It has been a full day since the state of the union address, there were many factual errors made by Obama and yet I have yet to see the old Fact-checking groups getting on the stick.
I know that Obama is given more slack than say Sara Palin, but I would expect a fact checking call on his comment on the Supreme Court. He was factually wrong as well as out and out over the top.
I have opinion-check on most of his tripe, but for our purposes here let's just stick to the fact that the Supreme Court didn't do what he said they did (open up our campaigns to foreign money.
This is a deeply ironic charge as most of us remember that he raised a lot of money on-line from middle-east locations and he was able to circumvent the restrictions that are still in place against foreign money in American politics.
Hat tip to Gary Bauer on Al Kresta's show.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
State of the unions address
I liked a whole lot of what I heard from Obamas' state of the unions speech tonight, not most of what he said, but a whole lot. The problem is I had the same feeling when he was running for office.
It is a problem because he never paid off on the things I liked and he did a whole lot I didn't like. He bailed out big businesses that he and his friends had "back scratching" agreements with. He nationalized the auto industry and tried to nationalize the medical field.
He can talk about universities price gouging, he can talk about small businessmen needing a tax break and he can talk about freezing spending, but if he has no plan for capping tuition rates, if he isn't going to cut the red tape that strangles small business and since he has already grown government, given most government workers raises, bonuses and promotions, and he isn't going to cut entitlements, then he is basically telling a big lie.
As to his continued push to nationalize health-care it goes against the principal of subsidiarity, but it also has numerous moral problems including funding and mandating abortion, contraception and possibly sending granny down the hospice chute. In other words it is something no Christian should support.
This does bring into question the religion of the 1/4 or so of Catholics who tend to support this sort of thing. One has to ask if their religion is Catholic or Democrat? On the Orthodox side there was a temporary flirtation with becoming Republican, but because the Orthodox side is Orthodox Catholic first and the Republican party is mostly interested in holding office, it never became a problem.
Having listened with an open mind to his pitch and then having seen the results I can understand that some folks fell for it the first time; I have no sympathetic understanding of folks who fall for this joker again. Consider that his party has run half of Congress since 2006, and all of it with a super-majority since 2008 along with the executive branch, then most of our woes that are government related can be laid at their collective feet.
So if I was to sum it up I would say this; Talk is cheap, but it takes money to buy whiskey.
It is a problem because he never paid off on the things I liked and he did a whole lot I didn't like. He bailed out big businesses that he and his friends had "back scratching" agreements with. He nationalized the auto industry and tried to nationalize the medical field.
He can talk about universities price gouging, he can talk about small businessmen needing a tax break and he can talk about freezing spending, but if he has no plan for capping tuition rates, if he isn't going to cut the red tape that strangles small business and since he has already grown government, given most government workers raises, bonuses and promotions, and he isn't going to cut entitlements, then he is basically telling a big lie.
As to his continued push to nationalize health-care it goes against the principal of subsidiarity, but it also has numerous moral problems including funding and mandating abortion, contraception and possibly sending granny down the hospice chute. In other words it is something no Christian should support.
This does bring into question the religion of the 1/4 or so of Catholics who tend to support this sort of thing. One has to ask if their religion is Catholic or Democrat? On the Orthodox side there was a temporary flirtation with becoming Republican, but because the Orthodox side is Orthodox Catholic first and the Republican party is mostly interested in holding office, it never became a problem.
Having listened with an open mind to his pitch and then having seen the results I can understand that some folks fell for it the first time; I have no sympathetic understanding of folks who fall for this joker again. Consider that his party has run half of Congress since 2006, and all of it with a super-majority since 2008 along with the executive branch, then most of our woes that are government related can be laid at their collective feet.
So if I was to sum it up I would say this; Talk is cheap, but it takes money to buy whiskey.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Cruel culture
We live in a society that demands that its members live certain lies no matter how much destruction it causes them. This results in cruelties that the barbarians didn't subject each other to because they were not sophisticated enough to fall for such obvious lies. They probably wouldn't have even tried many of our neo-customs because they wouldn't have believed anyone else would be dumb enough to agree to be subjected to such ill usage.
Let's start with an example from a few generations ago; imagine a teen boy and a teen girl from intact homes. They know that they shouldn't have sexual contact because it is;
1 sinful
2 shameful
3 could result in an out-of wedlock birth or a shotgun marriage.
4 could result in an STD
In other words they know it is highly forbidden on many fronts - by conscience, common sense, and by society. At that time there were two main lies that were plaguing our teen example;
1 An elevation of the lesser love Eros at the expense of Agape Love ( a confusion that is at least as old as Shakespeare who confused the terms deliberately to make greater points that were understood in his day, but not immediately afterwards - at least if we are to believe Joseph Pearce on this subject)
2 The next lie was one that was new with our grandparents/ greatgrandparents or the age that grew up with the automobile and movies. Both of these things moved the couple out from under the eyes of chaperoning family members and into a gray area (by which I mean a somewhat darkened room).
The movie theater was somewhat public, but somewhat private and served as a great place to try advances that would have not been made while her father was in the room. Also it served as a legitimate location to travel to in an automobile, and a reason to get home late.
Night has a strange way of weakening our inhibitions and our will. I can't explain it, and I won't bother to prove it by citing statistics because it is simply a fact and if you aren't the sort of person who is capable of noticing things for one's self then you will just have to believe me.
So the teens of our great, great grandparents age had means and motive but no opportunity, but with the coming of the auto and the movie the next generation or so had means, motive, and opportunity and the only thing they had to combat it with was a healthy fear of the consequences and grace.
In the next generation or so teens were told the lie that;
1 If the couple really loved each other it wasn't that sinful to "jump the gun"
2 Nor was it very shameful
3 Contraception would take away the risks
4 Finally the risk of STD's were minimal if you used protection
As time went on;
1 The idea of sin was forgotten except to be ridiculed or despised.
2 Shame was called unhealthy and modesty was called shame
3 Young girls were put on the pill and given condoms
4 There was something wrong with you if you weren't "doing it" like everyone else
Society demands that we live the lie that all this is fine and dandy; if you don't you are subjected to all the punishments the community can unleash on you short of incarceration, and they are working on that. This is not the real cruelty though. The real cruelty is what happens to the teens who are thrown out into this mess with no warning and no safeguards except those that are designed to give a false sense of security.
Just because a girl's purity is no longer guarded like the treasure it is, doesn't mean that it is safe to plunder it anymore than it would be safe to break into a nuclear reactor just because it was no longer guarded. There is going to be fall-out if you misuse it. The Russian soldiers who were told that they were protected adequately to enter Chernobyl after the accident were just as dead as if they had been warned with the truth and had proceeded in contradiction to that warning.
Anyone who watches day-time TV knows what I mean by fall-out from casual sex (or any sex outside of marriage for that matter.)The Barbarians lived in small groups and dealt in the real world; nobody could have made as big a fools of them as someone has of us.
So you might have been able to trick some of them into going into Chernobyl without proper gear, but you wouldn't have tricked them into abandoning their duty to protect their daughters. And their minds weren't ruined by political correctness; they knew that if you protect everyone's daughters then you've pretty much protected everybody's sons.
I think I'll write my next piece on arranged marriages!
Let's start with an example from a few generations ago; imagine a teen boy and a teen girl from intact homes. They know that they shouldn't have sexual contact because it is;
1 sinful
2 shameful
3 could result in an out-of wedlock birth or a shotgun marriage.
4 could result in an STD
In other words they know it is highly forbidden on many fronts - by conscience, common sense, and by society. At that time there were two main lies that were plaguing our teen example;
1 An elevation of the lesser love Eros at the expense of Agape Love ( a confusion that is at least as old as Shakespeare who confused the terms deliberately to make greater points that were understood in his day, but not immediately afterwards - at least if we are to believe Joseph Pearce on this subject)
2 The next lie was one that was new with our grandparents/ greatgrandparents or the age that grew up with the automobile and movies. Both of these things moved the couple out from under the eyes of chaperoning family members and into a gray area (by which I mean a somewhat darkened room).
The movie theater was somewhat public, but somewhat private and served as a great place to try advances that would have not been made while her father was in the room. Also it served as a legitimate location to travel to in an automobile, and a reason to get home late.
Night has a strange way of weakening our inhibitions and our will. I can't explain it, and I won't bother to prove it by citing statistics because it is simply a fact and if you aren't the sort of person who is capable of noticing things for one's self then you will just have to believe me.
So the teens of our great, great grandparents age had means and motive but no opportunity, but with the coming of the auto and the movie the next generation or so had means, motive, and opportunity and the only thing they had to combat it with was a healthy fear of the consequences and grace.
In the next generation or so teens were told the lie that;
1 If the couple really loved each other it wasn't that sinful to "jump the gun"
2 Nor was it very shameful
3 Contraception would take away the risks
4 Finally the risk of STD's were minimal if you used protection
As time went on;
1 The idea of sin was forgotten except to be ridiculed or despised.
2 Shame was called unhealthy and modesty was called shame
3 Young girls were put on the pill and given condoms
4 There was something wrong with you if you weren't "doing it" like everyone else
Society demands that we live the lie that all this is fine and dandy; if you don't you are subjected to all the punishments the community can unleash on you short of incarceration, and they are working on that. This is not the real cruelty though. The real cruelty is what happens to the teens who are thrown out into this mess with no warning and no safeguards except those that are designed to give a false sense of security.
Just because a girl's purity is no longer guarded like the treasure it is, doesn't mean that it is safe to plunder it anymore than it would be safe to break into a nuclear reactor just because it was no longer guarded. There is going to be fall-out if you misuse it. The Russian soldiers who were told that they were protected adequately to enter Chernobyl after the accident were just as dead as if they had been warned with the truth and had proceeded in contradiction to that warning.
Anyone who watches day-time TV knows what I mean by fall-out from casual sex (or any sex outside of marriage for that matter.)The Barbarians lived in small groups and dealt in the real world; nobody could have made as big a fools of them as someone has of us.
So you might have been able to trick some of them into going into Chernobyl without proper gear, but you wouldn't have tricked them into abandoning their duty to protect their daughters. And their minds weren't ruined by political correctness; they knew that if you protect everyone's daughters then you've pretty much protected everybody's sons.
I think I'll write my next piece on arranged marriages!
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