Politics

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from a reader on another blog:

1. why don't you, with all things, trust in god?
2. not knowing god's mind, how do you know that you are not working against god's will by working against obama's policies?
3. you say, "without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head," so if god is both merciful and just, does that mean michele's disease is deserved?

1- why don't you, with all things, trust in God?

Just as Ruth trusted God, she also acted.  God has ordained the end (His will), He has also ordained the means (human action).

Christians act - to the best of their ability - to abide by God's will.  Do we get it wrong sometimes?  Of course, but God is still in control and God will use our mistakes to teach, chastise or punish.

I knew a woman who sat at home and said, "I just trust God to provide for my needs"...we said, "well, trust God, but get off your butt and get a job."

Trusting God does not mean stay idle and let Him do all the work.

2. not knowing god's mind, how do you know that you are not working against god's will by working against obama's policies?

There are Christians working on both sides of the political fence, so somebody has it wrong.  I believe that (most of the time) if both factions are working against each other they generally meet somewhere in the middle.  If President Bush had ben a conservative (vs. a Republican), we would have had a divided government and things would have ended up a little prettier.

But let's look at some of the policies and what Scripture says.

On taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves:

“If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countrymen may continue to live among you…”
—Leviticus 25:35-36 (NIV)

What about those who can take care of themselves but still do not work?

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, If any will not work, neither let him eat. (1 Thess 3:10)

What about managing money?  The Bible says a lot about stewardship and investing wisely - with a government of the people, I think this would include the government.

On abortion:  There does seem to be a difference between early and late term "causing of a miscarriage".  The unborn is called "a child" throughout the Bible.   I can understand a mother being driven to feeling the need to have an early term abortion and Roe v. Wade will be with us for a long time.

BUT>>>late term abortions (elective) and partial birth abortions may not be with us.  These are the abortions that I'm vocal about.

And once a child is born, I believe that they are "human" and should be given medical care (even if that care is only paliative.)

So..

  • stewardship and wise investing and spending
  • death of infants
  • care of those unable to take care of themselves
  • the "not care" of those who won't...

The rest is all "opinion" and operating under what we believe is best for our country and the conservative's belief is just as valid as the liberal's (and vice versa - holes can be poked in both sides)

3. you say, "without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head," so if god is both merciful and just, does that mean michele's disease is deserved?

Deserved?  Or useful?

Not the same thing.

Even an evil thing can bring about great good.  Joseph was sold into slavery and God said, "they meant it for evil, but I used it for good".

John Piper wrote a piece, "Don't Waste Your Cancer".

In it he says,

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design.

[...]

Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

So it is not that Michele deserves cancer...but all of life is of God and even what Satan means for evil, God can either stop it or not...and He will work it for good.

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Uh...yeah.

What were Sarah Palin's choice?  What was the situation?

Read here from Peter Andrew (HT: Hot Air) from legalnewsline.com:

The problem is the two choices she has to pick from are justices who don't align with her conservative views.

Alaska's judges are selected using the Missouri Plan, which combines election and appointment in choosing the judge. The Alaska Judicial Council selects the nominees from which the governor can then make an appointment. As one conservative Web site explained, "she's boxed in tighter than Florida Gov. Charlie Crist."

A total of six judges applied, but only two were elected by the Judicial Council, Eric Smith, considered very liberal, and Morgan Christen, who is viewed as more of a moderate. Christen and Smith were rated with scores of 4.3 and 4.5 out of a 5 point scale used to elect judges by the council.

Out of two choices, she chose the one she felt would make the best judge.

My advice would be to make political hay:  Palin would force her "radical" beliefs on the country by appointing only the most conservative judges!!!

Really...because Morgan Christen is soooo conservative....

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Campaign for Liberty...(Ron Paul)

The U.S. Constitution is at the heart of what the Campaign for Liberty stands for, since the very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document.  Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a "living document" that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers.  Thomas Jefferson spoke of binding our rulers down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution, and we are proud to follow in his distinguished lineage.

It makes sense that I'd like this site...back in 2007 I posted a quiz that put Paul as my best match.

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Buyer's remorse?

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5 ways that you'll know the recession is over...

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Lower wages, here we come...

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If you like fantasy books, but don't like the sex that goes along with a lot of them...

here's a Mormon mom who took up writing...

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"Theology" but Steve Timmis (Resurgence Blogs)

Theology Is for Life

We’ve compounded the problem by seeing theology as the articulation of abstract and often difficult intellectual concepts. But the only theology worthy of the name is applied theology: theology that is worked out at street level in the messiness of life. Election is not a doctrine to be discussed only by professionals in the comfort of a study, but by a group of believers so that they are humbled and thrilled by God’s choice. Total depravity isn’t just something to be argued over in a lecture room, but faced up to by a group of saved sinners as they cry out to the Holy Spirit to open blind eyes. Calvin was right in a number of things, not least when he said, “Doctrine is an affair, not of the tongue, but of life.”

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From Steve at Triablogue

It’s striking to observe that, by his very own reckoning, Dawkins’ religious doubts coincide with the exact time in life when he encountered a pedophile priest. Inside the body of an aging Oxford Don is an angry 9-year-old who’s still lashing out at Christianity in the person of a long-dead Latin teacher.

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more and more...

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I read an article today that makes a few political predictions that I found interesting and makes a commitment to rethink her political views if the predictions are wrong.

The author's predictions:

So, here are my foreign policy predictions:

At the end of Obama's first four-year term:

1. The US will still have an active military presence in Iraq.
2. The US will have attacked at least one more country that poses no direct threat to us. (I'm not even going to count his early air strikes on Pakistan.)
3. Military spending will have increased.
4. US citizens will be no safer from terrorist attacks. I say this because I believe the (sadly all-too-accurate) perception of the US as an imperialist warmongering nation will persist. I realize this one is open to interpretation. I would just ask you to honestly ask yourselves at the end of these four years whether this is the case.

[...]

What I do predict is the following. By the end of Obama's first term in office:

1. More than 1% of US adults will still be in prison. This number will very likely be even higher than it is today, and the black and Hispanic portion of that population will not have decreased by any significant amount.
2. We will still suffer from the kind of police abuse that is becoming more and more common: military-style raids on unarmed civilians in their homes; the shooting and tasering of unarmed citizens; and police and judicial corruption leading to the jailing of many more innocent people than can be acceptable under any system. The militarization and aggressive behavior of police forces will probably become worse before they get any better. This is another one that is somewhat open to interpretation. I would ask you to rely on your own honest judgement regarding whether you believe things have really changed in this area.
3. "No-Fly" lists will still be in place, and there may even be more restrictions on travel.
4. There will be more restrictions on gun ownership and the right to self-defense.
5. The police tactics and suppression of dissent at the 2012 RNC and DNC conventions will be just as brutal as they were in 2008.
6. Government surveillance of US citizens will continue (remember that bill Obama voted for that gave immunity to the telecoms companies that assisted with this in the past?),

[...]

My prediction: By the end of Obama's first four years in office, the US economy will be in much, much worse shape than it is now. Specifically:

1. The US will have massive inflation. The dollar will lose at least 50% of its value against most goods and services, and certainly against the goods and services most people use every day. This is a very conservative estimate. It will probably be much worse.
2. Unemployment in the US will be worse than it is now. It will be at least in the double digits.

 

I'm going to post the article in its entirety in June of 2012 and look at the predictions and see how they play out (assuming that the inflation thing doesn't rule out my blogging.)  (first unplanned difficulty...wordpress won't let me publish that far ahead...so I'm setting it to publish in Decempber of this year and will edit the date stamp accordingly.)

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Okay...so we have a few hundrend billion dollars (this time around) on the basis that it might stimulate the economy, but nobody can really say for sure.

But conservatives are supposed to prove that borrowing from future generations won't work before opposing the spending package.

Shouldn't it be the job of those who want to spend the money to prove that it will work - before committing to trillions in national debt?

My son's car blew its clutch.  It will cost $600.00 to fix it...and it might work and it might not - it's a 22 year old ford that he paid $400 for.

It's his job to convince me that fixing the clutch will make the car drivable.

It's not my job to convince him that it won't work.

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here.

Interesting.  My city is getting millions of dollars for projects that have already been completed - school buildings that have been rebuilt - that we're paying extra millages for, raising our property taxes.

That must be what liberals mean by "tax relief" - putting our children into debt for projects that we're already paying for, already completed.

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Fla. doctor loses license after botched abortion

The board on Friday found Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique in violation of Florida statutes by committing medical malpractice, delegating responsibility to unlicensed personnel, and failing to keep an accurate medical record.

It's not like the problem was that

(...) a live baby was delivered, but ended up dead in a cardboard box.

Oh no...the whole "live baby in a baggie" thing was not the problem.

I guess Florida doesn't have a version of the "Born Alive" bill...

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“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507.

Fast forward:

UPDATE: February 2, 9:15AM: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tom Daschle says he's "deeply embarrassed and disappointed" about his failure to pay more than $120,000 in taxes.

And

Also, the financial disclosure form Daschle filed about a week ago shows that he made more than $200,000 in the past two years speaking to members of the industry that President Barack Obama wants him to reform.

Obama has said that no one in his administration who has lobbied on a set of issues within the past two years can deal with the same subject matter.

Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for Daschle, said the money he earned in speaking fees from health care interests do not pose a conflict for the health care reform Obama wants him to lead.

Daschle said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services ethics office that if he's confirmed by the Senate, he will resign as a senior policy adviser at the Washington law firm of Alston and Bird LLP. He reported earnings of more than $2 million from that firm during the past two years.

Daschle also earned more than $2 million in consulting fees from InterMedia Advisors LLC of New York, an investment firm specializing in buyouts and industry consolidation. He said he also intends to resign from that firm upon his confirmation.

Glenn Reynolds notes:

from Glenn Reynolds

OUCH: “Tom Daschle never met a tax hike he didn’t like for us. But why the hell can’t he pay his own taxes?”

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I thought I had written on the terms "pro-life" and "anti-abortion" before, but there were a few posts that got "lost" when I changed web hosts.  I'll end up writing again, because I do not self-identify as "pro-life", but prefer the term "anti-abortion".

I read an article at "GetReligion.org" about a couple of news stories:

This one is from "Newsbusters":

Christianity Today Favors 'Anti-abortion' Over 'Pro-life' Label?

Evangelical magazine Christianity Today is using the term "anti-abortion," rather than "pro-life," to refer to a CatholicVote.com ad which NBC has refused to air during the Super Bowl. (h/t @pdavidy8)

The term "anti-abortion" isn't used by reporter Sarah Pulliam in the body of her article posted at CTliveblog, but it is used in her January 30 article's headline -- Anti-Abortion Super Bowl Ad Rejected by NBC -- on the magazine's Twitter page (see screencap at right).

By using "anti-abortion" in its headline, Christianity Today appears to be following the lead of the Associated Press. The AP calls for the term "anti-abortion instead of pro-life and abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice" in its Stylebook. AP goes further and frowns on the term "abortionist," saying it "connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions," so a reporter should "use a term such as abortion doctor or abortion practitioner," it counsels.

The gist of the story seems to be saying that "Christianity Today" magazine prefers one label over the other.  The reality is that the ad being spoke of is not "pro-life" in general, but is specific to the abortion issue.  Thus, if CT generally uses "pro-life", but for this specific, anti-abortion ad, uses "anti-abortion", it doesn't mean that they prefer the label in general, only that it is more accurate for that particular ad.

Here is the CT story in question.

I think that this is a "not a story", but rather a commentary  on how groups "self-describe".

I self-describe as "anti-abortion".  I also make a distinction between those more general "pro-choice" folks and those who have never seen an abortion that they did not support (pro-abortion).

For example:  Roe v. Wade is "pro-choice".  FOCA is pro-abortion.

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On a lot of things, there is a more liberal and a more conservative viewpoint.

On most of these things, I tend to the more conservative side.

Here is what I have learned:

  • If a person on the more liberal side criticizes a person or group on the more conservative side...good!  We need to be aware of the faults of the "other" side.
  • If a person on the more liberal side criticizes a person or group on the liberal side...well, by and large it just doesn't happen.  "We need to stick together against the conservatives or we will lose the ground that we have gained"
  • If a person on the more conservative side criticizes a person or group on the more conservative side, that's just the way that it should be.  "After all, you should know the faults of your own side and now, you're "getting it."

The fourth leaning?

If a conservative criticizes a person or group on the more liberal side - even if it is just recognizing extremes...

OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS!!!  It is as if the world is beginning to implode!

The message?

Criticize conservatives.  Conservatives, look to your own faults.

Leave the liberals alone, or there will be consequences.

You will be accused of hatred, you will be accused of divisiveness, you will be called ignorant, you will be told to "get a life".  You will be called a dinosaur, a bigot or worse.

The moral...liberals are sensitive beings who do not wish to be examined and who do not wish to examine themselves.

liberals are also in the business of examining conservatives and insist that conservatives examine themselves.

Careful...your double standard is showing.