Today our pastor preached on “Jesus and Politics”. The sermon was centered on Mark 12:13-17. For those of us who are Christians and tend to get overly focused on politics, this is a message worth hearing. Pastor Darrin Patrick is a superb preacher, and this message is one of the best I’ve heard him deliver.

Listen to it. Pray about it.

Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”

We live in an entertainment culture. The lives of many in this country revolve around the consumption of media and entertainment. Sports is almost an object of worship to some, and events such as the BCS Championship and the Super Bowl are virtually national holidays, surrounded by endless attention in the news/sports media and other popular culture outlets. Given that media consumption is now so ubiquitous, with flat-screen digital TVs, smartphones, satellite TV, streaming video, iPads and other multimedia sources, is it any wonder that politics has now taken on a similar flavor? 2012 is an election year and along with it, politics as entertainment has come to the fore. Even Entertainment Weekly has a “Politics As Entertainment” page! But the biggest proof point for this is the seemingly endless series of debates between GOP candidates. This may make for good entertainment, but does it make for good politics?

We could see this coming long before the primary season began. As Politico noted on Sunday, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus made an attempt to put some controls around the debate schedule.

In words that were one part prescient, one part naive, Priebus in April warned at a media breakfast: “The idea of twenty different forums and twenty different groups is a little much. We need to have some order in our debate process.”

Priebus’s effort to have a Republican National Committee commission take control of the process quickly got answers from presidential campaigns and sponsoring news organizations: nice try. And fat chance.

I believe there are two key reasons that the campaigns and the news organizations have fed this debate overload.

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Leon’s OT from yesterday went to good use, so I’l start up another one tonight.

One little story I found amusing: apparently, voters in the city of Los Angeles will be asked to vote on whether porn stars should be using condoms. To be blunt, I don’t know why I’d care if porn stars give each other diseases that would undoubtedly prevent them from “plying their trade”…seems to me we’d be better off that way.

I suspect Ron Paul would disagree with me.

Open thread

In the Old West, buildings were often built with “false fronts”, or façades, that hid the fact that the actual building behind them was much less than it appeared on the surface. The word “façade” is defined as “a superficial appearance or illusion of something”. Now many are probably not aware that the White House in DC has a façade. But it’s not in front of the WH – it’s inside it. President Barack Obama is a human façade – a living, breathing illusion.

Victor Davis Hanson discusses Obama The Myth in his column “When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend”. Throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign, the façade that is Barack Obama was prominent. The media was in love with this god-like persona (“He’s sort of a god…he’s going to bring all different sides together”). He caused some media figures to practically swoon in adoration (“a thrill going up my leg“) But what does reality tell us?

Hanson documents the reality of the Obama myths.

Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?
…
At Chicago, did lecturer Obama write a path-breaking legal article or a book on jurisprudence that warranted the rare tenure offer to a part-time lecturer? (Has that offer ever been extended to others of like stature?) In the Illinois legislature or U.S. Senate, was Obama known as a deeply learned man of the Patrick Moynihan variety? Whether as an undergraduate, law student, lawyer, professor, legislator or senator, Obama was given numerous opportunities to reveal his intellectual weight. Did he ever really? On what basis did Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan regret that Obama could not be lured to a top billet at Harvard?

Where did this aura of brilliance originate? Padded resume, perhaps?

Hanson distills the problem:

In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well. Read Plato’s Ion on the difference between gifted rhapsody and wisdom — and Socrates’ warning about easily conflating the two. It need not have been so. At any point in a long career, Obama the rhapsode could have shunned the easy way, stuck his head in a book, and earned rather than charmed those (for whom he had contempt) for his rewards. Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed. Obama seems never to have done that. He liked the vague idea of Obamacare, outsourced the details to the Democratic Congress, applied his Chicago protocols to getting it passed, and worried little what was actually in the bill. We were to think that the obsessions with the NBA, the NCAA final four, the golfing tics, etc., were all respites from exhausting labors of the mind rather than in fact the presidency respites from all the former.

Conclusion? Obama is a heck of an actor who knows how to erect a wonderful façade and illusion of competence.

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Well, I’m sufficiently disgusted by the developments in the Virginia primary. That’s about all I’ve seen in my email and on Redstate today. But today is December 24th – Christmas Eve. And it’s time for me to put an end to the day’s ruminations about politics and start thinking about what tonight and tomorrow should be all about: the birth of our Savior.

There was one article that caught my eye today that subtly links the world of politics with Christmas. CNN.com published an article titled “When Bedford Falls Becomes Pottersville“. It is a superb article that uses “It’s A Wonderful Life” as a metaphor for an America without Jesus. I would post some quotes here, but I would wind up just blockquoting the entire article.

As you read it, think about what this nation would be like without a savior. There would be no hope. While politics and the presidential race are certainly relevant and important in our lives, nothing is more important than what we are celebrating tonight: the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Our hope should be in him and him alone…not in some politician whose promises will inevitably be broken. The promises of God will never be broken, just as this one was not:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

(Luke 1:26-37)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

But alas – unfortunately, you won’t be able to buy this one for Christmas this year.  It seems that the latest in the Tom Clancy Rainbow Six series may have adopted a new villain:  Occupy Wall Street.  MRC TV has the story here.

Now I’m not all that convinced that it’s OWS that they’re going after – I don’t see any stringy hair or torn clothes…but they may be smelly (can’t tell here…)

 
As the good folk at MRC point out, the Left is none too happy to see their allies getting blown up. If the OWS kids really are the target of this game’s ridicule, it’s really too bad the creators weren’t even MORE explicit about it. After all, the Left didn’t seem all that broken up when another game creator decided that “Tea Party Zombies Must Die”. I suppose the lesson here is that I can look at that example of liberal silliness and chuckle about it, whereas the Left, as usual, is indignant about one of their causes being mocked.

So – for anyone except maybe Ron Paul fans (who might be reminded too much of the Great Satan going after Iran), this one should be on your short list for next Christmas!

Hey, look: It’s THANKSGIVING!! And of course that brings … the annual “WKRP Turkey Drop Open Thread”

“With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”

(You can watch the entire episode on Hulu)

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. Enjoy the day, and give thanks to God today for the many blessings in your lives.

(Oh, and this is an open thread. Talk amongst yourselves…)

This one’s been making the rounds of late, and it just found my inbox this morning.  This is a poem that appears to have been originally published back in the late 1940s, and according to the document, was placed in the Congressional Record by GOP Representative Clarence J. Brown of Ohio.  One might think it a fake, considering how eerily accurately it describes the current Occupy Wall Street, etc. thinking.  But it appears to be for real…I located a newspaper article from 1978 that published the same poem. As further verification, our crack Redstate Research Team (read: Jeff Emanuel) located the entry in the Congressional Record of the 81st Congress, First Session.

I shouldn’t pick exclusively on the Occupy Wall Street folks. This piece really describes the whole entitlement mentality/culture that has festered in this nation for decades. As the writer says “nobody has to give a damn – we’ve all been subsidized”

So – enjoy. (Oh, and please consider this your open thread of the day)

This evening, USA Today published a story describing the law-breaking participants in the “Occupy movement” as a “violent fringe”.  But how can a movement whose entire existence is predicated upon breaking the law be anything but criminal and destined to incite violence?  The mere concept of this “occupation” promotes the idea that the occupiers would perpetrate an act that is bound to break multiple laws in virtually every location where these people have erected their disease- and crime-infested tent cities.

So at what point does anecdotal evidence indicate a trend and show that this is not “fringe” behavior?  When do hundreds of incidents of mass lawbreaking, violence, rape and murder demonstrate that this anti-social behavior is standard procedure from these crowds and not the exception?  BigGovernment.com is maintaining a running total of the violations rung up by the Occupy crew.  Just a sampling of the Occupiers’ stunts:

1. NY: 10/1/2011 — Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
2. Madison, WI: 10-27-2011 — Madison Occupiers Lose Permit Due to Public Masturbation
3. Phoenix: 10/28/2011 — Flier at Occupy Phoenix Asks, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?”
4. NY: 10/18/2011 — Thieves Preying on Fellow Protesters
5. NY: 10/9/2011 — Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters Accused of Living in Filth as Shocking Pictures Show One Demonstrator Defecating on a POLICE CAR
6. NY: 10/7/2011 — Occupiers Rush Police … More
7. Cleveland: 10/18/2011 —  ‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped
8. NY: 10/10/2011 — ‘Increasingly Debauched’: Are Sex, Drugs & Poor Sanitation Eclipsing Occupy Wall Street?
9. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — Man Accused of Exposing Self to Children Arrested
10. 10/12/2011 — Iran Supports ‘Occupy Wall Street’
11. Portland: 10/16/2011 – #OccupyPortland Protester Desecrates Memorial To U.S. War Dead
12. Portland: 10/15/2011 — #OccupyPortland Protesters Sing “F*** The USA”

There are a couple hundred more and undoubtedly far more that have not seen the light of day, considering the Occupy folks’ tendency to hide the violations.

Yet despite the hundreds of incidents that have occurred across the nation, local law enforcement and governmental authorities have been hesitant to enforce the laws and jail the violators.  

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Today is Do-Over Day for Harold Camping and his EOTW prediction.  Yes, kids, today’s the day that The Big One will occur and the world will come to an end.

And I forgot to take a vacation day today.

So, here’s an open thread for you to mull over what you should be doing on this, your last day on Earth.  I have some work to do this morning, then I’ll be watching Top Gear this evening.  But in the meantime, I’ll be thinking on Matthew 24:36, and I hope Harold is doing the same.

Discuss.

NOTE: As member CincoSolas_del_Bronx mentions in the comments, I typo’d the title.  It wasn’t intentional, but considering how Mr. Camping has apparently neglected to pay attention to the basics of Matt 24, I’ll just leave it that way.  The title was INTENDED to refer to this:

Every week brings another controversy or another debate – and another Republican POTUS front-runner.  And once again, the GOP base continues its eternal (and fruitless) search for the Perfect Conservative.  Each time a candidate peaks, they stick their foot in their mouth or some issue about their past pops up and they drop in the polls in favor of the next flavor of the month.  It was Mitt, then it was Michelle, then it was Rick, and now it’s Herman/Herb.  Every time a new flavor appears, they either blow their own popularity (cf. Bachmann) or the base picks them apart (cf. Perry).

But the issue here not the flaws of the latest flavor of the month.  The problem in the the GOP race is/are the many flaws of Mitt Romney.  The GOP base is in search of Not Romney.  Romney is a mediocre candidate and about 75% of the GOP seems to know it.  But no one has been able to put him away.  Romney is a smooth communicator.  He does well in debates.  He’s articulate and looks like a President.  But almost no one wants him to actually BE one.  It appeared that another flavor of the month might emerge in Gov. Chris Christie or (heh) Sarah Palin.  This week’s events put those rumors to bed.  And it really didn’t matter – they would have gone the same way as the prior contenders.  The only question now is if Herman Cain can buck the trend and demonstrate to the GOP base that HE will lead the nation out of it’s mess better than Mitt.

But rather than having ME try to make the case about Romney, why don’t we let Jon Stewart tell us about him? (h/t AoSHQ)

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When I was in high school, we had to read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle“.  In that piece, Sinclair depicts the evils of the 19th/early 20th century meatpacking industry and how socialism and labor unions saved the day for the workers.  Now there were certainly times such as those when labor unions served a useful purpose in protecting the interest of workers, but…

Those times are past.

Today public opinion of labor unions sits at a historic low, despite having a very union-friendly President in the Oval Office.  According to Gallup

While Americans’ views of labor unions have held steady since last year, with more approving than disapproving, Americans remain less approving than in the past. Further, there is a greater divergence this year in Republican and Democratic approval of unions.

On Friday, Rasmussen Reports released polling data indicating similar results – about half of Americans “see no further need for labor unions”, with 30 percent in disagreement.  And they’re not exactly knocking down doors to unionize.  Rasmussen states that “Among working Americans who do not belong to a union, just 13% would like to join a labor union where they work.”

It’s fairly surprising that the approval of labor unions has dropped to its lowest point during the Obama presidency.  But why?  My suspicion is that Democrat control of the White House and both sides of Capitol Hill has given us an unprecedented view of the reality of organized labor.  It’s not that Obama and his party have necessarily strengthened the unions, although events such as the NLRB interference in Boeing’s business has given some hope to unions, but the Democrats seem to have given the unions license to show their colors.  Union thuggery has become an everyday event, and videos and stories of the disgusting behavior of union members are rampant.

So, let’s look at this new, true face of organized labor.

The most recent incident was that of the f-bombing longshoreman in Washington state.  (Video is definitely NSFW):

Lovely. Thankfully this darling person was arrested for several felonies after his assault-laced tirade.  But wait, there’s more!

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Much has been made of Rick Perry’s executive order about Gardisil.  This news story provides some insights into how Perry’s action demonstrates how he put his pro-life viewpoints into action.

That…is a powerful story.

As people learn what’s actually in the bill, that six months from now, by election time, this is going to be a plus because the parade of horribles, particularly the worry that the average middle class person has that this is going to affect them negatively, will have vanished and they’ll see that it’ll affect them positively in many ways…”

NY Sen. Chuck Schumer, on “Meet The Press”, March 28, 2010

Most of us thought Chuck Schumer was full of it in March, 2010 (among other times/places/etc.), and…we were right.

Today, Rasmussen Reports released their latest poll on Obamacare.  For the second week in a row, Rasmussen showed that 57% of registered voters would like to see Obamacare repealed (36% oppose repeal).   Rasmussen says:

A majority of voters have favored repeal every week but one since March 2010, with support for repeal running as high as 63%.

There was only one week since March, 2010 that Americans have had some semblance of support for O-care.   One. week.  Rasmussen’s tracking of the issue shows that opposition to Obamacare has remained in the  50-60% range since the legislation passed.

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It’s a slow, Labor Day weekend Saturday, and as I browsed the Interwebz this morning, I ran across this gem from The Hill.  In it, Brent Budowsky attempts to channel his inner Harry Turtledove by creating an alternate history about what might have happened had Algore won the 2000 election against George W. Bush.

The piece is rife with silliness such as this:

The pro-earth policies of President Gore would have made a substantial dent in pollution and taken the offensive against climate change. Gore would have still won and deserved the Nobel Prize, as a world leader of nations.

Torture would never have happened under an American president.

The Supreme Court would never have decided Citizens United as it did. Special interests would not have as much power to buy our elections and democracy had Gore been inaugurated in 2001.

The basic mistake that Budowsky makes here is that of virtually every politician and pundit on the Left:  the Law of Unintended Consequences.  The Left never considers the side-effects of their policies.  So what would the economic impacts have been had Algore had his way and the U.S. had been saddled with economy-choking cap-and-trade, or worse, legislation?   How much worse would the terrorism problem had been if Algore had continued the terrorism “policy” (if one could call it that) of President Clinton?

So, I leave this exercise to you, dear readers:  What is your alternate history of an Algore presidency?

This is your open thread for the day – answer that question, or pose others.

Discuss.

Ever notice how adept the Democrats are at the use of euphemisms to try to hide their agenda? We’ve seen it a number of times recently: “revenue enhancements” instead of “tax increases” during the debt limit debate, or “balanced approach“, which again hid the Obama agenda of jacking up taxes. How about the efforts of Debbie Wasserman-Schulz (“competitive option”) and Nancy Pelosi (“consumer option”) to hide the real Democrat agenda of governmental intrusion in private health insurance (the semi-euphemistic “public option”).  Even the Harry Reid Democrats’ use of “compromise” is a veiled attempt at hiding their agenda of “my way or the highway“.

The euphemism du jour has been established today by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  Apparently FEMA has discovered that Americans really do think “government” has become a bad word.  In an attempt to produce a kinder, gentler “government”, FEMA and Boss Barack have decided that they are part of a big, happy “federal family.  Now I come from a pretty big extended family (my mom had > 12 brothers and sisters, which means I have a LOT of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.)…but I’m not all that fond of a big “federal family”.

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As Moe and Erick noted below, “it happened.” Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced his intent to run for President of the United States.

Video streaming by Ustream

The first Redstate Gathering was in Atlanta in 2009, and now we’re on our third one. No matter what GOP candidate you support for the nomination, this 2011 Gathering is one for the history books. Thanks to Governor Perry, Governor Haley, Senator DeMint and all of the others who are there making the event the best ever!

(Updated with full video of Perry’s speech – bs)

Business people seem to have a particularly good grasp of what’s going wrong in Obamaland.  Amilya Antonetti articulates it well here.

“What should the President say on Monday?” “I apologize. I apologize because i did not lead this country to success”

If only that could fix the disaster that Barack Obama and his minions have foisted off on this nation.

(Consider this an open thread)

Back in the good old days, referring to a liberal as “tax and spend” was considered an insulting accusation – one that Democrats avoided, deflected and denied. All except poor Walter Mondale. Back in 1984, for some reason, Mondale thought that telling Americans that he was going to raise taxes would somehow be considered a good thing to do.

Of course we know the outcome:

Let’s fast-forward to today.  Today, Harry Reid released his inner Mondale:

“[Republicans] have to understand today, right now, the day that we passed the bill, that they will have no legislation coming out of that committee unless revenues are a part of the mix. It’s a fact of life,” Reid said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” radio program.

“In my private conversations with the Speaker [John Boehner] and with the Minority Leader [Mitch McConnell] over here, they assume and the legislation allows revenue will be part of the mix,” Reid said.

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Or at least that would be the response I would expect from the Left.

Yesterday the journal Psychological Science published a paper (abstract here, original here*) that demonstrates:

the mere sight of the American flag can subtly shift their political views… towards Republicanism.  It’s an effect that holds in both Democrats and Republicans, it affects actual votes, and it lasts for at least 8 months.

This is a fascinating finding in and of itself, but even more so considering the other recent study that showed

that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.

So apparently, patriotism is a Republican thing.  (Go ahead now, lefties, get all frothed up).

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