Yesterday evolutionist Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham had a publicly televised debate. I didn't see it, but a lot of people are talking about it, and I got into the tail end of a debate going on a friend's Facebook page. Michael, an agnostic because atheist sounds too harsh for someone who isn't anti-God, just doesn't believe in God, and Peter, a Christian biologist had a lively debate going on. They were discussing things with terminology I don't know, so part of it was way over my head, but other things were said that I do know a little about, so I added my two cents worth.
I'm not adding their conversations, but Michael criticized Scripture saying, No man has seen God at anytime, and then in another place it says someone saw the face of God. He also threw in a criticism of the Bible being unscientific. They had a discussion of amino acids being created in a test tube, which I have read about. I don't know the terminology they were using, but I know enough about the event to comment on it. So, with that introduction, here is my reply.
Wow. Wish I'd seen the debate. I've had these kinds of discussions and the intellectuals blow me away. I've heard Ham speak too and I thought he presented creation well, but it was never in a debate situation. It sounds from the comments that he didn't do so well. I don't suppose I could keep pace with Michael and Peter, but I would like to add a few thoughts.
Both men were arguing from subjective beliefs which require faith. Ham's position is based on a scriptural foundation which does indeed leave many details unanswered, but which are supported scientifically by such laws as thermodynamics. Evolution has just as many or more unanswered questions that scientific laws actually refute. Laws of probability show that the likely hood of getting enough amino acids to combine to even take the first step toward life are so astronomical that it is foolish to believe it could even happen.
There are many questions about Scripture and some of those probably have to do with translations not being exactly perfect, but it's an unfair argument to take a verse out of context and throw it into the mix without taking the time to do an exegetical study on the whole passage and finding out what its true meaning is. It's also unfair to make a blanket statement about scientific errors in the Bible without noting what and where they are so we can discuss them.
As for actual evolution, there are things that have honest scientists stymied. The eyeball, for example. No one has dared speculate on how it evolved. The same goes for sex. If life just mutates blindly into new life, what's the point of sex? And how could blind mutation invent something so pleasurable? For that matter, what is the purpose of blind mutation into life forms anyway? If there is no God, why are we here? What's the meaning of life? What answer does evolution provide?
The entire evolutionary argument falls apart when you start talking about evolving mushrooms. You alter and select mushrooms through breeding, but at the end of the day you still have a mushroom. It hasn't evolved into anything.
When you talk about fossils you start losing credibility. The fossil record all over the world proves one thing; no transitional forms, no proof of any change from one creature to another. Colin Patterson, an evolutionist, who was the curator of the British Museum of Natural History, realized this and made the comment that it should be a crime to teach the fossil record as proving evolution in public schools.
Stephen Jay Gould also realized this and came up with a theory he called Punctuated Equilibrium in which species don't slowly evolve, they leap forward all at once. In other words, a monkey didn't slowly evolve into a Neanderthal, he suddenly gave birth to a human, and all monkeys did the same thing at the same time. Patterson called these "Hopeful Monsters."
The fact is, if you can believe something like that, you can believe in creation, because that's essentially how God did it. All at once. Both ideas suggest an intelligence behind the action.
Creation shows purposeful design, and that's what we see all through the universe. Mathematical precision; everything working in an exact order dependent on everything else. Explain how an explosion out of nothingness did that? You can't do it.
A final thought. You bring up DNA, which is actually the death of evolution. DNA is the blueprint of life and it determines exactly what life is going to be. You alter it, or mutate it as evolution says, and you either deform or kill the life form. Down syndrome for example. Genetic mutations are almost 100% harmful, that's why evolution requires billions of years to develop. The problem is, the life form would become extinct long before it ever began to develop positively and ultimately you would have to have billions of sparks in the primordial ooze starting life over and over just trying to get the first amoeba to survive.
Not only is it easier, it is more logical to believe the biblical record of creation.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Minimum Wage
When Walmart workers went on strike in nine cities last November 29, demanding raises to double their minimum wage, the company did a cost analysis study and showed that if they raised the minimum wage of all their hundreds of thousands of employees to $15 an hour, it would cost more than the profit they took in 2012. The result would have led to either half of the workers being laid off, or a steep increase in the cost of their products in order to keep the stores open, followed by the average shopper being forced to go elsewhere and the beginning of the end of Walmart.
The argument is that corporate owners and CEOs take an unfair amount of their profits while single mothers with two kids have to take two or three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Obama continually invokes class warfare with his demands for income equality and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Minimum wage sounds good to people at entry level jobs who don't understand business, or what it took their employers to build the companies they are working for, but it never works in the long run. There are obviously examples of CEOs milking their companies for ungodly personal benefits; GM for example. Capitalist systems are always wide open for corruption because money talks, but free enterprise/"trickle down economics" has made America the wealthiest, most accomplished nation on earth. The answer is not to destroy the system.
The problem is twofold; government interference through taxes and greedy unions. Unions had a purpose when they were started, but they have drifted far from fair wages and safe working conditions. Unions demanding unrealistically high wages of 70 to 80 dollars an hour plus lifelong benefits commensurate with salary at retirement is one of the things that broke GM. The union was so greedy that they preferred to let the company go under and their members lose everything before they would offer a single compromise to save their jobs. But why should they compromise? They had Obama and the government backing them up. You and I, the taxpayers, have lost 10 billion dollars propping up the company. How many GM cars do you have for your investment?
The bigger problem is government taxes and regulations. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations handed down every year. Corporations are forced to hire hundreds of accountants and lawyers just to keep pace. There is part of the cost of your product. The cost of keeping up with OSHA is so great that companies have been forced to outsource to other countries just to stay in business. That's why everything in Walmart is made in China. It's cheaper to build a factory and a warehouse, hire cheap Chinese labor and ship the goods over here than it is to buy American made goods. Thousands of jobs are lost in America because of union greed and overbearing government mandates.
Then there is the ambulance-chasing legal profession that forces everybody with any money to get insurance for their own protection; the pharmaceutical companies that spend millions in advertising for experimental products that are so dangerous they take 30 seconds out of every commercial telling you the side affects to protect themselves; the health insurance debacle, which as bad as it is always made out to be, was still the best in the world, and is now falling apart with Obamacare; and on and on it goes.
The answer is for the Federal government to stop deficit spending, balance the budget, cut corporate taxes, abolish the personal income tax, close down the EPA, the DOE, OSHA, and the IRS, and let the capitalist free enterprise system, common sense, and the American entrepreneur work. The fewer taxes corporations are burdened with the more jobs they can provide. We are 17 trillion dollars in debt. If the government had put that in the bank and saved it, instead of wasting it on the socialist welfare state, they could give every American citizen, all 300 million of us, over 50,000 dollars each. For a family of three that would pay for a nice house. How is that for income equality? That would level the playing field quite well.
In his SOTU Obama pointed at the stock markets and admitted that corporate America is doing better than ever and that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is greater than ever. He used the argument to push inflicting more of his pain on the economy, but if anyone was paying attention, that was an indictment in his own words of the failures of his own policies. The gap has gotten wider under his economic program than ever before, and includes his own 12 million dollar increase in personal wealth. And no, it's not Bush's fault or Reagan's. The 1980s was not the decade of greed. That started with Clinton, grew through Bush, and exploded in 2009 when Obama took office. There will always be greedy people, but with a few exceptions, the problem is not in corporations. It is in the government.
Minimum wage increases sound good to people who don't understand economics, and to leftist, socialist politicians who see easy votes from non-thinking people. The reality, however, is that government required minimum wage increases have always caused the cost of living to go up at a faster rate than those on minimum wage can keep up with. It doesn't work. The answer is to end this goofball politically correct socialist nanny state and let the American people go back to work.
The argument is that corporate owners and CEOs take an unfair amount of their profits while single mothers with two kids have to take two or three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Obama continually invokes class warfare with his demands for income equality and closing the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Minimum wage sounds good to people at entry level jobs who don't understand business, or what it took their employers to build the companies they are working for, but it never works in the long run. There are obviously examples of CEOs milking their companies for ungodly personal benefits; GM for example. Capitalist systems are always wide open for corruption because money talks, but free enterprise/"trickle down economics" has made America the wealthiest, most accomplished nation on earth. The answer is not to destroy the system.
The problem is twofold; government interference through taxes and greedy unions. Unions had a purpose when they were started, but they have drifted far from fair wages and safe working conditions. Unions demanding unrealistically high wages of 70 to 80 dollars an hour plus lifelong benefits commensurate with salary at retirement is one of the things that broke GM. The union was so greedy that they preferred to let the company go under and their members lose everything before they would offer a single compromise to save their jobs. But why should they compromise? They had Obama and the government backing them up. You and I, the taxpayers, have lost 10 billion dollars propping up the company. How many GM cars do you have for your investment?
The bigger problem is government taxes and regulations. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations handed down every year. Corporations are forced to hire hundreds of accountants and lawyers just to keep pace. There is part of the cost of your product. The cost of keeping up with OSHA is so great that companies have been forced to outsource to other countries just to stay in business. That's why everything in Walmart is made in China. It's cheaper to build a factory and a warehouse, hire cheap Chinese labor and ship the goods over here than it is to buy American made goods. Thousands of jobs are lost in America because of union greed and overbearing government mandates.
Then there is the ambulance-chasing legal profession that forces everybody with any money to get insurance for their own protection; the pharmaceutical companies that spend millions in advertising for experimental products that are so dangerous they take 30 seconds out of every commercial telling you the side affects to protect themselves; the health insurance debacle, which as bad as it is always made out to be, was still the best in the world, and is now falling apart with Obamacare; and on and on it goes.
The answer is for the Federal government to stop deficit spending, balance the budget, cut corporate taxes, abolish the personal income tax, close down the EPA, the DOE, OSHA, and the IRS, and let the capitalist free enterprise system, common sense, and the American entrepreneur work. The fewer taxes corporations are burdened with the more jobs they can provide. We are 17 trillion dollars in debt. If the government had put that in the bank and saved it, instead of wasting it on the socialist welfare state, they could give every American citizen, all 300 million of us, over 50,000 dollars each. For a family of three that would pay for a nice house. How is that for income equality? That would level the playing field quite well.
In his SOTU Obama pointed at the stock markets and admitted that corporate America is doing better than ever and that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is greater than ever. He used the argument to push inflicting more of his pain on the economy, but if anyone was paying attention, that was an indictment in his own words of the failures of his own policies. The gap has gotten wider under his economic program than ever before, and includes his own 12 million dollar increase in personal wealth. And no, it's not Bush's fault or Reagan's. The 1980s was not the decade of greed. That started with Clinton, grew through Bush, and exploded in 2009 when Obama took office. There will always be greedy people, but with a few exceptions, the problem is not in corporations. It is in the government.
Minimum wage increases sound good to people who don't understand economics, and to leftist, socialist politicians who see easy votes from non-thinking people. The reality, however, is that government required minimum wage increases have always caused the cost of living to go up at a faster rate than those on minimum wage can keep up with. It doesn't work. The answer is to end this goofball politically correct socialist nanny state and let the American people go back to work.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
A Newer, More Transparent NSA
Last night I stayed up until 2am here in the Philippines to watch Obama's speech on how he was going to fix the National Security Agency. It was a tedious speech that rambled the long way around the barn before getting to the point. Obama kept curling his lips around his teeth and then smacking them before beginning the next sentence, which about half way through became really obnoxious. The basic problem with it is that there isn't a thing he says that can be trusted, and this speech, when you look closely at what was said, doesn't give any assurance that anything is going to change for the better.
In 2008 Obama campaigned against NSA domestic spying as being criminal. Then he moved into the White House and increased domestic spying a thousand fold. The left has called the NSA practice of listening to and collecting billions of domestic phone records a phony scandal, but it has grown so big now that Obama can no longer ignore it. In his address he laid out a plan to reign in the NSA. Or did he?
He started out with a rehearsal of the spying and intelligence services in American history. He spoke of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty prior to the American Revolution, the Union army using balloons in the Civil War, the code-breakers in World War 2, and modern technologies that have grown since 9/11. It all sounded so good, but considering how little he seems to know about actual American history, all I could think was, I wonder who wrote this speech for him?
His historical review missed the whole point. The Sons of Liberty were spying on the occupying British troops. Union balloons were used to spy on the Confederate army. The code-breakers in World War 2 were intercepting Japanese messages about war plans. Even the Bush "domestic spying" was on phone calls between known and suspected terrorists and required warrants before they could listen in. None of these were an invasion of American homes or private conversations, which is what is happening now.
Obama listed four changes he is making to the NSA. These are not helpful. Briefly, the first grants Obama more executive power. The second calls for a more transparent NSA. The third puts restrictions on our foreign intelligence gathering, and the fourth puts the Attorney General in charge of overseeing all the collected domestic data. Then he said Congress needs to act because there is little he can do by executive order. As if that's ever stopped him before. Interestingly enough, I listened to the Fox News analysts immediately after the speech and to more comments this morning, and I've yet to hear any of them discuss any of these four items. They need to be discussed because they are dangerous.
Obama has already assumed executive powers that the Constitution does not allow, and is acting more like a dictator than a president. He's only strengthening his hand by assuming more. The NSA more transparent? Coming from the "most transparent" president in history? That's laughable at best, and insulting at worst. Next, he told the world how he is going to restrict our intelligence services from gathering data. He said he would limit the NSA from tracking phone calls to only a party two calls removed from the original rather than a third which they do now. How is that going to help our national security? He talked about the damage Edward Snowden did, but it doesn't even compare. Obama just gave away our intelligence service strategy to the world.
Then, putting the Attorney General in charge of the illegally collected domestic data is like putting the proverbial fox in the hen house. This is the criminal behind Fast and Furious, who won't prosecute black criminals or deport illegal aliens, who is at war with states trying to increase their own security. This is the guy who just yesterday warned public school teachers not to discipline black or other minority students in their classrooms. This is a man who cannot be trusted to do anything in a non-partisan way.
Obama tried to reassure us by saying we "don't spy on ordinary people who are not a threat to our national security." Oh yeah? What about the IRS scandal targeting conservatives and anyone who dares say a word against the administration? Holder has apparently directed the FBI not to investigate the IRS while he puts a very partisan Obama donor in charge of the inquiry. This in itself is a scandal.
Obama concluded that these changes are necessary for the United States to remain true to who we are in a changing world. The truth is we haven't been true to who we are since Obama was elected, and these changes aren't going to help get us there.
In 2008 Obama campaigned against NSA domestic spying as being criminal. Then he moved into the White House and increased domestic spying a thousand fold. The left has called the NSA practice of listening to and collecting billions of domestic phone records a phony scandal, but it has grown so big now that Obama can no longer ignore it. In his address he laid out a plan to reign in the NSA. Or did he?
He started out with a rehearsal of the spying and intelligence services in American history. He spoke of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty prior to the American Revolution, the Union army using balloons in the Civil War, the code-breakers in World War 2, and modern technologies that have grown since 9/11. It all sounded so good, but considering how little he seems to know about actual American history, all I could think was, I wonder who wrote this speech for him?
His historical review missed the whole point. The Sons of Liberty were spying on the occupying British troops. Union balloons were used to spy on the Confederate army. The code-breakers in World War 2 were intercepting Japanese messages about war plans. Even the Bush "domestic spying" was on phone calls between known and suspected terrorists and required warrants before they could listen in. None of these were an invasion of American homes or private conversations, which is what is happening now.
Obama listed four changes he is making to the NSA. These are not helpful. Briefly, the first grants Obama more executive power. The second calls for a more transparent NSA. The third puts restrictions on our foreign intelligence gathering, and the fourth puts the Attorney General in charge of overseeing all the collected domestic data. Then he said Congress needs to act because there is little he can do by executive order. As if that's ever stopped him before. Interestingly enough, I listened to the Fox News analysts immediately after the speech and to more comments this morning, and I've yet to hear any of them discuss any of these four items. They need to be discussed because they are dangerous.
Obama has already assumed executive powers that the Constitution does not allow, and is acting more like a dictator than a president. He's only strengthening his hand by assuming more. The NSA more transparent? Coming from the "most transparent" president in history? That's laughable at best, and insulting at worst. Next, he told the world how he is going to restrict our intelligence services from gathering data. He said he would limit the NSA from tracking phone calls to only a party two calls removed from the original rather than a third which they do now. How is that going to help our national security? He talked about the damage Edward Snowden did, but it doesn't even compare. Obama just gave away our intelligence service strategy to the world.
Then, putting the Attorney General in charge of the illegally collected domestic data is like putting the proverbial fox in the hen house. This is the criminal behind Fast and Furious, who won't prosecute black criminals or deport illegal aliens, who is at war with states trying to increase their own security. This is the guy who just yesterday warned public school teachers not to discipline black or other minority students in their classrooms. This is a man who cannot be trusted to do anything in a non-partisan way.
Obama tried to reassure us by saying we "don't spy on ordinary people who are not a threat to our national security." Oh yeah? What about the IRS scandal targeting conservatives and anyone who dares say a word against the administration? Holder has apparently directed the FBI not to investigate the IRS while he puts a very partisan Obama donor in charge of the inquiry. This in itself is a scandal.
Obama concluded that these changes are necessary for the United States to remain true to who we are in a changing world. The truth is we haven't been true to who we are since Obama was elected, and these changes aren't going to help get us there.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Obama's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
In 1962, movie director Stanley Kramer had just finished his Oscar winning film, Judgment at Nuremberg, a sobering account of the Nazi war crimes trials. For his next film he decided to do something light-hearted for a change of pace, and for the first time ventured into comedy. Collecting a bevy of the greatest comedians in Hollywood, his creative genius turned non-sensical slapstick into the most spectacularly funny movie ever made.
About a group of greedy treasure hunters, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes them from the California desert to the fictional town of Santa Rosita on the coast in search of a fortune buried under a giant W. It starred Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, and an A-list of jesters. The flick could only have been better if it had included Red Skelton, and Kramer apparently tried to get him, but he wasn't available, and Sid Caesar's role was originally Ernie Kovak's, but sadly he died in an automobile accident shortly after filming began. The only straight man (that is, non-comedian) in the movie is Spencer Tracy, and he got the last laugh.
Funny as it is, the movie is the perfect caricature of the Obama administration. Mad, mad, mad, mad. A bevy of greedy clowns searching for treasure in tax payer's pockets and blaming all its failures on a big W. And Obama, the "straight man," is getting the last laugh increasing his personal wealth by 12 million dollars since moving into the White House, playing 160 rounds of golf, an average of one game every eleven days in the last five years, and spending roughly a billion dollars on extravagant vacations to Europe, India, South Africa, and of course, Hawaii. It would actually be funny if it weren't for the fact that it's real.
Obama's press conference after his return to the White House was comedy at its best:
He chided Congress, particularly the uncooperative Republicans, for going on vacation and not working to get unemployment benefits extended for 1.3 million Americans. Let's see, just like he went on vacation at the cost of about 4 million dollars and did nothing to encourage the Republicans to cooperate with his socialist agenda. I'll bet if Obama had stayed home that 4 million might have been able to help some of those unemployed people.
He then went on to repeat another laughable lie that he had cut the deficit in half. As I seem to remember, the deficit was something over 9 trillion dollars when he came into office and now it is something over 17 trillion, roughly double what it was when he started. I also seem to recall that he increased deficit spending from 450 billion under George W. Bush to 1.3 trillion every year of his "reign of terror" until this year. This year the deficit is projected to be something under 800 billion. So deficit spending has been cut by roughly 39%, a ways short of half, but the deficit itself is still above 17 trillion and growing.
He followed that up with another laugher: extending unemployment benefits creates jobs. Yeah, just like fifty years of the Great Society has won the war on poverty. You don't create jobs by taking money away from employers and giving it to non-working people and increasing their dependence on the government. Actually, if Obama was smart he'd let the benefits end. He did that before and got the unemployment rate down from 10% to 7.2% by dropping the unemployed from the unemployment numbers, even though they hadn't found jobs. If he'd let it end again the numbers would drop below 7%. There wouldn't be anymore jobs but he'd look good to the undiscerning leftist welfare voter.
And then there's global warming, the issue Obama jumped on several months ago to try and distract our attention from Benghazi. Did you hear about the Russian research vessel that went to the Antarctic to find evidence of global warming and got stuck in the ever increasing ice cap at the South Pole? (Remember Al Gore about five years ago predicting the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014?) Now we've had record cold temperatures all across the United States in the last two weeks. Yesterday the White House made a statement about "polar vortexes" and how the deep freeze is actually caused by global warming. Right. I'm sure that in the frozen blood vessels in his one track brain Obama really does believe this.
Of course, there is always foreign policy. Obama, the great communicator, was going to talk the belligerent nations of the Middle East out of their WMD and bring peace. November 1, 2012, he trumpeted that Al Qaeda was decimated. Today Al Qaeda is getting ready to conquer Iraq and Obama is illegally helping the Al Qaeda backed Syrian rebels, and Iran is taking advantage of his naiveté to hurry up its nuclear program. Far from bringing peace, Obama's policies have contributed to the loss of peace in the entire Middle East region, and the loss of the world's respect for America.
BTW, who can't run and who can't hide? And how many people have been held accountable for Benghazi? Not one. Oh, but don't worry about it. The New York Times just ran an exhaustive 7,500 word article on Benghazi and found out it wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was an unknown at the time video that caused it, and that Hillary essentially had nothing to do with it. Talk about government controlled media. The piece sounds like Pravda or Isvestia.
Oh, and the IRS scandal. Did you see that Eric Holder has finally decided to investigate? He appointed a woman lawyer who contributed six thousand dollars to Obama's re-election campaign. Do you suppose there might be a conflict of interest there?
And how could we forget Obamacare? The healthcare.gov website was unable to verify Barack Hussein Obama's identity. Do you think the birthers might have had it right all along? Obama's signature legislation, the thing that is going to define his legacy, this communist disaster, is potentially the thing that could end his extravagant dictatorial reign. That's the biggest laugh of all except one. Nobody on the Republican side, including conservative radio talk show hosts, has the guts to pursue the issue. And the one laughing is Obama.
He told us he was going to change America and he has; spiritually, morally, culturally, and politically, and none of it for the good. Rather than the utopia he promised, he's walked on the Constitution, violated the law, presided over the slowest economic recovery in history, and given us a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
T'ain't funny McGee.
About a group of greedy treasure hunters, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World takes them from the California desert to the fictional town of Santa Rosita on the coast in search of a fortune buried under a giant W. It starred Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, and an A-list of jesters. The flick could only have been better if it had included Red Skelton, and Kramer apparently tried to get him, but he wasn't available, and Sid Caesar's role was originally Ernie Kovak's, but sadly he died in an automobile accident shortly after filming began. The only straight man (that is, non-comedian) in the movie is Spencer Tracy, and he got the last laugh.
Funny as it is, the movie is the perfect caricature of the Obama administration. Mad, mad, mad, mad. A bevy of greedy clowns searching for treasure in tax payer's pockets and blaming all its failures on a big W. And Obama, the "straight man," is getting the last laugh increasing his personal wealth by 12 million dollars since moving into the White House, playing 160 rounds of golf, an average of one game every eleven days in the last five years, and spending roughly a billion dollars on extravagant vacations to Europe, India, South Africa, and of course, Hawaii. It would actually be funny if it weren't for the fact that it's real.
Obama's press conference after his return to the White House was comedy at its best:
He chided Congress, particularly the uncooperative Republicans, for going on vacation and not working to get unemployment benefits extended for 1.3 million Americans. Let's see, just like he went on vacation at the cost of about 4 million dollars and did nothing to encourage the Republicans to cooperate with his socialist agenda. I'll bet if Obama had stayed home that 4 million might have been able to help some of those unemployed people.
He then went on to repeat another laughable lie that he had cut the deficit in half. As I seem to remember, the deficit was something over 9 trillion dollars when he came into office and now it is something over 17 trillion, roughly double what it was when he started. I also seem to recall that he increased deficit spending from 450 billion under George W. Bush to 1.3 trillion every year of his "reign of terror" until this year. This year the deficit is projected to be something under 800 billion. So deficit spending has been cut by roughly 39%, a ways short of half, but the deficit itself is still above 17 trillion and growing.
He followed that up with another laugher: extending unemployment benefits creates jobs. Yeah, just like fifty years of the Great Society has won the war on poverty. You don't create jobs by taking money away from employers and giving it to non-working people and increasing their dependence on the government. Actually, if Obama was smart he'd let the benefits end. He did that before and got the unemployment rate down from 10% to 7.2% by dropping the unemployed from the unemployment numbers, even though they hadn't found jobs. If he'd let it end again the numbers would drop below 7%. There wouldn't be anymore jobs but he'd look good to the undiscerning leftist welfare voter.
And then there's global warming, the issue Obama jumped on several months ago to try and distract our attention from Benghazi. Did you hear about the Russian research vessel that went to the Antarctic to find evidence of global warming and got stuck in the ever increasing ice cap at the South Pole? (Remember Al Gore about five years ago predicting the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014?) Now we've had record cold temperatures all across the United States in the last two weeks. Yesterday the White House made a statement about "polar vortexes" and how the deep freeze is actually caused by global warming. Right. I'm sure that in the frozen blood vessels in his one track brain Obama really does believe this.
Of course, there is always foreign policy. Obama, the great communicator, was going to talk the belligerent nations of the Middle East out of their WMD and bring peace. November 1, 2012, he trumpeted that Al Qaeda was decimated. Today Al Qaeda is getting ready to conquer Iraq and Obama is illegally helping the Al Qaeda backed Syrian rebels, and Iran is taking advantage of his naiveté to hurry up its nuclear program. Far from bringing peace, Obama's policies have contributed to the loss of peace in the entire Middle East region, and the loss of the world's respect for America.
BTW, who can't run and who can't hide? And how many people have been held accountable for Benghazi? Not one. Oh, but don't worry about it. The New York Times just ran an exhaustive 7,500 word article on Benghazi and found out it wasn't a terrorist attack, that it was an unknown at the time video that caused it, and that Hillary essentially had nothing to do with it. Talk about government controlled media. The piece sounds like Pravda or Isvestia.
Oh, and the IRS scandal. Did you see that Eric Holder has finally decided to investigate? He appointed a woman lawyer who contributed six thousand dollars to Obama's re-election campaign. Do you suppose there might be a conflict of interest there?
And how could we forget Obamacare? The healthcare.gov website was unable to verify Barack Hussein Obama's identity. Do you think the birthers might have had it right all along? Obama's signature legislation, the thing that is going to define his legacy, this communist disaster, is potentially the thing that could end his extravagant dictatorial reign. That's the biggest laugh of all except one. Nobody on the Republican side, including conservative radio talk show hosts, has the guts to pursue the issue. And the one laughing is Obama.
He told us he was going to change America and he has; spiritually, morally, culturally, and politically, and none of it for the good. Rather than the utopia he promised, he's walked on the Constitution, violated the law, presided over the slowest economic recovery in history, and given us a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
T'ain't funny McGee.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Peace, Good Will Toward Men
On my son Ethan's birthday twelve days ago, his kindergarten class had a small party for him. His teacher asked him what he wished for his classmates on his birthday. Ethan replied, "Peace."
I don't know where he came up with that. It wasn't planned, but it was a good thought from a six year old.
The Gospel of Luke, chapter two, tells the familiar Christmas story of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary in a cattle stall in a little village called Bethlehem. It then describes how an angel appeared to shepherds out watching their sheep in the night and announced to them the birth of their Messiah. "Fear not," the angel said.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
Then an angel chorus of multitudes joined in to say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, Peace, Good Will Toward Men."
The Christmas season is an especially poignant time when families get together, friends are reunited, rivalries are set aside, and for a few days people try to get along in peace. How sad that in America atheists, with the apparent blessing of the government and a progressive judiciary, are trying desperately to remove the reason for the peaceful season.
Everywhere people are searching for peace. The purpose of the United Nations was to try and establish or maintain peace worldwide, but everywhere you look there is no peace. There is an ongoing drug war along the US-Mexican border. In the Philippines there are the Abu-Sayaf, and the Moro Muslim movements that want to split the country; there is the devastation in Tacloban, Leyte, and in Samar from the recent typhoon, and corrupt government officials are walking away with donated relief goods and selling them in Manila. There is unrest in Thailand, persecution of Christians in China.
The Middle East is in flames. Libya is still not stable two years after Khadafi was overthrown. Yemen is the new recruiting and training center of Al Qaeda, which is not on the run. There is unrest in Egypt after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government, and Coptic Christians are being persecuted, driven from their homes, and their churches burned down. The civil war in Syria has killed over 100,000 people, and the Al Qaeda backed rebels, with illegal support from the current US administration, has wiped out and murdered entire Christian villages. Even Turkey is in trouble. War continues in Afghanistan. Suicide bombers still plague Iraq. Iran continues on its quest for nuclear weapons. The North Koreas threaten to use nuclear weapons every time they feel a little belligerent. There are civil wars across the African continent, including an erupting conflict in the world's newest nation, South Sudan.
AIDS is still a global problem. Malaria is a scourge in the tropics and Africa. New strains of diseases combat medicine. The global economy with high unemployment everywhere is on the brink of collapse. People are fearful of the future because there does not appear to be much peace in the world today.
But they are looking in the wrong places. People look for love and fulfillment in immoral lifestyles that only bring heartbreak and often disease; they look for escape in alcohol and drugs that bring only a temporary forgetfulness, but make their problems worse; they look for meaning in power by hurting and putting people down who are weak, and still they are empty; they look to religion and find contradiction; they look to government for answers to individual problems and find it has none.
It is interesting that in the Christmas season, the time we celebrate peace and God's love, the highest rates of suicide occur. The reason is that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John 2:15-17), all that the world offers, cannot bring satisfaction to the heart or peace to the soul.
Peace is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The angel said, "Fear not." There is reason to have faith and hope because he announced the good news, news that will bring great joy. This news was not limited to the Jews, or to any small group of people. It was for everybody.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The Savior was born. No longer does anyone need to fear about their eternal destiny. The Messiah has arrived; the One who will take away all our sins has come. Peace comes by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Christ came, born of the Virgin Mary, to live a perfect, sinless life, because we are sinners (Romans 3:23).
He came with the intention of dying for our sins on the cross because we could not pay for our sins on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Then He rose from the grave as proof that He can raise us up to heaven. This is the gospel:
That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
Without Christ we are bound for hell (Romans 6:23), but if your faith is in Christ, His Christmas gift to you is eternal life and a place prepared in heaven. Jesus is the only way (John 14:6).
You don't need to fear the future. Jesus came as a baby in the manger to become the Christ on the cross to give you peace, and you can have peace in your heart by receiving Him as your Savior.
Dear God, I am receiving the Christmas gift of Jesus Christ and the eternal life you have promised. I understand that I cannot save myself, and that Christ is the only Savior. I am repenting of my sin, and asking you to forgive me and to come into my heart and save me. In Jesus name, Amen.
May the peace of Christ be yours. Merry Christmas.
I don't know where he came up with that. It wasn't planned, but it was a good thought from a six year old.
The Gospel of Luke, chapter two, tells the familiar Christmas story of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary in a cattle stall in a little village called Bethlehem. It then describes how an angel appeared to shepherds out watching their sheep in the night and announced to them the birth of their Messiah. "Fear not," the angel said.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
Then an angel chorus of multitudes joined in to say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, Peace, Good Will Toward Men."
The Christmas season is an especially poignant time when families get together, friends are reunited, rivalries are set aside, and for a few days people try to get along in peace. How sad that in America atheists, with the apparent blessing of the government and a progressive judiciary, are trying desperately to remove the reason for the peaceful season.
Everywhere people are searching for peace. The purpose of the United Nations was to try and establish or maintain peace worldwide, but everywhere you look there is no peace. There is an ongoing drug war along the US-Mexican border. In the Philippines there are the Abu-Sayaf, and the Moro Muslim movements that want to split the country; there is the devastation in Tacloban, Leyte, and in Samar from the recent typhoon, and corrupt government officials are walking away with donated relief goods and selling them in Manila. There is unrest in Thailand, persecution of Christians in China.
The Middle East is in flames. Libya is still not stable two years after Khadafi was overthrown. Yemen is the new recruiting and training center of Al Qaeda, which is not on the run. There is unrest in Egypt after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government, and Coptic Christians are being persecuted, driven from their homes, and their churches burned down. The civil war in Syria has killed over 100,000 people, and the Al Qaeda backed rebels, with illegal support from the current US administration, has wiped out and murdered entire Christian villages. Even Turkey is in trouble. War continues in Afghanistan. Suicide bombers still plague Iraq. Iran continues on its quest for nuclear weapons. The North Koreas threaten to use nuclear weapons every time they feel a little belligerent. There are civil wars across the African continent, including an erupting conflict in the world's newest nation, South Sudan.
AIDS is still a global problem. Malaria is a scourge in the tropics and Africa. New strains of diseases combat medicine. The global economy with high unemployment everywhere is on the brink of collapse. People are fearful of the future because there does not appear to be much peace in the world today.
But they are looking in the wrong places. People look for love and fulfillment in immoral lifestyles that only bring heartbreak and often disease; they look for escape in alcohol and drugs that bring only a temporary forgetfulness, but make their problems worse; they look for meaning in power by hurting and putting people down who are weak, and still they are empty; they look to religion and find contradiction; they look to government for answers to individual problems and find it has none.
It is interesting that in the Christmas season, the time we celebrate peace and God's love, the highest rates of suicide occur. The reason is that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John 2:15-17), all that the world offers, cannot bring satisfaction to the heart or peace to the soul.
Peace is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The angel said, "Fear not." There is reason to have faith and hope because he announced the good news, news that will bring great joy. This news was not limited to the Jews, or to any small group of people. It was for everybody.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The Savior was born. No longer does anyone need to fear about their eternal destiny. The Messiah has arrived; the One who will take away all our sins has come. Peace comes by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Christ came, born of the Virgin Mary, to live a perfect, sinless life, because we are sinners (Romans 3:23).
He came with the intention of dying for our sins on the cross because we could not pay for our sins on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Then He rose from the grave as proof that He can raise us up to heaven. This is the gospel:
That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
Without Christ we are bound for hell (Romans 6:23), but if your faith is in Christ, His Christmas gift to you is eternal life and a place prepared in heaven. Jesus is the only way (John 14:6).
You don't need to fear the future. Jesus came as a baby in the manger to become the Christ on the cross to give you peace, and you can have peace in your heart by receiving Him as your Savior.
Dear God, I am receiving the Christmas gift of Jesus Christ and the eternal life you have promised. I understand that I cannot save myself, and that Christ is the only Savior. I am repenting of my sin, and asking you to forgive me and to come into my heart and save me. In Jesus name, Amen.
May the peace of Christ be yours. Merry Christmas.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Duck Dynasty
I've never watched Duck Dynasty. I'm not into reality shows. I don't get thrills sitting around watching other people live their supposedly normal lives with TV cameras all around them watching everything they do and say.
Be that as it may, in the United States of America we have something called the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to free speech. For two hundred years or so that meant free religious speech as well, but in the last thirty years religious freedom has increasingly come under such attack that we have reached the stage where Christians are on the brink of not being able to express their beliefs about anything, anywhere, anymore.
Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson is a case in point. In an interview with GQ magazine, in which he was probably set up for the gay lobby and liberal media to have an excuse to find offense, he expressed his belief that according to the Bible homosexuality is a sin, and that homosexuals, like all unrepentant sinners, will not go to heaven. You would have thought he had raped and murdered the holy family. Not only did liberals and gays jump on his case, so-called conservatives also piled on the condemnation.
Piers Morgan, the British talk show host who doesn't understand our Constitution, declared that the First Amendment shouldn't protect the speech of "vile bigots." He doesn't understand what a vile bigot is either.
Leaning conservative but mostly straddling the fence, that great theologian, wishy-washy Bill O'Reilly, infamously turned to Matthew 7:1-2 to point out that even though Robertson had a right to say it, he didn't have a right to judge.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
As with all, believers and non-believers, who stoop to using this argument to squelch religious opinions, O'Reilly misinterprets the meaning by cracking the first verse like a whip, but ignoring the second verse which explains it. The verse is not saying we cannot make judgments about people or what they are doing. Everybody makes judgments about people every day. In Matthew 7, verse two qualifies verse one by saying that if you judge people by a certain standard, you must live by the same standard because God will judge you according to the same standard you set. In other words, live consistently by your judgments. So, in fact, we are to make judgments. Jesus also told us to make judgments in John 7:24:
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Regardless, O'Reilly, GLAAD, and all the rest of them missed the whole point. Phil Robertson wasn't judging or condemning anybody. He was expressing his belief in God's Word, which very clearly teaches that homosexuality is a sin (Romans 1:18-32), as well as all kinds of fornication, and drunkenness, greed and idolatry, and that homosexuals, along with a list of other unrepentant sinners, will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9). It is God that has judged homosexuality to be sin, and God who said homosexuals won't be in heaven.
Phil Robertson didn't single out homosexuals, the interviewer did. Robertson didn't instigate a riot, he didn't incite violent, negative reactions against gays, he didn't call for retribution against them for their lifestyle. He simply answered an interviewer's question, and what was the vile bigoted thing he said?
You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.
So, in saying that homosexuality is a sin, Robertson made no condemnation of homosexuals, but rather said that all people ought to love all people, as well as love God, and that if we all repent from our sins and turn to Him, the world will be a better place. Far from being hate speech, it is a very loving, compassionate and caring message.
Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, has called for the beheading and stoning to death of gays.
So who does the media crucify, and which religion is called intolerant and unloving, and who, and which religion has the media ignored in spite of this very hateful, intolerant speech?
Duck Dynasty has been the most successful reality show in history, but its producer, A&E, has suspended Phil Robertson from continuing on the program. The family says they won't go on without him. Actually, I think they should go on, and on the first episode without Phil they ought to bring up for discussion why he isn't there and continue the discussion on homosexuality. Put the noose on A&E's neck and make them pull the plug on the whole show.
Be that as it may, in the United States of America we have something called the First Amendment, which guarantees our right to free speech. For two hundred years or so that meant free religious speech as well, but in the last thirty years religious freedom has increasingly come under such attack that we have reached the stage where Christians are on the brink of not being able to express their beliefs about anything, anywhere, anymore.
Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson is a case in point. In an interview with GQ magazine, in which he was probably set up for the gay lobby and liberal media to have an excuse to find offense, he expressed his belief that according to the Bible homosexuality is a sin, and that homosexuals, like all unrepentant sinners, will not go to heaven. You would have thought he had raped and murdered the holy family. Not only did liberals and gays jump on his case, so-called conservatives also piled on the condemnation.
Piers Morgan, the British talk show host who doesn't understand our Constitution, declared that the First Amendment shouldn't protect the speech of "vile bigots." He doesn't understand what a vile bigot is either.
Leaning conservative but mostly straddling the fence, that great theologian, wishy-washy Bill O'Reilly, infamously turned to Matthew 7:1-2 to point out that even though Robertson had a right to say it, he didn't have a right to judge.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
As with all, believers and non-believers, who stoop to using this argument to squelch religious opinions, O'Reilly misinterprets the meaning by cracking the first verse like a whip, but ignoring the second verse which explains it. The verse is not saying we cannot make judgments about people or what they are doing. Everybody makes judgments about people every day. In Matthew 7, verse two qualifies verse one by saying that if you judge people by a certain standard, you must live by the same standard because God will judge you according to the same standard you set. In other words, live consistently by your judgments. So, in fact, we are to make judgments. Jesus also told us to make judgments in John 7:24:
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Regardless, O'Reilly, GLAAD, and all the rest of them missed the whole point. Phil Robertson wasn't judging or condemning anybody. He was expressing his belief in God's Word, which very clearly teaches that homosexuality is a sin (Romans 1:18-32), as well as all kinds of fornication, and drunkenness, greed and idolatry, and that homosexuals, along with a list of other unrepentant sinners, will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9). It is God that has judged homosexuality to be sin, and God who said homosexuals won't be in heaven.
Phil Robertson didn't single out homosexuals, the interviewer did. Robertson didn't instigate a riot, he didn't incite violent, negative reactions against gays, he didn't call for retribution against them for their lifestyle. He simply answered an interviewer's question, and what was the vile bigoted thing he said?
You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.
So, in saying that homosexuality is a sin, Robertson made no condemnation of homosexuals, but rather said that all people ought to love all people, as well as love God, and that if we all repent from our sins and turn to Him, the world will be a better place. Far from being hate speech, it is a very loving, compassionate and caring message.
Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, has called for the beheading and stoning to death of gays.
So who does the media crucify, and which religion is called intolerant and unloving, and who, and which religion has the media ignored in spite of this very hateful, intolerant speech?
Duck Dynasty has been the most successful reality show in history, but its producer, A&E, has suspended Phil Robertson from continuing on the program. The family says they won't go on without him. Actually, I think they should go on, and on the first episode without Phil they ought to bring up for discussion why he isn't there and continue the discussion on homosexuality. Put the noose on A&E's neck and make them pull the plug on the whole show.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Fifty Years Ago
Fifty years ago today I was near the south end of the playground at Asbury Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. I was in the fourth grade, and we were on our lunch break when one of my classmates, Scott Haskins, who had gone home for lunch, came walking up with a big smile on his face and saying, "The president's been shot!"
We didn't believe him. Scott was kind of a rough kid and often in trouble, and everybody thought he was pulling our legs. But he insisted. We looked at each other and wondered, then went on playing. Only a few minutes later the bell rang and we ran back up to the building and to our classroom on the second floor. As we entered the room and saw our English exchange teacher, Miss Mundy, with her head bowed at her desk, the room suddenly became solemnly still. I knew then.
When everyone was seated, Miss Mundy got up wiping a tear from her eye and stood before us with her hands clasp before her. "There has been a tragedy," she said. "Your president has been killed." We sat in silence, but my skin tingled. She managed a half smile as she looked around at each of us. "It is a sad day for America," she said. "It's a time for you to be with your family. School has been canceled and you are to go straight home." There was no rejoicing. We filed out quietly and went home.
I remember coming in the door and telling my mom, "The president's been shot." "I know," she said to me. She was talking to someone on the phone. That's the end of my memory of that day. I never did think to ask my mother why she was home so early. She usually didn't get home from work until five. Maybe she'd been sent home early too.
It didn't occur to me until much later and I was much older that I think Miss Mundy grasped the magnitude of what had happened perhaps better than a lot of Americans did. Maybe because she was British and had the opportunity to work as a teacher in America she had an appreciation for our society and form of government that many Americans just took for granted. I have no idea what her political persuasions were or if she favored John F. Kennedy or not, but there was an understanding in her tone and demeanor that made me feel proud to be an American, and sad for our loss.
Two days later we were watching the news coverage when Jack Ruby stepped through a crowd in a police station and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I don't remember now if we saw it live or a replay on the five o'clock news, but Mom turned and looked at me in total shock, "Did you see that?" she asked. "He shot him!" I saw it.
Assassination was not new to American politics. Ever since the dueling days when Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton, congressmen and presidents have been assaulted. In 1856 South Carolina Representative, Preston Brooks, walked into the Senate chamber and attacked Senator Charles Sumner, beating him so severely into unconsciousness with a cane that it took Sumner a year to recover. The first attempt on a president took place on January 30, 1835. A deranged man named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson, but his pistol misfired. Jackson hit the man with his cane and he pulled out another pistol which also misfired. Then Lawrence was wrestled to the ground by Davy Crockett.
The first president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War had ended five days before, and a war-weary president, relaxing for the first time in four years, was shot in the back of his head as he sat in a theater watching the play, Our American Cousin. His was particularly bitter as the war had just ended and his vision for restoring the South "with malice toward none and charity for all," died with him.
On July 2, 1881, James Garfield, in the first year of his administration was shot in the back. He hung on for two and a half months until complications led to a heart attack and he died. Twenty years later almost to the day William McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He lived for eight more days. His successor, Teddy Roosevelt, was the victim of an attempted assassination in 1912, but he survived to live on until 1919. His nephew, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was also the target for an attempted assassination. In 1933 another crazy man took five shots at FDR, killing the mayor of Chicago, but missing the president-elect. Shots were fired at Gerald Ford twice during his short presidency but he was unhurt. Then in 1981, Ronald Reagan came within a quarter inch of being the next assassination victim. Miraculously he survived.
But fifty years ago today it was JFK. This was before Camelot. The First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, had taken the world by storm and at the time was probably a lot more popular than he was. She would create the Camelot image after his death.
All I knew at the time was I didn't like him. It wasn't due to any nine-year-old political savvy. What I knew was what I saw on television. We had an old reddish-brown box, console type TV, about three and a half feet high, with a big speaker on the bottom and the picture tube on top. I remember watching Kennedy give a speech one night, his features somewhat blurred by the old grainy black and white picture, and hearing his New England accent. It made my mom cry and I hated him. "Now I know what a Russian sounds like," I said. Mom quickly corrected me. Near as I can figure that speech was probably about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A half century later there is more confusion about Kennedy and his legacy than ever. At the time of his death he was vilified by Republicans and even some in his own party. He was a welfare liberal who embraced civil rights and was weak on foreign policy, yet today conservatives praise him for cutting taxes and standing up to Kruschev, and are quick to point out that his civil rights bill, which was pushed forward by Lyndon Johnson, only passed because Republicans voted for it. And then there are the lingering conspiracy theories about how many shooters and who was behind it, all made possible because it was caught on film.
Fifty years ago while I played on a playground in Denver, shots rang out from the Texas Book Depository, the grassy knoll, and wherever else in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Had JFK lived he would be 96. I wonder what he would have thought about his party and the state of the country today?
We didn't believe him. Scott was kind of a rough kid and often in trouble, and everybody thought he was pulling our legs. But he insisted. We looked at each other and wondered, then went on playing. Only a few minutes later the bell rang and we ran back up to the building and to our classroom on the second floor. As we entered the room and saw our English exchange teacher, Miss Mundy, with her head bowed at her desk, the room suddenly became solemnly still. I knew then.
When everyone was seated, Miss Mundy got up wiping a tear from her eye and stood before us with her hands clasp before her. "There has been a tragedy," she said. "Your president has been killed." We sat in silence, but my skin tingled. She managed a half smile as she looked around at each of us. "It is a sad day for America," she said. "It's a time for you to be with your family. School has been canceled and you are to go straight home." There was no rejoicing. We filed out quietly and went home.
I remember coming in the door and telling my mom, "The president's been shot." "I know," she said to me. She was talking to someone on the phone. That's the end of my memory of that day. I never did think to ask my mother why she was home so early. She usually didn't get home from work until five. Maybe she'd been sent home early too.
It didn't occur to me until much later and I was much older that I think Miss Mundy grasped the magnitude of what had happened perhaps better than a lot of Americans did. Maybe because she was British and had the opportunity to work as a teacher in America she had an appreciation for our society and form of government that many Americans just took for granted. I have no idea what her political persuasions were or if she favored John F. Kennedy or not, but there was an understanding in her tone and demeanor that made me feel proud to be an American, and sad for our loss.
Two days later we were watching the news coverage when Jack Ruby stepped through a crowd in a police station and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I don't remember now if we saw it live or a replay on the five o'clock news, but Mom turned and looked at me in total shock, "Did you see that?" she asked. "He shot him!" I saw it.
Assassination was not new to American politics. Ever since the dueling days when Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton, congressmen and presidents have been assaulted. In 1856 South Carolina Representative, Preston Brooks, walked into the Senate chamber and attacked Senator Charles Sumner, beating him so severely into unconsciousness with a cane that it took Sumner a year to recover. The first attempt on a president took place on January 30, 1835. A deranged man named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot President Andrew Jackson, but his pistol misfired. Jackson hit the man with his cane and he pulled out another pistol which also misfired. Then Lawrence was wrestled to the ground by Davy Crockett.
The first president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War had ended five days before, and a war-weary president, relaxing for the first time in four years, was shot in the back of his head as he sat in a theater watching the play, Our American Cousin. His was particularly bitter as the war had just ended and his vision for restoring the South "with malice toward none and charity for all," died with him.
On July 2, 1881, James Garfield, in the first year of his administration was shot in the back. He hung on for two and a half months until complications led to a heart attack and he died. Twenty years later almost to the day William McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He lived for eight more days. His successor, Teddy Roosevelt, was the victim of an attempted assassination in 1912, but he survived to live on until 1919. His nephew, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was also the target for an attempted assassination. In 1933 another crazy man took five shots at FDR, killing the mayor of Chicago, but missing the president-elect. Shots were fired at Gerald Ford twice during his short presidency but he was unhurt. Then in 1981, Ronald Reagan came within a quarter inch of being the next assassination victim. Miraculously he survived.
But fifty years ago today it was JFK. This was before Camelot. The First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, had taken the world by storm and at the time was probably a lot more popular than he was. She would create the Camelot image after his death.
All I knew at the time was I didn't like him. It wasn't due to any nine-year-old political savvy. What I knew was what I saw on television. We had an old reddish-brown box, console type TV, about three and a half feet high, with a big speaker on the bottom and the picture tube on top. I remember watching Kennedy give a speech one night, his features somewhat blurred by the old grainy black and white picture, and hearing his New England accent. It made my mom cry and I hated him. "Now I know what a Russian sounds like," I said. Mom quickly corrected me. Near as I can figure that speech was probably about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A half century later there is more confusion about Kennedy and his legacy than ever. At the time of his death he was vilified by Republicans and even some in his own party. He was a welfare liberal who embraced civil rights and was weak on foreign policy, yet today conservatives praise him for cutting taxes and standing up to Kruschev, and are quick to point out that his civil rights bill, which was pushed forward by Lyndon Johnson, only passed because Republicans voted for it. And then there are the lingering conspiracy theories about how many shooters and who was behind it, all made possible because it was caught on film.
Fifty years ago while I played on a playground in Denver, shots rang out from the Texas Book Depository, the grassy knoll, and wherever else in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Had JFK lived he would be 96. I wonder what he would have thought about his party and the state of the country today?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Four Score and Seven Years Ago
Seven score and ten years ago, Abraham Lincoln boarded a train bound for the little hamlet of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Four months earlier Gettysburg had been the unlikely scene of the greatest battle ever fought in the western hemisphere. For three days the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia led by the venerable Robert E. Lee slugged it out with the beleaguered Army of the Potomac under its new and nervous commander, George Gordon Meade.
Fought around landmarks that would be etched into military history, Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, the Devil's Den, the battle reached its climax on farmland in a shallow valley between two ridges running north and south called appropriately, it seems, Seminary Ridge, and Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand Confederate troops, battle flags waving in the breeze, bayonets gleaming in the sun, marched in perfect order across the mile wide field until they came into range of the Union canons filled with grapeshot, and hell belched forth slaughtering hundreds and leaving gaping holes in the formation. Still they came until they pierced the Union line. Forever remembered as "Pickett's Charge," it was the "ebb tide" of the Confederacy, and came within a hair's breadth of changing history, before it was driven back. Half of the men that made the charge never made it home. Casualty estimates for the entire battle range from 43-51,000, with over 7,000 dead, 27,000 wounded, and another 10,000 missing, either dead, prisoners or deserters.
It took months to clean up the carnage. Most of the bodies were buried in shallow graves until a new National Cemetery was made ready. Thirty-five hundred Union troops were finally buried in the cemetery as well as 3,200 Confederates. Most of the Confederates, however, were later transferred and reinterred in southern cemeteries.
On November 19, 1863, the National Cemetery was dedicated. One of the great orators of the day, Edward Everett, had been asked to give the keynote speech. He spoke for two hours. Almost as an afterthought, the president was invited to come and say a few words. Legend has it that Lincoln hastily wrote his speech on an envelope while riding on the train, but he had actually written it out beforehand, carefully crafting in a few words the true meaning of the American experience.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Eighty-seven years earlier our fathers had signed the Declaration of Independence. I suspect that with the rewriting of American history in our public school textbooks and the dumbing down of our children with such programs as Common Core, which is not based on moral, Christian, or patriotic values, most Americans probably don't realize that not only was America conceived in Liberty, we were the first nation in the history of the world to ever be founded on the belief that people have a right to be free, and that government exists only by the will of the people, and not the other way around.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Honoring our war dead, those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice that we might live on in peace, should be one of the top priorities of not only our government, but of all Americans. How ungrateful and pathetically small it was that during the recent partial government shutdown the current president thumbed his nose at our heroes coming home in caskets. How pitifully selfish it is now that on this momentous occasion, the 150th anniversary of the most well known speech given in American history, he doesn't have time, even though he was invited months ago, to take a twenty minute helicopter flight to Gettysburg to be a part of the ceremony. Here is an event that is "altogether fitting and proper" to do, but he can't be bothered. This is the man who shamelessly compares himself to Lincoln even though he couldn't stand in Lincoln's footsteps, much less in his shoes. The comparisons stop here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
What else can be said? This paragraph has been dissected, taken apart, scrutinized, and explained by hundreds of writers and commentators, but nobody can say it any better than Lincoln wrote it. What humility in light of those who died, what pathos in honoring their sacrifice, what passion for the cause of freedom, what brilliance in the writing. Who has ever better described a patriot, or more eloquently captured the emotion families and friends suffer when their loved ones give "the last full measure of devotion?" Who has ever better challenged his countrymen "that these dead shall not have died in vain?" Who has ever better understood the Founders's intent in creating a free nation under God "of the people, by the people, for the people?"
This is our America. We are the greatest nation on earth. The question before us is, can we take from our honored dead the increased devotion to have a new birth of constitutional freedom or is this nation going to "perish from the earth?"
We dare not let it.
Fought around landmarks that would be etched into military history, Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, the Devil's Den, the battle reached its climax on farmland in a shallow valley between two ridges running north and south called appropriately, it seems, Seminary Ridge, and Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand Confederate troops, battle flags waving in the breeze, bayonets gleaming in the sun, marched in perfect order across the mile wide field until they came into range of the Union canons filled with grapeshot, and hell belched forth slaughtering hundreds and leaving gaping holes in the formation. Still they came until they pierced the Union line. Forever remembered as "Pickett's Charge," it was the "ebb tide" of the Confederacy, and came within a hair's breadth of changing history, before it was driven back. Half of the men that made the charge never made it home. Casualty estimates for the entire battle range from 43-51,000, with over 7,000 dead, 27,000 wounded, and another 10,000 missing, either dead, prisoners or deserters.
It took months to clean up the carnage. Most of the bodies were buried in shallow graves until a new National Cemetery was made ready. Thirty-five hundred Union troops were finally buried in the cemetery as well as 3,200 Confederates. Most of the Confederates, however, were later transferred and reinterred in southern cemeteries.
On November 19, 1863, the National Cemetery was dedicated. One of the great orators of the day, Edward Everett, had been asked to give the keynote speech. He spoke for two hours. Almost as an afterthought, the president was invited to come and say a few words. Legend has it that Lincoln hastily wrote his speech on an envelope while riding on the train, but he had actually written it out beforehand, carefully crafting in a few words the true meaning of the American experience.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Eighty-seven years earlier our fathers had signed the Declaration of Independence. I suspect that with the rewriting of American history in our public school textbooks and the dumbing down of our children with such programs as Common Core, which is not based on moral, Christian, or patriotic values, most Americans probably don't realize that not only was America conceived in Liberty, we were the first nation in the history of the world to ever be founded on the belief that people have a right to be free, and that government exists only by the will of the people, and not the other way around.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Honoring our war dead, those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice that we might live on in peace, should be one of the top priorities of not only our government, but of all Americans. How ungrateful and pathetically small it was that during the recent partial government shutdown the current president thumbed his nose at our heroes coming home in caskets. How pitifully selfish it is now that on this momentous occasion, the 150th anniversary of the most well known speech given in American history, he doesn't have time, even though he was invited months ago, to take a twenty minute helicopter flight to Gettysburg to be a part of the ceremony. Here is an event that is "altogether fitting and proper" to do, but he can't be bothered. This is the man who shamelessly compares himself to Lincoln even though he couldn't stand in Lincoln's footsteps, much less in his shoes. The comparisons stop here.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
What else can be said? This paragraph has been dissected, taken apart, scrutinized, and explained by hundreds of writers and commentators, but nobody can say it any better than Lincoln wrote it. What humility in light of those who died, what pathos in honoring their sacrifice, what passion for the cause of freedom, what brilliance in the writing. Who has ever better described a patriot, or more eloquently captured the emotion families and friends suffer when their loved ones give "the last full measure of devotion?" Who has ever better challenged his countrymen "that these dead shall not have died in vain?" Who has ever better understood the Founders's intent in creating a free nation under God "of the people, by the people, for the people?"
This is our America. We are the greatest nation on earth. The question before us is, can we take from our honored dead the increased devotion to have a new birth of constitutional freedom or is this nation going to "perish from the earth?"
We dare not let it.
Friday, November 15, 2013
I Told You So
Who said the following? (Hint - it was not Ronald Reagan.)
"The theme of this movie is whether men are to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by a dictator.... Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today."
These comments were made by Cecil B. DeMille when he introduced his 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. He further explained that the story was about "the birth of freedom." The movie premiered during the dark days of the growing Cold War. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and communism was on the march. DeMille gave perspective to the ideological battle going on around the world. How poignant and even prophetic his comments were. How ironic that twenty-two years after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union we are still fighting this battle. Only this time it's not with tyrants around the globe, it's with the one in the White House.
The battleground for the struggle we are in now is the misnamed Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Even though an attempt by the Republican Party to defund or delay the act led to a partial government shutdown, the law went into affect on October 1. It was an immediate disaster. Within minutes of opening the incompetently created website crashed, and it has continued to crash. After six weeks less than 50,000 people have signed up for a policy on the government exchange, and only another 50,000 or so have signed up on state run exchanges. In order to reach its March 31 goal of seven million enrollees, 39,000 need to sign up every day. What's worse, over five million people have had their insurance plans canceled.
Obama's promise about people being able to keep the insurance plan they had was finally exposed for the lie it has always been. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who is responsible for the website failure, repeatedly lied to the House Oversight Committee about the program's readiness and the progress being made getting it fixed. The president's poll numbers plummeted to under forty percent, and finally some Democrats began to jump ship telling Obama he needs to fix the problem, and preparing bills to authorize a delay in the requirement to get health insurance by March.
Yesterday Obama finally came down out of the clouds to offer a solution. But what he offered wasn't a solution. Without apologizing for anything he told the insurance companies to reinstate the five million policies that they have canceled and to keep them in place for another year. Sounds good except for one thing. The insurance companies have been preparing for this for the last three years. They just spent thousands on man hours, paper, ink and postage sending out cancelation letters, and they've deleted those policies from their computers. Chances are they aren't going to spend the money to rewrite and send out five million reinstatement letters, nor waste the thousands of hours it would take to rebuild the policies they no longer have, only to send out the cancelation letters again next year. Obama's ruling will delay the penalties for not signing up for another year, but chances are most of those five million that lost their policies are not going to get their insurance back within the next year.
There is method to his madness. Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Obamacare catastrophe so the fix is not so much about the AFA as it is about getting the Democrats off the hook. Obama has now put the burden back on the insurance companies to reinsure people and if they don't you can be sure he will blame the evil insurance charlatans for leaving people without any health care.
The one thing that everybody seems to be overlooking, however, according to Charles Krauthammer, is the continual tromping on the Constitution. He is right. The AFA is law passed by Congress and signed by Obama. Obama's only authority is to implement the law, yet he has personally altered it, given exemptions, and now delayed it, (after shutting down the government because he refused to negotiate on delaying it). He has no constitutional authority to do any of this. It is the responsibility of Congress to make the changes, but even Congress has taken a pass and allowed Obama to get away with it.
This is tyranny. This is a dictator imposing his will on free souls under God. This is the ideological warfare we are waging that will determine whether or not we will continue to be free.
There may be a silver lining in all of Obama's duplicity. The AFA needs seven million people enrolled by the end of next March for the system to work, but Obama just delayed the individual mandate for a year. With the slow number of people signing up now, and with no penalties coming for another year, and with the website debacle as it is, they aren't likely to be anywhere near the seven million needed by next March and the whole program may collapse on itself. Obama may have just signed the death warrant to Obamacare.
And to all those whom I've been debating this with over the internet, probably none of whom are reading this now anyway, those who have called me racist, hateful, ignorant, biased, arrogant, proud, stupid, and told me I belonged on another planet, I have one thing to say, ... I told you so.
"The theme of this movie is whether men are to be ruled by God's law or whether they are to be ruled by a dictator.... Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today."
These comments were made by Cecil B. DeMille when he introduced his 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. He further explained that the story was about "the birth of freedom." The movie premiered during the dark days of the growing Cold War. The Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and communism was on the march. DeMille gave perspective to the ideological battle going on around the world. How poignant and even prophetic his comments were. How ironic that twenty-two years after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union we are still fighting this battle. Only this time it's not with tyrants around the globe, it's with the one in the White House.
The battleground for the struggle we are in now is the misnamed Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Even though an attempt by the Republican Party to defund or delay the act led to a partial government shutdown, the law went into affect on October 1. It was an immediate disaster. Within minutes of opening the incompetently created website crashed, and it has continued to crash. After six weeks less than 50,000 people have signed up for a policy on the government exchange, and only another 50,000 or so have signed up on state run exchanges. In order to reach its March 31 goal of seven million enrollees, 39,000 need to sign up every day. What's worse, over five million people have had their insurance plans canceled.
Obama's promise about people being able to keep the insurance plan they had was finally exposed for the lie it has always been. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who is responsible for the website failure, repeatedly lied to the House Oversight Committee about the program's readiness and the progress being made getting it fixed. The president's poll numbers plummeted to under forty percent, and finally some Democrats began to jump ship telling Obama he needs to fix the problem, and preparing bills to authorize a delay in the requirement to get health insurance by March.
Yesterday Obama finally came down out of the clouds to offer a solution. But what he offered wasn't a solution. Without apologizing for anything he told the insurance companies to reinstate the five million policies that they have canceled and to keep them in place for another year. Sounds good except for one thing. The insurance companies have been preparing for this for the last three years. They just spent thousands on man hours, paper, ink and postage sending out cancelation letters, and they've deleted those policies from their computers. Chances are they aren't going to spend the money to rewrite and send out five million reinstatement letters, nor waste the thousands of hours it would take to rebuild the policies they no longer have, only to send out the cancelation letters again next year. Obama's ruling will delay the penalties for not signing up for another year, but chances are most of those five million that lost their policies are not going to get their insurance back within the next year.
There is method to his madness. Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Obamacare catastrophe so the fix is not so much about the AFA as it is about getting the Democrats off the hook. Obama has now put the burden back on the insurance companies to reinsure people and if they don't you can be sure he will blame the evil insurance charlatans for leaving people without any health care.
The one thing that everybody seems to be overlooking, however, according to Charles Krauthammer, is the continual tromping on the Constitution. He is right. The AFA is law passed by Congress and signed by Obama. Obama's only authority is to implement the law, yet he has personally altered it, given exemptions, and now delayed it, (after shutting down the government because he refused to negotiate on delaying it). He has no constitutional authority to do any of this. It is the responsibility of Congress to make the changes, but even Congress has taken a pass and allowed Obama to get away with it.
This is tyranny. This is a dictator imposing his will on free souls under God. This is the ideological warfare we are waging that will determine whether or not we will continue to be free.
There may be a silver lining in all of Obama's duplicity. The AFA needs seven million people enrolled by the end of next March for the system to work, but Obama just delayed the individual mandate for a year. With the slow number of people signing up now, and with no penalties coming for another year, and with the website debacle as it is, they aren't likely to be anywhere near the seven million needed by next March and the whole program may collapse on itself. Obama may have just signed the death warrant to Obamacare.
And to all those whom I've been debating this with over the internet, probably none of whom are reading this now anyway, those who have called me racist, hateful, ignorant, biased, arrogant, proud, stupid, and told me I belonged on another planet, I have one thing to say, ... I told you so.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Rollout Hearing
Did anybody watch the House hearings on the obamacare rollout disaster yesterday? Democrats on the committee led by Henry Waxman kept repeating the worn out blather that the system is working, people are getting insurance premiums lowered, and the Republicans are to blame for shutting down the government. Charles Rangel gave a history lesson that is only true in little pea-brained Democrat minds saying Republicans were against Social Security ad nauseum.
Several Democrats made comparisons to the Bush Medicare Part D rollout because it was slow at first also. The difference, of course, is that there was no mandate forcing people to buy Medicare Part D, and they had no expectations or need for millions to sign up in the first few months.
Sebelius, after apologizing for the rollout failure, then went on to blame Verizon for the shutdowns, and said the website had never crashed, even though it had crashed three times over last weekend and was offline at that very moment. When asked about the Obama promise that you can keep your health care plan, period, she said that was three years ago, even though Obama said it again last month. She defended it by saying that the plans people are losing are inferior plans, and when reminded that people are finding the new costs up to 400% higher, she said the website allows them to shop around. She completely ignored the problem that every plan you can shop around for costs more. Obama's lie about keeping your policy got lost in the shuffle and it came down essentially that people have to pay more because it's their own fault. When asked about delaying the individual mandate she said "No," because it's the law. When confronted about single men needing maternity care in their insurance she said, some men need maternity care.
I would say fools are generally irrational, and you can't argue with irrationality. Men, as well as 70 year old women, needing maternity care is pretty irrational. In fact, there was a whole lot of irrationality coming from the Democrat side yesterday. One old codger even got up wanting to fight a Republican. He claimed 17 million children would be uninsured without obamacare and accused the Republicans of not having a plan. The congressman he was arguing with said it was a false choice because there are other ways to cover the children and he held up a bill he planned to introduce today for an alternate plan. Unfortunately the Republicans were all over the place with their questions and they failed to hold Sebelius' nose to the question of what Obama knew and when.
The most focused Republicans were a couple of congresswomen who didn't waste any time with niceties and thanking Sebelius for being there and were pretty much on fire asking their questions. It's too bad the rest of the committee wasn't as forceful as they were. One congressman from Texas tried to get cute referring to the Wizard of Oz and telling Sebelius she wasn't in Kansas anymore. It basically backfired on him from Democrat ridicule.
The hearing finally ended after three and a half hours. I watched about two hours of it, but I had to keep leaving and coming back because some of the things people were saying were so asinine I couldn't stand to listen, and I didn't get all their names either. I'd say I really don't know what they accomplished except to prove that Sebelius can lie as well as the rest of them, and even though at one point she took the blame for the failure, it was only to protect someone she had just fingered as responsible. Just like in all the Obama scandals, no one has yet been held accountable for anything, and Sebelius has no plans to hang anyone.
The Democrats left the hearing with the same fog in their eyes that they came in with, and went back to the Lala Land in which they live. The Republicans walked out having failed to nail Sebelius when she could so easily have been nailed. And Washington goes on in its mad rush to destruction.
Several Democrats made comparisons to the Bush Medicare Part D rollout because it was slow at first also. The difference, of course, is that there was no mandate forcing people to buy Medicare Part D, and they had no expectations or need for millions to sign up in the first few months.
Sebelius, after apologizing for the rollout failure, then went on to blame Verizon for the shutdowns, and said the website had never crashed, even though it had crashed three times over last weekend and was offline at that very moment. When asked about the Obama promise that you can keep your health care plan, period, she said that was three years ago, even though Obama said it again last month. She defended it by saying that the plans people are losing are inferior plans, and when reminded that people are finding the new costs up to 400% higher, she said the website allows them to shop around. She completely ignored the problem that every plan you can shop around for costs more. Obama's lie about keeping your policy got lost in the shuffle and it came down essentially that people have to pay more because it's their own fault. When asked about delaying the individual mandate she said "No," because it's the law. When confronted about single men needing maternity care in their insurance she said, some men need maternity care.
I would say fools are generally irrational, and you can't argue with irrationality. Men, as well as 70 year old women, needing maternity care is pretty irrational. In fact, there was a whole lot of irrationality coming from the Democrat side yesterday. One old codger even got up wanting to fight a Republican. He claimed 17 million children would be uninsured without obamacare and accused the Republicans of not having a plan. The congressman he was arguing with said it was a false choice because there are other ways to cover the children and he held up a bill he planned to introduce today for an alternate plan. Unfortunately the Republicans were all over the place with their questions and they failed to hold Sebelius' nose to the question of what Obama knew and when.
The most focused Republicans were a couple of congresswomen who didn't waste any time with niceties and thanking Sebelius for being there and were pretty much on fire asking their questions. It's too bad the rest of the committee wasn't as forceful as they were. One congressman from Texas tried to get cute referring to the Wizard of Oz and telling Sebelius she wasn't in Kansas anymore. It basically backfired on him from Democrat ridicule.
The hearing finally ended after three and a half hours. I watched about two hours of it, but I had to keep leaving and coming back because some of the things people were saying were so asinine I couldn't stand to listen, and I didn't get all their names either. I'd say I really don't know what they accomplished except to prove that Sebelius can lie as well as the rest of them, and even though at one point she took the blame for the failure, it was only to protect someone she had just fingered as responsible. Just like in all the Obama scandals, no one has yet been held accountable for anything, and Sebelius has no plans to hang anyone.
The Democrats left the hearing with the same fog in their eyes that they came in with, and went back to the Lala Land in which they live. The Republicans walked out having failed to nail Sebelius when she could so easily have been nailed. And Washington goes on in its mad rush to destruction.
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