Things That Make You Shake Your Head

That banner headline comes from renowned radical left-wing USA-hater Matt Drudge, who linked to this Reuters story:

Israeli tank fire killed up to 40 Palestinians at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medical sources at two hospitals said.

Two tank shells exploded outside the school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.

Medical officials said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or local residents.

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Inhumanity is inhumanity and atrocities are atrocities no matter what flag it’s perpetrated under.

From Matthew Yglesias:

Mitch McConnell says Republican senators “represent half the American population.” James Surowiecki does the math and concludes that they actually only represent 37 percent of the voters. All the more reason not to worry too much about getting 80 votes for anything.

Of course, this is the same math that said Bush’s 48% and 51% wins in 2000 and 2004 respectively equaled ‘a mandate’ while Obama’s 53% win in 2008 does not equal a mandate. And it’s the same math that says the GOP losses in 2008 of the White House, more seats (8) in the Senate and even more seats (21) in the House does not equal a shift away from the Republican Party but rather equals an evenly-divided country that still remains center-right. And, this is the same senator who supported Bush’s fiscal recklessness and mind-numbing deficits, yet all of a sudden urges “caution” and “restraint” with the new president’s spending plans.

With this type of math, it’s no wonder we are in the mess that we find ourselves in today.

Tales from The Crypt:

Roland Burris, the man Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich picked to succeed Barack Obama in the Senate, might get to etch another accolade into the monument he built for himself if this appointment goes through.

You see, Burris has already charted his esteemed career path on the walls of his future grave in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery (pictured here). Beneath a seal of the state of Illinois, Burris lists his accomplishments to date, and there seems to be plenty of room above the bench to mention his career in the Senate - if he has one.

Humility, unfortunately, has never been a pre-qualification for the U.S. Senate. Vanity, on the other hand, seems to be a prerequisite.

It all seems so very tragically comical (and utterly embarassing for the people of Illinois).

Just like his fellow Republicans at FGO and the Oklahoma GOP, former Oklahoma congressman and failed Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate Ernest Istook chose to besmirch the Spirit of Christmas with an unabashedly (and unashamedly) partisan Christmas message. I received the following email in my inbox yesterday morning — Christmas morning:

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Forward this to your friends who care.  Merry Christmas!
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Santa Evacuated from North Pole!

Read the details at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508

Here are excerpts:

Evacuation operations continue at the North Pole, as Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, their reindeer and an estimated 5,000 elves are being relocated due to global warming to a secure but undisclosed location.

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“The only way to save future Christmases was to evacuate the toymakers and Mrs. Claus and to re-locate operations before the ice melts,” said Nobel Laureate Al Gore, who was on the scene with a camera crew for the occasion.  The footage will be included in Gore’s new documentary, “An Inconvenient But Jolly Old Elf”

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Observers confirmed that Santa was red with anger and threatened to retire.  Said one onlooker:

“His cheeks were like roses and his nose like a cherry.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the heat of his anger was as white as the snow.”

It was unclear who would have the power to appoint a replacement, but several governors volunteered to accept responsibility for picking a successor to Santa.  Said one, “You don’t get many opportunities like this.  Appointing a Senator is worth a lot.  But choosing a new Santa Claus?  Priceless!”

There’s more.  Read it all in Ernest Istook’s column at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=84508

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I’ll repeat what I said in my post last Saturday regarding co-opting the Christmas holiday for partisan pandering:

This partisanship by the party that so often likes to believe it’s more “Christian” than others certainly doesn’t reflect the spirit of this Christian holiday or the Christ whose birth is being celebrated.

Leave it to the Oklahoma GOP and people like Jim Martin to make the Christmas holiday — the holiday of “peace on earth and goodwill to all men” — a partisan event.

Wishing You A Merry Red OK Christmas! click on link for flash animation

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Un-be-liev-able.

This partisanship by the party that so often likes to believe it’s more “Christian” than others certainly doesn’t reflect the spirit of this Christian holiday or the Christ whose birth is being celebrated.

Earlier today, I posted a report that said “incompetent” was the top word that came to mind for more than half of survey respondents when describing President Bush. Here is some supporting evidence:

Campbell Brown spotlights a tragic story brought about by an absurd law.

(You can read the transcript of Campbell Brown’s commentary here.)

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I have a Native American heritage, although I’m not on any rolls. I am certainly not unsympathetic to the plight of Native American tribes in this country, especially given the horrendous treatment of Native Americans by our government over our nation’s history. But this law is outrageous and it’s absurd.

Once a mother and/or father gives up a child voluntarily, then that is decision that should stand permanently and not be allowed to be rescinded. It’s not fair to the child or the adoptive parents to take back that child once the new family has been established. I cannot see how it’s in the best interests of the child to be taken from the only parents that he/she knows to be “returned” to strangers.

It’s wrong and this tribe should be ashamed of itself.

Andrew Sullivan says those two words summarize George W. Bush’s “entire, cosseted, spoiled, rich-kid attitude.”

“So what?”

That’s how he acknowledges that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq to speak of before he created a power vacuum through his botched war and occupation. So two wars to cripple al Qaeda actually gave al Qaeda and Jihadism in general two new bases for operation: Iraq and Waziristan. Thanks to the amazing work of many troops and generals and Iraqis, al Qaeda is at bay (though not defeated) in Iraq, but resurgent in Pakistan. Which is to say that several thousand Americans - and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - died to get us back to Square One.

I wonder if he would be as cavalier in his response if one or both of his daughters were among those who died.

[Editor's note: I'm introducing a new feature on this blog. Each Saturday, I'll re-publish the blog post that I deem the "highlight of the week" — whether because it received the most hits, generated the most discussion or had the most impact on readers and/or on my personally. This week's "highlight" was a post written by Brian, one of my regular readers, that generated some interesting discussion and received quite a few hits. Brian had a lot to say about some recent posts between various blogs discussing Christians and hate. I invited him to share his thoughts on this matter here on this blog as a guest contributor. Here is his post again, originally published on Wednesday, December 10th. You can read the comments that original post generated here.]

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I was intrigued today by a rather verbose post regarding Christianity and hate. Rather than addressing the challenger’s post line by line, it seemed a good opportunity to address the concepts of Christianity and hate more generally. Something the poster seemingly wanted to do but didn’t seem to accomplish very effectively.

This is one of those topics that I think would apply to the idea that many Christians are not really ready for the “solid food” — milk is still much more palatable (1 Cor 3:2, Hebrews 5).

Is hate a part of Christianity or more pointedly, does God hate?  The old adage that most try to prove theologically is God hates the sin while he loves the sinner.  The question at hand is, is that entirely true?  While I am not sure I can agree with much of the challenger’s post, he seems to be trying to challenge the idea that hate is antagonistic to Christianity or God.

If one wants to be a mature, truth-seeking follower of God, one must be willing to open themselves up to uncomfortable subjects and be willing to consider them through the filter of God’s Word.  What often keeps Christians from maturing in their faith is that they know something to be theologically true whether they have invested the time to truly study the issue. This leads inevitably to prooftexting scriptures to find support for their already understood position.

So, at risk of alienating those who will not continue reading after stating this uncomfortable fact, I will state that God not only hates the sin, but there is scriptural evidence that he does indeed hate sinners as well.  I will offer my support for this in a moment but let me first state that only God is God and just because there is evidence that God’s divinity creates a strong enough disdain for conscious disobedience does not provide license to his followers to apply any form of judgment over His creation.

Let us start with the scripture that can be uncomfortable to many since it does demonstrate that God himself not only hates the sin itself but also the individual associated with the sin Continued