, we are one country. We need to win and we need to remain tough against terrorism. It doesn’t benefit anyone to do otherwise. I will go see a movie that reflects that point.”

He is echoed almost immediately by commenter “Lee”: “The real answer – the obvious one that liberals can’t bring themselves to accept – is that most Americans are tired of liberal spinmeisters trashing their country, our soldiers, and our way of life. The Redfords of the world sit in their ivory towers and try to tell us how to think and react based on their own prejudices …”

And so it goes down the page… hundreds, soon thousands.

The problem here is that the Left finds whatever fits their narrative and blows it out of proportion, as I have noted before with the movie “Redacted”. Brian De Palma found a horrifying incident, but then he calls it “the reality” of what’s happening in Iraq, and by extension (i.e. by not showing the positive things happening in Iraq) he and all these writers and directors paint a horrendously proportioned and one-sided picture of the war.

Essentially, all this anti-Americanism does not interest the public. Further, it plays into the hands of our enemies. We are producing their propaganda films for them! (But don’t question their patriotism.)

One other thing this exposes is the canard that Hollywood is a strictly money-making machine, and they only produce what the public wants. You hear this excuse trotted out when someone complains about the excessive and gratuitous sex and violence. But these anti-war movies are not making nearly the money others do, yet they keep making them. Flop after flop hits the theaters, even with big stars in them. If this explanation of Hollywood’s subject matter were true, they’d stop hitting their heads on this particular wall, and they’d also make more G and PG movies.

Truth is, they know the influence they have, and will, in many cases, take the loss to get their views out there, dressed up and made up to look respectable. But it’s still just a pig with lipstick, and the American people are not buying the propaganda this time.

[tags]Hollywood,war movie,Iraq war,Lew Harris,Gitesh Pandya,Steve Bocho,Robert Redford,Brian De Palma,Redacted,movie ratings[/tags]

Here’s an unexpected presidential endorsement.

Pat Robertson, one of the most influential figures in the social conservative movement, announced his support for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Pat Robertson

Robertson’s support was coveted by several of the leading Republican candidates and provides Giuliani with a major boost as the former New York City mayor seeks to convince social conservatives that, despite his positions on abortion and gay rights, he is an acceptable choice as the GOP nominee.

This endorsement serves a few purposes. First, it shows (yet again, for those who weren’t paying attention) that The Religious Right(tm) isn’t as monolithic as the media makes it out to be. There were those who said they’d stay home if Guliani was nominated, but this move by Robertson shows that it’s not quite the herd it’s been made out to be. Although, if you read the comments attached to the article, you’ll find a boatload of those for whom this realization has flown over their heads.

Secondly, as Chris Cillizza notes in the article, this will have a calming effect in the SoCon arena and among the buzz brokers who were predicting turmoil in the Republican ranks. It shows that, even if Guiliani is the nominee, his chances in the general election will not be hampered by political purists.

Robertson has indeed done his cause a favor by breaking yet another stereotype of the Christian Right. Whether or not everyone agrees with his choice for endorsement is beside the point. And then, when you think about it, it is the point.

[tags]Pat Robertson,Rudy Guliani,Republican,Religious Right,Christian Right[/tags]

The movie, “The Golden Compass”, is essentially a moral compass that points south instead of north. As mentioned here before, author Philip Pullman, from who’s books “His Dark Materials” the movie comes from, is distinctly anti-religious. As such, the movie, while it is marketed to the same crowd as The Chronicles of Narnia, seeks to deconstruct religion in the eyes of the kids.

Not content with the subtleties of allegory, Pullman’s movie involved the church directly, and depicts it as willing to kidnap and experiment on children in trying to determine if a particular substance is actually Original Sin. He blurs the idea of a daemon as simply the human soul that manifests itself, in some of the universes in his story, as an animal that stays with the human. Ultimately, in the trilogy, the God figure is killed. Christians will immediately see the difference and the problem with one character’s goal of establishing a Republic of Heaven to rival God’s Kingdom of Heaven.

Even though it sounds like the anti-religious themes are being downplayed in the movie, the movie inevitably spurs book sales, which is where the real issues are. I would ask Christians not to put this movie on their holiday schedule. While the controversy will no doubt increase some ticket sales, I’m hoping that the dollars withheld by others will more than offset that.

(Information on this can be found at Wikipedia here and here. A review of the books from a Christian who really wanted to like it can be found at Journeyman. The original press release by the Catholic League can be found here.)

[tags]Philip Pullman,His Dark Materials,The Golden Compass,Christianity,The Catholic League[/tags]

That capitol of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Harvard University, came to the conclusion that, in the current presidential campaign, the media tilts…well, wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Read on.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which “produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans.”

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

On cable news, the tilt was not quite as severe, but not for the reason you’re probably thinking.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans narrows on cable TV, but it’s there nonetheless. Stories about Democrats were positive in more than a third of the cases, while Republicans were portrayed favorably in fewer than 29%. Republican led in unfriendly stories 30.4% to 25.5%.

CNN was the most hostile toward Republicans, MSNBC, surprisingly, the most positive. MSNBC was also the most favorable toward Democrats (47.2%), Fox (36.8%) the most critical.

And for those who hold up Public Radio as the last refuge of the truly dispassionate, prepare for your bubble to be burst.

The anti-GOP attitude also lives on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” There, Democrats were approvingly covered more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%. It seemed to be reserved for Republicans, who were subject to one-fifth of the program’s disparaging reports.

This, of course, is not exactly news to those of us on the Right that have known this for quite some time. But for Media Matters, and the “Reality-Based Community” of the Left, reality will continue to be denied. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see, and as long as the tilt is their way. You can almost hear Sergeant Schultz intone, “I hear nnnnothing, nothing!”

[tags]media bias,Project for Excellence in Journalism,Joan Shorenstein Center,Harvard,journalism,CNN,MSNBC,Fox News,National Public Radio,Morning Edition,Media Matters[/tags]

I hate polls.

In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times survey conducted Oct. 19-22, two-thirds of the respondents said a recession is “likely” next year. A recent poll by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly half of Americans believe the country already is in a recession.

And yet…

SECRETARY GUTIERREZ: Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for coming, and I’m here with my colleague, Dr. Ed Lazear, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Today, the Department of Commerce announced that third quarter GDP growth was a robust 3.9 percent, making this the 24th consecutive quarter of economic growth. This growth is coupled with a record-breaking 49 consecutive months of job growth and historically low unemployment. The President’s policies have helped foster broad-based economic growth.

This third quarter was fueled by consumer spending, business investment, rising net exports and non-residential construction. Housing remains a concern, but its impact is being offset by growth in other sectors of the economy.

How much this good news is reported by the media, as often as, say, the housing market problems, affects these polls. This is all a matter of perception. Perception is important in the economy, but this points out, not that the economy is bad, but that news of its strength isn’t getting reported.

Hat tip: Power Line.

[tags]economy,polls,CNN,Bloomberg,Los Angeles Times,media[/tags]

Warner Todd Hudson over at Blogger News Network has identified a clear case of media bias, but not just from one angle. It’s not just that a Republican was dealt with unfairly, but that the same Associate Press reporter, in the same set of circumstances, treated a Republican and a Democrat quite differently.

On October 4th, I had a previous piece displaying the “reporting” of one Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer, who gave us a little tale about a state Senator from South Dakota who is accused of sexually molesting a legislative Page. One tiny aspect of the facts of that particular story seemed to slip by old Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer and that would be that the accused legislator is a Democrat.

So, go ahead… ask. What would old Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer, do if he should be assigned a story where the eeeeevil sex offender was a Republican lawmaker? Come on, I know you are dying to ask.

Follow the link to see the details. In less than a month, Mr. Brokaw and his editors manage to display their double standards and break official AP guidelines. At worst this is blatant bias, and at best it makes the case for getting some (any?) diversity of thought in the editor’s office to avoid unintentional bias.

[tags]Associated Press,media bias,Chet Brokaw,Warner Todd Hudson[/tags]