Making Sacrifices for Obama

I have seen it all now. I have seen it all.

It is bizarre enough that Pentecostals in Kenya are praying fervently for the election of Kenyan Barak Obama as President of the United States. Bishop Dr. Washington Ogonyo Ngede of the Power of Jesus Around the World Church believes he is anointed by God. Apparently Pentecostals in Kenya aren’t burdened by the same values as their American counterparts.

But it isn’t just Christians that are praying for Obama’s victory.

At Kit Mikayi, a sacrificial rock shrine 20 miles from Kisumu, about a dozen people have visited on the senator’s behalf, according to Jennifer Okot, an elderly villager who lives near the shrine.

Customarily, those seeking large blessings sacrifice a goat by swinging it by its legs so that its head and neck are bludgeoned against a large rock in a naturally occurring enclosure between two massive boulders that serves as the shrine’s sanctuary. The goat’s demise incurs the blessings of the rock shrine’s god, said Caroline Odhiambo, a 24-year-old who tends to the shrine.

Yes, Kenyans are sacrificing their goats so Obama can sacrifice American children.

In the US, most charismatic faith healers are supporting McCain and his charismatic running mate Sarah Palin. In Kenya,  “The charismatic faith healer Fr. John Pesa I says he has offered prayers for an Obama victory over the past two months in his cathedral of the Holy Ghost Coptic Church on the outskirts of Kisumu.” Pesa is a former Roman Catholic. Real Roman Catholics priests oppose abortion.

Specious Analogies and the Liberal Politics of Hate

What a contrast in two blogs.

The Alaskan Anti-Palin, the very popular liberal blogger AKMuckraker over at Mudflats, has compared the governor of that state and current GOP Vice Presidential candidate to the White Witch of Narnia. By the time  I read the article posted yesterday, there were over 250 cheerleading comments by fellow liberals who have happily fallen into the same fallacies that AKMuckraker has pulled together to create her analogy. Some were even so absurd as to say that Lewis would be impressed or happy with the analogy. Some recognised and lauded the obvious parallel analogy of Obama to Aslan. (An Aslan who apparently be happy with leaving unsuccessfully aborted babies in cupboards to die. Yeah, that’s what would make Lewis proud. Definitely.)

In contrast, over at Hillbuzz, a pro-Hillary pro-McCain pro-Palin blog – yes, a Democrat blog – you can see what Obama followers have done in Gainesville, Virginia. This was picked up by the local press in Northern Virginia, but it doesn’t seem to have made any national outlet. Funny that. Something tells me if it had been anti-Obama messages spray painted, there would have been a lot more interest.

At least the hanging effigy of Sarah Palin in West Hollywood, California was picked up by the press. That was so over the top it really would have been hard to miss. But again, if it had been Obama . . . Well, it doesn’t even bear thinking about all of the recriminations. The same house also had McCain in the chimney with flames around him. The local CBS affiliate wanted to be sure their coverage was balanced and unbiased, so they mentioned that the vandalism went both ways. There was a report of a single Obama yard sign in the LA area that had a racial slur on it.

There Was a Kernell of Truth After All

There are a few, mostly conservative, blogs that have picked up the story about David Kernell being indicted for hacking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. Strangely when it comes to mainstream media, more quality outlets in the UK seemed to have picked this up than their US counterparts.

Now I can understand how Barak Obama’s ties to terrorist William Ayers have trumped the Kernell/Palin coverage, but still you think there would be more. Kernell is, after all, the son of a Democratic lawmaker. His alleged actions constitute a crime. He breached the privacy of a Vice Presidential candidate.

When Kernell wass first suspected, liberal bloggers immediately cried foul and said conservatives were just jumping to conclusions and trying to pin this on Democrats. Any retractions from the liberal blogosphere?

How Sarah Won the Debate

I fell asleep on the sofa last night after a 13-hour day, which include prospective parents night at school. Fortunately I had set the telly to SkyNews, as I knew they would be carrying the VP debate live. I woke up not too far into it and watch the rest.

Part of me wanted to be discouraged, because Biden is clearly a more experienced debater and extemporaneous speaker. But then I remembered that the Vice Presidency is not about debate or extemporaneous speaking. In fact, these aren’t even skills that a VP needs.

I also remembered that many American voters are more impressed with plain talking than smooth debating. Palin didn’t make any significant mistakes. She stayed on message with the campaign.

If winning the debate means that she out argued her opponent, I don’t know if she won. If it means she was an asset to her ticket and improved their chances, then perhaps she did.

Palin the Pro-Choice Candidate

Sarah Palin is pro-choice.

With all the political rhetoric and ideological shorthand being thrown around some people may have missed this. She believes that women should have the right to choose representatives close to home who can decide law and public policy, not nine judges in Washington picked by the President. She supports their right to choose, even if they choose differently than she would, since she would like women voters to exercise their right by choosing representatives who will protect all innocent human life.

That’s because she believes that women temporarily housed and fed inside someone else’s body should have the opportunity to spend their lives making all sorts of choices, even though all of them will make good choices and bad choices, and will have to live with the consequences of their choices. She holds the view that they should have those opportunities even if their father was a really bad person. Some people actually think that one man’s choice – even though that choice led to creation of their daughter’s life – should take away her right to ever make one. Fortunately Sarah Palin doesn’t hold such an extreme view. She doesn’t think a child should be punished for their parent’s crime, and especially not with the death penalty.

For those men or women who will have limited choices in life because their genes have limited some of their abilities, Sarah wants to protect their right to choose as well.

Sarah Palin also realises that everyone has their choices limited by law. Everyone that endangers innocent human life uses their body. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to gang violence. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to armed robbery. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to drunk driving (even though her husband was once charged with it 22 year ago, before they were married).

Some women are saying they want the government to keep its hands off their wombs. It seems to me that Mrs Palin is perfectly happy to keep the government’s hands (or anyone else’s for that matter) off their wombs. It’s only when someone starts putting their hands on it that anything bad happens. Sarah definitely has a hands-off policy when it comes to wombs. That’s the only way to protect the unique human life inside it.

Without a judge-imposed law, both Sarah Palin and Joe Biden know that there will be more women in the United States to make more choices. That’s why Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has opposed the appointment of judges who would limit their own perogative to choose for the American people. He knows that as many as half of the 4,000 people each day in America who permanently lose their right to choose are women. He knows that many women voters in many states will want to protect the right of every human to choose and he want to continue to keep them from having that right.

That’s why I’m supporting Sarah Palin – the pro-choice candidate.

When Lack of Vetting Hurts

You gotta feel sorry for liberal journalists when one of their own rips them apart. Clearly the hosts of a Pacifica Radio program thought they were going to throw softballs to former Democratic US Senator Mike Gravel so that he could take big swings against Sarah Palin’s nomination. After all, Gravel is from Alaska and ideologically quite opposite from Palin. Seemed a sure bet.

Did they ever get it wrong. This is a YouTube clip of the radio interview, with a slide show featuring various photos alternating between Gravel and the Palin family.

Fake and Real Quotes

I have seen blogs railing against Sarah Palin based on quotes from interviews in the Anchorage Daily News.  I was glad when I got the latest Snopes.com update newsletter. As they do, the good folks at Snopes have identified the source, which was, as you might suspect, not the Anchorage Daily News. So, as usual, Palin’s detractors spend much of their time battling a straw man. After all, this is so much easier than dealing with the real woman.

In the same update, I learned about Charlie Daniels’ commentary on Barak Obama’s disparaging remarks about those people who cling to their religion and their guns. As you might expect, the rather unacademic Country musician reflects the feelings of that part of America looked down upon by the snobs on either coast.

Each Has Served

This actually appeared in a CNN article. Someone wrote this with the journalistic equivalent of a straight face.

Each presidential candidate has served his nation in different ways. McCain was a Navy officer for over two decades and often encourages Americans to serve a “cause greater than oneself.”

Obama served as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago after he graduated from college. In a speech in December, the Illinois Democrat said he would ask for Americans’ service if he becomes president. “This will be the cause of my presidency,” he said.

You have to applaud CNN for accuracy. It couldn’t be clearer that they served in very different ways.

Joe Biden’s Disabled Thinking

I’ve been quite busy with work, so I haven’t had a chance to write anything the last couple of days. I had ideas about which subjects to broach, but having just seen this story, I know now what I want to say.

At a campaign stop in Columbia, Missouri, Joe Biden said: “I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy … and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well, guess what, folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

This was clearly aimed at Sarah Palin, because John McCain supports stem cell research. I don’t agree with him, and neither does Sarah, but he does. But it exposes Biden’s attempt to appeal to emotion without any regard for logic or reason. Biden assumes that to care about children with birth defects, it is necessary to choose doing something about them as the ultimate moral action, trumping all others.

Biden is saying that if you really care about birth defects, you cannot believe that the human life of the embryo is sacred. Only people who believe in the disposability of embryonic life can call themselves caring.

Biden also ignores the fact that stem cell research will do nothing for those parents who already have a child born with a birth defect. It will not ease their difficulty one bit. So why would someone who is going to “work in dealing with parents who have both the joy … and the difficulty of raising a child” with birth defects have to support stem cell research? Biden is only playing on the ignorance of his audience.

And Sarah Palin does not opposed stem cell research. She only opposes embryonic research. There is a lot of research that is ongoing using the stem cells of adults. After all, we all produce stem cells. Why doesn’t Biden mention that?

Is this the best attack he can make – to combine logical fallacies and factual errors? Is this what Sarah Palin is up against?

I thought Joe Biden might put some substance to Obama’s empty platitudes. I thought we might see something more than smoke and mirrors- something more than unsupportable policies built on the sandy foundation of emotional appeal and the politics of envy. Is it really any surprise that the Republican ticket is moving ahead in the polls?

Evangelical Leakage

I was surfing around the blogosphere and I have been observing some of the evangelical leakage to the Democrats in this Presidential election. It seems to come from three main sources, the emerging church movement, the black churches, and the apathetic. As I was reading in blogs, especially in the comboxes, I was struck by several things.

First, there is the appeal Obama has because he talks about compassion and helping the little people, especially with the big people’s money. It is spiritualizing the politics of jealousy. After all, Jesus said we should take care of the poor. Jesus didn’t seem to like rich people very much and said they would have trouble getting into the Kingdom of Heaven. The thing the emerging Christian socialist church seems to have missed is that Jesus never said we should rob the rich to take care of the poor.

What I have seen of the emerging “missional” churches seems to be Marxist Mennonite, squishy Anabaptist pietism, drunk deeply from the well of Ronald Sider. Obama is seen as the pacifist, caring candidate, who has adopted the views of the great philosopher Rodney “can’t we all just get along” King.

These churches also seem to be suffering from foetus fatigue. The abortion issue, for a long time the very first litmus test, is getting boring to some. The emerging church is quite wrapped up finding ways to live the word of Jesus in the New Testament and since Jesus didn’t talk about abortion, this has become a side issue. The only problem is that Christians that believe the Bible, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox (in other word, other than a small liberal fringe) recognise that abortion is murder. So it seems that mass murder is not the issue it used to be.

Then there are the black evangelical churches. These had been moving more and more toward the Republican Party because in a election between two white men, it was clear that while neither was perfect, the Republicans have stood for traditional family values and those issues which have been important to all evangelicals. They could see how uncomfortable white Democrats were when they were campaigning in black churches (something with which the IRS would have had a field day if it had been Republican candidates campaigning in white churches, but that’s for another time).

During recent elections, black and predominately white churches were joining together in various prayer gatherings and vigils. They were all praying for the election of candidates that reflected the same set of values.

Now there is a black candidate. As I have said before, he is someone who has nothing in common with them culturally. He is not a descendant of slaves or a victim of racial discrimination. But he is black, mostly because his supporters are suddenly happy to adopted the One Drop Rule, ignoring the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia. Like I have said before, unlike almost all of them, he is actually an African-American. Suddenly the possibility of having a man with similar skin tone in the White House is all that matters.

Sadly, I don’t think that the addition of Sarah Palin to the GOP ticket will swing either of these segments of the evangelical vote. However, she has and will continue to energise the apathetic. These were the ones who got excited about Mike Huckabee. These are the ones the Left really loves to hate. In fact, the more the Left  vent their hatred on Palin, the more energised these people get. They had no reason to get excited about McCain, but now they have one of their own. Hopefully this will stop enough of the leakage.

Desperately Trying to Find a Scandal

You gotta give the Left credit. When they want to get nasty, they don’t give up.

I have never seen so many scandals surrounding one person so fast as the Left has started slinging everything they can find at Sarah Palin. Okay, I suppose you can’t call them scandals, since the people of Right and Center aren’t particularly scandalised. And you can’t really say the Left are slinging mud, because that implies there’s some actual dirt.

How could Sarah Palin have an 80% approval rating in a state so small that everyone is in everyone else’s business if there was actually a problem?

They know that people are going to retaliate when whistle-blowers try to clean things up in government.

These are people that already knew Bristol was pregnant. And I’m sure, if his MySpace account had been accurately “uncovered”, they already knew that Levi is a jerk. (Some of them might even have daughters who have messed up with jerks. It is only leftwingers whose daughters always hook up with model citizens – probably because they are rebelling against their parents.)

They knew she goes to an Assembly of God church and if she wants to be a Charismatic/Pentecostal, with all that particular theological baggage,  then that’s her perogative. They’re not surprised that Christians want to evangelise the whole world. They aren’t even worried about their governor standing in front her church urging people to pray for American soldiers in Iraq, that God would guide their path.

Every time another liberal blogger starts blathering about another “-gate”, thinking they finally uncovered the truth that will shock the nation, they just demonstrate how out of step they are with mainstream America.

Palin’s Creationism Hurts Obama’s Chances

So it’s not bad enough that Sarah Palin is pro-life, she is a creationist? She may even support the teaching of Intelligent Design. The liberal blogosphere is in a tizzy. How could such a person be running for Vice President?

They somehow think this is going to be a negative. In all of their haughtiness, they forget that most Americans are creationists. According the a 2005 CBS poll, only 15% of respondents believe humans evolved without God being involved. 51% said God created humans in their present form. For creationists and other ID proponents, Palin’s views only confirm her credentials.

Despite the hopes of the shrieking Left, Palin’s views will not drive any voters away.

The issues was made directly relevant to voter preferences by a CBS poll in the aftermath of the 2004 election. It found that 47% of Kerry voters believe that God created humans in their present form. Another 28% of Kerry voters believed in God-guided evolution. 56% of Kerry voters wanted Creationism and evolution taught in schools.  24% of Kerry voters wanted Creationism taught instead of evolution.

Clearly if Obama is going to be more successful than Kerry and actually win, he will need the support of creationists and ID proponents. I am very happy for his supporters in the blogosphere (or anywhere else for that matter) to continue mocking them and deriding them. Alienate them – please.  It just further demonstrates that Obama’s beliefs and values are not those of middle America.

Albert Mohler on Trig Palin and the Value of Life

Back in May of this year, Sarah Palin was the subject of a blog post by Dr Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler mentions then that she is often mentioned as a potential running mate for John McCain, so perhaps he was less surprised than I was when this came to pass.

However, this is not the subject or focus of his post. Rather it is about the Palin’s youngest child, Trig. It is worth a few moments of your time.

Where’s Al Franken When They Need Him?

I’m sure many of you have seen this from the Republican National Committee.

While someone on the Left with a lot of time and little imagination is doing the fake blog thing to make fun of Sarah Palin, the RNC has a Facebook spoof on Obama.

You’d think with Big Fat Idiots like Al Franken running for the US Senate, the Democrats could come up with something more entertaining. After all, his sole credential for sitting in the upper house of most powerful legislative body in the world is that he is a satirical comedian. Why aren’t they fully tapping into their resources?

The Republicans Now Have the Hottest Ticket

I’m sure I’m not the only one who wasn’t expecting Sarah Palin to get the nod for the VP spot on the GOP ticket. The Democrats may have had the first woman to run for Vice President, but the Republicans have the hottest woman to ever be a VP nominee. Yep, we just won the photogenic stakes.

I think this actually matters. Let’s face it, Joe Biden – as nice a guy as he is, and yes, I cried during his son’s introduction at the Demo Convention – does not bring anything to the ticket. None one is going to vote for Obama because of Biden’s got more experience in foreign policy. The VP is not the President’s chief foreign policy advisor. That’s why he hires a Secretary of State. Then he’s got a Deputy Secretary, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, National Security Advisor, and a host of other hopefully really smart people.

No one is going to vote for Obama because he’s got an old guy on his ticket as well. No one is going to think, sure, Obama’s young, but there’s an older man who will go from being one of the most powerful men in the Senate to being the tie-breaking vote, in case there ends up being a 50-50 party split.

On the other hand, people will vote for McCain because he has a younger pretty woman on the ticket. She will attract Hillary supporters who wanted their woman on the Demo ticket. It’s the politics of gender. There are those for whom having a woman on the ticket is as important as it is for others to have a black man. And youth balances out McCain’s years in a way that age does not work for Obama. When people are looking for heroes they want Batman and Robin (or Batgirl, in this case), not Batman and Alfred. It doesn’t look good for the side-kick to appear more qualified that the principle.

But Sarah Palin doesn’t just bring women on board. The irony is that not only will she attract Hillary supporters, she will also attract some of the most virulent Hillary haters. She is rock solid conservative. She’s a member of the Assemblies of God. She is a poster-mother for the pro-life movement.  She is the answer to everything Republican voters questioned about John McCain’s conservatism.

And she is a lot better looking than Hillary. She doesn’t look strident. She doesn’t look aggressive. She’s feminine and unlike Hillary, she doesn’t have to work hard to look that way.

Oh, and she has held elective office for longer than Hillary. After all, Hillary claimed to be the candidate with experience. And she could claim this, having served in the Senate four years longer than Obama. Of course, Obama had those eight years in the Illinois Senate and Clinton had never held any other elected office. But I digress. . . Palin has held elective office since 1992 – five years before Obama – though she was out of office between 2002 and 2006. However, during 2003-04, she was Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Unique amongst all the names on the two major tickets, she is the only one to have held office in the executive branch of government.

As a brief aside, I should mention that despite the whim of a group of editors on Wikipedia, the First Lady is never “in office“. Despite her delusions of grandeur, or her ability to henpeck her husband, she is never a member of the executive branch of goverment.

Last night, I thought Tom Pawlenty was both the best and most likely choice. I’m glad I was wrong. Palin has all the advantages of Pawlenty and more. Put another way, she is Mike Huckabee without any of the baggage acquired during the primary season. Sarah Palin makes me want to come back to the States and start canvassing voters.

Nothing New With Nothing to Offer

I just watched Obama’s acceptance speech, available here because the UK news networks wanted to share in the glory of the new world messiah.

Now I can’t say I watched it all that closely after a while, because I got bored with more of the same old thing. However, as the speech reached its crescendo, I listened just to marvel at how many sentences Obama and his speech writers could string together without actually saying anything.  The crowd was getting so excited at what he was saying and he wasn’t saying anything.

As he was being invested as a demi-god in the faux Greek temple, cheered in a football stadium by throngs of supporters, I marvelled once again at his rise. After a bit more than half a term in the US Senate and the equivalent of two terms in the Illinois Senate, he is the answer to all that troubles the world.

I thought it was particularly interesting that the news coverage talked to people who quoted Martin Luther King’s line from the “I Have a Dream” speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But that’s exact what has happened. Barak Obama’s candidacy is not the fulfilment of King’s dream – or if he’s the fulfilment of King’s own dream, he’s not the fulfilment of King’s words. Obama is being judged by the colour of his skin.

After all, he is neither the descendant of the black American experience nor was did he grow up in his own experience of racial discrimination. But he’s black. He may be the first actual African-American every elected to any federal office. After all, his father was African and his mother is American. All of the other black elected officials I’ve known of were born to an American father and an American mother which makes them American-Americans, as best I can tell. So if people are wanting to elect an African-American, he’s about as authentic as they can get and about the only chance they are ever going to get.

If people are wanting to vindicate the slave heritage and the triumph of civil rights, then there is nothing remarkable or groundbreaking about his nomination. Denver was not, in the words of the Sky News, “The scene of an unprecedented night American history.” He has nothing in common with Martin Luther King, W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, James Meredith, or the Little Rock Nine, other than the amount of melanin in his skin.

McCain and Rick Warren

I saw some of John McCain’s interview with Rick Warren last night. I have to say that I was quite impressed.

I know that he supports embryonic stem cell research, and I’m not sure how he can reconcile that with his unhesitating view that the right to human rights begins at conception. But given that Obama is entirely in support of a woman’s right to choose murder, I have to go with McCain.

Otherwise I thought he answered well. Even though I’ve only seen clips of Obama’s performance, all the news reports indicated that McCain gave much more direct answers throughout.

The only question is whether McCain’s forthright approach and his answers on other issues will resonate with enough evangelical voters to motivate them to vote.

Warren has not made an endorsement. It’s not that I think a pastor (regardless of how famous) should make an endorsement. Rather it is that it isn’t obvious that he’s supporting McCain. Seems like a no-brainer.

Confused

My friend Greg recently offered a few reflections on Barak Obama by email. I post them here with his permission:

I’m a little confused, so let me see if I have this straight about the Democratic candidate for President of the United States:

His father was a Kenyan black Muslim. We have seen pictures of his African “family” (ahem).

His mother is a Kansan white atheist. Um… okay. Where are the pictures of his white mother and his white grandparents who raised him?

His father deserted his mother and him when he was very young and went back to his family (Whose family?) In Kenya?

His mother married an Indonesian Muslim and took him to Jakarta where he was schooled in a Muslim school.

His mother returned to Hawaii and he was raised by his white Kansan grandparents? When ?

He later went to the best high-dollar schools. How?

He lives in a $1.4 million dollar house that he acquired through a deal with a wealthy fund raiser. How?

He (ahem) “worked” as a civil rights activist in Chicago… so he has never held a productive job.

The presidency is not a civil rights post, nor is it subject to affirmative action set-asides.

He entered politics at the state level and then the national level… where he has — at best — minimal experience.

He is proud of his “African heritage” … but it seems that his only African connection was that his African father got a white girl pregnant and deserted her.

I didn’t know that sperm carried a “cultural” gene. Where is the pride in his white culture?

For over 20 years and until very, very recently, he and his wife were members of an “Afrocentric” church that hates whites and Jews, and blames America for all the world’s perceived faults… and he repeatedly covered up for the pastor and the church until it was politically expedient to denounce them.

He claimed that he could not confront his pastor, but he wants us to believe that he can confront North Korea and Iran. Hmmm…

Okay, I think I see how he could be a “uniter” and bring us together. I think the “hope” is that he keeps yammering about is he hopes no one will unite the pieces until after the election.

Like I said, I am confused… but I think I’m starting to get things sorted out.

Running Mate

I’ve been busy with marking, so I haven’t had time to write much. The only thing that brings me out of the woodwork briefly is the Obama candidacy, now that it appear to be a lock.

Hillary has made it clear that she would like to be on the ticket, even if it is as second banana. This isn’t surprising since it’s a heartbeat away from the Presidency and everyone knows just how many hearts have stopped beating by being positioned to close to the Clintons.

However, regardless of the personal danger involved in choosing Hillary, I think there is really only one obvious choice for Obama. Not that I want the Democrats to win in November, but if I were one of the three VP pickers, I would be telling Barak that he needs John Edwards. He’s as liberal as Hillary – not that this really matters in a VP candidate – but he doesn’t have the baggage of high negatives.

He’s a Southerner to balance out Obama’s Indonesia/Hawaii/Illinois/Kansas mother and Kenyan father background. This is better than Hillary’s Illinois/Little Rock-but-never-really-Arkansan/New York residential trail. Obama may play well in Peoria, but he’s also got to win Plains, Pascagoula and Poteet.

The Rod of Correction

Thanks to the young fogey for this quote from Rod Dreher which reflects my own sentiments:

I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but more of this gaggy Dear Leader stuff from Obama worshipers I have to watch, the more I appreciate Hillary Clinton’s plain old milk-curdling nastiness.

Actually, thanks to the young fogey for the link to Rod generally. I like the Orthodoxy with attitude, even with commenters who suggest that his scathing analysis of society is somehow not compatible with his Lenten fast.

All Change

I think Barak Obama has the best chance of being elected President of the United States.

I’d actually rather see Hillary Clinton elected. If you know me, you know that is not an easy thing to say. I’d rather see almost anyone elected rather than Hillary. But at least with Hillary you know what you are getting. All you have with Obama is the most liberal voting record in the Senate combined with the endless chant of “Change! Change! Change!”

Obama has not been around on the national scene long enough to have built up a lot of negative feeling. Clinton would be defeatable in November because so may people have an attitude of “anyone but Hillary”. Once in office, Obama will push for an agenda that most Americans will not like. It will be too late.

Obama will work with a Democratic Congress, in the first such tandem between Capitol Hill and the White House since the first half of Bill Clinton’s first term. That’s when we got the FACE Act, the Brady Law, don’t ask dont’ tell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer. We also got the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That created 50 new federal offenses, banned semi-automatic “assault” rifles, and eliminated higher education opportunities for prisoners.

The big differences between 1993 and 2009 are that Obama is much more liberal than Bill Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is both more legislatively aggressive and more liberal than was Tom Foley. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steven is 87. Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are in their 70’s.

Then there is foreign policy. Obama will be much happier for the UN to decide that. He’s going to pull the troops out of Iraq. That sounds good, but unfortunately the US invasion created a bit of a mess and a subsequent direct withdrawal will result in a complete breakdown of civil order. Any Christians who are left in Iraq had better get out, because it will just be a matter of which Islamist extremists can kill the most people. Also expect something close to full-scale war between Iraq and Turkey.

So yes, all in all, you can expect change, change, change from an Obama presidency and you can expect an Obama presidency in January.

BBC Says Huckabee Won By Bribery

I’m watching the BBC News coverage of Super Tuesday. As usual, it is all reported with an air of British superiority – or more exactly that of American inferiority.

Washington correspondent Matt Frei is anchoring the coverage of what he calls “an absurdly byzantine electoral system”.

Occupying a spot on his commentating panel, there is no surprise seeing British-born naturalised American Christopher Hitchens. His view of the Iowa caucues: “It’s not illegal to offer bribes and inducements to elect and that’s what made Mike Huckabee a front-runner.”

Yeah, that’s it. Mike Huckabee threw his millions and millions (that he doesn’t have) into bribes for Iowa GOP caucus voters.

But it’s not just Huckabee that’s the recipient of Hitchen’s ire. He was also happy into inform us that if John McCain gets the nomination, he will campaign for any Democrat.

That’s the sort of unbiased coverage we get here.

No End to Mixed Sex Wards

It is no surprise that if you put women and men together in the same hospital ward, there might be some cases of assault. And of course there’s the whole embarrassment factor when it comes to certain bedside medical procedures or discussions. But if you are in the US, you are wondering why anyone would be talking about same sex wards. In fact, you may even be wondering what a ward is. (It’s like having a shared room, only with 5-7 other people.)

The Labour government promised it was going to eliminate mixed-sex wards in the National Health Service. It has now abadoned that promise.  Health minister Lord Darzi has now admitted it is “an aspiration that cannot be met”. That’s the reality of socialised medicine.

All the Democrats running for president are promoting socialised medicine in one form or another. I just wanted you to know what you have to look forward to.

Searching for Mike

Once again I have been getting lots of traffic from various Mike Huckabee searches. It is interesting to see the sort of searches that bring people to my blog. So far today it has included “huckbee + gay rights”, “Mike Huckabee theocrat”, “huckabee theocrat”, “Michael huckabee”, “mike huckbee evolution”, and “mike huckbee immigration”.

Seems a lot of folks are worried about Mike, afraid he is going to persecute gays, ban the teaching of evolution, and do all sort of other dastardly theocratic things. Of course he’s never suggested these things.

The closest thing might be when in 1992 he suggested that those with AIDS should be quarrantined. Since AIDS was generally associated with the gay community due to the nature of the transmission of the disease, particularly in the early days, I suppose this could be considered a persecution of gays.

Most Americans don’t believe in evolution, so like the majority of the electorate, Mike Huckabee is a creationist. Of course the liberal elite (even those who call themselves Fiscal Conservatives) can’t imagine that someone who holds high political office actually holds the same views as the unwashed masses. This is really why they can’t stand Mike. Politicians all talk about being public servants – but they don’t really mean it.

The only weakness I see is the immigration issue. There seem to be an awful lot of people for whom immigration is a very hot button issue. Mike is trying very hard to be anti-immigrant as possible, while still obeying the directive to love his neighbour as himself. It is certainly a hard row to hoe. If he shows a Christ-like attitude toward immigrants it could cost him the votes of many of his natural constituents who are anti-abortion, favour the traditional family, and don’t believe in evolution.

Watching Iowa Everywhere

In the run up to, or even on the night off, a British general election, the American press couldn’t care less. I am watching BBC News 24 and the Iowa Caucuses have taken the first 10 minutes of a 30-minute programme. Even in the days leading up to tonight, it has been a major news story.  The level of coverage on Sky News has been similar.

With these two we also get the CBS Evening News and ABC’s World News Tonight. I have seen Iowa from every angle. Because the Republican procedure is a bit different from Democrats, it is a matter of minutes before the GOP results should be known.

It seems so strange that everyone in the world is putting so much stock in what a few hardy Midwesterners do on a cold, snow blanketed night. Though it seems like it shouldn’t make that much difference, I’m still hoping Huckabee shows well. Other the other hand, I’m of two minds about Hillary. I hate to see her win anything, but I like the idea of a Democratic nominee with such a high negative ratings.

So we await the results.