Ok. So it makes strategic sense for Romney supporters like Yours Truly to smile indulgently and even delightedly at the antics of the Paulistas. After all, Paul isn't a serious candidate for the nomination, and every vote he gets is a vote one of Romney's more credible opponents won't get.
If Paul wins the caucuses Tuesday, that's almost as good from Romney's point of view as winning himself. Paul will quickly fade from the scene after the early primaries, and it's highly unlikely that he'll ever be as strong anywhere else as he is in Iowa. Paul is a distraction which makes it difficult for candidates not as well set for the long haul as Mitt is to compete. Since Paul has no credibility as an actual candidate for the nomination, Paul and Romney finishing one/two on Tuesday has no downside for the crowd in Boston.
But as you may have noticed, I'm not complacent about Paul. I just don't like the idea of the people of Iowa looking like fools in front of the entire world, even if the wound is self-inflicted. Moreover, I'm genuinely scared, not so much as Paul himself- a harmless eccentric with no real capacity to influence national policy- as of some of his followers, who are crazier than a flock of drunken loons.
And besides, I kind of enjoy the attention the Iowa Caucuses get us. And face it: if Ron Paul wins the caucuses on Tuesday, who in their right mind will pay the slightest attention to the Iowa Caucuses in 2016?
It was excellent- easily twice as good as the marvelous first film in the Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law collaboration. Stephen Fry is marvelous as Mycroft, Sherlock's smarter brother, and Jared Harris is brilliantly evil as the infamous Professor Moriarity- an opponent in every nuance perfect as the counterpart of Downey's Holmes.
The only trouble with this series is that Downey and Law just aren't Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson. Rather than the almost autistically brilliant, icily cerebral detective of the canon, Downey's version is always very much in on the joke, a somewhat outrageous and witty character exhibiting a droll sense of humor that is as entertaining as it is unlike the canonical Holmes. The banter between Downey and Law is priceless- this version of the detective and the doctor are very much equals- but somehow they don't quite seem to be... well, Holmes and Watson.
Who, after all, can imagine Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Britt expressing a reluctance to ride a horse by saying, "I'm uncomfortable having something between my legs that has a mind of its own?"
Rather, they're some other Victorian consulting detective and his medico side-kick of the same names who live at an alternate 221b Baker Street with a landlady named Mrs. Hudson. This is a pair of characters who deserve their own identity.
I love this pair! May there be many more movies in this wonderful series!
The other day I got a call asking whether it would make any difference to my vote on Tuesday if Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann ran as a team, with one indicating that he or she would select the other for vice-president if nominated.
It will be interesting to see the ramifications for Sorenson's career. There is a scene in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons in which Thomas More, on trial for his life, says to former protege Richard Rich, who has just perjured himself on behalf of the prosecution in exchange for the office of Attorney General for Wales, "Richard, Richard! It profits a man nothing to gain the whole world in exchange for his soul. But for Wales!"
But for Ron Paul, Kent? A marginal figure who has as much chance of winning the nomination as... well, Richard Rich? The esteem of an admittedly vocal but still inconsequential movement on the fringe of the Republican party is worth your credibility?
Santorum is rising in the polls, and I've felt all along that he was the natural fit for the folks who backed Mike Huckabee four years ago. Depending on how strongly Iowa's "Evangelicals" get behind him, he could be a bigger factor on Tuesday than anyone has counted on.
I pick him to finish third right now. Winning would be a stretch. Finishing second wouldn't be.
As if to underscore exactly what is at stake in the Iowa Caucuses (and the rest of the GOP primary season), Rasmussen today released a poll showing Mitt Romney defeating President Obama 45% to 39%. Six percent are undecided.
Cain, Gingrich and Perry have each narrowly and briefly lead Mr. Obama at some point, but this is the largest lead any Republican has held over the president in the Rasmussen poll this time around. It is also the poorest showing Mr. Obama has had against any Republican.
Obama leads all other potential Republican opponents by between seven and 15 percentage points.
Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll shows Romney reclaiming the national lead among Republicans from Newt Gingrich. Romney has 27% to 23% for Gingrich, 11% for Ron Paul, eight percent for Rick Perry, and five percent for Michele Bachmann. The poll does not report results for Rick Santorum or Jon Huntsman.
The latest poll here in Iowa says that Mitt Romney has moved into the lead.
The CNN.TIME, ORC poll conducted on December 21-24 and December 26-27 gives Romney 25% to 22% for Ron Paul, 16% for Rick Santorum (again, as the buzz predicted), 14% for Newt Gingrich, 11% for Rick Perry, 9% for Michele Bachmann, and 1% for Jon Huntsman. 2% expressed no preference.
It should be noted, however, that this poll was taken only among self-identified Republicans. Independents and Democrats are allowed to change their registration on primary night in order to participate in the GOP caucus. Even some polls showing Ron Paul still in the lead among those intending to participate in the caucuses show Romney leading among Republicans. Also, the poll was begun before Herman Cain's departure from the race; the votes of Cain voters were awarded to the candidate they had listed as their second choice.
Romney seems to have been the primary beneficiary of Gingrich's fall from grace to to a barrage of negative ads from Romney, Perry and Paul. But perhaps the most notable result is Santorum's rise from 5% in the last poll released earlier this month- only Huntsman had less support- to 16% and third place in the poll released today.
While Paul leads the field when voters are asked which candidate's positions they most agree with (22% to Romney's 18%), Romney leads by a large margin when the question is about "the personal qualities and characteristics you think a president should have" (25% to Paul's 19%). Voters in this survey placed "leadership skills and vision" ahead of candidates' positions on issues as the most important factor in their decision by a margin of 49% to 44%.
Paul leads the field in the number of respondents who say that they would never consider supporting him (42% to Gingrich's 39).
41% believe that Romney has the best chance of defeating President Obama in November, compared with 17% for Gingrich and 14% for Paul.
The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.5%.
Meanwhile, Romney's lead in New Hampshire is growing, according to a study done during the same period by the same organization. As in Iowa, votes cast for Herman Cain were awarded to the candidate whom the voter in question indicated was his or her second choice.
The poll shows Romney with 44%, with Paul a distant second, with 17%. Gingrich, who had 26% in the previous poll, has tumbled to third with 16%. Jon Huntsman has 9%, Rick Santorum 4%, Michele Bachmann 3%, Rick Perry 2%, "none of the above" 1%, and "no opinion," 5%.
Asked whether he could vote for Paul, Gingrich replied, "No." If Obama were the alternative? "You'd have a very hard choice at that point."
I wouldn't, personally. A sickening choice, yes- but not a hard one. As little use as I have for Barack Obama's policies, I'd vote to re-elect him in a heartbeat if Ron Paul were the alternative. The election of a naif like Paul would be the greatest threat to our national security in my lifetime.
"I think Barack Obama is very destructive to the future of the United States," Gingrich told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. "I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American."
"As people get to know more about Ron Paul, who disowns 10 years of his own newsletter, says he didn't really realize what was in it, had no idea what he was making money off of, had no idea that it was racist, anti-Semitic, called for the destruction of Israel, talked about a race war - all of this is a sudden shock to Ron Paul?" Gingrich wondered. "There will come a morning people won't take him as a serious person."
For reasonable people who know Paul's record, of course, that morning dawned a long time ago.
Accusing Paul of a "total record of systemic avoidance of reality,"Gingrich called thes Texas congressman "a person who thinks the United States was responsible for 9/11, a person who ... wrote in his newsletter that the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 might have been a CIA plot, a person who believes it doesn't matter if the Iranians have a nuclear weapon."
Many of those charges, it should be noted, come from that newsletter, which Paul published for ten years, but about whose contents and even the authors of many articles he claims to be ignorant. The business about the United States being to blame for 9/11, however, is not.
Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, has also chimed in, calling Paul's isolationist views on foreign policy "dangerous for the United States."
Ron Paul continues to lead Mitt Romney by four points in the latest Public Policy Polling Iowa tracking poll.
Newt Gingrich, who only weeks ago was looking like the inevitable winner of the Iowa Caucuses and perhaps the Republican presidential nomination, continues his slide- from 27% to 22% to 14% to 13% in four consecutive polls.
The latest poll show that Romney leads Ron Paul by 22% to 20% among those who are actually Republicans, reinforcing fears that left-wing Democrats may intend to cross party lines to caucus for Paul. 16% of those polled said that they had participated in the Democratic caucus in 2008.Half that number self-identified as Democrats. All participants in the poll said that they planned to participate in the Republican caucus this year.
Participants seem clear on the point that Romney (25%) has the best chance of beating President Obama, but by 58%-30% planned to base their support on issue positions rather than electability (from what I know of Iowa Republicans, I am not surprised)..
The sheer dedication of Ron Paul's supporters- who have the best organization in the state- is going to make him tough to beat on Tuesday, and remains a significant variable. And he continues to lead in the polls. But the relatively small amount of attention Ron Paul's front-runner status has drawn to his foreign policy and his other baggage momentum seems to be with Mitt Romney, and Iowans may yet avoid humiliating themselves in front of the world.
It's worth remembering, too, that four years ago it was Romney who had the best organization in the state. But Mike Huckabee didn't get the memo.
Tuesday is a long way away, but at this point the weather is looking good- another good sign for Mitt.
A word of warning: unless you understand the peculiar doctrine of the Holy Ministry held by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, you're not going to get this.
Evidentally I'm not the only one who thinks that Rick Santorum's showing here in Iowa will be a major surprise next week.
The polls haven't picked up a Santorum surge, but there's been plenty of buzz. And it makes sense. Santorum is a natural for Iowa's plentiful social conservatives, and he lacks the baggage of a Ron Paul or a Michele Bachmann.
I'm not saying that Santorum is going to win, but don't be surprised if he ends up in the top three. Not only have we begun to see well-produced TV ads in the last week or so, but while the other candidates have been making noise Santorum has been quietly waging the only traditional, boots-on-the-sidewalk-visit-all-99-counties wholesale campaign Iowa Republicans have seen this year.
No excuses about Cutler and Forte. No words of hope about McCown giving us a competent backup quarterback for a change, or our unsuspected depth at running back.
Until the Bears can redeem themselves next season, we Bear fans must live with the shame of a season in which we lost twice to the Mold 'n' Gold.
Dan Lederman, a Jewish Republican state sentator from South Dakota, is worried specifically about “(Paul's) views on national security, the white supremacy thing, foreign policy, the stance that having a nuclear Iran is okay.”Others are concerned that Paul's rhetoric also seems to be strongly anti-Israel, though not necessarily anti-Semitic.
Paul has denied responsibility for a series of racist posts in the newsletter he published under his own name in the Seventies. Paul claims he didn't pay attention to what was being published under his name, and didn't even know who wrote some of it. The viewpoints expressed in the newsletter, however, seem to correspond to those of many of Paul's supporters- a point which concerns even people who (like me) do not believe that Paul is personally racist.
The trouble is that although Paul disavows the viewpoints of these bigots and extremist fanatics, he does not disavow their support- and they seem drawn to him like flies to honey. These connections, along with Paul's isolationist foreign policy and vigorous insistance that Iran has every right to build nuclear weapons without UN sanctions or American opposition despite the nature of its leadership, concern many Republicans of all faiths. President Obama has been the subject of criticism from a great many conservatives for his tendency to grovel before foreign leaders and apologize for America even when no such apology is called for. But next to Ron Paul, Mr. Obama looks like Winston Churchill.
Paul's extremism seems to have escaped many here in Iowa. While Paul has run ads attacking the record of other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, he has bristled at the notion that his record is also fair game. And Paul has not been attacked by the other candidates, largely because he is seen as irrelevant; his chances of winning the nomination have generally been seen as nil by all but Paul's own supporters.
But recent polls have shown Paul running strongly in several states besides Iowa. Many Republicans, attracted by Paul's hard-line views on the budget, seem unaware that on Iran and the war on terrorism he is considerably to the left of even President Obama, or of his general reputation for extremism.
At the very least, a Paul victory here in Iowa on January 3 would not only be a major black eye for the state, but might well endanger the future of the Iowa Caucuses.. After all, it would be hard to argue that a state whose Republican caucuses had been won by Ron Paul in 2012 should even be taken seriously in 2016. I personally expect Paul's support elsewhere to plummet as voters become more familiar with his positions on foreign policy and the nature of much of his support. Many Republican leaders worry that Democrats and other far-Left elements might cross party lines to caucus for Paul, and then switch back to President Obama in November.
But that might not happen soon enough to prevent Iowa Republicans from making fools of themselves in front of the entire world.
May the Word and Sacraments of the incarnate God keep your heart in the peace that comes from knowing that He has borne our sin and shame that we might share His glory forever.
From the Sept. 26, 1996, Austin American-Statesman:
"Fortunately, several types of accounts are tough for the IRS to investigate," Paul wrote. "For instance, it's still legal to open a bank account without revealing your Social Security number."
He also offered to help readers get a foreign passport.
"Peru recently announced that it will sell its citizenship to foreigners for $25,000," Paul wrote. "... People concerned about survival are naturally interested in a second citizenship and passport. If you're interested, drop me a note and include your telephone number, and I'll get you some interesting information." [...]
Paul, a Surfside obstetrician, former member of Congress and 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for president, said Morris (Paul's opponent in the 1996 congressional race-REW) quotes material out of context. Paul also said his advice was appropriate at the time it was published.
Twenty or so years ago, Ron Paul published a newsletter that helped make him famous and earned him a lot of money. The newsletter's content was blatantly racist. Paul has insisted ever since that because he didn't pay attention to what other people were writing in his name, and doesn't even know who did the writing in many cases, and in other cases meant things "tongue-in-cheek" or in an "academic" sense, and disavows the content of the newsletter now, (though not necessarily in the past), he somehow isn't responsible for it.
Or else he is responsible for it, but since he's taken responsibility for it, it can't be an issue anymore.
Personally, I find that lame attempt to evade responsibility for the newsletter in some ways almost as disturbing as the content of the newsletter itself. This is especially the case because Dr. Paul's... er, dedicated followers contain such a high percentage of "truthers," Holocaust deniers, white supremacists, and other generally worrisome people. Maybe they, too, have been deceived about those newsletter statements, and support Dr. Paul under false pretenses?
Dr. Paul was questioned about it on CNN yesterday. Here is the questioning-and his reaction:
The latest Rasmussen Poll has Mitt Romney five points up on Ron Paul, with Newt Gingrich- who looked unstoppable a week ago- trailing Paul by three points.
Romney has 25%, to 20% for Paul, and 17% for Gingrich. Rick Santorum (keep your eye on this guy; my gut tells me that he's going to be the social conservatives' man) and Rick Perry each have 10%. Native Iowan Michele Bachmann has 6%, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman 4%. 1% prefer someone else; 8% aren't sure.
The race remains in a condition of flux. For some reason Rasmussen's polls seem to favor Romney; two polls earlier in the week showed Paul with small leads. But two things seem certain: first, the Gingrich boom is over, and second, barring a breakthrough by one of the second-tier candidates (Santorum would be my guess), it appears to be coming down to Romney and Paul.
One was Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright, freedom fighter, and president; founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on Human Rights and Communism; and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and many similar honors; and, by any measure, one of the Twentieth Century's greatest heroes of human freedom and dignity. At the time of his death, he was president of the Human Rights Foundation.
"Vaclav to the (Prague) Castle!" was the battle cry of the "Velvet Revolution" of November and December, 1989, in which the long-suffering Czechs and Slovaks at last threw off the Russian and Communist yoke. A shy and self-effacing man, Havel developed the habit of not looking those with whom he spoke in the eye- because avoiding looking his Communist jailers in the eye that was a way in which he had been able to maintain a certain amount of personal power and control under interrogation and torture.
Bill Clinton has compared Havel to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. An inveterate chain smoker, this great man died of lung cancer last Saturday.
Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, was one of modern history's greatest monsters. A ruthless dictator who enjoyed the lavish life of a playboy while his people literally starved, the self-styled "Dear Leader" of North Korea was an erratic, unpredictable man who subordinated the vital needs of his suffering people to the maintenance of the fifth-largest standing army in the world, an ambitious ballistic missile program, and the development of nuclear weapons, he demanded absolute obedience and agreement from his subordinates and ruled his languishing land with an iron hand. Mismanagement combined with floods and other natural disasters under Kim to make the lot of North Korea one of the least enviable of any nation on Earth. He promoted a bizarre cult of personality which caused many North Koreans to attribute supernatural powers to him, including the ability to control the weather! We will probably never know how many deaths Kim was responsible for.
Contrary to Ron Paul, it is indeed America's business- and that of every other nation and of decent people all over the world- to do everything possible to see that the world's leaders include more Vaclav Havels, and fewer Kim Jong Ils. To quote Havel himself, "America cannot avoid its responsibility to stand as an obstacle to evil when it appears in the world.
Nor should we- or any truly decent people- even try.
"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."
REW responds: If only Ron Paul had a few 'sensible political opinions!'
(TONGUE-IN-CHEEK DISCLAIMER: Ron Paul is not responsible for the fact that he paid for the racist bilge above to be published under his name, because he didn't pay attention to what he was paying to have published under his name, and doesn't know who wrote it, or else it was "academic," or "tongue-in-cheek," or something. So don't be concerned about what this shows about his judgment, or anything. He doesn't agree with this stuff, nor with a whole lot of other stuff he paid to have published under his name. Really. Ron Paul is simply not responsible!)
As a Romney supporter, I suppose that I should be happy. But I hate seeing my fellow Iowans making themselves look like idiots in front of the whole country.
It's not just Paul's odd economic views or his naive, looney-tunes world view and a foreign policy which amounts to hinding our head in the sand and trusting that the world would be gentle with America if it would only stop being the source of all evil in the world. Beginning in 1978, Paul began publishing a newsletter which contained some of the most virulently racist garbage imaginable.
It should be noted that Paul did not write most of this stuff, and claims that he didn't keep close track of the newsletter's contents. He merely allowed it to be published under his name.
Some samples:
"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."
"What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?"
First Pat Robinson, and now this? Guys, Ron Paul winning the Iowa Caucuses would be a civic embarassment on the level of having Al Franken as one's U.S. Senator.
Don't do it. He's not going to win the nomination anyway, but still...
Just don't do it.
There was a time when eyebrows would be raised by news of the 14 year-old daughter of a religion professor being openly bi-sexual. Not any more.
Eyebrows are now raised by Texas Gov. Rick Perry invoking two thousand years of Christian ethical thinking and the plain and consistent teachings of both testaments that homosexual behavior is sinful.
Perry was confronted by Rebekah Green of Decorah, Iowa the other day over his opposition to gays serving openly in the military. I do not share Gov. Perry's postion on the issue, and it needs to be admitted that he expressed himself badly in responding to Ms. Green. “Here’s my issue., said Perry."This is about my faith, and I happen to think, you know, there are a whole hosts of sins. Homosexuality being one of them, and I’m a sinner and so I’m not going to be the first one to throw a stone.”
Hopefully Perry mispoke. In fact, nobody but an utter yahoo would suggest that homosexuality- as an orientation- is a sin. People who pay attention to the evidence are clear on the point that we do not choose our sexual orientation. While it is clearly not genetic, as some on the cultural Left try hard to argue- half of the identical twins of gay men, who have an identical genetic inheritance, are straight- it is clear that both pre-natal and post-natal influences beyond the control of the individual determine sexual orientation
But homosexual behavior is a different matter. Though social liberals have striven mightily- and mostly successfully- to confuse the issue, it is homosexual behavior rather than the condition of being homosexually oriented that Scripture and that considerable portion of Christianity which still considers itself bound by it regards as sinful.
Mr. Green's denomination- and that of her father, Luther College religion professor Todd Green- is not part of that portion of Christianity. The zeitgeist-worshipping Evangelical Lutheran Church in America officially abandoned biblical sexual ethics a couple of years ago.
Ms. Green herself accused Perry of trying to tell people "whom they can love." But love, of course, is not the issue.
Sex is. And Perry has concerns- which again, I do not happen to share- that having serving members who are openly homosexual might prove problematic to our military. Apparently most soldiers, sailors and Marines disagree with him.
I, too, think he's wrong. But it's a reasonable question to ask. And neither Ms. Green nor her father nor the media ought to demonize him for asking it.
But they should be more honest about what the real issue is in the debate over the public acceptance of homosexuality. It's not orientation. It's behavior. And it's long past due time for the cultural Left to stop trying to disingenuously make an ethical issue into a matter of discrimination.
But now comes the real outrage. Says Prof. Green, It takes no courage to come out of the closet to be a Christian and run for president of the United States. I’d be more impressed if you were Muslim or an atheist and coming out like that, but to come out as though this was an act of courage for him to proclaim his Christian faith, but he also wants to take the stand against gays in the military. "
Actually, it takes considerable courage in this day and age for anyone to "come out of the closet" and confess that he's a Christian who believes what the Bible and the apostolic Christian faith have to say about homosexual behavior, whether he's running for president or not . As one who advocated that position in the ELCA for years, I would humbly suggest that Prof. Green knows it, too.
Nobody who held the biblical position would be allowed to teach religion at Luther College.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine recently published this photo by the Hubble Space Telescope, entitling it "Ein Angel zur Adventszeit" ("An Angel for Advent").
First Jay Cutler breaks his thumb and Matt Forte sprains his knee. Now Johnny Knox is headed for the operating room, and Sam Hurd is headed for the hoosegow. And the Bears season is officially in the dumpster.
No playoffs this year. And the Ursine Warriors' chance of saving the season from utter ignominy by beating the hated P__kers next week are virtually nill.
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has attacked Ron Paul for painting Islamic terrorists (and the Iranians) as the good guys and the United States as the bad guys.
Maybe on Mars, Ron. But not on this planet.
Limbaugh criticized the eccentric Texas congressman for "running to the Left of Obama" on Iran.
Here is the exchange between Paul and Michele Bachmann during the Sioux City debate in which Paul let loose with his rant:
I'm not necessarily a huge fan of either Limbaugh or Bachmann. But this time, I agree with them both: the election of Ron Paul to the presidency would pose the greatest threat to America's national security in my lifetime. The man simply doesn't have a clue.
Mrs. O speaks truly: the Baptists seem to be just now learning what we Lutherans seem so eager to forget.
"Aieee!Yog Sothoth!," for example, is just not an appropriate hymn lyric for biblically orthodox Christians. And neither are the lyrics of a great many "contemporary" or simply standard "Evangelical" hymns and songs.
Yes, the words do matter. We end up believing what we pray- or sing.
Christopher Hitchens- eloquent apologist for those simultaneously oppressed and unpopular and, unfortunately, snarky atheist- is dead at 62. The author of God is Not Great suffered from esophageal cancer
I was never quite sure whether to admire or be horrified at the man. He was never afraid to "call 'em as he saw 'em," even if it meant being politically incorrect enough to view the Iraq war through the lenses of concern for the people of Iraq rather than Bush hatred. On the other hand, his view of religion as very nearly the root of all evil was to say the least extreme, and he was vehement in his denial of God. As a Christian, I hope he had occasion to revise his views before finding out the hard way how very wrong he was about that last one.
One thing, in any case is clear: we're poorer for his absence. We need more people with his intellectual courage, even when they're wrong about the most basic things of all.
Meanwhile, in last night's Sioux City debate, Ron "Blame America First" Paul demonstrated conclusively his unfitness to be president by taking the side of the terrorists in the War on Terror. The terrorists hate us, Paul claimed, because we kill innocent civilians and invade countries. Iran's nuclear threat, he said, is merely an excuse for America to be evil to somebody else.
Paul, of course, has no chance of being nominated. But if he were, I wonder whether the general election campaign would be a contest between him and President Obama to see who could apologize for America most often and most abjectly.
The Law is everything God demands of us. It includes His threat of punishment for disobedience.
The Gospel is the Good News of what God has done for us in Christ. It is the Gospel, and not the Law, that makes a sermon- or a person- Christian.
There is no Christian monopoly on the notion that you should be good, or that God makes demands on our behavior and threatens us with punishment if we don't comply. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Rastaferians, and just about anybody who doesn't worship either Satan or Cthulhu can go along with that. Even atheists and agnostics often acknowledge that ethics are good, and that it's better to be nice than naughty.
But God isn't Santa Claus, even though He does know whether you're naughty or nice, and even knows when you are sleeping and knows when you're awake. And the distinctively Christian message is forgiveness of sins through the life and death of Jesus Christ, not the kind of generic brow-beating you can get from almost any teacher or writer of any kind who isn't a sociopath.
An awful lot of sermons preached in Christian churches simply aren't Christian sermons. As Walther observed in Thesis XXV of The Proper Distinction, "...the Word of God is not rightly divided when the person teaching it does not allow the Gospel to have a general predominance in his teaching."
While Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses and others may not want to remember this particular Christmas-related story, gift giving wasn't the only thing St. Nicholas (a forensic reconstruction of his face is at the right) was famous for.
Arius, for those who need a brush-up course in church history, denied the Trinity and taught that Jesus was similar to (homoiousious) but not identical to (homoousious) the Father.
I guess you would kind of expect somebody whose father was named Ammonius to have a rather stinky theology...
Negative ads detailing the former Speaker's checkered past seem to have punctured the Gingrich balloon. Two new polls show Mitt Romney jumping into the lead here in Iowa, and extending his lead in New Hampshire. Gingrich has tumbled into second place in Iowa, and third place in New Hampshire.
The new Iowa Rasmussen numbers give Romney 23%, Gingrich 20%, Ron Paul 18%, Rick Perry 10%, Michele Bachmann 9%, Rick Santorum 6%, and Huntsman 5%. Ten percent are undecided or support someone else.
My gut tells me to keep my eye on Santorum. A smart and focused campaigner with a a strong appeal to the social conservatives who make up the greater part of the Iowa GOP, I have a very strong hunch that many caucus-goers in what seems to be a fluid race are going to come down at the last minute in his corner.
Every candidate except Gingrich, who lost twelve percent, has apparently picked up support in Iowa in the past week. Huntsman, who picked up three points, has visited Iowa precisely once.
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, a new poll shows Romney with 35%, Paul (!) with 21%, and Gingrich dropping to third, with 16%. Huntsman has 13%, Bachmann has 4%, Perry has 2%, and Santorum has 1%. Romney even leads among Tea Party supporters in New Hampshire.
Since Paul's army of extraterrestrials is generally acknowledged to be the best organization any of the candidates has here, this should be taken seriously. And nobody ever went broke betting on the...er, ideologically unusual wing of the Iowa Republican party showing up in force on caucus night.
Romney, of course, is rooting for Paul if he himself can't finish first. Anything that can slow Gingrich's momentum is good news for Mitt, whose organization nationwide is the strongest and deepest. If he can survive the early going, Romney is the best positioned of the candidates for a long, drawn-out battle for the nomination. Romney's nightmare scenario is a quick knockout blow, with Gingrich winning in Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida and finishing strong in New Hampshire, sucking the air out of Romney's sails and building a tsunami of momentum for Newt.
Paul's significance will diminish rapidly after Iowa even if he wins. His dovish isolationism and idiosyncratic economic beliefs are so far out of step with mainstream Republicans that even in an admittedly unpredictable year he seems unlikely to expand his small band of fanatical followers enough to seriously challenge for the nomination. But at the very least, he will play a major role in determining the story on caucus night.
Romney has 32% to Newt's 22%. Ron Paul is third with 18%. Jon Huntsman is fourth, with 10%.
Meanwhile, another Rasmussen poll shows pretty much what I've been saying on this blog: Mitt Romney is simply a much stronger candidate for the general election than Gingrich or any of the others (with the possible exception of Huntsman).
According to the poll, 53% of likely U.S. voters have an at least somewhat favorable opinion of Romney, compared to 38% with a negative one. For quite a while, the polls have shown Gingrich and the others- including President Obama- with unfavorable ratings higher than their favorable ones by various margins.
If the GOP nominates Gingrich, it really ought to change its symbol from the elephant to the lemming.
I take back everything I said earlier this season about Blackhawks' backup goalie Ray Emery.
The dude's record so far is 6-1. Corey Crawford is 12-7.Despite a respectable won/loss record, I'm afraid Corey has been a bit of a disappointment to me thus far this year. Good to know that the Good Guys have the depth between the pipes to cover for him.
I watched the Republican candidates' debate over at Drake Saturday night. A great deal of attention was given Newt Gingrich's comment the other day that there is no such thing, historically, as a Palestinian people. Needless to say, such a remark by a potential president of the United States created quite a stir in the Middle East over the weekend, and did our nation very little good in the Arab world. Newt is correct, of course. But that doesn't change the fact that his tactless comment was a perfect example of the problem described in this pre-debate post.
Yeah, Mitt Romney blew it when he challenged Rick Perry's inaccurate quotation from Romney's book by offering to bet the Texas governor $10,000 that his version of the statement in question, rather than Perry's, was correct. Millionaires do not come off well casually offering bets of that magnitude at a time when the American people are suffering economically the way most of us are today.But I doubt the damage it did him was quite as great as the attention ABC News paid to the gaffe would indicate. I almost thought they were going to replay the exchange in slow motion, maybe with stop action.
Ron Paul did a very credible impersonation of an Earthling.
Negative ads pointing out some of Gingrich's ethical lapses and some of his less popular stands on various issues are beginning to appear here in Iowa. I still see him as the odds-on favorite to finish first in the caucuses, though I would expect his margin to come down a bit. It would be wise to keep an eye on New Hampshire; a Gingrich victory there might almost wrap the nomination up for the former Speaker. He is very likely to win convincingly not only in Iowa, but also in South Carolina and Florida. He will be way, way out in front as far as delegates and momentum before Mitt Romney has a chance of catching up- if he ever does.
Which is bad news for the Republican party. Flat prediction: economy or no, if Gingrich is nominated, Barack Obama will be re-elected. Newt's negatives with the independents and moderates he will have to win over in order to beat POTUS are just too high- and apt to get even higher as the scrutiny of a national campaign is turned on a candidate with a knack for coming off as erratic.
The Bears were leading Denver 10-7 with less than two minutes left in the game. If Barber could have simply stayed on his feet for, say, five seconds, and then fallen down, Caleb Hanie could have taken a few knees and it would have been over.
Unfortunately, Barber drifted off into a momentary cerebral snooze and went out of bounds. The Bears had to punt. Shortly thereafter, the Broncos kicked the tying field goal and sent the game into overtime.
Barber did make a nifty catch then, on what seemed to be Chicago's game-winning drive. And when Hanie handed off to him, Barber broke through the line and seemed headed toward the end zone for the touchdown that would have redeemed his earlier mistake. Unfortunately, though, he forgot something.
The ball.
It was stripped as Barber cleared the line of scrimage. Denver recovered- and a few plays later kicked another field goal.
When I started watching the game, the Bears led 10-0 with less than eight minutes left. They lost, 13-10.
Two thoughts: first, don't be too hard on Barber. With Jay Cutler out, the Bears were reduced to a strictly one-dimensional offense. All they could do was run. The Ursines need a reliable, experienced backup good enough to give them a credible passing game even if Cutler is unavailalbe. They do not need a young quarter back to "bring along-" although there would be nothing wrong with having one of those, if one of sufficient talent to clearly have a claim to be the "quarterback of the future" came their way. He could play third-string.
But first and foremost, they need a substitute for Cutler who will enable them to survive if Jay goes down. This is essential. There is no option.
Secondly, it has been a long time since I heard a network NFL broadcast in which the annuncers rooted as openly for one of the teams as the announcers yesterday rooted for Denver in those closing minutes.
Well, a third thought, although it's pretty obvious: whatever chance the Bears still have of a wild card berth is looking mighty thin this morning.
Last night I heard David Brooks say that of all the Republican congressmen and former congressmen who served with Newt Gingrich when he was speaker whom he has asked, only two think that he would be a credible presidential nominee. Brooks said that there were occasions while he was Speaker when Gingrich was accompanying other Republican leaders in the House to press conferences in order to announce their position on an issue- and on the way changed his mind, and did a 180 degree flip on the issue by the time he got to the rostrum!
The guy is a genius; no question. But he's also erratic, impulsive, scattered, and a ticking time bomb. There is no telling what he is going to do or say next.
Peggy Noonan has a fine article on Gingrich in the Wall Street Journal, and his pros and cons as a potential opponent for President Obama. The thing about Gingrich, Noonan writes, is that "it's all true:"
Ethically dubious? True. Intelligent and accomplished? True. Has he known breathtaking success and contributed to real reforms in government? Yes. Presided over disasters? Absolutely. Can he lead? Yes. Is he erratic and unreliable as a leader? Yes. Egomaniacal? True. Original and focused, harebrained and impulsive—all true.
The guy is a loose cannon. Even if he were more competitive a potential nominee than he is, there is no telling what Gingrich is going to come out with from day to day.
That's a big problem in a presidential nominee- and an even bigger problem in a president.
First, it is doubtful that anybody can save the Episcopal church. Even the Good Shepherd cannot save sheep so determined to flee from Him. And lest we forget, the very gender of this "bishop" is an act of rebellion against that Good Shepherd, intellectually dishonest theological and historical rationalizations to the contrary. Best to remember, too, that the Graeco-Roman world of the First Century was one in which female religious leadership was generally accepted; the prohibitions of women's ordination in the Epistles cannot reasonably be said to have been historically or culturally conditioned.
A cavalier attitude toward the Faith Once Delivered is the whole problem with the Episcopal church, and the "solutions" Miller describes are in fact precisely what is so very wrong with the Evangelical church today. Arsenic is not an antidote for strychnine- especially when one is unwilling to give up the strychnine.
Baseball stat guru Bill James regards Ron Santo as the eighty-seventh best player and the sixth best third baseman ever to play the game. Santo's statistics were better than most of the third basemen already in the Hall. He was a perennial Golden Glover and All-Star; for a stretch of time, only Brooks Robinson was his superior as an active major league third baseman. But somehow, when it came to inducting new members into baseball's Hall of Fame, Santo was always left out.
Perhaps it was jealously. Certain living Hall of Fame third basemen (who shall remain nameless) publicly- and lamely, in view of Santo's numbers- implied that he somehow didn't measure up; maybe they felt that their own legends would somehow be diminished by the Hall giving Santo his due.. My own theory is that because three members of the 1969 Cubs- "the greatest team that never won a pennant-" were already immortalized in the Hall, perhaps some felt that adding Santo to Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins would be to shower too much honor on a team which, after all, choked when the chips were down and never so actually much as made it to the post-season.
But other Hall of Famers who had played against him- Joe Morgan, Willie Mays, and Bill Mazerowski come to mind- passionately argued that Santo belonged in Cooperstown, too. His election was confidently expected in Chicago year after year. But tragically- inexcusably- Ron Santo died on December 3, 2010 without being recognized by the Hall as one of baseball's all-time best.
"This is my Hall of Fame," Santo said the day the Cubs retired his Number 10.
Santo was my favorite player during my teenage years. I wasn't fast or mobile enough to imagine myself as a shortstop or second baseman or outfielder. But I thought I had some power, and might be able to field a bit. And I loved the diving stops Ron would make on those rockets down the third base line, and that patented off-balance throw to first to nail a speedy runner after charging down the line and grabbing a grounder bare-handed. When I daydreamed about baseball, I daydreamed about being Ron Santo.
But Santo wasn't just a great player. He was a hero. He played most of his career with diabetes- and kept it a secret, afraid that revealing it might hurt his career.
One of my favorite stories was Santo's tale of the game against the Dodgers when he started to lose consciousness in the on deck circle because of low blood sugar. He toyed with simply swinging at the first three pitches, so that he could sit down. When he got to the plate, he saw three Bill Singers on the mound. When Singer delivered his first pitch, three balls approached the plate.
Santo swung at the middle one- and blasted it into the left field bleachers for a game-winning grand slam homer.
In later years, having suffered several heart attacks and lost first one leg and then the other to his disease, Santo became a beloved broadcaster for the Cubs. He and the smooth, sophisticated Pat Hughes went together like ham and cheese. Their interaction was perfect, reminiscent of Jack Quinlan and Lou Boudreau, the Cubs broadcast team I grew up with. Santo was a pure fan, and when- inevitably, it seemed- something went wrong to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Santo's wail of "NOoOoOoOoooo!" spoke for us all. Somehow, it was theraputic, an effective temporary analgesic for the pain symptomatic of one affected by Billy Goat Fever.
For many of us, the image of Ron Santo that will stick with us the longest is of his running off the field after yet another Cub victory early in the 1969 season, when the Bruins were making a shambles of the National League and it was an article of faith on the North Side that a world championship was inevitable. Yesterday, the news of Santo's election to the Hall made my day. All I can say is
There is no excuse for losing to the Kansas City Chiefs. None. But this afternoon, the Bears pulled it off.
Signing McNabb would be nice; clearly Caleb Hanie is not the answer, and I doubt that Josh McCown would be much better. But now Matt Forte is down with a sprained knee- it isn't clear yet for how long- and without some kind of a passing threat, opponents can simply key on whoever is playing back there.
Besides, the math is against them. The Ursines' chances of winning a wild card berth have to be considered remote at this point, having lost two games in as many weeks that they should have won easily.
Yes, he paid money to his alleged mistress. Of course, he never denied having tried to help the woman, who was having severe financial problems.
Yes, he did settle a sexual harrassment suit brought by one of the several women who suddenly accused him of inappropriate behavior. But making such an embarassment "go away" is by no means an admission of guilt.
I don't know whether Cain is guilty of adultery or secual harassment or not. But I do know that literally any woman can make such claims about literally any man, and that Cain was driven from the race by little more than mere accusations. Contrast this with former President Bill Clinton, whose notorious "bimbo eruptions" not only proved no final obstacle to his election as president, but who even survived an accusation of forcible rape.
Accusations are not proof. They should not automatically be taken at face value. Yet when Clarence Thomas was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, in many circles Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment were accepted without hestitation by many on the Left. Somehow, when the accusations emerged against Cain, I had a feeling of deja vu.
Here's a prediction. Remember it: the next time a conservative male African-American makes a credible run for the Republican nomination, he, too, will be accused by somebody of sexual harassment, and maybe of adultery, too.
The accusation is just too easy to make, to hard to disprove- and all too available in the face of something which would be an absolute disaster for the Democratic party and the Left: the emergence of a black Republican leaders who might actually bring a substantial percentage of the African-American vote back into the Republican column where it started out.
The exit of Herman Cain from the race is apparently crystalizing the Iowa Caucuses into a three-man race, with Romney- the only Republican with a realistic chance of defeating President Obama- the big loser. All the polls currently show Gingrich pulling away here.
Henry Clay is supposed to have said once, "I'd rather be right than president." Iowa Republicans are somewhat notorious for the fact that they'd rather be far Right than elect one.
I've long been enamored of the Martian crater Galle in Argyre Planitia (below). Known (for obvious reasons) as the "smiley face crater," it has always seemed to me strong evidence that God has a sense of humor. Imaged by three seperate Mars missions- Viking, Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express- it's been a kind of inside joke among astronomy buffs for years.
Although I hadn't heard about it, it seems that back in 2008 the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered another "smiley face crater" (above) in the Neredium Mountains, north of the Argyre basin. Not quite two miles across, it's considerably smaller than Galle. It does not yet have a name, but one planetary scientist has expressed a preference for the newcomer on the ground that "it's goofier."
One of the most amusing things about the Galle crater is the frantic attempts by the more humorless (and less imaginative) in the astronomical community to pretend that, like the famous "Face on Mars" in Cydonia, the "smiley face" is an optical illusion. It is not. While it's possible to take pictures of it from angles which obscure certain features, the "face" is, in fact, there.
What does it mean? Absolutely nothing.
That's why it's good for a chuckle. I really think the would-be debunkers would be much better off if they could just learn to at least smile once in a while.
The answer is some of each. But one thing is sure: while I am not a fan of President Obama, I would rather see him re-elected because the economy recovers than defeated because it doesn't.
And so should every American, regardless of party or political philosophy.
A few days ago I read a well-written (if ironic) story about an American woman of, er.... progressive inclinations marooned in the UK by a miltary coup in the United States fostered by Christian fascists.
Wherever we look, we see the Right (and specifically the Christian Right) painted as dangerously totalitarian in inclination, and a threat to the freedoms of those who disagree with it. The irony, of course, is that in the real world wherever you look- from the indoctrination in atheism offered at public expense at state university campuses, to attempts to portray moral objections to sodomy as somehow expressions of "hate" against those who practice it, to laws in Canada and Australia and Great Britain actually criminalizing politically incorrect speech- it is in fact the Left, and specifically the atheist Left, which seems (excuse the expression) hell-bent on suppressing the expression of any opinion or viewpoint which differs from its own.
This, as Jordan Sekulow and Matthew Clark point out- is the season when the totalitarianism of self-proclaimed defenders of diversity is most evident. While the Supreme Court (as it ought to be painful for any Christian to remember) has ruled civic manger scenes to be acceptable on the ground of their essentially commercial rather than religious import, any specifically religious symbolism connected with the celebration of a primarily religious holiday (the birthday of Jesus) worshipped at least nominally by the overwhelming majority of the American public is somehow held to be an attack on the right of dissenters to dissent.
Once again, we encounter the skewed logic which says that the way diversity is preserved is to suppress the expression of any opinion or attitude except one. Ant that is a far greater threat both to diversity and to freedom than anything advocated by the Christian Right.
If you're looking for real bigotry, look to your Left, not your Right.
ADDENDUM: Interestingly, Craig Ferguson did a riff or two Friday night (with the help of his foul-mouthed bunny rabbit puppet) comparing atheists with militant vegans as rivals for the title of most obnoxious type of intolerant boor. Somehow, I didn't expect old Craig to see things this way, but as a fan of his I am gratified.
ADDENDUM II: Just noticed that Topix had posted this to the "Atheism" discussion. Interesting responses. The first attacked my intelligence and suggested that I should be killed. No rebuttal, however. The second agreed, and expressed the opinion that my article should be suppressed.
Thanks, guys, for doing such a masterful job of validating my argument! :)
Conservatives seem to be engaging in a great deal of self-delusion these days, imagining that any of the cartoon characters opposing Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination have a snowball's chance in Tartarus of beating Barack Obama, economy or no economy.
Of course not. If the Obama administration admitted the obvious- that we won the war in Iraq that its head proclaimed so loudly and so long was unwinnable- it would have to give the credit to the Bush administration. The current one- and Mr. Obama in particular- having done everything possible to prevent it, the corollary would be that both Mr. Obama and most of his party were wrong about an issue concerning which they are emotionally incapable of admitting error.
Surely, though, this represents a new low in partisanship: an administration refusing to admit that the United States has won a war because to do so would cast its predecessor in a favorable light.
If only this outfit (and the sanctimonious international community generally) had displayed similar zeal when it came to Saddam Hussein, the issue would never have arisen.
...is a sixty one year-old former Lutheran minister, who served parishes in Missouri and Iowa for fifteen years.
He became active in politics during the McCarthy campaign in 1968, and was tear gassed while serving as a messenger on Michigan Avenue during the Democratic convention that year. He subsequently worked for a number of liberal Democratic candidates at the ward, city, state and national levels before finding himself unable to reconcile his pro-life, socially conservative views with the increasingly radical direction of the Democratic party.
He has been a delegate to the Iowa state conventions of both parties, and currently represents Saylor Township's First Precinct (just north of Des Moines) on the Polk County Republican Central Committee. Nevertheless, he still considers himself a Chicagoan, despite not having lived there since 1981; the Chicago Blackhawks, Bears and Cubs are among the true passions of his life, and he really, really misses Tom Tom tamales and Italian beef sandwiches.
He is also an avid reader, an amateur astronomer and a history buff.
