Posts

Posted on

Who Are You Voting FOR?

Perri, of the eponymous Perri Nelson’s Website, asks, “Shouldn’t we look at why we want to vote FOR a candidate when we’re choosing one?”

Well, of course we should ask ourselves that, Perri! In fact, it’s usually the first thing I do ask myself when looking at candidates for office. Unfortunately, I have rarely found a political candidate who offered me much in the way of valid reasons to vote for them. In fact, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the total number of political candidates–national, state and local–who have offered me much in the way of legitimate positives in their candidacy or persons.

Ronald Reagan was one such. After voting in several other presidential races for the “least bad” choice (and being monumentally wrong with one, to my shame–and no, I’m not referring to votes cast for Nixon), my first vote for Reagan was a relief.

Bob Xxxxx–(in a local race). Good guy, Honest. Does his office credit.

Kevin Zzzzz–yeh, not an interesting speaker, but a decent man for a state senator.

Ummm, just about running dry here. I guess I could include our district’s Representative to the House. He’s a blowhard who gives me a rash, and he has his head up his _____ on several issues, but overall, he’s been an “honest politician” (that is, he’s stayed bought). I’ll vote for this blowhard again this time based on his (few, IMO, though in one case profound–his son’s turned out to be a better man than he is) positive accomplishments and the fact that his opponent’s a snake.

That about covers the pols who’ve given me valid, positive reasons to vote for them in the past.

Perri notes some positives for McWhatsisname, and I have to admit they exist, though some of the ones he mentions as reasons to vote for McWhatsisname are negatives in my estimation. A commenter on Perri’s post mentions his reasons for supporting The Obamassiah. Funny thing, none of his reasons involve any actual accomplishments or anything else I’d count as a positive.

Frankly, I’d like to embrace Perri’s idealistic search for reasons to vote for political candidates and avoid voting against a candidate for the candidate’s negatives, but while I always look for positive reasons to vote for a candidate, in the last 4 decades, I’ve found few. Perhaps that’s just my natural ability to spot flaws–an ability that has served me both well and ill in the past–but almost every time I hear a politician speak my B.S. meter pegs out, and that can’t be a good thing. *heh*

(Of course, it’s the rare, exceedingly rare instance when a Mass Media Podperson doesn’t overload my B.S. meter, but that’s another problem.)

For now, I think I’ll concentrate on dumbasses who proclaim themselves “undecided” and fools (yes, fools–those who aren’t themselves active poisoners of the body politic) who have swallowed the Obamassiah’s sugar-coated cyanide capsule and attempt to compare and contrast those few McWhatsisname’s and Sarah Palin’s (many more than McWhatsisname’s) positives with the truckload of poisoned B.S. from The Obamassiah.

That’s about as positive as I can be about this election cycle’s presidential offerings, and frankly, one-on-one, the method has shown some apparent success. I’ve had former Obamaites and Obama-leaners come back to me with negatives they’ve discovered on their own once their eyes were opened… and in one case, simply pointing an Obamaite to facts about the McWhatsisname health care proposals opened blind eyes to the lies Obama’s been spouting about that. That alone was enough to persuade one more vote for McWhatsisname/Palin.*

Heck, that’s about as positive as I think I can be in our local (Sheriff/County/City) and State (rep/senate/etc.) races this year. Well, perhaps a bit more positive about the Democrat running for governor in my State. In fact, he could well be my fifth candidate in the last 40 years I can actually vote for in good conscience. (Heck, even my dad has had good experiences with the guy, and he lives in another State!) I don’t even have to think about what a snake the Repugnican’t candidate is.

Politicians *spit*. Can’t live with ’em; can’t live with ’em. I’d be happy to live without ’em. Heck, a constitutional monrchy could scarcely be as bad as the mess we have now. I’d probably be better. See the header quote on this blog for a part of the reason…

Continue reading “Who Are You Voting FOR?”

Posted on

“Render Unto Caesar”

I was over at Cathouse chat, just checking in to see what has been going on in Kat’s life recently, when I stumbled across a comment that referred to Charles Chaput’s “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life”. Now, I’ve not yet read the book, but I have some taste of the probable thrust from the title. I’m not Roman Catholic either, but again, I think I can infer a bit of the content from my knowedge of Roman Catholicism, as well.

Looks/sounds interesting from what reviews I’ve seen. If its content is anything close to what I can infer from reviews/title/current knowledge about RC thought, I may well find myself in substantial agreement with Chaput.

Backing up a bit. I grew up in a Southern Baptist subculture where Matthew 22:17-21 ws usually applied thusly: pay your taxes and pay your tithe. Now, that’s always–even from childhood–struck me as a particularly shallow exegesis (*heh* from long before I had an inkling of an idea of what the word exegesis even meant). As I grew “in wisdom and in stature” (and in girdth and breadth *heh*), I became able to put some meat on the bones of my disatisfaction with that shallow interpretation. And so follows my shirt tail exegesis… a group of Pharisees came to Jesus and said,

Matthew 22:17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? 18 but Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, [ye] hypocrites? 19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. 20 And he saith unto them, Whose [is] this image and superscription? 21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

First, this was a group of Jewish “lawyers” attempting to pull Katie Couric on Jesus. Roman occupation (and Roman taxes) were strongly disliked by the Jews of Israel, so, they thought, if Jesus did not denounce paying Roman taxes they’d have trapped him into an unpopular stand. On the other hand, the Romans really came down hard on anything that even smacked of fomenting tax evasion or revolt, so if he did choose the popular answer they more than half expected, they could have him up on charges before the Roman government lickety split.

Horns of a dilemma? Not so. Jesus simply invoked the very orthodox Jewish principle of the imago dei–the concept that we are all made in God’s image, and then turned the Pharisees’ challenge on its head. “Whose image” is stamped upon the coin? Caesar’s. But you see, when Jesus followed that up with both “render to Caesar” and “render to God” he directly invoked the principle of imago dei, essentially saying, “This coin comes from Caesar, so pay him with it, but YOU are stamped with God’s image and belong to Him, therefore, you owe Him yourselves.”

I like to ask myself further, “What does this image of God look like when stamped on a man?” Now, we can look all through scripture and nature to discern what God’s image might “look” like, but I think Jesus was talking about His image as to character and behavior, and probably no other description succinctly distills the imago dei like Micah 6:8

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

That is what the “coin” stamped with the image of God looks like: Justice; Mercy; Humility. Look for those traits in someone who’s “render[ing] untoi God the things that are God’s” and you’ll see someone who has internalized 2 Corinthians 5:17… and who exemplifies submission to Jesus command in Matthew 22:21.

Yes, “render unto Caesar” means much more than simply paying our taxes. It also–at the very least–means obeying those laws that do not directly contradict biblical precepts (see Acts 3-4), and in a representative republic (with democratic elements), it also means we have a responsibility to govern well. (Which in my experience largely means we ought to concentrate on throwing the bums out of office at every election, but that’s just my view, of course. :-))

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Posted on

Linux: Gottaloveit

It’s been a little over four months since I move nearly all my Windows use over to virtual machines running on an Ubuntu 8.04 box, and despite numerous big and little “gotchas” along the way, it’s been a Good Thing. In fact, now that more and more WINE issues seem to clear up with every recent WINE update, I rarely need to start any of the Windows VMs, apart from checking “CLICK paths” for other users I’m walking through Windows issues over the phone or via email (I still prefer to simply log onto a remote session on someone’s computer to walk through issues, instead of phone/email).

One of the nicest things about the all-Linux, all the time experience has been the security aspect. The built in firewall has performed as well at online security-probing sites as highly intrusive, third party Windows firewall powerhouses have performed, and although I installed ClamAV (not active protection like most Windows AVs), neither its on-demand scanner nor such places as Trendmicro’s Housecall have found any infections.

Get that: no active defense, as is recommended for Windows computers, but also no infestations of malware.

I attribute that to several things. First, Ubuntu is designed to NOT run in admin (or root privileges) mode, as most Windows computers are by default. Installing software, changing system parameters, etc., all require the user to specifically, manually input the root password, so if I were to have malware installed, it’d almost surely have been installed with my witting participation, and that’s not likely at all, at all.

Then there’s the fact that few malware authors want to invade such an admittedly small target population. (That’s one of the security advantages of the Mac platform, BTW: small target.)

Then there’s my choice of browser. (note: Opera recently had a security issue that affected all OS platforms, but was corrected in a 24-hour period. Compare that to security issues that’ve been outstanding for YEAS in Internet Exploder.) No kudos to Ubuntu for that, of course, but I do like the more secure (than IE or even Firefox, AFAIK) browsing experience. (For even more security enhancement, I’ll sometimes run OperaTOR from a flash drive. The Windows version runs Just Fine in Linux using WINE.)

And, of course, I can’t ascribe merit to Ubuntu for avoiding infections I’d not succomb to in any OS–I do not, for example, invoke email attachments from ANYONE unless I expect the attachment AND I manually scan it with an up-to-date anti-virus.

So, if you’d like to ditch your power-sucking vampire of a security suite, Ubuntu–or Linux in general–seems to be the ticket. (And yes, I know BSD offers even more security, as reported by many, but right now, its GUI options and software selection, even though it can run most ‘nix apps, is just slightly south of what I find in Ubuntu Linux–just slightly.)

For y’all who’re still wearing the Me$$y$oft ball and chain, why not give Wubi a try? It’s an easy-peasy way to install Ubuntu in a Windows folder. I’ve not had any problems installing/uninstalling Ubuntu using Wubi on any of a number of computers here at twc central, but do read the FAQ at the Wubi site. Heck, it even uses the Windows bootloader to boot into Ubuntu and is uninstallable using Windows’ Add/Remove Programs.

Or install VMWare Server and try running Ubuntu in a VM in Windows. You might just like it enough to ditch Windows entirely on your next computer build/purchase.

Update: savvy users are already aware of such things as “Clickjacking”–a type of browser hijacking allowing “an attacker to use one or more of several new attack scenarios to literally steal your mouse clicks.” It’s a set of malware techniques that all browsers in all OSes can be vulnerable to, although Linux still is more difficult to attack via clickjackig methods. Still, by disabling javascript and a few other lil content goodies, along with iFrames, Opera is safer than most, and still allows one to use javascript, et al, for any trusted site by simply setting Site Preferences to allow ’em for any one given “trusted site”. Granular controls: a Very Good Thing.

Posted on

Who Is Barry Soetoro?

As I have said before, I do not know if there’s a fire just because there seems to be some smoke to the question of Barry Hussein Obama-Winfrey’s citizenship, but since The One refuses to release a certified copy of his birth certificate, it’s no wonder folks continue to have questions.

The question about Obama’s citizenship–who knows the answer? Apparently Obama does, but he’s not saying. Why?

Trackposted to Mark My Words, , , Faultline USA, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted on

Trout in the Milk?

Of course, circumstantial evidence isn’t equivalent with being caught red-handed, but if there’s a trout in the milk, one may be safe in assuming the milk’s been adulterated, eh?

I’ve noted before that The Obamassiah’s long alliances (not mere association) with communists, terrorists and folks who express open hated of America are obvious disqualifiers for any public office, let alone the presidency, but that’s all in the past, as he might say: some guy he knew when he was a youth (whom he has described as greatly influential on his own belief/value system); another guy he saw around in his neighborhood (who got him his first big-time job out of law school and to whom he funneled millions of dollars for his radical “education” initiatives); some preacher (who was The One’s pastor for 20+ years and whom The One described as his spiritual mentor), some “community group” he’s had dealings with in the past (ACORN–the bigtime vote fraud group, a subsidiary of which the Obama campaign has paid $800,000 for “get out the vote” efforts).

All in the past. Nothing to do with now or future plans, right?

But there’s a trout in the milk, folks. Every single solitary proposal that is a constant amid the forest of Obama hand-waving is right out of the Frank Marshall Davis/Jeremiah Wright/William Ayers playbook. If all these people who were identified as Obama himself as influencing his values, with whom he worked for years are not still influencing his policies and procedures, then why does everything he proposes sound like and agree with their viewpoints?

Just wondering if we can catch and fry up that trout…

Hammer away on the theme articulated by Dick Morris:

“Rezko was his financial adviser, Wright was his spiritual adviser, and the guy who gave him his first job used to blow up government buildings.”

Trackposted to Mark My Words, , , Faultline USA, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted on

Opinions: Everybody’s Got One

But not all opinions are equal, regardless the opinion that many express to the contrary.

To mangle an otherwise perfectly fine comment by a character in a James Doohan/S. M. Stirling novel, Ah, Congress, “…[w]here mountains of supposition are constructed from molehills of [mis]information and presented as incontrovertible fact.”

*heh*

Let me back up to the question of authority. There are three basic types of authority: divine (whether modern pagan humanists recognize it or not), natural and constructed.

Setting aside divine authority, for most humans–apart from the proclamations of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Waming nutjobs and satanic phony “Christian” pastors and their siblings in other cults–do not presume to possess divine authority, I’d like to briefly address the other two classes.

Continue reading “Opinions: Everybody’s Got One”

Posted on

Birds of a Feather II

I’ve been mentioning to “real world” contacts for some time–especially those lazy dunderheads who claim to be “undecided voters”–the connections between The Obamassiah and radical communists/leftist agitators Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky and jihadist-sympathizer and racial agitator, Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour (a/k/a Donald Warden), but Democrat=Socialist has noted Obama-Raila Odinga ties I had not considered before. (I’ll get back to the commies and the jihadist in a bit, out of order in Birds III.)

Click through to the link above for the YouTube video D=S has posted. Watch. Come on back and see below the fold.

Continue reading “Birds of a Feather II”

Posted on

Birds of a Feather

A good introduction to one of Obama’s questionable associations.

Ask yourself: what do Obama’s past associations indicate about what kind of people he would tend to appoint to positions of power and influence? Look at the Alinsky methods of societal reform in which Obama is thoroughly schooled and ask if the goals and methods of such organizations as ACORN–with whom Obama has a long working relationship which he now claims he has not had–are what you want to see operating from the highest office in the land.

From the Baltimore Sun, letter to the editor, October 5, 2008:

Let’s quickly review ACORN’s recent history related to voter fraud: In July 2007, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington state. Seven ACORN volunteers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms.

Three ACORN hoaxers pleaded guilty to voter fraud last October. A King County, Wash., prosecutor called the group’s behavior “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”

The group’s activity in Washington state is not isolated. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in 14 other states.

In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the leftist pressure group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. The charges are pending before the city district attorney’s office.

Also see here and here.

Obama: endorsed by the CPUSA for a reason…

THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Posted on

Speaking the Unspeakable

OK, someone has to say it: Anyone who is undecided at this point about who to vote for come November for Senator, Representative or President is an idiot or profoundly lazy or both.

Local races could be either easier or harder to decide, but the national offices? [Assuming–a radical and possibly unwarranted assumption–voters have the basic intellectual capabilities to do their homework on candidates and issues] Either folks have been doing their due diligence and studying the candidates and issues or they’ve been slacking off and don’t really deserve the franchise at all.

There. Now I’ve said that the “Emperor of the Undecided Electorate” is walking around in blissful, lazy, naked cluelessness can we move on to a discussion about how to alleviate the problem of stupid, lazy, dumbass so-called “undecided voters”? (Personally, I think a quick civics exam at the polling place followed by handing those that don’t pass a ballot that WILL NOT PROCESS is a good place to start…)

Posted on

More Meaningless BS From the Hivemind

According to a group of pedantic poo-bahs, Governor Palin “…spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level in Thursday night’s debate between the vice presidential candidates.”

The same group that rated her comments at a grade level of 9.5 and Biden’s at a grade level of 7.8 also put her penultimate sentence “at a grade level of 18.3” (several “grade levels” shy of the reading level of the inhabitants of twc central*–and yeh, the CNN report did NOT use the word “penultimate,” choosing instead the awkward, dumbed down and wordier, “second-to-last” formulation… no doubt in recognition of the subliteracy of CNN’s usual readership/viewership. Either that or the writer didn’t know the word “penultimate”–another distinct possibility).

Oh, *yawn* Put Academia Nut Fruitcakes and Mass Media Podpeople together and this is what usually results: stupid yammering.

Continue reading “More Meaningless BS From the Hivemind”