Brutally Honest

Yes, let’s talk about fairness, Mr. President

By tim, The Godless Heathen

Via Moonbattery comes this awesome piece by Stephen Moore at the WSJ:

President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?

Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?

Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?

Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?

Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?

Go read the rest, it's worth it.

Michelle Malkin: "Character and honor matter. Santorum has it."

In a compelling and convincing piece, Michelle Malkin has decided that Rick Santorum is her guy:

Rick Santorum opposed TARP.

He didn't cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufactured crisis in 2008. He didn't follow the pro-bailout GOP crowd including Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and he didn't have to obfuscate or rationalize his position then or now, like Rick Perry and Herman Cain did. He also opposed the auto bailout, Freddie and Fannie bailout, and porkulus bills.

Santorum opposed individual health care mandates clearly and forcefully as far back as his 1994 U.S. Senate run. He has launched the most cogent, forceful fusillade against both Romney and Gingrich for their muddied, pro-individual health care mandate waters.

He voted against cap and trade in 2003, voted yes to drilling in ANWR, and unlike Romney and Gingrich, Santorum has never dabbled with eco-radicals like John Holdren, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. He hasn't written any Contracts with the Earth. 

Santorum is strong on border security, national security, and defense. Mitt the Flip-Flopper and Open Borders-Pandering Newt have been far less trustworthy on immigration enforcement.

Santorum is an eloquent spokesperson for the culture of life. He has beensavaged and ridiculed by leftist elites for upholding traditional family values not just in word, but in deed.

He won Iowa through hard work and competent campaign management. Santorum has improved in every GOP debate and gave his strongest performance last week in Florida, wherein he both dismantled Romneycare and popped the Newt bubble by directly challenging the front-runners character and candor without resorting to their petty tactics.

He rose above the fray by sticking to issues.

Most commendably, he refused to join Gingrich and Perry in indulging in the contemptible Occupier rhetoric against Romney. Character and honor matter. Santorum has it.

As time has passed, my inclinations toward Gingrich have waned.  I'm more and more troubled by Newt and his baggage laden-ness doesn't help.  Michelle's piece makes a strong argument for Santorum and the character and honor of the man is indeed convincing.

His road ahead is daunting to say the least but if Gingrich continues to struggle, if he continues to lose traction, then Santorum will strongly play the role of the anti-Romney quite well and in that role, he'd certainly have my support.

Monica Crowley: Alinsky Dedicated Book to Lucifer and Obama Taught Alinsky

By Locutisprime

And for those who might question...

This is the dedication page (click to enlarge) of Rules for Radicals, excerpted from the online view available through Amazon.

Rand Paul detained by TSA

You know... if this had been his father Ron, then perhaps it would've made a little sense... I mean, some people think Ron Paul is off his rocker... but Rand?

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s press secretary Moira Bagley tweeted on Monday that Transportation Security Adminstration officials were detaining her boss in Nashville, Tenn.

“Just got a call from @senrandpaul,” Bagley tweeted at about 10 a.m. on Monday. “He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”

Texas Congressman and current Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul – Sen. Rand Paul’s father – placed a post on Facebook about the news as well. “My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport,” Ron Paul posted. “I’ll share more details as the situation unfolds.”

Ron Paul adds, via Twitter, that the TSA detained his son “for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner.”

As I'm posting this, the situation is still ongoing.

Fascinating.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Did Rick Santorum say something "politically unwise"?

Or is this merely yet another race card being played?  I'll report, you decide:

Perhaps I'm misreading it... perhaps this has nothing to do with race... if so, what exactly makes it "politically unwise"?

Color me a darker shade of curious.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"That view can easily mislead and distort the reality of Tebow’s faith"

The Anchoress is back after a brief hiatus and she's weighing in reluctantly on the Tim Tebow phenomenon:

No one can possibly know if the freakish numbers accompanying yesterday’s game actually mean anything. Is it God being reassuring? Crafty leprechauns out to distract us from what is more important? Perhaps the numbers game is the underworld distorting issues of faith and prayer; perhaps it is the unwitting result of a collective-consciousness obsession.

Everyone will believe what they like, and we’re all free to. I tend to come down on the story somewhere between Shakespeare and a cockney philosopher: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt in your philosophy, Horatio, and it’s a funny ol’ world, ain’t it?

Father James Martin, asked the question by the WaPo, goes full-Jesuit on the story:

All this raises the inevitable question, and one that I’ve been asked numerous times over the last few months: Is God answering Tim Tebow’s prayers?

Well, in good Jesuitical fashion the answer is: Yes, no, and I don’t know.

He’s right on all counts: yes, God is hearing and answering Tebow’s prayers, because he hears and answers all of our prayers. No, we cannot possibly understand what the answer really is, and being a public Christian is not a freepass to success, and who can know the mind of God, anyway?

Lost in all of this is the simple truth that a person’s relationship with God, no matter how publicly lived, is still profoundly personal and deeply, mysteriously unknowable.

I suspect Tebow, when he prays during a game, is praying “thy will be done” and “praise be to you”, and any contemplative will tell you that these simple prayers, when prayed regularly and heartfully before the start and end of every activity, become profound and intimate interactions.

But to many–perhaps to most–Tebow’s actions are interpreted to be little more than “God, help me complete this pass” and “Hey, thanks for the completed pass!” and, as Fr. Martin suggests, that view can easily mislead and distort the reality of Tebow’s faith and the whole point of the life of faith, in general. This is why I rather dislike the intense interest in Tebow and God and Answered Prayers: I think it is helping to put a very shallow spin on a practice of true depth.

She's got more and as always, it's worthy of your time.

I'm having fun tweaking the haters and they're out there in great numbers.  

But what this all means is anyone's guess and whether God is actually in the midst of Tebow time is best left for deeper thinkers.  It's tough however not to mess with some people.  On facebook, someone (admittedly not necessarily a Tebow hater) wrote "I guess it's true what they say...God works in mysterious ways....helping Tim Tebow win a football game; but not helping all the starving African kids, or stopping wars, or curing disease..."

To which I replied, with tongue less than firmly planted in cheek, "Or growing hair on bald men... it's all crazy... next thing you know, God might decide to become a man who likes to party (by turning water into wine), a man who likes to punk his followers (I walked on water Peter, c'mon you can do it) or someone crazy enough to say: Hey, believe in me and live forever... yea, it's all crazy mysterious and completely out of character for God to be taking all this Tebowing crap seriously..."

My point, perhaps lost in the feebleness of my attempt to make it, is if God can do what Scripture has God doing time and again, is it really all that nutty to believe he's got His hand in this?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"Modern America has become a secular theocracy..."

"... with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God."

If someone can rebut what follows, then by all means, I'd like to hear it:  

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.

For the renowned Christian scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, such a view was fatally flawed morally, intellectually, and spiritually, producing the twentieth-century rise of the total state, total war, and mega-genocides. For Lewis, Christianity provided the one true and coherent worldview that applied to all human aspirations and endeavors: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)[1]

In his book, The Discarded Image, Lewis revealed that for Medieval Christians, there was no sacred/secular divide and that this unified, theopolitical worldview of hope, joy, liberty, justice, and purpose from the loving grace of God enabled them to discover the objective, natural-law principles of ethics, science, and theology, producing immense human flourishing. [2] Lewis described the natural law as a cohesive and interconnected objective standard of right behavior:

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all values are rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) “ideologies,” all consist of fragments from the Tao itself. Arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. (The Abolition of Man)[3]

You should read the whole thing before applauding as it may challenge your suppositions.

Food for thought from the always thought provoking Mark Shea.

What the world needs now, is love, sweet love

Gerard brings us this one.

I'm deciding not to comment on it. 

Hillary in '12 as an Independent?

The Anchoress is raising the possibility:

I know the conventional wisdom holds that no Democrat would dare to run against Obama and risk a deep fracturing of the party. Conventional wisdom, however, is hogwash in the face of voter discontent and distrust of both parties and the D.C. establishment. If ever the time was right for a strong candidate — from the left, not the right — to strike out as an Independent with a good chance of winning, it’s this election year, and Hillary Clinton is precisely the candidate to do it.

Independents ran to Obama in ’08, and they’re running away from him as fast as they can in ’12, but not necessarily toward the GOP, whose current field of candidates seems like 8 tilting vials of nitro-glycerin, just waiting to fall. Offer them a candidate they can associate with a era of “peace and prosperity” — one who many of them happen to like and think got a raw deal in 2008 — and they will careen toward her like seagulls toward dropped bread.

Hillary will pull all the disgruntled PUMA (Party Unity My A$$) voters who in ’08 were told “you don’t have to fall in love, just fall in line” and are still rinsing the bad taste out of their mouth from that primary; she’ll pull all of the Democrats who are currently, quietly, wishing Obama would just go away. And while Obama supposedly enjoys an approval rating of about 85% within the African American community, it’s a decent bet that those who liked her before they ever thought of Obama could be persuaded to like her again. Hillary, after all, feels no ways tired.

A candidate from the right could never do it. Between GOP/Conservative in-fighting, the purge-and-purity brigade and the need of some to “teach a lesson” with their vote — and the predictable broadsides that will be launched against such a candidate by the Democrat-favoring press — the best a conservative third-party candidate could hope to do is “make a point.” The Democrats and far left will all still vote for Obama, and the independents will either run scattershot or sit out the election altogether. Hello, Mr. Perot.

But Hillary Clinton — boldly proclaiming that “the two-party system is broken” to a nation that pretty much agrees with that assessment, and offering the tantalizing suggestion that the best way to work with a congress so immobilized by partisan concerns is to bring in a No-Party President — could seize the moment and make it her own.

Intriguing assessment and she's got more, all the result of Robert Reich suggesting Biden and Hillary should trade places. 

I, of course, would much rather see a Republican in the office but they're floundering like a freshly netted fish and should they continue to flop around I could see Hillary drawing a wider appeal.

All of it interesting.  All of it to unveil itself in the coming days and weeks.

Hang on to your hats.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

MSNBC demonstrated "an appalling lack of judgement"

By Locutisprime

They admit to being incendiary and irresponsible:

No word on this from the Romney campaign yet.

Watch closely in the background, I know I saw a pig fly across the screen...