Jeff Gannon Redux

Does anyone remember Jeff Gannon and his alleged fake, planted question for President GW Bush? The media went daft over the softball question bemoaning the decline professional standards of the press at the hands of the Bush White House. Yesterday, the Obama White House planted a question with the knowledge of the whole White House press corps using the Huffington Post reporter Nico Pitney. But this is okay because its the chosen O!ne. Is there anyone in the press who will say no to this administration?

Tonight is the ABC sponsored White House anouncement of America's journey to government medicine. Once again, Obama is using the Chavez playbook on how to get on primetime television using a complicit media to force his agenda.

Isolation

Apparently, the new foreign policy of the USA is isolation. The President said he did not want to meddle in the affairs of other countries so they could not blame the US for their own problems. I am sympathetic to this view but not for the same reasons. I don't want other Western countries to blame the US for the problems in other countries. This has been the prima facia argument against the US used by the progressive Western politicians and left-wing activists for the last 40 years. If the US is not involved, then oppression is not as distasteful to these intellectual sophists. Left-wing icon Noam Chomski famously declared the Cambodian genocide was not as bad becuase of:

"a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered."

As we know now, it was the communist thugs of the Khmer Rouge who killed millions of people, not the USA's 'invisible hand' that left-wing conspirators love to point to when their ideological chums massacre people. I find a dark comedy where left-wing human rights atrocities are blamed on some form or capitalistic imperialism...either comedy or psychosis.

So, I welcome the isolation. The UN can go back to strongly condemning and then turning a blind eye to oppression. After a few hundred thousand are killed they can convene reconciliation councils and the Western progressive intellectuals can tut-tut the tribalism and religious dogmas that sparked such violence and call for an end to intolerance by passing some new declaration on human rights before heading off to their cocktail parties where they play nice to the next despot who is arming their militia (with Chinese or Russian AK-47s and RPG's) to kill their political rivals and associated tribes in the name of justice.

The Human Rights Catastrophe Known as Jimmy Carter

The more I read about this man, the more I find out just how much human misery has come about as a result of his actions. This brings me to my question: Why do people gush over this man? I am thinking about doing a 15 part series on the dictators who Carter has sidled up to. Disturbingly, many (left leaning) Christians point to this man as some model of compassion in leadership. I would suggest that this man's compassion (as best as I can define means talking nicely to dictators) is based on political ideological grounds that have been baptized as Christian.

Today, I point to Robert Mugabe a man of blood lust power. Did you know that Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young (UN Ambassador for the USA) supported this guy? Indeed, the elected moderate Bishop Muzorewa was seen as a Western stooge and a vestige of colonial rule even though he was duly elected in a free election. But because the Soviet and China funded and armed generals were not in the election, the lefties of the world cried foul (along with the other Marxist supported dictators of sub-Saharan Africa). Andrew Young liked the brutal junta men of Nkomo and Mugabe even calling them kind and gentle.

Here's the problem, Muzorewa was anti-Marxist. He was one of those people accused by the left of leading the world to war by being mean to communists. In this time of Detente, the group speak claimed the anti-Marxists were causing the Marxists to kill people. Basically, the Marxists were throwing their murderous tantrums because the mean older brother of Western Capitalism refused to let the Marxists have their time in the toy bin. So under immense pressure from the left, Muzorewa was overthrown and Mugabe put in place for life (you know democratically, like Castro).

So, now we have a new election in 2008 where Mugabe looses yet retains power. We have a Zimbabwe that cannot feed its people. We have a currency that is a joke which means hard assets are required for any sort of trade...which means no food because the new land policies have ruined farming and no one accepts Zim dollars. Thanks Jimmy! I am glad America has lost this value.

Good Craic and Bad Theology

This is a great article on how the academics hoax each other. My favorite line:

[T]o put it another way, he argued that the traditional concept of gravity was just a capitalist fiction that would be made irrelevant by the socialist/feminist/relativist theory of 'quantum gravity.'

Now for the bad theology. Some open theists have used quantum theory to buttress God's limited capacity to foresee randomness. I hope the purveyors of this thinking were not the victims of a hoax because some of their arguments stem from a 'social construct' perspective arguing that God's omniscience is the product of human history not revelation.

I found this hoax to be hilarious on many levels. Of particular delight was the hoax title, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." How many theology papers have I read that said 'Transformative Hermeneutic?'

How Virginia Takes Care of Its Bridges

Bridge Demolitions By Sounds - More amazing video clips are a click away

Cognitive Dissonance

Some things that I have heard in the media recently:

-Osama Bin Laden's latest tape is no big deal because the head of Al-Quaida is a has been and the Muslim world doesn't pay attention to him anymore because of Barack Obama. A has been? Didn't we ignore OBL in the 1990's?

-The economy is coming back never mind the jobs shed and out-of-control deficit spending. At least the Chinese economic students in Beijing knew to laugh at Treas. Sec. Geitner when he said such things.

-Sen. Leheay (Dem-VT) has ridiculed the treatment of Judge Sotomayor as racist. Yeah, well how does the Honorable Senator explain his treatment of Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Alberto Gonzalez, and Janice Rogers Brown.

-8 months ago, the media narrative concerning GM and Chrysler was 'no to bankruptcy' because no one would buy the cars or do warranty work. So what has changed other than the government has nationalized the two companies and politically driven the two company's restructuring? Now the media is doing puff pieces on how the gov't is, dare I say...savior of the auto industry.

-Finally, there were two (domestic) terrorist events in the US on Sunday and Monday of this week. I bet most people can only name one. BTW, the under-reported event follows in a string of similar attacks over the last 7 years taking place in Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chapel Hill.

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