Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

THE HATEFUL LEFT WISHES RUSH LIMBAUGH DEAD

And President Obama laughs!

Me:  Classy guy?  Oh yeah

IT'S NOT LACK OF EXERCISE CAUSING OBESITY; IT'S EATING TOO MUCH!

The British Telegraph reports "Greed not laziness explains obesity epidemic."

A study has found that over the past 30 years, average calorific intake has increased by at least 500 calories a day, while exercise levels have changed little.

The study is the first major piece of research to quantify the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the obesity epidemic.   Read on...

Me:  I don't doubt that people are getting fatter; I can see that for myself.  I just wonder how researchers determine relative caloric intake.  Do they consult how many hamburgers MacDonalds sells?

WHY MARK STEYN IS BECOMING ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST POPULAR COLUMNISTS

It's not just his book, America Alone.  It's because he puts together sentences like the following:

Meanwhile, over in the other [Democratic] tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness:  In the Democrats’ parade, whatever your bugbear, government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the GOP can never match.

And yet and yet . . . Last November, even with the GOP’s fiscal profligacy, even with the financial sector’s “October surprise,” even with a cranky old coot of a nominee unable to articulate any rationale for his candidacy or even string together a coherent thought on the economy, even with a running mate subjected to brutal character assassination in nothing flat, even running against a charming, charismatic media darling

WHAT ARE OBAMA'S INTENTIONS TOWARDS ISRAEL?

Not very positive, it seems.  This much we know, U.S - Israeli cooperation is starting to break down under Obama.

Senior officials in Jerusalem expressed concern recently over the sharp decline in the coordination between Israel and the United States on security and state affairs since President Barack Obama’s entered the White House and especially since the formation of Israel’s new government…

“Obama’s people brief their Israeli counterparts in advance much less about security and Middle   East policy activities than the Bush administration used to,” the officials said.

In addition, when they do brief Israeli officials, they don’t consult with them or coordinate their statements in advance.

This has caused several coordination “malfunctions” between the two states in the past two months, they said…

[A senior] official said the new administration no longer seems to see Israel as a “special” or “extraordinary” state in the Middle East, with which the U.S. must maintain a  different dialogue than with other states.               [Read more of this revealing article in Haaretz]

Victor Davis Hanson offers a devastating review of the difference between Obama's lips and his actions:  [my emphases]

 And given the Obama method of grandly professing the opposite of the reality that will soon follow (most ethical administration nominees in history lead to Geithner, Richardson,  Daschle, Solis, etc.; no desire to interfere in the private sector means near nationalization of the banking, car, and soon health-care industries; commitment to public campaign financing equals first candidate to reject it in the general election; strong desire for fiscal sobriety translates into a $1.7 trillion annual deficit; Bush shredding the Constitution means adoption of Bush's wiretaps, email intercepts, Predator attacks, Patriot Act, Iraq plan, renditions, etc., and on and on), the tell-tale sign of the final U.S. break with Israel will be a dramatic Obama hope-and-change declaration that "our historic commitment to Israel will remain unchanged."

When we hear that, we know exactly what follows . . .

JUSTIN TAYLOR INTERVIEWS OS GUINNESS ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRANCIS SCHAEFFER'S DEATH

I respect Guinness, and I respect Schaeffer and this short interview transcript is enlightening.  Of Schaeffer, Guiness says:

I often say simply that I have never met anyone with such a passion for God, combined with a passion for people, combined with a passion for truth. That is an extremely rare combination, and Schaeffer embodied it. It is also why so many of his scholarly critics completely miss the heart of who he was, and why his son’s recent portrayal of his father is such a travesty and an outrage.

Further,

When almost no Evangelicals were thinking about culture and connecting unconnected dots, Schaeffer not only did it himself but blazed a trail for countless others to follow. Many who trumpet their disagreements with him today owe their very capacity to disagree to his influence a generation ago. A little man in stature, he was a giant in influence, and many who have gone further have done so only by standing on his shoulders. I for one owe far more to Francis Schaeffer than I can ever say, and I live daily in his debt.

Me:  I never personally made it to L'Abri, but Schaeffer and his books introduced me as a young man to Christian worldview thinking and to the wider world of literature, art, music and philosophy.  We may take issue with various points of Schaeffer's summaries and generalizations, but as Guinness says, we do so only because it was Schaeffer, or one of his intellectual descendants, who introduced and legitimized the wider world of scholarship to us in the first place.

MARK STEYN - ON JEWS & ISRAEL AS THE FOCUS OF THE WORLD'S HATRED

Mark Steyn offers a comprehensive synopsis of the world's increasing hatred of Israel and Jews.  It's depressing, and unfortunately I don't see anything on the horizon to offer a reprieve.  What a shameful state of affairs!  Consider:

A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Fifty-nine percent? What the hell’s wrong with the rest of you? Hey, relax: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. For purposes of comparison, in a recent poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—i.e., the “moderate” Arab world—79 percent of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. As far as I know, in the last year or two, they haven’t re-tested that question in Europe, possibly in case Israel now scores as a higher threat level in the Netherlands than in Yemen.

GOOD QUESTION REGARDING OBAMA AND RELIGION

Andy McCarthy raises the question:

President Obama has vowed to be a no-show for today's National Prayer Day. Does that mean he is also cancelling the annual Iftaar dinner the Bush White House took to holding to mark the end of Ramadan?

Me: Excellent question.  It will be interesting to see.  And possibly quite significant. 

VIDEO: COUGAR VS. BEAR CUB

A friend sent me the link to a four minute Wildlife Adventure that's really an adventure!  How it was filmed, I have no idea.  It's from the Oscar-nominated nature film, "The Bear."

DANA MILBANK - OBAMA LOOKING MORE AND MORE DIVINE

Well, Milbank didn't say that in so many words, but he did write today:

Maybe Barack Obama really is The One.
 
Yesterday's news was good -- almost supernaturally so.

The economy? Recovering.

The markets? Rallying.

Swine flu? Abating.

Drought? Ending.

And on and on he went.  (HT: HotAir)

Me:  I'm not impressed, especially when Obama has his own cheerleading squad in the press duly obsessed with making him look good.  It's a press that refuses to see (or report) anything wrong, eery, or untoward, no matter what.

And that goes for late-night comedians also.  They defend Obama, rather than ridicule, skewer, satirize, or make jokes about him.  Not exactly how they treated President Bush.  "We're now into biased comedy. We can't even laugh without a political agenda," says Glenn Beck.  And he's right.  This is not good.  The Messianic aura marches on. 

Aside:  HotAir notes Obama's strongarm tactics regarding Chrysler.  Shocking, actually.  And not a little scary as it reveals the machinations beneath the veneer.  Consider, also, Obama's killing the D.C. school voucher plan.  The "One" obviously has some people very disappinted in him, if one bothers to look for them.

Q & A WITH JOE THE PLUMBER

He's a regular guy, a sincere Christian who wishes he were a better Christian, and a guy who tells it like it is.  Read the interview.

DINESH D'SOUZA - "WHY WE NEED EARTHQUAKES"

- UPDATE:  Welcome readers from Wintery Knight Blog!  Thanks for the link!  To learn more about myself and this blog's viewpoint, click here.

-Drawing on the book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe  by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, D'Souza's explains:    

While natural disasters occasionally wreak havoc, our planet needs plate tectonics to produce the biodiversity that enables complex life to flourish on earth. Without plate tectonics, earth's land would be submerged to a depth of several thousand feet. Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.

Plate tectonics also help regulate the earth's climate, preventing the onset of scorching or freezing temperatures that would make mammalian life impossible. In sum, plate tectonics are a necessary prerequisite to human survival on the only planet known to sustain life.    [Read on for more . . .]

Note also:  David H. Rogstad, of "Reasons to Believe," offers yet another benefit for life from  earthquakes.  More articles here.

CHUCK COLSON - CO2, EPA AND US

Chuck Colson's perspective is worth weighing.

Just recently, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are “pollutants that threaten public health and welfare.” The “threat” comes from the effects of man-made global warming.

This ruling is the first step in regulating the very gas that makes life on Earth possible. If that sounds odd to you, it should. A lot of what is going on here has little, if anything, to do with public health.

ANDREW C. McCARTHY REVIEWS MARK LEVIN'S "LIBERTY AND TYRANNY: A CONSERVATIVE MANIFESTO"

UPDATE:  Welcome readers from Wintery Knight Blog!  Thanks for the link!  To learn more about myself and this blog's viewpoint, click here.

-Solid review of a major new book:

It is a rarity that an important book arrives at its perfect moment. Such is the case with Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.[1] We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism—at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Mark Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.   [more . . .]

MARK STEYN - OBAMA HAS THE KNACK OF APPEARING MODERATE WHILE ACTING RADICAL

Steyn:

The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president’s success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. . .  But underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever-more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative, unhurried, moderate routine on primetime press conferences. On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective . . .

GIANNA JESSEN - ABORTION SURVIVOR; COMPELLING SPEAKER!

This morning our pastor weaved into his sermon a portion of the speech (available on YouTube) that Gianna Jessen delivered in Sept. 2008 at Queen's Hall, Parliament House, Victoria, Australia.  Gianna is an abortion survivor.  What a compelling speech!  You don't understand abortion, until you've heard Gianna speak.  (See here for part two of her speech).

JONI EARECKSON TADA SPEAKS AT THE CRYSTAL CATHEDRAL (VIDEO)

It's hard to imagine a more courageous, inspiring person than quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada.  Forty-two years ago, at the age of 16, she dove into shallow water in the Chesapeake Bay, broke her spine, and has been in a wheelchair ever since.  The radiance and beauty of Christ shine through her.  Click here for a video of her talk broadcast from the Crystal Cathedral May 3, 2009.  Here is her website - Joni and Friends.

A.N. WILSON RETURNS TO CHRISTIAN FAITH FROM THE WILDERNESS

A.N. Wilson is an exceptionally talented writer.  Charles Colson has summarized his return to Christian faith (reprinted below).  Optimistically, I wonder if Wilson might one day turn into the sharp-witted, God-honoring, secular balloon-pricking Malcolm Muggeridge of our present generation.  Wouldn't that be extraordinary?  I am moved to wonder that on the strength of his article: "Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity."

Herewith Colson's article (But I must say parenthetically, that Wilson's book on C.S. Lewis -- which Colson praises overmuch -- has a whole lot of serious problems.  See Wayne Martindale's review here.)  But back to Colson's report:

SHARON ALLEN - STORY OF AN ORTHODOX JEW WHO CAME TO ACKNOWLEDGE JESUS AS THE MESSIAH OF ISRAEL

Someone told me about this women this morning.  She tells a fascinating story.

WHY OBAMA WOULDN'T CALL ON FOX TV'S MAJOR GARRETT AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCE

Major Garrett explains why he wasn't called upon (audio).  And he's not guessing.  He was warned in advance that if Fox didn't carry Obama's evening press conference, Garrett wouldn't get called on.  Listen to the interview and hear the question Major Garrett was going to ask the President regarding Guantanamo.

OBAMA USES "ROUNDTABLES" AS PROPS AND WINDOW DRESSING FOR PREDETERMINED POLICY

- Update 5/5/09 - Audio interview with Andy McCarthy in which he expands his views.

- Original Post - Andy McCarthy prosecuted the terrorists who plotted and conducted the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.  He is an expert on the terrorist situation and had been invited to an Obama administration "roundtable" on counterterrorist policy, but has publicly declined to be, as he put it, a prop.  McCarthy wrote:

Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues.  I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.  Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.   [more . . .]

Me:  Why do I bother to blog about this?  Because it is the way the Obama administration does business.  Obama knows exactly what he wants to do, announces it, and then produces a panel with a semblance of input that is totally phony.  But he uses it as a cover for his own agenda.  Read the rest of the link to get a clearer picture of Obama's window dressing, which, no doubt, will continue to fool a lot of people.  No one ever accused Obama of not being smooth and clever.