Stones Cry Out

Everybody says they want more politicians in office that fight corruption, wasteful spending, and are willing to go after their own party to do it.  Yet Sarah Palin is continually talked down by Democrats, who’s concerns about corruption seem to have taken a holiday.

Now comes word that their concerns about bipartisanship — about both parties working together — is also on vacation.

Sen. John McCain’s record of working with Democrats easily outstrips Sen. Barack Obama’s efforts with Republicans, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of their legislative records.

Whether looking at bills they have led on or bills they have signed onto, Mr. McCain has reached across the aisle far more frequently and with more members than Mr. Obama since the latter came to the Senate in 2005.

In fact, by several measures, Mr. McCain has been more likely to team up with Democrats than with members of his own party. Democrats made up 55 percent of his political partners over the last two Congresses, including on the tough issues of campaign finance and global warming. For Mr. Obama, Republicans were only 13 percent of his co-sponsors during his time in the Senate, and he had his biggest bipartisan successes on noncontroversial measures, such as issuing a postage stamp in honor of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Democrats say that they want bipartisanship, and indeed have praised McCain’s overtures to them in the past.  But all of a sudden, that seems to be ancient history.

Now, I will say that I’m not entirely a big fan of some of McCain’s bipartisanship. McCain-Feingold “First Amendment Abridgement Act” (my name for it, not theirs) is a prime example.  But outside the campaign season, politician and voter alike keep complaining about how all this bickering in Washington keeps them from doing “the people’s business”.  But here we are, with the most bipartisan politician for President I think we may have ever seen, and suddenly Democrats have lost all interest in it.

Oh, and Sarah Palin is also quite adept with respect to bipartisanship, getting a 75% job approval rating from Alaska Democrats.  Congress can only dream of such high numbers.

Guess “bipartisanship” just means “doing what I want you to do”.

The media has seemed to take Obama’s side in McCain’s ad accusing the Democrat of signing a bill that would bring “comprehensive sex education” to children as young as kindergarten.  The Obama camp called this a lie, that it was mostly about inappropriate touching at the young ages, and the media have played it that way.

Except that, as Byron York notes, when you actually read the bill and speak to its cosponsors (well, the one he could ever contact about it), that’s not necessarily the case.  Now, Obama may have had his own reasons for voting for the bill, but as York summarizes:

But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate that issues like contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases be included in sex-education classes for children before the sixth grade, and as early as kindergarten.  Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.

Read the whole thing(tm).

• Wordplay for your morning (or whatever time you read this).
• Left vs Right and the extremes.
• al-Qaeda … imploding?
• An add regarding Mr Obama and his pro-abortion stance. Also, comparing candidates openness.
• In the wake of the recent big bank kerfuffle … “high test hooey” from Mr Obama. On the banking thing again … why it’s really a good thing.
• Kill them? Why not just change the channel? Is that really too difficult?
• Very cute.

The Corner today points out a interesting survey done by David Frum. The Corner poster, Jim Manzi does some additional statistical musing and comes to a similar conclusion. However, this should cause a lot of consternation and navel gazing by anyone considers right vs left or conservative vs liberal a straightforward set piece ideological struggle. Consider that post in the light of two additional pieces of data:

1. This divide has been stable for some time.
2. and locally speaking therefore the policies set in place must therefore be supporting the stability of that divide.

The problem is that the Democratic states have been espousing policies that value equality and should be normalizing that which divides us. The GOP is ostensibly the free market party and supports business more and therefore should one would expect would widen the divide between the haves and have-nots.

However, the demographic data contradicts this. The Democrats are stronger in areas that are more divided and the GOP in areas with more equality. If this is stable … then there is an essential problem here.

Which means one might conclude that GOP policies do more to reduce the divisions between us and the Democrats reinforce them. So either politicians of both parties are lying all the time of that everyone is wrong about policy. That is, the policies that are assumed to reduce division in fact acerbate them and which are assumed to divide, don’t.

To restate, if you the reason you are a Democrat is because of the stated desired results that the Democratic platform espouses, you should switch parties because the actual entrenched policies of the other side empirically do what you find desirable and the policies of your party are empirically harmful. If on the other hand, you are rich and you want to get richer (and if it’s at the “expense” of the other guy you don’t care) then you should vote Democratic, because it is their policies which have been most effective at achieving that goal.

Greenpeace vandals have been cleared in the UK of damaging a coal station.  It’s not that they didn’t do it, it’s that the jury thought they were justified.

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 [US$ 62,594] worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

This act of vandalism was just graffiti…this time.  And Greenpeace has now been given license to cost power companies (and the people they service) $62,000 at a shot as many times as they want without repercussions.  That is incredibly foolish.

Barack Obama’s former employer as a community organizer is at it again, trying to elect their favorite son by any means necessary.

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”

But ACORN is an equal-opportunity defrauder.  Michigan isn’t singled out.

In recent years, ACORN’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Washington, with some employees convicted of voter fraud.

ACORN officials said they were looking into the problem.

Indeed, with conclusions, no doubt, some time after election day.

• Not a failure of free market, but of government intervention? Will the Fischer book, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History be discussed and read?
• On Media and Ms Greenburg … what about fallout I wonder? More thoughts on the same.
• A Byzantium book reviewed.
• Puppies and the farm life and spiders and autumn.
• The left and decency.
• Heh.
• Hitting the handicapped, or how not to take the political high road.
• Teeth.
• Biden and charity, well, he’s no Dick Cheney.

Mr Boonton (?) has offered that the Bush Doctrine would be an interesting topic for debate (This was originally written for my blog. If Dan Trabue, a frequent commenter here, who thought this style of debate has merit, wants to take this up here and on his blog … I’m game). I’ve suggested that a better method of debate might be for each side to express the other’s point of view. This might be viewed as a “scholastic” debate in that the medieval scholastics such as St. Thomas Aquinas used something like this dialectical method in their writings (they expressed their point, raised all the objections which and countered them in turn at which point the issue was proven). So, I suggest that my interlocutor and I enter into a short experiment in this sort of debate. I will restate the Doctrine as I understand it and then proceed. My suggestion would be that in the comments of this essay, I be corrected by my interlocotur and any number of other commenters until the expression of their objections (they are the “con” side) are represented. Then, I will restart their case (as amended) and offer a short rebuttal. It will then be my interlocutor’s opportunity to offer (on his blog) the case for “pro” side. I will correct, he will restate and rebut.

There is an understanding between nations that sovereign states cannot be attacked, and that any such attack is morally wrong earning at the least the condemnation of other nations and at the worst causes that state itself to lose the protection sovereign nations enjoy from such attacks. There are actions within a state that a state may take which cause that state to lose that protection, such as engaging in genocide within its borders. The Bush Doctrine holds that harboring and supporting terrorist organizations within a states borders is such an action which causes it to lose that protection.

The left and progressives hold the “con” position. That is, the support and harboring of terrorists within one’s state is does not cause that state to lose the protection from attack granted to sovereign states. I will now (below the fold) enumerate the reasons why. Commenters should either add reasons which I miss or correct my wording and correctly state the reasons I give.

Read the rest of this entry

I was going to put a blog post together on this issue, but Dan Spencer at Redstate has done so, and with links to keep you busy for quite some time.

Among his list of things Palin has done on the earmark front, and contrasted with Obama:

• She ordered her administration to cut the number of earmarks (including the “Bridge to Nowhere”).
• He consistently supported said bridge, even refusing to redirect funds for it to Katrina victims.
• She significantly reduced the number and dollar value of earmarks to the state of Alaska.
• She vetoed nearly $500 million in government spending over 2 years
• He has requested nearly $1 billion in earmarks over 3 years.

With a tip of the Blogger’s Fedora ™ to PowerLine, Charlie Gibson dabbled in some out-of-context quoting to try to slip up Sarah Palin last night.

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

Yes, the exact words, but in the middle of a 3-sentence thought that put it in context.  From the video:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.

To break it down linguistically, the “also” that begins the second sentence continues the “pray for” thought.  So to put the phrase that Gibson was referring to in its context, it would more correctly be “Pray that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God.”  That is a very different statement than the one Gibson infers; suggesting Palin was declaring it as such.  Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to catch that and clear it up.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

But apparently, Gibson’s deceit couldn’t help but try to pull more out of context.  And it simply had to be deceit, because if he read or heard enough of the quote to pull out those phrases, he couldn’t possibly have missed the very nearby context.

Gibson did apparently dry off quite well before the interview after being so long in the tank for Obama. 

In Obama and the Palin Effect, Deepak Chopra states,

Now, that was an interesting comparison, wasn’t it? Chopra is arguing that because the number of Alaska’s 683,478 residents is about one-tenth the number of New York City’s 8,274,527 residents, the task of governing Alaska must also be about one-tenth the job of governing NYC.

But let’s take a look at this graphically. Below is a bar-chart histogram which compares both New York City (NYC) and Alaska (AK) with regards to their population levels.

Clearly, the population of NYC dwarfs that of AK.

However, what if we were to look at the size of NYC as compared to that of AK? The chart below illustrates this for us.

So, in terms of area (square miles), Alaska’s size (656,424 sq. mi.) so overwhelms that of New York City’s (469 sq. mi.), that NYC doesn’t even register on the chart. Simply put, Alaska is 1,400 times the size of New York City.

Using Chopra’s reasoning, this must mean that, in terms of area to govern, the job of running Alaska is expanded to the scale of running 1,400 New York Cities!

I wondered how these resource-based comparisons played out when comparing Obama’s state of Illinois to that of Palin’s Alaska. So I did a little bit of research. I found the results interesting.

Read the rest of this entry

• Premises and Creationism and Science … the Nagel point is entirely reasonable.
• Orthodoxy, Turkey and persecution … and the EU membership carrot plus … the candidates and the WoT.
• How not to interview … example #1. Related … One fence-sitter and Mrs Palin.
• This sort of thing is exactly what we need more of to bring healthcare costs down … automation.
• Ms Althouse says no, I (and Christian doctrine) say yes … it is adultery.
• Imposition of values, from the left.
• A neat map.

Dan Trabue, in our conversations on monastic life, offered that celibacy is un-Biblical. Huh?

Explain then (1 Corinthians 7 ESV):

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

It seems to me the plain meaning of this is that St. Paul offers that unmarried devotion to Christ is preferred to marriage hence the “I wish all were as I myself am”, to whit unmarried and celibate (this chapter offers more support for that view as well).

Secondly, for 1500+ years the Christian church always held that unmarried celibacy, such as the monastic life was a higher calling than marriage. Today, many Protestants reject this. Why? On what basis? I honestly have no idea what is the basis of that rejection.

I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

Doug’s post below reminded me that I wanted to recycle a post from a few years ago (apologies to those who have read it already). I think it’s topical.

Jessica is the daughter of our friends. Every day, the school bus comes for Jessica, who happens to be the last child on the route. On this particular bus, the kids have assigned seating, and Jessica sits next to the same young boy–day after day. And, day after day, this young, frightened boy cried the whole trip. He was crying when the bus came to Jessica’s house, and he cried the rest of the way to school.

One day, Jessica decided to help the boy. She reached out her small hand, and gently laid it on his arm. The boy stopped crying. The mere touch of another, gentle soul was enough to comfort him. The next day came, the boy was crying. Jessica sat down, reached out, touched his arm, and he stopped crying. This pattern repeated the next few days. She did not have to say anything, her touch was all he needed.

And then, a few days later, something interesting happened. On this day, the boy stopped crying a few blocks before the bus reached Jessica’s house. He knew she would be getting on the bus soon and that was enough to comfort him. She still put her hand gently on his arm, of course. This pattern repeats to this day. The boy stops crying a few blocks before Jessica’s house.

I suppose he can sense where the bus is because of the curves in the road near her house. You see, the boy is blind. He can neither see Jessica, nor her house. He just senses when the bus is almost there.

Jessica’s actions on the bus do not surprise her parents. She has four siblings at home, including a newborn sister. Whenever one of her sisters, or her brother, is hurt, Jessica is there to comfort the child. Offering her gentle shoulder and heart for another’s comfort. That’s who Jessica is–comforter of the hurting. She is also one of the happiest children I have ever seen. There’s always a smile on her face.

Jessica turned five this past February. [She is now eight.] That, in itself, is a miracle. Jessica was born with hydrocephalus. While in her mother, the fluid built up in her tiny brain and damaged it. Jessica also has Down Syndrome. There are many things that Jessica will not be able to do in her life. To some, Jessica should never have been born. Some, having received the news of her condition, as her parents did, by amniocentesis, would have chosen to end the pregnancy, and her life. The reason, I suppose, is that she won’t have much quality of life. She’ll never be a productive member of society. She may not be able to take care of herself. Not much of a life in our modern society.

However, I know one little boy on a bus who knows that Jessica is nothing short of a gift from God.

Maybe the doctor mentioned in Doug’s post below needs to meet Jessica.