Archive for April, 2010

Dan Calabrese

It’s often said about certain areas that are so dominated by one party that a Democrat (or as the case may be, a Republican), “couldn’t lose there if he tried.”

Well.

Georgia’s 4th congressional district is so heavily Democratic, it would be hard for a Democratic incumbent to lose there even if . . . well, even if he said something so stupid he became the laughingstock of the entire nation.

Reality.

Like, say, that he feared the island of Guam would become so heavily populated it might tip over and capsize. Like Congressman Hank Johnson.

If it’s possible to defeat Johnson, who won 76 percent of the vote in his last, pre-Guam-capsizing-comment race, the beneficiary looks to be Republican LIz Carter – a 41-year-old businesswoman who is having plenty of fun with Johnson’s misstep, but also minces no words about the shortcomings of current leadership on the Hill, or about what Republicans would need to do in the event they take back control of some or all of Congress in 2011.

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Bob Franken

It’s amazing how crazed people get anytime somebody says “Do you want bureaucrats to get between you and your (name it)?”. It’s the red meat that sends red-blooded Americans into a frenzied red state of mind.

Nothing new here.

Actually, I’m confused: If we so identify that color with conservatism, why did we call the Communists “Reds”? Given all the cries of Socialism and other name calling, are we now in a situation where our Reds are accusing opponents of being Reds? Just wondering.

Silly as that is, it’s no more so than the “Do you want a bureaucrat to get between you and yada yada yada…”. It was a killer argument against truly effective health care reform and now it’s being trotted out by those opposed to meaningful protections against the anything-goes financial industry.

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication.

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Bob Franken

Not only is the Tea Party Right…often far Right, it’s also right. It is motivated largely by anger and there’s plenty to be angry about. Unfortunately it’s also wrong.

The fury and desperation that fuel those who have rallied to this movement is misplaced. Their proper targets should be those in the corporate-finance power structure whose insatiable greed caused a near collapse of the economy and a full collapse of the lives and well-being of the millions whose money they squandered.

Do they even know what they're defending?

Instead their rage is aimed at government regulators and efforts to give them real power to bring the corruption under control. They have been oh-so-cleverly manipulated by organizers (the Tea Party branches claim to be spontaneous but that just isn’t so) who are financed by some of the very big money interests who have gotten us into our mess.

They have been successful in deflecting the Tea-Partiers’ rage away from the bad guys who might help put a stop to their cheating, meaning the regulators. It’s similar to the way the wealthy keep the lawmakers at bay by using a tiny part of their riches in the form of campaign contributions to coerce and/or sweet talk them away from creating sensible rules of conduct for playing with other peoples’ money.

Andy Hefty

JACKSONVILLE — I am going to make a not-so-bold prediction: Outgoing Governor Charlie Crist will lose in his bid for the United States Senate. Some would argue that he’s the only one who can win, but I can tell you for certain that Chain-Gang Charlie has not lived up to his self-imposed standards of a conservative governor.

Here’s why:

First of all, he claims to be the ultimate conservative. Definitions aside, he has simply ridden his predecessor’s political coat tails the entire time he has served as governor. Rather than rejecting stimulus money, he welcomed it. Come to think of it, he hugged it. His GOP opponent, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, has used the warm embrace of President Barack Obama as a rallying cry.

Sorry, Charlie!

And rightly so. Crist failed to realize that the stimulus money had to come from somewhere. He forgot that all money that originates in Washington first comes from the taxpayers. So how can you claim to cut taxes (which he championed in the form of cuts to property taxes) and still be “conservative” if you are taking tax money funneled through DC?

It is a manipulation of data – and voters.

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Bob Maistros

OK, class, once again I need to step in and straighten matters out.

Instruction manual.

Because as Danny (North Star editor Dan Calabrese) has so aptly pointed out, Tony (Perkins, head of the Family Research Council) gets a “F” for his defense of the National Day of Prayer the other day against the smirking sophistry of Christopher Hitchens.  Franklin (I know it’s unfair to pick on the preacher’s son, even if the preacher is Billy Graham) didn’t do much better on TV the other night.  Even Danny has gone off the reservation a bit on this one.

So boys and girls, dudes and dudettes here we go:  there is a simple and idiot-proof argument on behalf of the Day of Prayer, from which Mr. Perkins and Rev.  Graham seemed to run screaming.

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Dan Calabrese

Please, God. Is it over yet? Can I open my eyes?

If you want to see the perfect illustration of my point from Friday about why a National Day of Prayer is more trouble than it’s worth for Christians, grab a vomit bag and try to sit through this seven-minute debacle in which atheist Christopher Hitchens eats Family Research Council president Tony Perkins for lunch.

worst.performance.ever

Oh. My. God. On the one hand, as a Christian, I want to ask whether this guy is really the best we can come up with. But what can you do when your position is fundamentally indefensible?

Aside from the part about the founders being atheists – a well-worn atheist trope for which I can find no compelling evidence – how can you honestly disagree with any of Hitchens’s points?

- It’s completely irrelevant that the judge in question was a district judge, and that matters because the level at which the judge serves is, astonishingly, Perkins’s primary argument, repeated at least three times.

- When Perkins argues that 80 percent of the country self-identifies as Christian, and Hitchens responds that this only proves we’re talking about a tyranny of the majority, how can anyone possibly say Hitchens is wrong?

- When Perkins calls for the judge to be impeached – impeached! – and Hitchens describes this as the sort of intolerance for which he regularly (and wrongly, in my view) excoriates Christians, how can you seriously disagree?

I suppose, if forced at the point of a gun, I could come up with a better argument than Perkins to defend the National Day of Prayer. He was cringe-inducingly terrible and should never show his face in public again. But this is what happens when, as Christians, we start making government endorsement of our agenda a primary objective. We create a playing field in which the likes of Christopher Hitchens is right. If we simply focus on the truth of God’s word, Hitchens never comes close to being right, and we never lose.

Can we please stop picking these fights?

Bob Maistros

Once upon a time there was a Good King.  The Good King was crowned at a time of hardship for his subjects.  So he reduced some of his subjects’ taxes as a small part of a very, very expensive program to create new positions.  The Good King pledged much of his Kingdom and all of its treasury to another large empire in the faraway east to pay for this program.

"Let them eat fennel!"

The Good King did not mention that most of the new positions created were for people working for the court and his noblemen in the various Commonwealths of the realm, and helping it rule over the subjects.  The Good King’s subjects became very worried that he had borrowed so much money from the other, faraway empire to produce so few positions for his subjects.

Meanwhile, the Good King was far more concerned about another matter.  It seemed he ruled over a land where most people feasted happily on T-bone steaks, tacos and éclairs paid for by their employers.  In fact, his Kingdom had the best food in the world Read the rest of this entry »

Herman Cain

When someone calls me a derogatory name such as “Uncle Tom” or “sellout” I don’t even flinch, because it puts their ignorance and lack of intelligence on display. But when someone accuses me or others of being a racist because we disagree with President Obama, I get really, really, really angry.

A veritable David Duke, yes?

I couldn’t care less that they call me a racist. But I care a whole lot that they try to intimidate me into not disagreeing with President Obama because he is African-American. To suggest we cannot disagree with our elected leaders for whatever reason is to suggest that we are a nation to be governed by tyranny.

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Gregory D. Lee

One of the most effective organizations ever created for turning boys into men and leaders is the Boy Scouts of America. Yet, somehow, Democrats in California see fit to block a resolution congratulating the BSA for 100 years of success because it allegedly discriminates against gays by barring them from membership.

You know what they want.

If a conservative doesn’t like an organization because of its policies, he moves on to another that fits his morals. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to destroy the organization because it does not meet their personal standards or lifestyle.

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