Our Sick, Edwards-Excusing Media
August 15, 2008
You know there are some in the liberal media who have simply lost touch with reality when the headline reads “John Edwards Cheats on Wife With Cancer” and they ask with great detachment whether he’ll be able to run for office again soon. These people’s morality is so bizarre that they showed more outrage at John McCain featuring a picture of Paris Hilton in a commercial for two eye-blinks than for Edwards catting around on a dying spouse.
For months (and more hotly in the last two weeks), the National Enquirer has been trickling out the goods they collected on John Edwards having an affair and possibly a love child with campaign aide Rielle Hunter, staking out Edwards in a California hotel – and how he hid in the bathroom to avoid them.
There’s a quick campaign ad on the two parties in a nutshell. Republican George Bush took on Osama bin Laden and took out Saddam Hussein. Democrat John Edwards hides in a bathroom from the tabloids.
Throughout this time, the very same media that almost immediately spread unproven trash on John McCain’s alleged “romantic” relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman because the source was the allegedly professional New York Times now remained as quiet as a cabin full of Carthusian monks. Only when everyone was familiar with the story thanks to the New Media and Edwards was forced to confess did the networks break their obedient silence.
Anyone watching the TV stories found a tone of sadness, of the outraged disappointment of Edwards supporters like campaign manager David Bonior. That’s acceptable. But the story came almost entirely from within the Edwards bubble. You couldn’t find in these stories any time for Republicans, and it was rare to find anyone asking not about Edwards, but about the Democrats in general. How would this taint them?
When the question emerged briefly on television, it had a perish-the-thought tone to it. On “Sunday Today” two days after the Edwards confession, NBC anchor Lester Holt asked the apparently unthinkable: “Is Obama touched or tainted by this in any stretch of the imagination?” NBC political analyst Chuck Todd was fervent in his reply: “I don’t think he is at all, Lester. You know, if anything, sure, that they lose a good surrogate. This was a guy who was very good on the stump.”
Holt worried that the Republicans might stoop so low as to speak of Edwards: “Is there any stomach for John McCain perhaps using, taking some political advantage of this, or will he simply leave this alone as a third rail?” (Translation: we would like to make this an untouchable third rail.) Todd was emphatic once again: ” Not at all. They’re probably going to leave this alone. John McCain had to deal with a story that their campaign was very upset about, that The New York Times did. They’re not going to touch this. You know, stuff like this usually ends up getting swept under the rug pretty quickly.”
But the networks didn’t sweep this under the rug. They sat on top of the dirty rug for months while the Enquirer dug out the Edwards affair, and now that it’s out, they want it swept right back under the rug before the Democratic convention. It’s unthinkable (to them) that this should taint the Democrats in any way. Even stranger, Todd thinks that McCain being slimed by the New York Times should shame him into shutting up, when it certainly didn’t provoke any shame within Todd’s profession. They all ran that story without taking a coffee break to investigate the skimpy evidence for themselves.
This is not the network “news” approach when the scandal shoe is on the other foot. Ask yourself: what did Rev. Ted Haggard’s use of drugs and male prostitutes in Colorado have to do with the national Republican Party? Or Mark Foley’s dirty Internet messages to congressional pages? Yet every time they it’s happened to a Republican, the media worked strenuously to spread the tar and underline the damage to the GOP.
What did Larry Craig’s shoe placement in an airport bathroom in 2007 have to do with the Republican Party as a whole? The media treated that story as a much larger scoop than John Edwards cheating on the wife dying of cancer. It was a story that led the news (certainly on Chuck Todd’s NBC) for days and days. Here’s Matt Lauer on day one: “Can the right wing withstand yet another scandal involving one of its own?”
The networks repeatedly displayed the Edwards marriage as a fairy-tale story of two lawyers celebrating their anniversaries over a chocolate Frosty at Wendy’s. Now we know it was bunk. For them to act like there was nothing shameful or hypocritical to expose here is another explicit display of their Democratic favoritism.
How The Dems Plan To Lose
August 9, 2008
Charles Krauthammer
Let’s see: housing meltdown, credit crunch, oil shock not seen since the 1970s. The economy is slowing, unemployment growing and inflation increasing. It’s the sixth year of a highly unpopular war and the president’s approval rating is at 30 percent.
The Italian Communist Party could win this election. The American Democratic Party is trying its best to lose it.
Democrats have the advantage on just about every domestic issue from health care to education. However, Americans’ greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37 percent to 21 percent for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously forfeited the issue of increased drilling for domestic oil and gas. By an overwhelming margin of 2-1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the last 27 years.
Democrats have been adamantly opposed. They say that we cannot drill our way out of the oil crisis. Of course not. But it is equally obvious that we cannot solar or wind or biomass our way out. Does this mean that because any one measure cannot solve a problem, it needs to be rejected? Read more
Today’s College Campus Life: Games Students Play
August 5, 2008
Marie Jon
August 5, 2008
Soon, college students from all over America will start the fall semester. Freshman orientation will begin and there will be a mad dash to join (some not too wholesome) fraternities and sororities. Why degrade a college tradition? Because a good number of the social frat and sorority houses have become perverted “deprogramming” institutions whose mission is to undo everything that conscientious parents have strived to teach their kids through the years they’ve lived under their tutelage.
Be aware that college has trappings that include all the rituals of campus life. If you have not had a long heart-to-heart talk with your child who is about to enter a secular college, it could be their undoing. Every possible temptation is laid out before them like a buffet. Most institutions of higher learning are liberal and secular; consequently, they have become ultra-permissive bastions of the MTV lifestyle.
Drinking is just one of the issues with which your student will be confronted. They will also be encouraged to engage in sexual hookups, and with that activity the risk of a myriad of sexually-transmitted diseases. So what are the latest games being played on campuses? Read more
Hamas Member Converts To Christianity - West Fails To Notice
August 1, 2008
by Jack Kinsella
The son of West Bank Hamas leader and Hamas MP Sheikh Hassan Yousef told a Jewish reporter from an Israeli newspaper that he had converted to Christianity, loves Israel, and even warning the Jews that Hamas will never make peace with Israel because Islam will not allow it. And virtually no one from the Western media thinks its worthy of reporting.
Formerly known by his Muslim name, Masab, the Christian ‘Joseph’ told the Jewish journalist Avi Issacharoff:
“I know that I’m endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he’ll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I’ll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God.”
Nor does he attempt to hide his affection for Israel, or his abhorrence of everything representing the surroundings in which he grew up: the nation, the religion, the organization.
“Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country,” he says.
“You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death.”
As a devoted Muslim and member of Hamas, Masab assisted his father for years advancing the cause of Hamas — the destruction of Israel. Now, he sends Israel his regards, describes his own culture as that which “sanctifies suicide and death” warns his former enemies of his own people’s perfidy, and moves to California.
The Department of Homeland Security, together with most of the intelligence services of the Western world, have been seeking some magic bullet, some ‘antidote’ to the brainwashing of radical Islam, since it was discovered that many of the allegedly reformed terrorists released from Gitmo Bay were later killed or recaptured on the battlefield.
They’ve tried all that modern science and the CIA’s Department of Dirty Tricks could come up with some way to break the grip radical Islam has on them, first, to obtain information about potential new targets, secondly, to find a way to release them.
One of the preferred methods is to praise Islam as a religion of peace and love that was hijacked by the radicals. That sentiment has been echoed from the secular halls of government, from the President, to members of his cabinet, to the press and into the living rooms of most Americans.
Meanwhile, they are forbidden by law to make any positive reference to Christianity, which is increasingly under attack as a harmful and hateful religion.
Masab was a product of the religion of peace and love. ‘Joseph’ the product of harmful, hateful Christianity. Which one would you want dating your daughter?
UN = Unbelievably Corrupt
July 30, 2008
by Jack Kinsella
“UN Scandal” - the two are so frequently linked that either used alone sounds like half a word. The organization is a scandal. It has all the trappings of an imperial government; it operates above the law, is accountable to no one, and serves itself at the expense of the governed.
The UN’s most prominent scandal remains the Oil for Food scandal, simply for the sheer size of the theft and brazen disregard for the people the UN was charged with protecting. The UN opposed toppling Saddam
because it would end the Oil For Food money, not because of any higher moral ground.
The Iraqis not being tortured and murdered by Saddam were being slowly starved by greedy UN diplomats. But somehow, the UN still enjoys global credibility. Everywhere the United Nations goes, rape, murder, theft and scandal follow.
In 2005, the head of the UN’s budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov, was indicted in Manhattan on charges of money laundering and bribery. Kuznetsov’s ‘cut’ was openly deposited into his UN staff credit union account.
The United Nations said it would launch an investigation after the London Daily Telegraph reported allegations that U.N. personnel have abused children in southern Sudan.
If these were U.S. troops, it would be proof that Bush is Hitler, and America is evil. Since we’re talking about the U.N., though, it’s just one of those regrettable incidents that can’t be helped, really.
There have been as many reports of U.N. peacekeepers and personnel, notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Sudan, committing crimes ranging from rape to forced prostitution of women and young girls as there have been UN peacekeeping missions.
In the Congo, the UN ‘peacekeepers’ who weren’t raping children were enriching themselves by selling guns for gold – to the very groups they were there to disarm.
The UN insisted that it be the lead agency in distributing the $200 million in international aid to the Burmese victims of Cyclone Nargis.
This week, under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, called a news conference to announce the UN’s latest scandal. It seems that the UN ‘lost’ about $10 million so far. And the UN has yet to get any actual aid to the Burmese people, three months after the disaster.
The UN is hopelessly, incredibly, unbelievably corrupt. Measurement by its record of success vs failure is difficult without a record of success to go back to.
It is the reason North Korea remains a threat after 50 years. And it is the reason why a terrorist nation such as Syria can be given a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council. The UN is buried under scandals. It has Oil-for-Food scandals. Smuggling scandals. And theft scandals.
Yet the continues to operate as an imperial global government, running roughshod over the weak like the tyrants of old. UN peacekeeping missions — with their record of robbery, rape and pillage — inspires terror in the local citizens they are supposed to protect.
Every year, the UN holds a ‘moment of silence’ in penance for its failure to act in Rwanda, even as the Islamic-Sudanese genocide against the Darfur Christians rages - for five years and counting.
The UN either inspires great faith or mass delusion — it is hard to say which. But it must be one or the other. Because it still exists.
Tony Snow: A Good Name
July 12, 2008
by Jack Kinsella
I cannot help but feel a sharp sense of loss on hearing this morning of the passing of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Snow succumbed to complications from treatment for colon cancer after a long and public battle with the disease.
By all accounts, Tony Snow was truly a class act. This is a guy who lived all his adult life in the public eye, hobnobbing with the most powerful people on earth, yet by all accounts, didn’t have an enemy in the world.
I admired Tony Snow for years — if ever there were someone I wanted to be like, it was Tony Snow. He was an honest guy. He called it as he saw it, but he always managed it without becoming shrill. He had a way of cutting through political correctness without seeming to violate its unwritten rules.
Everyone has a public side and a private side, whether one is a celebrity or just a guy doing his best to get by in this world. Who you are at work isn’t who you are at home.
In the case of a high-profile celebrity, who you see on TV isn’t always who the guy really is. Take Bill O’Reilly, for example. There is a video circulating the internet of O’Reilly transforming from his on-camera persona to who is really is, and back again. (Warning: the language is pretty graphic. Turn down your speakers if you have kids at home.)
The point isn’t to denigrate Bill O’Reilly. The point is that who you see on camera is generally the person he wants you to see, not necessarily the person he is when the cameras are turned off.
Or, more recently, there’s the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson, whose public persona is as the ‘elder statesman’ of the civil rights movement and, of course, an ordained minister. The other day, when the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson thought the microphone was off, we got a glimpse of the real Jesse. (Same warning: it isn’t stuff you want your kids to overhear - even if he is a ‘Reverend’)
On camera, he’s “Reverend Jesse” — off camera, he’s still Jesse from the ‘hood.
Tony Snow’s career spanned three decades. He made a name for himself by expressing his conservative viewpoints, which were well established when, after working in the first Bush administration, he began his broadcast career with left-leaning CNN. He left CNN to help launch the Fox News Network, before going to work for George W. Bush in 2006 as his press secretary, when Bush’s popularity had hit rock bottom. Snow was also a dedicated and unabashed Christian.
That is the kind of resume that would ordinarily have liberals calling for his head. When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died of a heart attack, the Left’s blogosphere was ecstatic. The comments about his death were so vile and hateful I wrote a column about it.
Nothing like that with Snow’s passing, although there is likely little about Falwell’s beliefs that Snow would have disagreed with. Even the Huffington Post didn’t cheer his death as good riddance to another conservative — high praise, indeed — considering the source.
I watched hours of tributes to Snow on both Fox and CNN by his colleagues from both sides of the political spectrum — the sense of loss — even by his ideological foes, was obviously real.
King Solomon made the point that it is not until one’s death that one can take the full measure of a man’s life. Ecclesiastes 7:1 says, “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.”
We all come into this life more or less equally equipped to face it. How we face it, and what we do with our lives, cannot be measured until it is complete. And in the end, the most valuable thing we take from it is a good name.
I never met Tony Snow, but I feel as if I knew him. And, by all accounts from those who did, the man I think I knew was the same man that they did. With his passing, even his ideological enemies are in mourning.
Tony Snow left behind a good name. I will miss hearing it.
Does Patriotism Matter? Ask the French
July 7, 2008
The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday but patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism “high-sounding nonsense.”
Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one’s country with “the idea of cosmopolitan duty.”
Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations’ banners of patriotism. Read more
A Nation In Decline?
July 5, 2008
Just in time for Independence Day, the bible of the American left, The New York Times, continues to opine that the United States is a “nation in decline.” Hoping to see a Democrat in the White House, the newspaper has been hammering home that theme on its editorial pages.
The Times bases its claims on two primary situations: The negative view of America abroad and income inequality at home. So, let’s take a look at the supposed “decline.” Read more
The Christian Caricature
July 1, 2008
by Jack Kinsella
Most of us understand the nature of the Christian character — the New Testament is abundantly clear on the subject.
When one becomes a Christian, one becomes a ‘new creature’ in Christ — the old things pass away, and are replaced by a new heart and a new mind.
The transformation is as unique as one’s relationship with Christ; it takes place in different ways at different speeds — as I noted last week, “each of us is unique — just like everybody else.”
But it is real, and every person who has ever surrendered their lives to Christ has experienced that transformation to some degree. I have been saved for more that thirty years and that transformation is still taking place. It will continue to take place, the Bible assures me, until the day I stand before the Lord:
“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)
It is that transformed, Christian character that leads us to the understanding that we are each in the process of being transformed — an understanding summed up well by the bumper-sticker slogan; “Christians Aren’t Perfect — Just Forgiven.” Read more
The Bible: God’s Immutable Word
June 29, 2008
by Marie Jon’
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)
You can call yourself a Christian, but if your life does not reflect the teachings of the Bible and the Savior you proclaim to serve, the chances are you’ve not experienced a true conversion.
Scripture exhorts Christians not to remain babies and drink only milk. It is the full substance of God’s Word which matures our faith. We are transformed by the renewal of our mind, which is also in Christ Jesus.
When a believer yields to God’s Holy Spirit, he or she comes to understand The Almighty. It is the Lord’s will that all know Him so intimately that His every word is comprehensible to the mind and heart. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.” (Isaiah 1:18) Read more
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