Paulites on the Move

Looks like the Ron Paul campaign has been hard at work collecting delegates behind the scenes. It seems they have been out-organizing the GOP establishment at the state conventions.

Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican with a libertarian’s heart, followed his
second-place finish in Nevada’s January presidential caucus by out-organizing
the state’s Republican establishment. In the process, the Paulites embarrassed
the campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for
president.
They seemed to make up more than half of the 1,300 or so state
delegates to the convention. They won a key procedural vote on the rules, and
their boisterous presence created significant delays, causing the convention
chairman, Bob Beers, a state senator from Las Vegas, to recess the convention
without selecting delegates to the national convention. The state convention is
to resume at a later date.
Paul supporters occasionally shouted down the
chairman, then rocked the convention with noise when Paul, their diminutive
doctor icon, appeared to rally them.

Just goes to show how many conservatives are fed-up with the current GOP.

Go Ron Paul.

Uncompromising Liberal?

This election season you are sure to hear from "conservatives" they would never vote for Obama because he is the "most liberal Senator." Hilzoy looks at Obama's legislative experience in the Senate and discovers some fascinating trends.

His legislation is often proposed with Republican co-sponsorship, which
brings me to another point: he is bipartisan in a good way...Obama tries to find
people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular
issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This
does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring
getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle. (This is especially
true when one is in the minority party, especially in this Senate: the chances
that Obama's bills will actually become law increase dramatically when he has
Republican co-sponsors.

McCain's 180

The American people did not support the goals of nation-building, peacemaking,
law and order and certainly not warlord funding. For us to get into
nation-building, law and order, etc, I think is a tragic and terrible mistake.
But the argument that somehow the United States would suffer a loss to our
prestige and our viability, as far as the No. 1 superpower in the world, I
think, is baloney. The fact is, what can hurt our prestige, Mr. President, I'll
tell you what can hurt our viability, as the world's superpower, and that is, if
we enmesh ourselves in a drawn-out situation, which entails the loss of American
lives, more debacles like the one we saw with the failed mission to capture
Aidid's lieutenants, using American forces, and that then will be what hurts our
prestige.

That was John McCain in 1993 in regards to Somalia. Looks like attractive conservative principles to me. What has happened since then?

Reducing my Cancer Risk

Looks like I'm doing fine with this one.

Christian message?

A South Carolina church has drawn quite a bit of attention by displaying the message "Obama, Osama...hmmm, brothers?"

Something I would expect from Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity, but from a Christian Church?

About a month ago, my grandparents forwarded me a classic Obama smear email. It stated he was a muslim, closet-terrorist, wouldn't say the pledge etc... you name it. Incensed by the nonsense, I sent an email back to my grandparents and everyone else on the forwarding list to let them know the accusations were not true and they were basically spreading lies.

Unfortunately, my grandma was offended and said something along the lines of "We used to be able to debate issues and have good conversations, but I guess we can't anymore." I replied and told her I have no problem debating issues with her and would never let her stance influence my feelings towards her, but this situation is different. Stating Obama is a terrorist or a muslim is not a debatable topic. It is a blatant lie. It is fair play to argue and debate that Obama is a "tax and spend liberal," inexperienced, lacks proper judgement, pro-abortion and so on, but those are valid claims to be made. Stating a lie with no evidense to back it up is not a debatable topic.

This brings us to the church in South Carolina. One of the most important principles of the Christian faith is honesty and truth. How is this church missing that message? How far has the Christian church fallen in the U.S. to place defamatory statements on their outdoor church sign, and to actually defend the act when called out on it?! This is not the message of the Gospels.

Andrew Sullivan compares this ruthless attitude against Obama to McCarthyism.

To say that someone who self-describes as a Christian is actually an
atheist or a Muslim is a form of McCarthyism, but because it rests on no facts
at all, and mere suspicion, and indeed denial of what the candidate himself says
in an area only the candidate can truly know, its something slightly
different. McCarthy at least himself believed that his targets might have
been Communists..."Obama, Osama, hmmm, are they brothers?" They are just
asking. They are not saying. Like Stephanopoulos and Gibson, Rove or
Clinton, they have no evidence for their accusations; they just don't know for
sure.

Yet, supposedly I was in the wrong for notifying everyone their behavior fell below the level of civil discourse. What a shame.

Fresh Air From McCain

This is some encouraging news:

Asked how his economic policies would differ from President Bush's, McCain said:
"Spending, spending, spending. This administration let spending get completely
out of control. We mortgaged our children's futures and it led to corruption,
and we presided over the largest increase in the size of government since the
Great Society."

His stance on the war makes me want to vomit, but I will be more than willing to vote for him if he can restore some fiscal sanity to our government. Thank-God people are starting to realize and speak out against what has occurred over the past 7 years.

Christianists Declare War

The other day, I was thinking of how my mom decided on what phone company to use when I was younger. Well, let me re-phrase that. How my mom decided on what phone company NOT to use.

At&t called our house to see if my mom wanted to switch our service over to them. My mom replied by telling them she would never switch to At&t because "they support homosexuals." Personally, I would choose a phone service by cost factors and their quality/reliability, but hey, what do I know?

However, this begs the question: "why do some people feel the need to boycott businesses that 'support homosexuals?" What harm is done by "supporting homosexuals?" Does that somehow affect me?

Well, I guess we have some answers after some fundamentalist christians are now upset with McDonalds for reaching out to a gay and lesbian chamber of commerce. Here are some examples of the hyperbolic rhetoric:

"Not today, in light of reports that McDonald's has decided, apparently, to
declare war on my family. And to declare war on the civilization of liberty,
independence, creativity, and humanity under God that my Dad fought for in World
War II."

And more...

"For human beings, this is a matter of liberty under God -- Why help finance
groups that turn their backs on the Declaration of Independence, the Founding
vision, and the living Creator who holds it all together?"

First, I don't see how two homosexual men or women acting in the privacy of their own home somehow negatively affect a heterosexual family. Additionally, homosexual couples embrace the principles of compassion, stability, support and committment. Shouldn't we be encouraging that? Isn't that what heterosexual families are supposed to promote? Gays don't want to destroy the family, they want to strengthen and be a part of it.

And what is with the argument that homosexuals are declaring war on liberty? Liberty is allowing people to be free to do whatever they want (as long as it doesn't harm others). In other words - free choice or free will. The only people here declaring war on liberty are the fundamentalists stating that McDonalds cannot support homosexuals or homosexuals cannot have relationships. Free choice and liberty is allowing others to make whatever choices they want. Liberty is not saying, "you can make free choices as long as they agree with my choices."

This is the major problem with the fundamentalist argument. They are saying there is no real liberty, just liberty that aligns with what God wants. Because of this, they say that to have true liberty, one must destroy the liberty of homosexuals and punish them.

Ed Breyton (where I got wind of the news) adds his own amount of advice.

Good lord, could you be just a little bit more melodramatic? Declare war on
your family? Rick, please...step down off the soapbox and take a deep
breath....the Hamburgler is not going to break into your house and force your
children to sodomize him. Ronald McDonald is not going to convince your son to
fondle his sesame seed buns. Take a step back and realize how ridiculous you're
sounding.

The End of the World

As some of you may have read, a doomsday cult has just emerged from a cave in Russia after finally realizing their prediction on the end of the world somehow was not accurate. Imagine that.

Appropriatley, Scott Adams gives some advice on what to look for when joining a cult.

Allow me to give you some advice: If you ever decide to join a cult, the first thing you should ask about is the quality of their doomsday cave. A poorly constructed cave could kill you, and that would take most of the fun out of doomsday.
You should also look for a cult leader who has some specificity about the exact doomsday date. Otherwise you’re just sitting in a cave for an extra month for no good reason. I’d want the comet to strike earth a minute after I wiped my feet on the cave’s welcome mat. That way the people who got all of my worldly possessions wouldn’t have time to enjoy them. The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong. For most other decisions, you can generally make a case for why your wrongness was really right. For example, you still hear people say Saddam had WMD but he did a good job of hiding them. There’s no way to disprove that sort of assertion. But when the world doesn’t explode on Tuesday, it’s hard to make a case that it did. You have to go with something like “The comet was heading this way, but we prayed it off course. You’re welcome. Give me back my stuff.”

He also links to an excellent site which records all the doomsday and rapture predictions by loonies. Here is a little nugget:

1993 CE - Benny Hinn, bizarro televangelist so far out of orbit you couldn't pull him back in with a tractor beam, prophesied that '93 would be the year the faithful would be Raptured up like dust bunnies in a handy-vac. He also prophesied, in his inimitable, loving Christian way that two years after that, God would destroy all those sinful, evil awful, vile, icky homosexuals... Mm hmn, me thinks the lady doth protest too much.