gdp's Comments

Big Journalism : Do Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas Think That Rape Doesn't Matter?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:43:40 +0000

I did not say that democratic socialism was totalitarian communism. I said that redefining morality in political terms has a corrosive effect that is predictable. And just because you can't read any better than a 6th grader, is no reason to accuse others of dishonesty. Repeat after me: "I don't understand. Will you explain?"

Big Journalism : Do Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas Think That Rape Doesn't Matter?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:32:26 +0000

We saw this in full bloom back in the 1990s, when the entire political left spun up into full-throttle denial in order to protect a sociopath, womanizer, serial liar, perjurer, and rapist who just happened to be President. They also excused clearly criminal fund-raising efforts, not to mention the sale of national security secrets to foreign governments in exchange for campaign contributions. For most people the implications are too shocking to assimilate, but the lesson is clear to those who have the stomach to accept it: for Democrats, no moral law applies. There exists no moral rule, no matter how vital, the violation of which Democrats will not excuse while protecting their own. They are truly, utterly, and completely amoral. Why we are continuing to participate in a representative democracy with such vicious jackals is beyond me. Nothing good can come of it. We should partition the nation and let them have their own; the speed with which the "Progressive" nation would devolve into a Western version of Somalia would prove some things pretty clearly. (Inevitably, they would blame the conservatives in their own nation for their demise. When dealing with amoral humans, some things are predictable.)

Big Journalism : Do Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas Think That Rape Doesn't Matter?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:23:50 +0000

"That's akin to me saying the Tea Party advocates Somali-style anarchy due to their distrust of government and desire for low taxation." No, it's not. Small government and low taxation are not anarchy. By contrast, redefining core moral concepts like "justice" in political terms is a feature that #Occupy protesters and their ideological bedfellows in tyrannical regimes hold in common. In fact, that's a core feature of American Progressivism, for which reason I have always expected Progressives to advocate the equivalent of Marxist dictatorship in effect -- and I have been correct about this. I abhor Alinsky tactics, and if you accuse me to my face of using them, I will have to restrain my impulse to break your nose. I will restrain it, though, because unlike the #Occupy creeps, I define morality in behavioral terms -- like the rest of Western civilization.

Big Journalism : Do Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas Think That Rape Doesn't Matter?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:47:50 +0000

What we're seeing is the character of the movement. People who embrace this ideology define virtue entirely in political terms. That means that they put all their effort at being "good" human beings into defending the correct political positions -- and none into actually reforming their own character. The result is that when they get together as a group, they tout their political memes powerfully, but behave consistent with the very worst in humanity. They do so while lecturing the rest of us regarding how we should be more moral -- meaning how we should agree with their politics, though they use the sanctimonious language of morality. When we point to the rampant lawlessness in the #Occupy camps, we are pointing to the evidence that their morality is a sham, and that their ideology produces the worst in humanity. When we point to the ruin of totalitarian regimes like North Korea, we are pointing to the same.

Big Journalism : Do Keith Olbermann and Markos Moulitsas Think That Rape Doesn't Matter?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:44:41 +0000

"I don't think it's fair to compare the 'occupy' zones with totalitarian regimes," It's fair because the ideology is the same, and the results are the same. If what we were seeing at #Occupy events were the normal distribution of human behaviors that we would see with any similarly sized group, I think few people would comment about it. What we're seeing, though, is the character of the movement. People who embrace this ideology define virtue entirely in political terms. That means that they put all their effort at being "good" human beings into defending the correct political positions -- and none into actually reforming their own character. The result is that when they get together as a group, they tout their political memes powerfully, but behave consistent with the very worst in humanity. They do so while lecturing the rest of us regarding how we should be more moral -- meaning how we should agree with their politics, though they use the sanctimonious language of morality. When we point to the rampant lawlessness in the #Occupy camps, we are pointing to the evidence that their morality is a sham, and that their ideology produces the worst in humanity. When we point to the ruin of totalitarian regimes like North Korea, we are pointing to the same.

American Vision News : Obama preaches Jesus would tax the rich, be Progressive

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 15:38:10 +0000

The Democratic party thinks we're idiots. In 2004, John Kerry lost the Presidential election because a large percentage of voters identified the Democratic party as "anti-religious." Ever since then, Democratic candidates have been quick to (mis)quote the scriptures in support of their policies. They're the same policies they supported back when they were openly anti-religious. In fact, they're still openly anti-religious whenever the subject comes up. They've just pasted supercilious verse-hacking over those policies. And they think it will sway Evangelical voters to imagine that they're biblical. Sadly, it DOES fool some. Sadly, assuming that some percentage of the American voting public is stupid is a bet that will always net you some profit. But that does not make the exercise any less cynical, nor any less dishonest.

American Vision News : Obama preaches Jesus would tax the rich, be Progressive

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 15:34:07 +0000

Massive government attempting to construct Utopia by fiat recalls Babel. Despite his honeyed words, Obama represents the spirit of rebellion that says "Let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name." (Gen 11:4) The nations rage and raise themselves against God's Anointed. He who sits in the heavens laughs.

NewsReal Blog : Muslims Burned 69 Churches in Ethiopia - Thousands of Christians Flee

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 11:33:25 +0000

The Left does not merely tolerate violence when the right people are doing it, although that is true. The Left declares violence just when it is committed against Christians. They will not admit this until confronted, but when confronted will be candid about it, because they believe it makes perfect sense; Christianity persecuted the entire world through the evils of the West, you see, so persecution against Christians is completely justified. The modern, Progressive movement touts tolerance and multiculturalism, but those are just fancy words masking Anti-Christianity. The unspoken moral criterion for all Progressives that lies at the root of all Progressive moral choices is that if a thing comes from Christianity, it is evil, but if a thing does not come from Christianity, it is good. Modern Progressivism is simply reflexive Anti-Christianity.

Big Journalism : Media Matter's Deceptive Editing On Fox Story

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 17:10:43 +0000

This is a woefully ineffective rebuttal. The only relevant fact is the one you relegate to Part II, the actual statements made by Bill Sammon. But where, oh where, is Part II? As far as I can tell, it does not exist. Are you INSANE??? Do you really think you can get away with posting Part I with a reference to Part II, and NOT post Part II? Who is going to bookmark the page and come back 3 days later to see if you've posted Part II? Won't they just dismiss the whole thing? Do NOT -- EVER -- post Part I with a reference to Part II, and fail to post Part II at the same time. At least, don't ever do that if you want people to pay attention. If you want to be ignored, you're doing fine.

Vision to America : Fox News Turned Off At Local Gym

Sun, 7 Nov 2010 14:17:24 +0000

It is absolutely the owner's right to choose what will and will not be on the TVs in his gym. This is the freedom of expression that Progressives oppose in so many venues. It is absolutely the customer's right to choose another gym in which to exercise, and to communicate the reason in plain terms to the owner.

American Vision : TEA-Party Hypocrisy: How Much Socialism Is Acceptable?

Sun, 2 May 2010 23:28:45 +0000

"They don’t hate socialism and government theft and abuse as a rule. If they did they would have been just as exercised about socialism, big government, fascism, dubious legislative tactics, deficits and the national debt during George W. Bush’s term in office. But they were silent."

And thus does Mr. McDurmon prove that he has been asleep for 30 years, like Rip Van Winkle. And earns both my scorn and my resolution not to read the rest of the article after this ill-informed, mean-spirited nonsense. Mr. McDurmon is both unaware of the ongoing political activism in support of fiscal conservatism over the years, and dismissive of any notion of accumulated opposition. He is also, it seems, unaware of the disinformation tactics of the American left, which he quotes in his article. The activism is quite clear. I know no conservatives -- not one -- who felt that George W. Bush's domestic spending choices were responsible. The collective sense of that irresponsibility was the reason that so many conservatives refused to support incumbents in 2006 and 2008; conservatives recognized that their principles had been betrayed by both the Bush administration and the Gingrich-era conservatives in Congress. Silence? Far from it. Furthermore, McDurmond needs to recognize that human beings operate on a threshold of dissatisfaction. The principle actually appears in the Declaration of Independence: "...all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Short version, they'll take it so long as it's not too bad. The Obama administration's assault on liberty and success is the last straw in a very large load; it's taken most people that long to get fed up. That does not mean that they approved of the previous assaults on liberty, just that they had not reached the threshold necessary to spark collective action. Finally, McDurmon quotes some of the most specious analysis of deficits during the past 30 years, echoing the left's absolutely mindless principle that all spending is the act of Presidents. They may be deliberately ignorant, but I doubt that McDurmon has that excuse. Congress holds the purse strings. The President proposes, but Congress disposes. I learned both dicta in the 7th grade. So did he, I'm sure. So the question of who was President when a certain debt level was reached is not nearly as important as who was controlling Congress, what the President proposed, and what the Congress did with what the President proposed. So, for example, he should have been aware that President Reagan submitted budgets that, if followed, would have balanced the federal budget by 1987. And he should have known that House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D, MA) declared Reagan's budgets "Dead On Arrival" in the House... and that Reagan shut down the government twice by refusing to sign what he considered irresponsible budget bills sent for his signature from Congress. I understand why Democrats, many of whom in fact have no principles at all, would misrepresent this history, but I do not understand why Mr. McDurmon has done so little homework, and accepts their distortions as fact. The Tea Parties are attended by people who understand the basic principles of liberty, but who have been busy pursuing their own lives so long as the government encroachment was less than intolerable. Now they are sacrificing time they would much rather spend elsewhere because the assault on liberty has become intolerable. They are neither socialists, nor are they friends of socialism. Mr. McDurmon should swallow his judgmental attitude, head for the library, and read some recent American political history written by somebody other than biased reporters for the New York Times. If he had, he would not be condemning the innocent.

Living Dead Man : Refuting the Resurrection: Part 4 - Secular Evidence and the Crucifixion

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:57:01 +0000

A nit: I think you meant "two millennia" rather than "two centuries."

Living Dead Man : Refuting the Resurrection: Part 6 - The Other Tombs That Opened

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:48:36 +0000

"Somebody in Jerusalem would have wrote (sic)..." WHO would have? What historian's writings do we have from Jerusalem in that era? And who outside of Jerusalem would have believed it, let alone reported it? Would Tacitus, Suetonius, or Pliny have bothered reporting this? Flavius Josephus, who was so eager to impress the Romans? You actually believe that some historian sitting in Rome or Alexandria would have believed a one-time sighting of prophets from a tiny Levant cult? How would they have even heard of it, except at the mouths of Christians who were also, by the way, preaching Christ's resurrection from the dead? And if they'd heard of it, and asked "What did the dead people DO?" and received the answer "Uh... they showed up,then they vanished," how does this differ from the thousands of ghost accounts that circulated through the ancient world as widely as through the modern world? Matthew probably included the account because he was writing to Jews, to whom the appearance of ancient Hebrew prophets might have had meaning. Mark probably omitted the account because the prophets held no significance to his Greek audience, were peripheral to the main story, and they would have disbelieved it. Luke may have omitted the account for similar reasons, or because he could not find witnesses to corroborate it. We don't know. Guys like you who argue "somebody would have reported this" have not the slightest clue how sparse historical reporting was in the ancient world, or how completely unimportant the Levant was. Your entire argument rests on your own thorough-going ignorance of history. This is less than impressive. We'll grant the obvious a priori skepticism that a report like this naturally generates, but aside from that, you have no evidence either for or against this occurring. "He made it up" is a plausible hypothesis but by no means proved by you.