Nobama 08

Blog Burst: Nobama08- The Ayers Connection

I'm stealing part of this post from an actress who writes a blog called "Confessions of a Closet Republican."

Please read the whole link above. Here's the money shot:

Stanley Kurtz is a journalist and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Kurtz’ article in the Wall Street Journal explains why Barack Obama is untrustworthy for the office of the President of the United States . He lacks integrity … and if it is one thing we do not need in the White House, it is yet another dishonest politician.Mr. Kurtz writes:


Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. LastApril, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in myneighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago 's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued astatement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland 's ghetto.In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursedmoney through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity, and bilingualism thantraditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America 's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.To say Mr. Obama is not ready for the presidency is a gross understatement. It is not simply that he lacks experience … it is also that he repudiates traditional American values and culture by embracing Marxist ideology, has been an acolyte of black racist theology, cuddled up with the anarchist activism of Saul Alinski, and even worse … the man is simply and irrevocably dishonest. There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America .


Lord Jiggy here: How much of this have your heard about in the Mainstream Media?

Problems, Bailouts, and etc.

Been busy lately...work, AdventureBoy, and we rescued a puppy from doom. Just weeks ago we took in a stray cat. Both nice animals, but the puppy needs to be housebroken. The miscreants known as my step-kids aren't, shall we say, motivated to do what needs to be done to train the puppy, so a lot of my time not at work and being Dadman or training for the Ironman is spent trying to give the puppy the idea. Of course, the idiots also known as my step-kids don't pay attention to what the puppy does, so he's not learning the lesson that Outside is the place to poop, and inside is the place to be nice.

Not learning the lesson. That kind of seques into my thoughts for today.

The Bailout.

Don't forget, the Democrats started us on this road. They had the best intentions...but that is where Liberals often screw the pooch. They look at "the way life ought to be," instead of accepting the way it really is, and going from there.

The Way Life Ought to Be is that everyone should have a house.

The Way Life Is, is that when you give people something they have not earned, they don't appreciate it. This was palably demonstrated with Welfare Housing, over and over. People didn't own it, and they didn't care, and public housing quickly sprawled into unlivable chaos.

We also see The Way Life Is in the no-interest loans that in many ways are at the root of the current problem. Again, the Democrats pushed these bills which forced banks to give loans to people who may not have been qualified. Now that people are defaulting on loans they never should have been given, financial dominos are falling.

And, strangely, the Democrats are looking to us to pay for their good intentions.

That's a very persistent trait of Liberals. They want to out-source their compassion. Conservatives give more to charity, putting their money where their own mouth is.

Liberals want everyone to contribute. They have their own ideas about what should be done, compassionately, and they want everyone to pay for those ideas.

Again, see the Bailout. They wanted everyone to have a house...and now you and I are paying for their compassion.

Seeing/Hearing Only What We Want to See/Hear

I don't know about you all, but I only had time for part of the debates. I tended to like John McCain's presentation/answers, and to not trust Barack Obama's.

But I'm already a McCain supporter. I'll take guts over glitz. John McCain has made choices and stood up for principles that cost him both personally (see how he can't raise his hands above his shoulders...beatings from his Viet Cong captors) and politically (he's voted against the party often enough that a lot of Republicans don't trust him). I don't know the details of the sacrifices Obama has made personally and politically, but I'm willing to bet a paycheck they don't come anywhere near McCain's.

I'll effectiveness over eloquence. McCain has been against spending my money for his political gain, as in the invideous practice of earmarks. Senator Obama has no such compunctions about spending my money if it will garner him some votes down the line.

It was interesting, however, to read responses to the debate on either side. The conservatives thought that McCain took it. Liberals felt Obama carried the day.

Both sides saw what they wanted to see.

The closer we get to the election, the harder it will be to see clearly.

But, speaking of seeing clearly, check out this unflattering video from Youtube (courtesy of The Anchoress). It shows, very clearly, that Democrats were lovin' their Fannie and Freddie a few years ago, when the e-vile Republicans were trying to get some oversight.

Many of those same Dems will try, hard, to pin this on President Bush, and, as Obama called it, "...eight years of failed policies."

Remember...Congress makes the laws. Those buffoons passed the laws...all the laws. The President can sign or veto them...but the buffoons have ways of putting poison pills into the laws (riders, earmarks, other squirrely crap) that put a President in the position of vetoing a good or useful act to keep sneaky junk from getting into the system.

The President can propose...but Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) legislate.

It's on them.

Remember that when Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama (a Senator, oddly enough) try to blame the President for the failure and the required Bailout.

Where is the Democrat's William Bennett?

Remember back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton was President?

There were a group of rightwing nutjobs who were putting out the story that "Bill Clinton Killed People in Arkansas!" The details are vague, since I never paid much attention to it. A quick Google search turns up the usual websites with insinuation and outright accusation.

When these nutty charges became more widely distributed, William Bennett, no friend of the Clintons or their administration, stepped up, and said, very publicly, "These accusations are beyond the pale."

Like somebody out of a Samuel Beckett play, I'm waiting (without much hope) for some brave and well-known Democrat to stand up and say "What's being done to Sarah Palin is beyond the pale. The attacks, the slurs, the slanders, the invasion of her privacy, the hacking of her personal emails...this is unacceptable and demeaning to our Party and our Country."

I'll let you know when that Donkey-riding Godot shows up.

Hollywood and W, and O

You might not have heard, but Oliver Stone is getting ready to release his film about President Bush, called “W.” I haven’t seen the film, but I have my suspicions.

This seems like the time to pitch my Obama opus called “The Hope of Audacity: America gets the Big O she deserves!”

It’s an American success story, with brave Barry overcoming the racists at every step of the way!

Starring:
Chris Tucker as “Barack Obama”
Tyler Perry as “Michelle Obama”
Gilbert Gottfried as “Joe Biden”
Tyler Perry as “Hillary Clinton”

Featuring:
Dennis Farina as “Anthony (Buckets o’ Cash) Rezko”
Nick Nolte as “Bill (The Bomber) Ayers”
Jim Varney and Polly Holliday as “Bitter Gun Clinger and Bitter Bible Clinger”

With special appearances by:
Barbara Streisand, Lindsey Lohan, Margaret Cho, and Sarah Bernhardt as “The Muses – Faith, Hope, Charity, and Tiffani.”


Since my script is based on those fine, balanced, and unpartisan books “Obama Nation” and “The Case Against Barack Obama,” you can be guaranteed my film will walk the fine balance between satire and slander with the grace of a ballerina on crystal meth.

I tell ya, it’ll kill.

New Days

Here's a thought:

When did you stop waking up in the morning, looking forward to whatever new thing life was going to bring you?

I was reading a memoir ("Sky of Stone," by Homer Hickam, writer of "October Sky" -- great book and movie, by the way), and he talked about being a boy and how every day was new.

I haven't felt that way in a while.

Is that true for you?

Assumptions

One thing we have to do, if we are to be conscious human beings, is to question our assumptions.

When Barack Obama said, "My grandmother was a typical white person...", a lot of heads were nodding in agreement. They knew what he meant. She was a typical white person, casually racist without realizing it.

Now if I were to say, "Barack Obama is a typical black man...", would the heads be nodding, or the fingers waving? The assumption then would be that I am a vile racist, that I'm impuning the character of that fine man by suggesting there is such a thing as a typical black man, and, further the assumption is that I'd have nothing good to say about a typical black man.

Assumptions. They're the filters that we use to view the world.

I mean, in my heart of hearts, I want to rip the n--- off Barack Obama. And I worry when I see a group of black teenagers walking toward me at night.

Some of my liberal friends would let their assumptions lead them to the conclusion I was a bit racist, eh?

But, wait. I didn't say either of those things. Jesse Jackson did.

And for Liberals, Jesse Jackson comes with an entirely different set of assumptions.

I guess it's okay, then.

Racism in the Race?

One poll, which was getting a lot of coverage, suggests that racism could cost Obama the race. They even went as far as saying he could be up by 6 points if it weren't for those lurking racists in the woodpile.

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles.

...On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn't be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites' views.

And the expected huge turn out of black voters. Those who are voting FOR Obama because he's (when convenient) black are what...members of his college fraternity?

This is half your country on White Liberal Guilt: Two white scumbag thugs attack a disabled black man, drag him to his death. Liberals say "This proves America is still racist." Conservatives say "What a heinous crime, string the two bastards up."

Four black thugs abduct, torture, rape, and kill two white kids. Liberals say: "SOUND OF SILENCE, nothing to see here, keep moving until we find more evidence of white racism somewhere else." Conservatives say, "What a heinous crime, string the bastards up." At which point Liberals say, "Oh, no, more evidence of white racism."

That's the kind of Doubly Standard Procedure that makes a Libertarian/Republican like myself scream in frustration.

If a white person does something vile, it's a sign of the deep-rooted racism in America.

If a person of color does something equally vile...well, we don't discuss that, it can't possibly be racist or a hate crime. Because, by definition, hate crimes are only performed by White People.

Racism comes, if you'll pardon the expression, in many colors. When that is honestly addressed by the Left, then perhaps we can have an honest dialogue in this country about race and its ultimate meaninglessness.

Tempted to Hatred

So, why the incendiary hatred (and there is no other word for it) for Sarah Palin?

You skim any story about Ms. Palin, and the comments tend to devolve into the most vile statements and outright twisted fantasy.

Somebody once said the other side of anger is fear.

They fear Sarah Palin, because of what her life says about the validity of their own beliefs, and about how they truly live their own beliefs.

I mean, look at the feminist assaults on her. It’s illogical, if you take feminists at their word: a woman is the equal of a man.

Sarah Palin decided to take on an entrenched male power structure, and on her own merits, SHE DEFEATED THE EVIL PATRIARCHY. She did it on guts, hard work, moxie, and her own native intelligence. She was not eased into the Governor’s chair through affirmative action; she wasn’t a token or window dressing. She did it on her own merits as a human being.

Logically, one might expect feminists to embrace her. She was not carpet-bagging junior Senator who had a very famous and Left-popular last name (well…sometimes the junior Senator had the popular last name, it depended…). She was a Feminist Philosophic Ideal Made Real.

But, she’s not the Right Kind of Real Feminist. With her evangelical religion, and her strong pro-life stance, her very real Feminist Achievements count for naught.

I think that’s where the anger comes in. Sarah Palin was a success without them. She, in fact, chose not to be a victim and blame The System/The Man/Whitey/Capitalists for her lack of success and her lack of internal happiness.

And that makes the KosKlownsKrowd (today’s new KKK) very frightened. Because they might have to take a closer look at their cherished notions about The System/The Man/Whitey/Capitalists/Republicans/Conservatives in the light of new information. They might have to own up to the sexism in their ranks. They might have to, you know, change their ideas.

That’s very threatening to their self-image. Remember, people will live up to their self-image. A gang-banger thinks he’s gotta be the baddest dude around, of course he’s going to shoot someone for disrespecting him. A social worker thinks he is on the earth to help people, of course he’s going try to help a stranger.

The KosKlownsKrowd’s self image is based on a lot of self-righteousness, and the whole, “Aren’t I a rebel, speaking truth to power.”

And Sarah Palin is standing there telling them, “I don’t need you to speak to power for me. I have already taken a lot of action on my own behalf.”

She did it without them. Hence the hate.

Time

When I was younger, I'd see movies.

I'd see most any film for the slightest of pretexts: the makeup was done by X, the script was by Y. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, a lot of them were much less than the sum of their parts.

Same with books. I'd read a lot of different things. Trashy crime novels (emphasis on the "trashy" part), junk science fiction, middling biographies.

But as I got older, that changed. I didn't get more discriminating, exactly. I got stingy. Stingy with my time. I don't have the time to waste on junk films. On crummy books.

I began to be more interested in feeding my soul, feeding my mind, with nutritional fare. Beauty. Uplifting. Honorable deeds. Noble tales.

Because...I don't have the time for garbage anymore.

So...go feed yourself with something good for your heart and your soul and your spirit.

Like this: http://www.aheadwithhorses.org/!/awhwp.html

Life and everything with it...

No blogging last two days. AdventureBoy took a spill on his bike, got banged up pretty hard, but thankfully, no broken bones, teeth, or a concussion.

He's scraped up, but was full of energy today. Unlike me.

Our Uncurious Betters

I read a few film sites. Lately, many of them have become very politicized. One of them, by an intense and basically decent man named Jeffrey Wells is called Hollywood Elsewhere. I've corresponded with the man, even donated money to his site, because I mostly enjoy his passion and occasional insanity.

He's pretty bent about Sarah Palin, and tends to trip over into bilious rage about hypothetical Red-Staters and their/our various proclivities and moral failings. I wonder who is the person that came to represent Red-Staters and their sins to him...but that's between him and His Higher Power.

Here's a fairly typical graph from a recent post about Sarah Palin:


"If low-information Walmart moms were inclined to read or even consider what's reported in the N.Y. Times, they might be thinking twice right now about supporting Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy. But of course, if they did read news stories of this sort they would no longer deserve the sobriquet."

You gotta love the "low information" bit.

What Mr. Wells and his fellows don't seem to understand is the lack of balance displayed between the treatment of his preferred candidate and the opponents is one of the things that drives those of us suffering from information deficit from the fields of leftist righteousness.

What might pain the voter who wish to be informed is the lack of a similar light turned upon Mr. Obama and his past actions. Admittedly, given the halo with which he is generally portrayed by the mighty Grey Lady and others, it might seem to shine a light is redundant (and an unspeakable increase to the carbon footprint, one might add).

And yet…there is that curious lack of curiosity. Surely, there are some who would speak of Barack’s time in the cloisters of the Chicago political machine. Perhaps some who might have an observation or two about his curious facility with that most pure, even-handed, and, yea, saintly of organizations. One might even ask why stories like this, Obama got ex-boss 1 million dollars , from the Chicago Sun Times back the dark (and dinosaur free) days of 2007, haven’t received the same scrutiny as say, Ms. Palin’s per diem requests.

And then there is that connection with Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman who felt the bombs he set off weren’t enough, that he should have done more. There are widows and orphans who might disagree with that point of view. His association with Barack is untidy, to say the least.

If the lights were turned as clearly upon these elements of Mr. Obama’s past as they have been so fiercely, repeatedly, and persistently turned up Ms. Palin…well, our uncurious Betters might be more deserving of the right to rule which they seem to presume is their right.

Dream Vessels

Okay, so I've decided the core of what is wrong with America is our spiritual emptiness.

Don't get me wrong: there is so much good and fine about America. Our compassion, the willingness of our people to sacrifice for others (and, just so you remember, note that Republicans/conservatives give much more to charity than Democrats/leftists. I'm just sayin'...).

A symptom of the spiritual emptiness is the way some of us fixate on Dream Vessels.

Dream Vessels are empty blanks, into which we project our own needs and desires.

I think of the celebrity worship, and how important they are to some of us.

Movie stars. Music stars. Even politicians.

They become the carriers of our dreams. We fill them up and we give them meaning.

A few of the Dream Vessels have the sense to recognize they are not who we tell them they are.

But most of the Dream Vessels become seduced, I think, by the concentrated attention. "If people are paying that much attention to me, I must be important."

Obama became a huge Dream Vessel for many people. I think that's one of the reasons the major press was so enamored of him. They want him to get elected, and it will make their dream come true: America has moved beyond its racist past!

(Well, actually, in a lot of ways, America has moved beyond its racist past. Unfortunately, we are not in utopia, and not perfect, damn it!, hence the dream remains.)

So, the press had not exactly been evil in pouring their energies and attention into the Vessel of Dreams that is Barack Obama...but they have been negligent. They want so badly for their dreams to become reality, they overlook the reality of his emptiness. He's eloquent, but is he effective? He says what they want to hear, but what has he done? Cast a light upon his past associates with as much vigor as you have examined Ms. Palin. But, no, that won't happen...dreams fade in too much light.

Much as I enjoy Sarah Palin, I think she is becoming a Vessel of Dreams for an entirely separate group of people -- and the Nightmare Made Flesh for another. Fortunately, Governor Palin is not nearly as empty as Senator Obama, and I suspect she can resist the lure of believing she as important and he, and his supporters, tell him he is.

Wasting Valuable Oxygen

Damn it, I just lost a post about this:

Scumbag Child Molestor Poses as child to enroll in school

So, I'll be short.

Note that this vermin was living with other vermin who had abused children.

Children are the most innocent and defenseless among us.

Society has a duty to defend the innocent and defenseless from those who would prey on them.

Child abuse ruins the victim's life. I worked in a drug and alcohol rehab, and I've listened to many people speak about the effects of being abused and how it impacted their lives. None of them found it beneficial.

These human plagues need to be removed from our society. We shoot rabid dogs, and they don't know right from wrong. Child abusers know what they are doing is wrong.

And they don't care. Almost certainly each of these slimeballs has more than one arrest/conviction for child abuse. They served their time and then they went out and abused another child.

I get very Old Testament about this. Two convictions, and they should be shot in a public square. I'd volunteer to be on the firing squad.

The Fire This Time

Today is September 11.

I am ashamed to say I let the date, and its real significance slip my mind until this morning. You know how it is: we’re buying a used car for the oldest boy to drive to college, the Jigglet’s computer is on the fritz, there’s a stray cat we’ve rescued, my work has become very chaotic. Immediate, day to day life captured my attention, not the currently quiet war we are fighting.

To avoid politicizing this day, I’m not going to lay the wood to the idiots who would minimize the dangers, or suggest incredibly complex conspiracies involving our government are behind the events of that day.

We are in a war. Many people don’t realize it or support it because we’re fighting an enemy that is more of an idea, a system of beliefs, than a physical force. Unfortunately, when those beliefs do become physical, mostly it is innocent civilians who die, people going about their lives in peace, who end up in pieces.

The last idea enemy of that kind was communism, although it quickly manifested into a serious physical force in the form of Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Our war with them was largely through proxies (Korea, Vietnam), and ultimately, we defeated them by having a better idea: democratic freedoms.

The enemy we contest with now would drive us back to the year 600. Even now, we are defeating our new enemies with better ideas (better technology doesn’t hurt). In Iraq, for instance, the local people have seen that our soldiers treat them better and provide more opportunity than the hidden armies of Al Qaeda who have slaughtered their families.

In this age of spiritual emptiness, with the nine million ways we have to distract ourselves from who we are and where we are: Remember Who the Real Enemy Is.

http://911digitalarchive.org/

What is wrong with America, Part I

I’ll probably have to break this up into a few posts as I mull it over. I want to have suggestions, as well. I don’t want to devolve into “oh, woe, it is all wormword and gall!”

I believe that all our ills in America, if not the world, stem from this single primary cause:

There is a deep spiritual emptiness in our culture.

Can you see it? I see it in the ways people continually strive to continually distract themselves: iPods, talking on cell phones, watching television, Internet…all of it chatter that keeps us from listening to the still silent voice.

Can you see it when you look around? America is one of the fattest countries on earth: not because we’re lazy, I think, but because we try to fill the emptiness we feel with food.

Can you hear it in the pop songs? “I was nothing until you.” “You complete me.” “You are the sunshine of my life.” All of those could equally be hymns of praise and longing, not silly love songs.

Later, we'll look at how this spiritual emptiness ripples through our country.

Heroes, Real and Manufactured

Dennis Prager wrote a column about his experience at the two conventions, and mentioned this moment: “On the final evening of the Republican Convention, I sat in a suite with Medal of Honor recipients. I rarely find myself speechless, and never find myself intimidated. I did then. I was in the presence of real heroism, of men who really had done great things. I didn't know what to say to them. I was like a kid seated next to his greatest sports or movie idols.”

I can relate to how he felt. About ten years ago, I was researching the life of Desmond Doss, hoping to make a film. If you don’t know Mr. Doss’ story, I encourage you to look it up. Briefly, he was a 7^th Day Adventist whose beliefs forbade him from fighting. During WWII, he was offered an exemption to work in a shipyard. But Mr. Doss was a patriot, and even if his beliefs told him not to fight, he wanted to serve his country alongside the men who were fighting for their country. He enlisted in the Army to become a medic. The Army didn’t know what to do with him, and spent 2 years trying to kick him out. Men would throw boots at him as Doss knelt to pray beside his barracks bunk.

Desmond persevered, and became a medic. He served in Okinawa toward the closing days of the war. Time and again he went into dangerous territory, sometimes staying behind when the enemy overran their positions (believe me, this short paragraph does nothing to capture any of his heroism), and was credited with saving the lives of up to 200 men. Doss himself was wounded, and some stretcher bearers came for him. On their way back to the medical tent, Doss spotted another wounded soldier. Doss rolled off the stretcher, told the bearers to take the other man. Crawling back to the American lines, Doss was shot (breaking his arm) and survived having a grenade tossed at him.

For his actions in the Pacific, he won the Medal of Honor. For decades, Mr. Doss refused to let a film be made of his life, because he said he wanted to be sure God got all the glory, not Desmond Doss.

I had the privilege to spend an afternoon with Mr. Doss and his wife. He’s very deaf from the Japanese grenade assault, but it’s one of the most memorable moments of my life. I was in the presence of a true Hero. Not a sports "Hero," not a politician…but a man who demonstrated incredible courage, both in the face of his fellow citizens who had no understanding of his principles, but was equally brave in the face of the enemy trying to kill those same citizens.

In this current election year, you may draw your own conclusions about what a hero is, what it means to serve at a very steep personal cost to oneself. Screenwriters have a dictum: “Action is character.” What do the actions of the four nominees say about their character?

(One last note. Mr. Doss carried a Bible into battle, given to him, I believe, by his Mother. During the chaotic evacuation from the beach to a medical ship, the Bible was misplaced. On the hospital ship, Doss asked about it. The word was passed back to the troops, and the dogfaces volunteered to search the beach until the Bible was found and returned to him.)

Blame

If a tree falls in the woods, and there are no reporters around to remind us (erroneously) that President Bush wouldn't sign the Kyoto accords, did the Pope still cause Global Warming?

Just wondering.

Corruption

Is there any good tool that can’t be corrupted? The same Internet that allows the Jigglet (aka "AdventureBoy") to locate webcams of Kiwis and rare birds can also deliver sad and twisted visions of the worst behavior humans can exhibit.

It’s probably the human condition (my friend The Anchoress could sum it up more accurately as part of the The Fall) to take the paths that lead downward. I mean…water flows downhill for a reason. It’s easier.

Strange how feeding our minds on sorrow, despair, and degradation is so much easier than filling our souls with images of beauty and uplift.

More choices, again. More conscious decisions about how to walk in the world, and who we want to be.

From the specific wrong to the General Evil

My daily round trip commute, on a good day, is two hours.

I try to make good use of that time by listening to books on tape. Too much talk radio makes me agitated and edgy, and too much FM radio does the same.

At least if I’m listening to a good biography or history, I can learn something. Keep my brain from succumbing to the 2^nd law of thermodynamics (especially the part about less energy available to do useful work).

I’ve been listening to a biography of Albert Einstein, read very engagingly by Edward Herrman. In it, the author mentions in passing a concept which I’ve either read or managed to observe by myself. If I recall correctly, it was an axiom that stated no theoretical idea can be expressed without having a concrete object to which to point.

When I was trying to explain tough concepts to AdventureBoy, back when he was just a boy, I called it translating. It seemed to me that to learn or understand something, we have to translate it into something known to us, to help us grasp an unknown.

Einstein’s application of this concept was to personalize his thought experiments. One example was an early visualization of himself riding a light wave.

It has occurred to me that perhaps our political concepts are formed the same way. I think of Andrea Dworkin. The poor woman was beaten by one husband, forced to prostitute herself by another, raped by someone else. No wonder she thought men were the very spawn of Satan. She took her particular experiences and generalized them to a larger group. Yes, she found evidence…but, then, again, she was looking for it, wasn’t she?

Personally, I’ve had to be aware of this tendency in myself. It was when I was married to AdventureBoy’s mom, ETEW (the Evil-Tongued Ex-Wife), that I began to see the many failings of Liberalism (and its shrewish sister, Gender Feminism). I won’t go into the many ways this specific woman’s behavior caused me to question the Received Wisdom of my Betters (you know who they are), but am I grateful I was at least able to take that away from the marriage. To say nothing of having AdventureBoy.

But what I must watch for in myself is to be sure I perceive with clear eyes and heart. That when I observe the duplicities and double-standards of the Democratic Party (and their House Ho’s, the MSM), that I am, in fact, seeing what is actually happening, and not filtering it through the prism of the experiences I had with a single individual who self-identified with those shared beliefs.

It’s tough to do.

Further, I wonder: for the shrill, angry Dems: who is the specific person they are generalizing to paint the conservatives as Evil? Who is it for Michelle Obama? For Code Pink? For Andrew Sullivan? For the KosKlowns?

This takes me back to some of the stirring encouragement from John McCain’s acceptance speech. “We’re all Americans,” he said, repeatedly, urging us to fight for what is good and right.

I need to remember that. We're all Americans.

Choices

I rewatched the Palin/McCain acceptance speeches again this weekend, while I was working on AdventureBoy's home PC.

The last ten minutes of the McCain speech, especially, just gave me goosebumps.

It got me to thinking about what one might get when choosing between the two candidates

	Obama/Biden		McCain/Palin
Do you want:	Oratory?	or	Achievement?
	Political Expediency	or	Enough character to make difficult, even dangerous personal choices?
	Book Learning	or	School of Hard Knocks?
	"Experience"	or	Effectiveness?

John McCain didn't always make the choices that were popular with the people around him...and he paid. He paid over 30 years ago, and now he can barely raise his arms above his shoulders.

What really tough, unpopular choices has Barack Obama made?

Craven Silence

Among the many remarkable things about Sarah Palin's current experience as the VP nominee, one of the most remarkable is the craven silence of Hillary Clinton about the treatment of this woman. The contemptible slurs, slanders, mis-representations, and yes, lies, told about Mrs. Palin and her background by the Obiden lapdogs and the KosKlowns cry out for condemnation. Yet, because Sarah had the poor taste to be conservative, pro-life, and evangelical, she is not accorded the "protections" that would be extended to a woman of the left.

The lack of loud, public, and prolonged defense of Sarah by the Feminist PosterPerson of our generation(or Her Designated Lackeys) speaks volumes about the intellectual, moral, and philosophical dishonesty of not only the feminists, but the Left itself.

(Ed. note: Ms. Clinton's silence may be due to the fact she is gnawing out her own liver in rage. She was supposed to be the first woman President of the United States, and Ms. Palin's astonishing rise and popularity has endangered that pre-destined outcome.)

Sarah Palin is Sarah Connor

How do we know?

The Machine is afraid of her.

First, they went after her, then they went after her kids.