My Thanksgiving Prayer

I'll have about 20 people at my house for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow evening, so need to come up with "the blessing" between now and then. I don't claim to be particularly good at this sort of thing, but people have come to expect it from me at these big gatherings. Here are my thoughts this year...

Dear Lord, we thank you for the blessings you've given us this past year: Good health, loving families, reliable friendships, and talents that enable us to have careers that support all of the above. We especially thank you, Lord, for bringing us Mr. and Mrs. Bond all the way from Utah to be with us at this Thanksgiving dinner. We're honored by their presence here and we wish them a happy visit this week. Above all, Lord, we thank you for placing us here, in the greatest country ever forged, at a pivotal time in history where we have the chance to do so much good in the world. We are unworthy of these gifts but with your help we will make the most of them all.

Lord, we ask you to please bless this house and this feast today, and to bless our time together and everyone here. We also ask you, Lord, for a special blessing for our soldiers in the Middle East and their families here in this country who want them to come home safely and soon. Grant them all peace and strength and keep them safe.

Finally, Lord, we ask you to please send your grace down upon those poor souls throughout the world who struggle to survive in difficult conditions, who don't have nearly what we are so fortunate to have in this country. Give them strength and send them help.

We ask this, Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, your son. Amen.

Democrats Get Nothing But Planted Questions

Maybe I'm naive, but my jaw about hit the floor when I watched this piece on HotAir.com (hat tip: Michelle Malkin) about the most recent Democratic presidential debate, hosted by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. It seems they took many questions from the audience, people purporting to be "undecided" voters, and these people turned out to be liberal activists out to further their own agenda. Far from undecided. The most amazing one was by Barack Obama, who appeared to know his questioner even though they had never met?

It turns out that CNN televised little more than a Republican bash-fest, not a debate. All the questions were based on liberal talking points while the viewing audience was told these were "undecided" voters who had visited (i.e. been vetted) for several minutes with CNN's floor correspondent (who spells her name "Suzanne" yet apparently pronounces it "Sue-zAHn". What's up with that?)

So either the activists lied about who they were, which taints the Dem party, or Suzanne did a pathetic job of vetting these people beforehand, in which case CNN is either biased or incompetent.

To me the big question is, will voters really be stupid enough next Fall to actually elect one of these fools to the presidency? Will the GOP allow this kind of nonsense to go on during the general election unchallenged?

Congressman Knows Why Iraq Violence is Down

BlackFive has a priceless post up today about a truly clueless Congressman, David Obey (Democrat, surprise surprise) and his rationale for why violence is down in Iraq. Read it here, and follow his links, too, for some good articles on specific recent successes.

I predict that as violence continues to decrease in Iraq, as it becomes more and more obvious that we are actually winning there, Democrats will have to get more creative, like Obey, to avoid looking the complete morons they actually are.

More Global Warming Hysteria

I don't watch much TV; mainly because I'm too busy. But partly because there's not a lot on that I think is worth watching. Tonight, a Sunday evening, I was flipping through the channels and ran across an old favorite, the History Channel. Everybody loves the History Channel. I stopped to see what was on and they were running some show called "Last Days on Earth".

This was a show hosted by Elizabeth Vargas, who I last saw years ago doing news, I think, for the Today show. So, an ostensibly unbiased reporter (as though that actually exists). The show was about all kinds of disasters that might befall us on Earth and wipe out all life: Super-volcanoes, asteroid hits, gamma ray bursts, and our old friend Global Warming, aka "Global Climate Change." I also noticed, looking at the guide for that channel over the next few hours, that several other shows, one called "Mega-Disasters," reported on roughly the same stuff.

Back in my liberal days I used to enjoy shows like these. Now I look at them differently. I see them now as propaganda machines for the Left. They clearly carry an agenda, and they focus on disastrous situations that, in most cases, mankind is utterly powerless to prevent. Knowing this I found myself wondering, "why show this stuff at all? How can we prevent a gamma ray burst?" In other words, what is the agenda? Is there money to be made? Power to be gotten? If people are made better aware, can these things be headed off? It does not make sense that there is no agenda, so what is it?

Ms Vargas was so obviously biased in this show that it just got disgusting. As if to address the claims of the Right that Global Warming is, at worst, a hoax, they had running interviews with various global warming advocates, cutting from one to another every few seconds, spliced with really grainy TV footage -- in every case with the "Fox News" icon at the bottom of the screen -- of various scientists being interviewed and saying that "it's a hoax" or "I don't believe it's happening, I don't believe it's real," this kind of stuff. At the end of all this they had Vargas, seemingly very concerned and serious, ask the question to an off-camera interviewee, "Is there, in fact, any credible debate about whether global warming is real?" At which point the interviewee is revealed to be ..... Al Gore! Now there's an unbiased guy we can ask that question to!

Al, of course, Mr. Nobel Laureate himself, very calm, cool, and collected, pontificates about how there really is no credible debate at all, and that in fact those big bad oil companies have spent millions of dollars to buy off a half-dozen scientists to cook up opposition to, and create confusion about, whether global warming is real. As if that weren't enough, Vargas obliges this by equating it to -- and showing video of -- the tobacco company presidents going up onto Capitol Hill all those years ago and denying, one after another, that nicotine is addictive. And of course because those guys were so obviously lying, global warming "denyers" are also lying! Don't you see the connection?? They even followed that by having one of their other global warming authors (unbiased, right?) equate "global warming denyers" with Holocaust denyers. He flat-out says this!

At that point they cut to commercial and I decided I had seen enough of this tripe. This is just one more example of the arrogance of the Left ("there is no debate!") and why I just don't trust them. This distrust underpins everything I understand about global warming. That is, it's one of the main reasons I don't take it seriously: I don't trust the sources.

I would also point out that, at no time during this barrage of propaganda was there any attempt at all to actually interview any of the global warming dissenters or even engage any of the credible points they have made about why the whole thing is suspect. Instead it was just the standard liberal ad-hominem attack followed by arrogant attitude. Almost as if to say, "there is no persuasive or valid argument to be made against what I am saying, thus anyone who does not agree with me is a fool and fools should be ignored." This is what passes for science from the Left.

Until the Left begins to show some respect for those who disagree with them, they're going to get no traction beyond those who already agree with them. When will they learn this?

Michael Yon Captures the Moment in Iraq

Michael Yon, the independent mil-blogger who embeds with our troops in Iraq, has captured another iconic photograph there. This one illustrates the re-opening of a Christian church and the raising of its steeple cross. You can view it and a paragraph-long story of its setup on Michael's website (which I support and so should you).

Things really are getting better in Iraq, despite what the mainstream media continues to spoon-feed to its audience.

Michelle Malkin, my favorite blogger, has a few more links to others who are also covering the new photo. And a good comment:

"Yes, Christian persecution remains rampant in the Muslim world and apostasy is still punishable by death. But there are glimmers of good news, and they won’t be broadcast on the nightly news or the front page of the NYTimes. Thanks to the
lens of Michael Yon, we can see a fuller, truer picture of Iraq than the 'grim
milestone'-driven legacy media lens allows us to see. That deserves thanks and
praise, too."

Lots of Questions Before I Buy Global Warming

At my office we have a guy who has bought into the Global Warming idea hook, line, and sinker. He is not rabid about it, like most liberals, but he does think I am the stereotypical conservative march-in-lockstep fool who just wants to make more money and doesn't care about the environment. This I found out when we disagreed about a local politician, "Light Bulb" Lloyd Levine, who wants to outlaw the incandescent light bulb in the state of California. My colleague thought that was a fine idea because we need to combat global warming.

I don't know whether all lefties believe that conservatives don't buy global warming on rational reasons or not. The dogma of global warming is so pervasive in our culture any more that I think they just scratch their heads and look at us like loon's for even considering questioning it. Everywhere you turn, you see statements about steps we need to take, not "in case global warming is going on," but rather "because global warming is happening and this will help stop it." It is bizarre how something so controversial is treated as fact. Here, then, are my thoughts on global warming. I'm willing to take it seriously, but here is why I don't today.

1) Who is pushing the agenda? All my life the Left has been pushing out various stories about how humankind is ruining the earth, whether it be from overpopulation; a hole in the ozone layer; global cooling; or fossil fuels and global warming. None of the problems they've described in my lifetime has ever turned out to be any kind of real threat, and all have caused people I know to take dramatic and costly actions to prevent them. In the case of overpopulation, I myself bought into it and did not consider having more than two children until after I learned to distrust the left. Overpopulation has never been a problem, it turns out. So right out of the gate, I distrust the sources.

2) Is the globe really warming at all? Most scientists seem to think "yes". Not all do. And of course many bought into the whole "global cooling / coming ice age" propaganda a decade ago. So I'm just not sure.


3) How much is it warming? I'm no scientist, but I am skeptical that scientists can accurately determine the exact average temperatures from tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, as they would need to do for accurate comparisons to today's temperatures. And the global warming propaganda has been so forcefully (and successfully) pushed onto the public that the average guy seems to think the average global temperatures will rise 10 degrees or much more in the next decade or two. Scientists I've read about, on the other hand, have speculated that it could be close to one degree over the next century.


4) Is the warming (assuming it's real) a problem? What will be the damage caused by global warming if it's real? Depending on who you listen to, the seas may rise 20 feet and wipe out the entire eastern seaboard within 20 years, or they might rise a few inches in the next century. So how real is the threat that the coastal cities of the U.S. would be submerged? With convincing evidence that this was imminent, it would obviously make sense to take steps to either protect the cities, relocate the citizens, or prevent the flooding. No one would disagree with this in light of such evidence. Today, however, this evidence is not clear.

5) Assuming the warming is real and a problem, what are the causes? If global warming is happening but will have no impact, then who really cares what causes it? In other words, up until this point if we can answer "no" to any of the first four questions, then further discussion of any kind is pointless. If, however, it is happening and is going to become a serious problem, then we obviously must ask, "how can we stop it?" And to answer that question we must know what its causes are. Is it happening because of something humankind is doing? Or is it a natural cycle the planet is going through? Global warming evangelists claim that there is irrefutable evidence that CO2 gases (you know, what comes out of your mouth whenever you exhale) are the prime cause of global warming, and that the prime source of said gases are the Industrial Revolution. Our penchant for burning fossil fuels and other unclean natural resources is putting all kinds of CO2 into the atmosphere, and this is creating a greenhouse effect that is trapping more heat close to the earth. Now there is no doubt that we have increased emissions into the atmosphere in the past hundred years. The question is, what have the effects of that been, and can they be conclusively linked to global warming (assuming it's real)?

6) Assuming we know the cause(s), is there anything we can do to stop it? If the answer is definitely "yes" to #5 (and that answer is far from clear today), then we have to turn toward planning ahead. These plans could involve adapting coastal cities to higher sea levels; moving people out of those areas; or working to reverse the warming conditions and thus head off the catastrophe.

The interesting thing to me is that, in all of this evangelism that has gone on in the past couple of years, no one is suggesting cities take steps to begin relocating people, or change building codes to keep new construction away from coastal areas, etc. All anyone ever talks about is reducing auto emissions and using less electricity or electricity from cleaner sources. Why? To me it proves the point that the agenda, here, really is to cut back on industrial pollution, and global warming is a cannard that enviromental activists are using to get that agenda pushed through. In fact, given the hypocrisy so rampant by so many of the activists (e.g. flying to events on chartered jets instead of on commercial flights), you could make the case that the real agenda is even more insidious than that (e.g. Communism).

In any event, one thing everyone seems to agree on but that no one ever talks about is that even if we were to do all the things environmental activists are proposing, tomorrow, the impact against global warming would be less than a half a degree 100 years from now. To me you might as well say "it's unstoppable."

7) Assuming we could stop it, what are the costs of doing so? Environmental activists complain about virtually every aspect of American life, from driving in cars to turning on too many lights in our homes. They seem to think we'd be better off living in 19th century conditions. Since no one believes that is reasonable, we instead are pushed to spend money on "cleaner" or more efficient items in our lives, such as electric/hybrid cars and flourescent light bulbs; and government is pushed to increase regulations in most industries (read: liberal / big government) to make heavier use of clean energy sources such as wind power, solar, hydro, etc. instead of coal and fossil fuels. Interestingly, nuclear power has always been safe and extremely effective at producing electricity cleanly, yet is still not embraced by the environmental activists who protested against it two decades ago. Why is that? Getting back to point #1, I don't trust them or their stated agenda.

Encouraging people to make use of cleaner technologies is certainly positive for the environment, and we all want that. The problem arises when people and companies weigh the costs of implementing such technologies versus the return and decide against it. Because this happens all the time, the environmental activists press for the government regulation that forces them to comply with these ideas. "Light Bulb Lloyd" Levine, for example, in his defense of the proposed law to ban incandescent light bulbs in California, was confronted with the fact that these new flourescent light bulbs have been available for years by Doug Macintyre, a radio talk show host. Levine acknowledged this and said that since we have not had the new bulbs being embraced as readily as we need to (because they cost much more than regular bulbs), we needed to make it a law. This, ladies and gentlemen, is textbook liberal philosophy.

8) Is the problem big enough, and are the costs reasonable enough, to justify spending the necessary money to stop it? The costs will obviously be huge to convert power plants; phase out regular light bulbs; phase out gasoline-driven automobiles; etc. (there are many more areas that would also need to be addressed). So would it be worth it? Who knows? Fighting the battle would without question consume vast resources of this country. We have a large and well-established economy that might be able to survive the hit. But remember that there are a large number of third-world countries that are just beginning their own industrial revolutions, and they certainly aren't going to risk the progress they are beginning to have by adopting all these environmental protections. So where would that leave us? We make all these big, expensive changes and we're still nowhere.


Summary
The bottom line is not that I am against making any of these changes. As a Christian I agree that we have a duty to be good stewards of God's handiwork, and that means taking care of our environment. However, as far as I can tell, there are still way too many questions lying out there unanswered to say so conclusively that we ought to be making such changes that are so risky for our economy and may have very little, if any, impact on the problem (if it exists and if we're the cause of it).

As far as I can tell, the only thing that 99% of scientists agree on is point #1, that the earth is, in fact, warming. Beyond that (i.e. how much, how fast), everyone argues. Given that that question is just the first in more than a half-dozen that I think we need to answer in the affirmative before we take serious action, and that I haven't been convinced of the left's answers to those questions yet, there's a long way to go before I hop onto the global warming bandwagon.

Finally Someone Lays a Glove on Hillary

Even if I were not a staunch conservative, I would still think that Hillary Clinton is a truly disgusting candidate for the U.S. Presidency. The only democratic candidacy worse than hers is that of John Edwards. The other candidates I can at least respectfully listen to.

This is a harsh comment, so I'll clarify: I cannot stand Hillary because I rarely believe that she believes what comes out of her mouth (i.e. it's all-pandering-all-the-time), and when I do believe it, she's usually saying nothing. That is, she is a master at saying nothing (something her husband was also accused of), but using a lot of words to do so. Both of these activities are dishonest. The fact that she not only is a viable candidate for the presidency, but the leading candidate, makes this 10 times worse. The only saving grace is that the Republicans will likely (I pray) put forth a worthy challenger and keep her from winning the election next year.

Republicans have always known this about Hillary, but until now, the Left has never acknowledged it. Now, other leftists want to beat Hillary in the democratic primary, and since she has a commanding lead at the moment, the gloves have come off. This became obvious in the most recent debate.

In this debate, (transcript here) Hillary was asked a question by moderator Tim Russert about a controversial (overwhelmingly unpopular) idea of Eliot Spitzer, the New York governor, to give illegal aliens driver's licenses. Russert asked her if she agreed with it. Hillary answered that she empathized with the governor and tried to leave it at that; but Russert followed up with her to get clarification. After that, Chris Dodd, John Edwards and Barack Obama all challenged her answer, recognizing it as a non-answer that just sounded good. They both wanted to know where she stood, and she tried to waffle, as she always does. In the end, she got hammered by fellow Democrats and looked extremely uncomfortable in the process.

Why does Hillary do this? I believe it's because she wants to play both sides of every issue, waiting as long as possible to commit to one side or the other and look good for it. Pundit Dick Morris, who used to work for the Clinton's, has a slightly different take. In his email bulletin on the matter he said this:

"she has come to believe, probably correctly, that if we knew what she really
wants to do as president, we would never vote for her. So on Social Security
(where she plans to raise taxes), Iran (where she will take military action if
need be), Iraq (where she will keep the troops), the Alternative Minimum Tax
(which she will only repeal if it can be used to hide massive tax increases) and
drivers licenses (which she will give to illegals as soon as she can), Hillary
resists telling the truth. And, under the scrutiny of opponents like Edwards and
Dodd, and the questioning of Tim Russert, it is becoming obvious even to
demented Democrats."

Either way, Democrats challenging her is good for the country. People ought to understand what a presidential candidate's positions on the important issues are. Then, and only then, they can make an informed decision about whether to vote for him/her. I dislike Hillary Clinton as a candidate partly for what she believes in. But I dislike her mostly because she is slippery and won't tell us what she really thinks about the issues.

Aftermath
In the days since that debate, Hillary has been trying to do damage control. Her latest ploy has been to try and garner sympathy by whining that she was "attacked" because she's a woman. This is an amazingly stupid idea. She was challenged because 1) She is the frontrunner by a long way; and 2) she gave a lengthy non-answer about a very unpopular issue in her own state, showing that she couldn't commit to a position even when 70+% of her constituents oppose it. Her opponents were completely correct to go after her on that. Right now they are trying to pull her back down in the rankings before she runs away with the nomination.

Barack Obama, in particular, has been very vocal about Hillary's non-positions, adding another non-answer about Social Security reform to the list. He put it succinctly: "You’re not ready to lead if you can’t tell us where you’re going."

If Hillary can't give a real answer to a simple question like illegal immigration and can't stand the heat of a real fight among other Democrat elites, how can she expect to win the general election, when the gloves will really come off, much less to lead the world if she wins?

Another Reason for Happiness: The Eagles' New Album

Don Henley, a lead singer of one of my favorite bands, the Eagles, said two decades ago when the band broke up that they'd get back together "when Hell freezes over" in response to constant badgering about it. So a few years ago, when they finally did get back together, they named their album, which was a live album with four new songs on it, "Hell Freezes Over," along with a tour and $100+ seats. Fans were ecstatic. Still, no new studio album.

That changed last weekend, when I read that the band had a new album coming out called "Long Road Out of Eden". I raced to Wal-Mart, which has an exclusive distribution deal with them, to buy it but discovered it wouldn't be out until Tuesday the 30th. Dejected, I left but accepted my wife's offer to stop by on Tuesday and pick it up for me.

I have been far from disappointed. The Eagles have lost nothing in the 20 years since their last big album came out. The new album is a double-CD, 11 songs on one and 9 on the other. Nearly every track is fantastic. Every member is showcased in various songs, and the boys are all there, except for guitarist Don Felder.

For me the best part, besides the catchy tunes themselves, has been savoring the classic Eagles harmonic sounds. This is showcased from the very first song, largely a capella, "No More Walks in the Wood". But it really shines in the chorus of the second track, "How Long" (which you can listen to on their website), as well as "Do Something," track 10. After the band broke up, members Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Henley, and Timothy B. Schmidt (okay, maybe not Timothy) went on to successful solo careers, as they're all quality singers and songwriters. And together their sound is just magical.

In a time when there's so much junk out there calling itself music, it's truly refreshing to hear brand new music from one of the best bands of the 70's and 80's. It's fresh music from "old school" musicians: Just singing, piano, Hammond organ, drums and lots of guitar.

Here's hoping and praying it doesn't stop with this phenomenal album.