gdp's Comments

Big Journalism : Race-Obsessed CNN Drops R-Word Into Relationship Between Cain and Tea Party

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:51:58 +0000

Mr. Nolte, your analysis is correct about the liberal attitude on display here (my apologies for using labels like "liberal," but the distinctions are clear enough that it is reasonable to do this). My summary is (1) they quote conservatives saying non-racist things, but then throw in the "reluctance" and "questions continue" deception to keep the innuendo of racism going, and (2) they all but say, "Cain got what he has because he got liberal-style help because he's black," implying he's proof that liberalism is better than conservatism. This all reminds me of the old joke about the man who woke up one day and thought he was dead. Encouraged by his family to see a psychiatrist, the man denied all proofs he was offered that he wasn't dead. Finally, the psychiatrist got the man to agree that dead men don't bleed, so the he pricked the man's finger, and he bled. The man looked at his finger and said, "What do you know--dead men do bleed!" Revising the joke: Political liberals woke up one day and decided that Tea Partiers were racist. Encouraged by conservatives to supply proof, they have failed. In the past (as I recall) liberals have insisted that Tea Partiers would oppose the presidency of a black man because they're allegedly racists. And now we see clear evidence that many Tea Partiers are supporting a black man for president. The liberal response, in effect: "What do you know--racists *can* support a black man for president!" (Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not making fun of all people with liberal slants on any issues, only of people like these media types who don't care about truth when it comes to criticizing the Tea Party and promoting their own views.)

Big Journalism : 'Pizza Man': MSM's Racially-Driven Attack on Herman Cain's Resume Begins

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:34:09 +0000

I couldn't bring myself to watch the "comedy" sketch, but as for the "news report," I am less bothered by their bias in calling him a pizza man than by their bias in insisting that *nobody* won because Cain won, and that nobody was a *big* winner even though Cain, as reported by him on that video, got twice as many votes as the next guy. Why don't these "journalists" just say, "Before we give you the facts, we need to poison the well with some lies first"?

Big Government : Thin Black Line Essential for Limited Government

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:22:55 +0000

I have to agree with several people who have posted already: What are you talking about??? You say: "Yet when judges actually strike down a law as unconstitutional, they are frequently derided as “activists” by people who ordinarily think of themselves as advocates for smaller government." You say: "Too often in cases that involve the government, judges ignore evidence, invent facts, and accept implausible explanations for government regulations." You say: "If we expect judges to engage the Constitution, proponents of limited government need to stop accusing any judge who strikes down a law on constitutional grounds of 'legislating from the bench.' " You have not offered a single piece of evidence for any of the claims or implied claims of these three statements. My impressions (on the first and third item) are that conservatives have called judges "activists" when they really are activists--putting their own ideas into the Constitution or ignoring it entirely. And then others, seeing that the term "activist" gets some traction, have picked it up and now use it to refer to any judge who doesn't let them get their way (taking all meaning from the word). I question whether the problem you are alleging (of conservatives misapplying the label) is really that common. Please write articles that provide evidence for what you claim.

Big Government : Balanced Budget Amendment: Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:58:46 +0000

I'm not sure whether a balanced budget amendment is entirely a bad idea, but I can agree with the sentiment that if unbalanced budgets are outlawed, then only law-abiding politicians will balance budgets.

Big Government : America's Foundational Creed: Anti-authority

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:07:02 +0000

Maybe I'm just reiterating what Libertyinfinite said above, but: I do not believe that the thrust of American patriotism has been anti-authority or anti-government, it is anti-tyranny—both tyranny of the king and tyranny of the masses. That requires a proper balance of government authority. The means to stabilize the government is then not the government itself, but a written constitution and the vigilance of the people. It is fair to call this attitude "suspicion" of government in the sense of not being convinced that government is the solution to everything.

Big Government : Saturday Open Thread: Overreach Edition

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 17:13:37 +0000

I think the following comparison of statistics is also sobering: The number of abortions in the U.S. since 1973, as of 2006-2007, according to the Guttmacher Institute, is over 45,669,050 (http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html). The population of California according to the April 1, 2010 census, is: 37,253,956 (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text.php). In other words, if we increased the population of the most populous state in the union by 1/5, it would still be smaller than the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade.

Big Government : What We Believe, Part VI: Immigration

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:42:22 +0000

Small side question: Clicking on Bill's name above brings up his previous installments in this series, namely parts 1, 2, 3, 5, and now 6. Was there a 4 somewhere?

Big Peace : Ministry: Adopt a Terrorist for Prayer

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:02:36 +0000

God is both loving and just. Jesus said to pray for justice, but he also said to love our enemies (Luke 18:7-8, Luke 6:35). I pray for both the defeat of evil people and for the saving of their souls while they still have the chance. And by the way, it doesn't matter whether terrorists accept the prayers of Christians; it matters that God does.

Big Hollywood : Taxpayer Funding for the Arts Corrupts the Arts

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:46:17 +0000

Just by the fact of being involved in a communication medium with limited air time, a government-sponsored organization like NPR will judge what content is important enough to use and what is unimportant. That means necessarily that one perspective is promoted and another demoted. So the favored perspective is the government-promoted perspective. But to have a government-promoted perspective from a supposedly non-partisan entity (regardless of the amount of money involved) seems to violate the principle of freedom of speech. Public media should be an open forum, and if it can't be that, then it shouldn't exist.

Big Journalism : Timothy McVeigh Was Not A Christian

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:43:46 +0000

Thank you for the article, but I have to correct one statement: "...you become a Christian by making a statement that you believe in Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior. You then try to live a life consistent with that statement." In fact, you become a Christian not by making a statement, but only by believing in Jesus Christ, accepting him as your Savior. Making a statement that you believe is part of living out your Christianity.

Big Government : What the Republican Pledge Needs: A Few More First Principles

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 17:30:07 +0000

Texas, I appreciate your points, and the frustration behind them. Just to give a quick reaction: Since I doubt we could get away from political motivation regardless of who does the nominating of judges, I think it makes sense to choose the nominator based on the idea that appointing judges should happen fairly quickly in order to maintain justice for the people. So it makes sense to me that the President would do the nominating, with advice and consent from the Senate so that the interest of the states is taken into account. If the Senate is vigilant enough to just say, "Nope! Next?" to any Supreme Court nominee that doesn't plan to abide by the Constitution, then that might be fast enough to have the same effect as a slate of nominees. I think I would not be comfortable with term limits for SCOTUS, since shifting personnel might bring a lot of shifts in how the law is interpreted, and I think that it would be better for the supreme laws of the land to have more stability than that. Either way, the amount of shifting should be taken into account when the Senate decides how much time to spend considering nominations; I would prefer that the terms be long and that the Senate regard the process as extremely important, in order to guard the rights of the people. A major drawback of all my arguments here is that if one party vigorously supports or opposes a SCOTUS nominee based on good principles, another party might use that as an excuse to use the same process to vigorously support their own political desires. For example, one party might filibuster a judicial nominee for being a judicial activist, and then the other might decide to filibuster a judicial nominee in order to keep abortion legal. So I'm inclined to keep the process as it is, but educate the public on the threats to their liberties caused by non-originalist justices, and keep the politicians accountable by threats of being voted out of office.

Big Government : What the Republican Pledge Needs: A Few More First Principles

Sat, 2 Oct 2010 13:42:05 +0000

I want Senators to pledge to vote against and even to filibuster against the approval of any judge unless he or she is an originalist regarding the Constitution. I want all members of Congress to realize that they shouldn't need to make a pledge for many such points, because they already made that pledge when they swore an oath to support the Constitution.

Big Hollywood : We Love Pixar: What I Learned From 'Ratatouille'

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 22:40:45 +0000

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I have seen much of Pixar and enjoyed Ratatouille. I am also enjoying your Pixar reviews very much. (One thing about the names in the movie--does anyone else besides me put "Skinner" and "rat" together to get B. F. Skinner, behavioral psychologist? Maybe your explanation is better.)

Big Journalism : How a Creationist Wins Love From the L.A. Times: Trash Breitbart

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 01:56:08 +0000

I believe it is more important first to understand whether God spoke through human writers in writing the Bible, which I believe to be true, and whether God preserved it for our benefit, which I also believe to be true. Next is to understand how God intended it to be interpreted, which I think is as ordinary language is interpreted--historically when written as history, maybe metaphorically when written as poetry--though understanding that there is something spiritual in the content. I think that Genesis 1 and its context give several indications that it is intended to be historical--not scientific, of course, but that does not mean it would have to be inaccurate as history; much of the Old Testament shows that its writers valued actual history, I believe. Given that, the issue is harder than you make it, since God's word is reliable but He also gave us the ability to do science. I lean toward the literal view and hope for better clarity eventually about the relationship of the two. Meanwhile, I think the Bible's message about the Creator who saved His lost people should not be lost in the whole discussion.

Big Journalism : How a Creationist Wins Love From the L.A. Times: Trash Breitbart

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:11 +0000

Good to hear from you, BZ, but I disagree. The Discovery Institute (the main ID proponents) have reported (http://www.discovery.org/a/3829) that "90.9% (or 5,458 words) of Judge Jones’ 6,004-word section on intelligent design as science was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU’s proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” submitted to Judge Jones nearly a month before his ruling. Judge Jones even copied several clearly erroneous factual claims made by the ACLU." This means that he was a biased judge, so I don't see why anyone should rely on his opinion. The fact that individuals involved in the court case apparently lied does need to be considered, but it would not be right to base an evaluation of the theory behind ID on whether some of its proponents, not even its main proponents, lied; that has no effect on the theory as developed by others whom we don't know to have lied. And I'm certainly not going to let a judge decide for me what is religion or science, especially one who was unable to make the distinctions necessary to tell whether the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade had been refuted (http://www.discovery.org/a/8561).

Big Journalism : How a Creationist Wins Love From the L.A. Times: Trash Breitbart

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 03:48:28 +0000

[Thought I posted a version of this, but I don't think it worked, so here I go again....] John-- You call David Klinghoffer both a creationist and a proponent of Intelligent Design. You do know those are different, right? I'd certainly encourage you to be more careful that the many journalists out there who purposely confuse the two. Here is a quotation from Klinghoffer (http://www.discovery.org/a/2784): "Intelligent Design, as most readers must be aware, is not creationism. It fully accepts that what we know of the earth's great antiquity and of the interrelationship of species can't be squared with a literal reading of the Genesis creation account. Rather, it asks probing questions about whether natural selection operating on chance genetic variation can explain the development of complex life, questions as yet not convincingly answered by Darwin's modern champions." I'm not sure he's right that all ID proponents reject a literal Genesis, but we should accept the definition of ID given by its main proponents, who distinguish it from creationism (http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php#questionsAboutIntelligentDesign): "Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text." Often lazy critics of ID will say it's the same as "creationism," because they figure everyone considers "creationism" to be religion or bad science, and they want to paint ID the same way. (Personally, I would rather people used "creationism" to mean belief in a Creator and "creation science" to refer to the attempt to square science and the Bible, but that's a side issue.) I think you should be more careful than that.

Big Journalism : How a Creationist Wins Love From the L.A. Times: Trash Breitbart

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 03:20:03 +0000

John-- You call David Klinghoffer both a creationist and a proponent of Intelligent Design. You do know those are different, right? I'd certainly encourage you to be more careful that the many journalists out there who purposely confuse the two. Here is a quotation from Klinghoffer (http://www.discovery.org/a/2784): "Intelligent Design, as most readers must be aware, is not creationism. It fully accepts that what we know of the earth's great antiquity and of the interrelationship of species can't be squared with a literal reading of the Genesis creation account. Rather, it asks probing questions about whether natural selection operating on chance genetic variation can explain the development of complex life, questions as yet not convincingly answered by Darwin's modern champions." I'm not sure that all ID proponents take a position against a literal reading of Genesis as Klinghoffer claims, but certainly we should accept the definition of ID given by its main proponents, which distinguishes ID and creationism (http://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuestions.php#questionsAboutIntelligentDesign): "Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text." Lazy critics of ID often call ID creationism in order to paint it as bad science or non-science. (I would rather that all sides used the phrase "creation science" instead of "creationism," which should mean any belief in a Creator, but that's a side issue. Note that I'm not agreeing that creation science is bad science; I'm inclined to believe a literal Genesis but haven't fully evaluated creation science or ID. I'm just saying that the ID critics view ID as creationism and view creationism as non-science.) So please make sure you're saying what is true and what you mean.

Big Government : Electoral College Attack Leads to Voter Fraud

Mon, 2 Aug 2010 00:06:01 +0000

I wonder what effect this attempt to bypass the electoral college could have on elections with a close vote. Currently when a vote is close it is close only in a few states, and recounting occurs there. But if elections were to go by the popular vote and the vote were close, then every state in the union would be a contested area. It seems that would add incentive to voter fraud.

Big Hollywood : Hollywood Rorschach: Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen & the Child Rapist

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:07:42 +0000

I'm glad you brought up the term "blacklist," but I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the distinction you're making. Would you clarify, please? For myself, I don't mind the idea that private individuals make lists of people they wouldn't do business with because they have a moral objection to things those people have done. On the other hand, I prefer that they not make lists for stupid reasons, and I think they probably go overboard if they dissociate from people just for having lists that don't agree with their lists. As for the people I myself would rather not do business with, I think conservative movie reviewers would do a great service to the rest of us if, every time they review a movie made by defenders of a certain immoral fugitive, they would call attention to that fact. That would save me from making the mistake of viewing that movie.

Breitbart.tv : CNN Host Takes Rush Quote Out of Context, Paints Him as Racist

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 01:15:25 +0000

A needed lesson in logic: The problem here does not appear to be that Rush Limbaugh’s comments were taken out of context; it is that these commentators do not understand how to reason. RL says, in effect, “To get elected it helped Pres. Obama significantly that he is black.” The commentator in the video reacts that RL is racist. Just saying what RL said, however, is not racist: To be racist is to draw negative conclusions about people because of their race. RL’s statement talks about the way the electorate voted, without talking about their race, so he was not racist toward the electorate. RL’s statement implies that Pres. Obama was a weak candidate in some ways, but does not attribut that to Obama’s race, so he was not racist toward the President. I do not spot any racism here. As for the illogic of the man who called RL racist, he gives two reasons to call RL racist: 1. It took more than being black to beat Hillary Clinton. - But that just says that other qualities helped Pres. Obama to win; it does not answer RL’s implied question whether being black also helped. 2. Obama was able to win in Iowa, and they’re mostly white. He convinced white people that he was an agent of change. - Again, the commentator misses the issue. Let’s suppose this were true: then-candidate Obama picked up many votes because he convinced many white people he was an agent of change. RL’s implied question would still remain: Did these white voters favor him over other agents of change, and did he also pick up votes from other white people or people of other races, enough votes to put him over the line, because he is black? Regardless of whether I agree with Mr. Limbaugh on this point, this commentator has neither disproved Limbaugh's point nor given me any reason to think Limbaugh is racist. But please let me know if it is my own logic that is in error. As for the context, though, adding that makes an important point, in fact Limbaugh's own point: How could it be more racist to say Pres. Obama is where he is because of his race than to say that Michael Steele is where he is because of his race?