CHANGE is a joke on the Democratic Party

Obama campaigned on a CHANGE ticket, but we got the first inkling that he was not really dedicated to CHANGE when he chose Washington insider, Joe Biden (aka 'Loose Change'), as his vice presidential candidate.

Now that he is our President-Elect, Obama is assembling a Cabinet that is a duplicate of the Clinton Administration. Heck, he's even embraced Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State! That is going to be an interesting juxtaposition as she is mightily power hungry. Obama is not giving any concessions to those who campaigned so hard for CHANGE.

The names he has chosen for his cabinet so far are surprisingly stale, as these people have failed in various moral and legal ways in the recent past.

Hillary Clinton has her own very visible skeletons and heavy baggage with Whitewater and a litany of dodgy choices.

Tom Daschle's represents humiliating defeat in his own state because of his failure to connect with his own party and people while Senate Majority Leader.

The possible choice of Bill Richardson, who leads the worst education system in the nation - better than only Puerto Rico in most areas of government service - speaks for itself.

Eric Holder, who oversaw the egregious Clinton pardons (Need I say more?) begs the question of his values.

Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff and Democratic hatchet man who sends dead fish to people who disagree with him, does not represent positive change. He's a bully.

YEAH, THAT'S THE CHANGE WE NEED!!!!

Can we destroy the Democratic Party Dream by making the same mistakes over and over? "YES, WE CAN!!"

Don't take me wrong! We have dear friends in the Democratic Party. We want to have compassion on the poor, and we believe in stewardship of the environment and alternative energy sources. We believe in 'green' jobs. We believe that working people should not have to pay $500 - 1000 per month for medical insurance - of which probably half of that is lawyer fees. We don't understand why India can sell fuel cell vehicles for $5000 (here is more information of the REVA )when the Chevy Volt base price is going to be $40,000. We don't believe that American Car companies can do much right, and they should be run by the government until responsible leadership can take over - not by those inflated childish fat cats in their Lear Jets coming to Washington to beg for money so they can produce more cars we don't need and can't afford, like the Hummer, the Escalade, the ugly Ford Flex, and the hideous crossovers as well as other SUV types.

But will Obama's 'Back to the Future" cabinet bring about CHANGE? I doubt it and the joke is on the Democrats who elected him.

The Ignorant are Easily Manipulated

Here is a Video by Penn and Teller where a petitioner gets hundreds of signatures to ban 'dihydrogen monoxide'. That stuff sounds really bad, doesn't it, until you think a little bit and realize the petitioner is getting people to want to ban WATER - H₂O!!




Those people did not even give a thought to the possibility of that strange sounding chemical being any more than an evil poison. Most of us learn that water consists of two hydrogen atoms (dihydrogen) and one oxygen atom (monoxide) in elementary and middle school.

This is one of the reasons why I teach. You cannot do much with adults who choose to be stupid and ignorant, but there is hope for the kids. Knowledge is power, literally.

Pure Evil

Can you imagine taking a happy ten year old girl and brainwashing her to be willing to die for Jihad?

Here is part of the article describing what happened to the children at the Red Mosque siege in Pakistan:

SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10.

As she spoke, rifle shots rang out, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted over Islamabad and hundreds of troops surrounded the pro-Taliban Red Mosque, a religious school complex in the heart of Pakistan’s capital where Saima was among hundreds of children being held as virtual hostages in a stand-off between militants and the government.

Saima and her 14-year-old sister, Asma, were embroiled in a struggle for the soul of Pakistan in which up to 70 militants died last week and more than 100 were injured, according to mosque officials.

Holed up inside the complex behind the lines of troops and razor wire, the children – many of them girls whose families had sent them to the mosque to receive a strict Islamic education – repeatedly rejected relatives’ entreaties to leave before a threatened army onslaught.

There was evidence that many had been brainwashed into a cult of martyrdom, and the authorities feared last night that some were being prepared to be suicide bombers. In barely eight weeks, Saima had been transformed from a religious but fun-loving girl to a jihadi, grimly craving martyrdom.

Imagine if you had sent your daughter to a private school to receive a decent education, and she came out so terribly radical! As a Christian, I can understand teaching your children that there is the possibility of being persecuted for your beliefs. That sort of teaching is Biblical and is a reality in countries which are hostile to Christianity (Sadly, Pakistan seems to be one of those countries). But to have your children brainwashed into believing they need to die or kill themselves to promote an oppressive theocratic system is totally evil.

Radiant

Fanaticism Trumps Numbers and Wins

I sometimes wonder what the majority of Americans are willing to die for. Particularly when I see so many young people (and I have teenagers as well as very extensive access to the university) sliding through high school and the first few years of college without accepting the challenge of excellence or the rewards of hard work and personal self discipline. Many of these young people act as if they are the center of their own universe, and when things go wrong they blame those around them for their own failings.

Their behavior is only a symptom of what Ralph Peters calls the dream of a happy-face, godless world where nobody quarrels.

Let me put this article, which really is an article about the conflict in "Palestine," in context now.

Peters states in his article that the reason Hamas won was that they are religious fanatics willing to die for what they believe. Here's a quote:

Hamas won because its fighters are religious fanatics ready to die for their cause. Fatah runs an armed employment agency under the banner of Palestinian nationalism. Most of the latter's security men are on the payroll because relatives or ward pols got them jobs. And they want to stay alive to collect their wages.

The result was predictable. Our government pretended otherwise. Now hairs should be standing up on the backs of thousands of necks, from the White House to the Green Zone.

I look at this wide eyed passion to die for allah (lower case on purpose) and compare it to the apathy of Americans, and it does make me worry!

Our children and our current generation has been taught to "Believe in Yourself" since infancy and through television and our school system, rather than to believe in a higher purpose and a more noble calling. One's self esteem and comfort is more important than the unity and defense of the nation that gives us the freedom to live the lifestyles we enjoy. The values of our founding fathers - well - they are old fashioned and we are "more enlightened now". Bah!

As a Choral Director, I see this all the time in new choral music produced for the consumption of music programs from the elementary level through high school students. The texts are so watered down and "feel good" and do not raise the spirit of the young student to higher sights other than their own emotions and very limited experience. (Consider the fourth grade students in Maine who boldly declare that global warming is the worst problem in the whole world - even as we stand on the brink of WWIII) They speak of "putting our differences behind us" as if living in denial is going to make things better. Children sing about "looking inside" as if that will bring "light to the darkness" and solve all our world problems will bring. What are the children of the fanatics singing and chanting? "Kill America! Kill Jews! Kill Infidels!" None of this mamby-pamby "why can't we all get along" crap!

I could get off on a rant about the extreme political correctness of our government schools, but that will have to wait for another blog entry. I will say I am grateful that choral directors may still use sacred music as an educational tool as it is part of the culture of our Western Civilization.

What if a fanatical Hamas like group were to attack here - perhaps on one of our college campuses. I'm afraid we would see our young men and women cowering and screaming like children. Forgive me for this allusion, but they would be as cowardly as many students at Virginia Tech when "Hammer Boy" Cho went postal on them. (I know I'll get some flak for that statement)

We are not encouraged to be strong and brave and to face our adversaries head on, no matter what the cost. Why? Our faith is weak. Many have no faith except in themselves. I'm not trying to be an evangelical preacher, just a humble blogger. So many of us here in America, while we give lip service to words like Liberty, Freedom, Honor, Courage, Country, God, and Family, don't have enough gumption to be willing to lay it all on the line to defend what we do have.

Here's more from Ralph Peters:

Our problem is that, of those who rise in government, few have witnessed the power of revelation or caught a life-changing glimpse of the divine. They simply can't imagine that others might be willing to die for all that mumbo-jumbo. Our convenience-store approach to faith leaves us numb to the passion of our enemies.

The true believer always beats the feckless attendee. The best you can hope for is that the extremist will eventually defeat himself.

And that does leave us some hope: Fanatics inevitably over-reach, as al Qaeda's Islamo-fascists have done in Iraq, alienating those who once saw them as allies. But the road to self-destruction can be a long one: The people of Iran want change, but the fanatics have the guns. And sorry, folks: Fanatics with guns beat liberals with ideas.

Faith is the nuclear weapon of the fanatic. And there's not going to be a religious "nuclear freeze." It doesn't matter how many hearts and minds you win, if you don't defeat the zealots with the muscles.

The quoted article comes from Ralph Peters' new book, "Wars of Blood and Faith," which comes out on July 25. Yes I'm advertising for him, but he speaks truth to life. Read it and take it in. Our whole nation needs to.

Radiant

UPDATE:

Found a great quote:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy 1.20.61

Poverty Politics

This is ironic. John Edwards goes to the University of California at Davis to give a speech at this state funded school. His topic is "Poverty, the Great Moral issue Facing America." His negotiated fee for this speech amounts to $31 per person - about $55,000 for the speech. And this university is going to raise tuition rates for the next school year by about seven percent.

This would not be so obscene except that Edwards proposed that 'every financial barrier' be removed from American students who want to go to college. This has been one of his campaign pledges.

Since Poverty was Edwards' topic, shouldn't he have done the speech for free, and help to relieve the financial burden of the students? That additional $55K could have been used to provide additional scholarships for deserving students so they, too, can climb out of poverty. Who knows? Maybe one of the deserving students will become a personal injury trial lawyer and become rich by winning lawsuits that place additional burdens on the rest of society just like Edwards did.

A List We All Should Read

While I would not title this list "10 Questions for Muslims" but rather "10 Questions for Muslim Countries," This is still a list people need to consider. It is too bad that, according to question 3, half of Arab women cannot read this, and that only 1% of the population of these countries have computers - half of which have internet access (also according to question 3.)

Here is the list, and all credit goes to Jack Lacton aka Kerplunk in Australia. While I've quoted this list in it's entirety, please visit his blog. His entries are well thought out and documented.


10 Questions For Muslims

1. Why is it Oil or Nothing? The combined annual GDP of the world's Muslim majority countries is under $2 trillion. That's less than 20% of the USA even though Muslims outnumber Americans by about four to one. Their GDP is about the same as that of Germany. The GDP of the major oil rich nations of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar combined is roughly equal to Thailand's $430 billion. Remove oil and gas from the Gulf states' exports and their export figure is below that well known exporting giant...Finland. What else do you do besides oil?

2. Why do you only account for 5% of the world's economy? How does it come about that 25% of the world's population is responsible for only 5% of the world's GDP? And that percentage is falling. Where is your industry? Where are your global companies? Where are your world-leading scientists? Heck, why are you not even any good at any sport?

3. Why are Arab nations so underdeveloped? According to the United Nations' Arab Development Report: Half of Arab women cannot read; one in five Arabs lives on less than $2 per day; only 1% of the population has a computer of which half use the Internet; 15% of the workforce is unemployed and that's expected to double by 2010; and the average growth rate per capita over the last 20 years was only 0.5% which is worse than anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa. How do you blame the rest of the world (or the Jews) for that?

4. Why don't you focus on education? The Muslim majority countries have less than 600 universities for 1.4 billion people. India has 8500 and the US 5800. In the history of the Nobel Prize, Muslim countries have produced only 8 Laureates from their billions of people. In the meantime, less than 12 million Jews have produced 167. That means it's more than 2000 times more likely for a Jew to be awarded a Nobel Prize than one of Allah's followers. In an age of increasing technological reliance how will most Muslim nations do anything other than fall even further behind?

5. Why do you do so poorly in prosperous nations? Essex University released the results of a study The incomes of ethnic minorities that showed the economic conditions of these groups in Britain. According to the report:

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are easily the poorest groups in the country. High unemployment among men: low levels of economic activity among women: low pay: and large family sizes: these all contribute to a situation in which 60% of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are poor. This is four times the poverty rate found among white people.

Indian and Chinese people have high levels of employment, and their earnings are on a par with white workers. On these measures they can be seen to be prospering.

The survey also concluded that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would be poor regardless of where they lived. Given the fact that Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians are the same people who had the same advantages of colonial Britain from which they were separated at the same time, why are the Indians so much more successful than the others? Indians are Hindus not Muslims. Why do Muslims do so poorly when others do so well?

6. Why don't you denounce terrorism performed in your name? Thousands of violent attacks are undertaken in the name of Islam each year by Muslims against non-Muslims. Why do you not condemn terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah? Why are there no senior Muslim figures denouncing these acts of barbarity against innocents? Instead, all that we hear is an excuse for violence and blame for the attacks placed on the victims. Why can't you tell right from wrong? When will Muslims develop societal values that don't belong in the 7th century?

7. Why are your countries not free? According to Freedom House of the world's majority Muslim nations only Mali is free. One country from around 50! 60% are not free and 38% are partly free. Why do Muslim nations account for the majority of 'not free' nations? Of the 10 worst of the worst, 7 are Islamic states. Why is this? Are you born to be in chains?

8. Why the nutty Fatwas every time someone criticises Islam? Salman Rushdie, a Muslim of Indian descent, writes The Satanic Verses in 1988 and, for his efforts, has a fatwa calling for his murder placed on him by Iranian nutjob Ayatollah Kohmeini. Why is it that all who criticise Islam get the same treatment? Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Spencer, Kola Boof, Khalid Duran, Naguib Mafouz...it's a long list. Why was Hitoshi Igarashi stabbed to death in 1991? For the crime of translating The Satanic Verses into Japanese. Why can't you learn to deal with criticism like the rest of the world did about a thousand years ago?

9. Why is truth optional? What's the most popular book in Arab nations? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Readers may know that the book is an anti-Semitic fiction created by Russian secret police in around 1900. However, in the Middle East it's presented as fact. Ridiculous, you say. Really? The Saudi newspaper Al Madina ran a series in 2005 confirming the truth of the 'Protocols', as the book is known. The series was broken down into separate articles such as Muslims must be familiar with the Protocols in order to know how to defend themselves and The Match between the Protocols and real events is the most convincing proof of their authenticity. Shortly after 9/11 a survey of Muslim countries reported that only 18% of people believed that Muslims were behind the attacks. These days they're blaming the Jews. Last month Egyptian researcher Muhammed Al-Buheiri appeared on Nile Culture TV to claim that the Jews are still kidnapping Christian children, murdering them and using their blood in their Passover matzos. It's as if the 9/11 Truthers were in charge of news. In an environment of such lies and denial how do Muslims expect society to advance?

10. What is it with the cartoons, anyway? Why did you go crazy in February 2006 over cartoons published in September 2005? Do you people have no sense of humour? Do you not understand the irony of violence for such a trivial matter? Do you not understand the concept of freedom of expression even if you aren't allowed to practice it in your own countries? Are you so brainwashed that you don't understand the self-harm you inflict by your over reaction?