Archive for September, 2010

Bob Maistros

We cut taxes way back in 2003.
Singin’, ooh what did we do what dumb did we do?
Left it so they would go back up this January.
Singin’, ooh what did we do what dumb did we do?

What, we govern?

It looked good, LOOKED GOOD.
It looked fine, LOOKED FINE.
It looked good, it looked fine,
Made a nice clean budget line.

Before we knew it we had Speaker Pelosi.
Singin’, ooh what did we do what dumb did we do?
Pushin’ for spending, just as natural as can be,
Singin’, ooh what did we do what dumb did we do?

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Dacia Nichol Taylor

I want to take a time out from all this political in-fighting and focus on the real fighting. The real wars.

Actually, I want to take a minute to reflect on a real hero who’s sponging all the political flap and keeping sanity alive. He’s a model of leadership. He’s a model of humility. He’s a model of perseverance. He’s a model American. His strategic successes have saved a war from the depths of historical failure, and with that may one day tell of yet another great American moment. He is General David Petraeus.

Not many will lead.

“Petraeus fights time, enemy in Afghanistan.”

Perhaps after the revelations from Bob Woodward’s latest book, Obama’s Wars, that title might have an entirely different meaning than the AP article from which it’s pulled intended to describe. The enemy seems to be time itself. He’s got a deadline that’s not feasible, lacks the resources he (collectively) asked for, and now apparently works under a president who’s not 100 percent behind his mission.

Americans are impatient at best, especially when faced with incredible uncertainty, challenging odds and amplified pressure from every source imaginable. But this man just won’t break. While we’re over here with swords drawn looking for blood over campaign races, he’s over there facing the men who want to kill us and end our ability to have such discourse.

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Dan Calabrese

In followup to my piece yesterday, some challenged me to make good on my statement that I could easily develop a quiz of 32 questions – not pertaining to the religious traditions of man as the Pew Forum did – but pertaining to the character of God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

You got it. If you want to try the answers, do us a favor and identify yourself by roughly the same categories Pew used: atheist/agnostic, evangelical Christian, mainline protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Muslim, Jew or whatever else.

No cheating!

Forget the racial stuff. We can let the Pew Forum and the legacy media obsess over race.

Two things about this: First, it’s not an open book test, so no checking your Bibles for the answers. You’re on the honor system, people! Second, in fairness to those who are not Bible scholars, you don’t need to cite Bible passages to support your answers, and please don’t.

Also, it occurred to me that if people do the quiz in the comments section, everyone can copy everyone else’s answers. So e-mail them to me instead at dan@northstarwriters.com, and be sure to tell me the category you fit.

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Dan Calabrese

For about the next 300 years, you’re going to hear exuberant atheists, agnostics and “freethinkers” quoting the survey that was released yesterday by The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life. They think the survey demonstrates that people of faith are so clueless, they don’t even know as much as atheists about what they believe.

Forget something?

Helped along by major media headlines, nonbelievers are in celebratory form today, sharing links that exclaim, “Atheists and Agnostics Know More About Bible Than Religious.”

Yep, those headed for eternal destruction are pretty excited today! Too bad this survey, whatever it may have to do with religion, doesn’t have anything to do with God.

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Brett Noel

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Dacia Nichol Taylor

Besides returning sanity back to the country by flipping the House and stalling the Senate, you know what I’m most excited about this year? Mitt Romney about to start showing some more face than he’s been giving us lately, thanks to that looming year ahead, 2-0-1-2.

Right now, he’s camping in New Hampshire, and his recent appearance at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee will definitely give you a taste of what his you-know-it’s-coming presidential bid is going to bring. And boy do we need it now.

No apologies.

After this primary season, Romney’s uniting leadership could certainly heal many wounds and bring us back together. If we can get him to the general election, I’d certainly bet on a landslide win followed by a victory and a presidency the GOP can put into its Reagan Hall of Fame.

What did he say? What did he do?

This man has Reagan down. He’s got the witty little stories with the funny lines. Some of the humor is self-deprecating, as appropriate Reagan-ness would proscribe. He’s very incorporative of his family in his stories, appearances and the like. And bonus, his message is very “we” the people, “we” the Republicans, “we” the future.

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Brett Noel

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Gregory D. Lee

Last week, a national survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was released and concluded, “The use of illicit drugs among Americans increased between 2008 and 2009. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows the overall rate of current illicit drug use in the United States rose from 8.0 percent of the population aged 12 and older in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009. This rise in overall drug use was driven in large part by increases in marijuana use.”

So it begins.

The Director of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, said, “The findings are disappointing, but not surprising. Youth attitudes about the dangers of drugs have softened in the past couple of years (emphasis added). In the past this has often signaled that increases in use are coming.” The drug czar got it right, and you can count on further increases of drug use.

In the past couple of years, so-called medicinal marijuana clinics have flourished in California, especially in the Los Angeles area. The city council finally woke up when it realized that in some places in the city, over a dozen marijuana clinics exist within a mile radius. It now is considering taking steps to control their spread. In the meantime, this November, there is a proposition on the California ballot to legalize the “recreational” use of marijuana.

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Herman Cain

In less than two years, this presidency has produced an unprecedented turnover rate of top administration advisors, a failed stimulus spending bill, failed economic policies that have left the economy stalled, much higher than expected unemployment, a hugely unpopular health care bill, a financial regulatory deform bill, a list of expensive poorly executed populist programs that flopped, out-of-control federal spending, uncertainty about success with the war in Afghanistan, and increased tensions with Iran, North Korea and China.

Epic.

Millions of voters have come to realize that this presidency lacks leadership, direction, decisiveness, economic urgency and, most of all, solutions. This combination of deficiencies has produced a more than uninspired citizenry, except for the most loyal and misled supporters of the president.

And just like the Obama supporter who confronted the president at a supposedly friendly town hall meeting last week, people are exhausted from listening to all of the failed attempts to spin failures into successes with speeches and media sound-bites.

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Dan Calabrese

Not to turn The National into the side of a milk carton, but this case has caught my attention and I’m hoping someone out there can help to find this young lady.

Mariah Kammerer is 16 years old. Her family lives in Henderson, Kentucky, but Mariah was living at the United Methodist Youth Home in Evansville, Indiana before running away on September 9. She (or someone) posted briefly on her Facebook account on September 12, saying that she is fine. Since then, however, there has been no activity on her Facebook or MySpace accounts.

Mariah is on the left.

Her mother, Darah, is frantic as might imagine.

I realize there will be some sentiment that this case doesn’t deserve the urgency I’m attaching to it, since a runaway situation is different than an abduction. And judging from some of the comment Mariah’s friends wrote on her Facebook page, this sort of thing is not entirely out of character for Mariah.

But for me, that’s not a reason to care less. It’s a reason to care more.

She needs to be found safe, obviously. But beyond that, this is clearly a troubled young woman. Whether she is troubled by circumstances in her life, personal issues with which she struggles, or perhaps something that’s happened that she is afraid to face up to – the fact of the matter is she needs to be with people who love her.

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