"His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.'"
We’ve seen how Tea Party Movement, Sarah Palin and Talk Radio have been blamed for the shooting of Congress woman Gabrielle Giffords. But another event this week is also deeply disturbing–the sentencing of Tom Delay. He has been convicted of money laundering and sentenced to three years. I searched two pages of Google before coming across an NRO article that explains Tom Delay’s crime: he had soft money exchanged for hard money so as to elect Republicans in the state of Texas. According to Republican strategist Ralph Reed, this commonly practiced and it is not illegal; he writes:
If DeLay’s operatives made any mistake at all, it was being too good at negotiating: They exchanged the funds dollar-for-dollar.This even exchange enabled prosecutors to later claim the funds were “laundered.” But money laundering requires an underlying crime. There was nothing illegal about supporting state House candidates with the funds so exchanged, and the transaction was reported publicly by both DeLay’s state committee and the RNC.
Reed says that this conviction will not likely withstand appeal. And yet the judge in the case claims it is not about politics. But it is about $190,000 of soft corporate money that was swapped for hard money sent to candidates in Texas. That’s politics, isn’t it.
In my opinion, this is all about the Left, having lost the war of public opinion, using the courts and the media to destroy the lives of conservatives. The criminal cases against Senator Ted Stevens, Scooter Libby, and Sir Conrad Black were of the same stuff. This is a disturbing trend, which is more reminiscent of totalitarianism than of free countries.
The Left has insisted upon multiculturalism to the point of implementing political correct policies which instead of profiling terrorists require that TSA officers stick hands up the crouches of seniors and down the pants of small children, spreading infectious diseases and violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. Yet these politically correct Leftists see nothing wrong with ridiculing the culture of some people, such as when it comes to the American pioneer values that I grew up with in Alaska.
An article by Aaron Sorkin ranting against Sarah Palin’s shooting of a caribou is making its rounds on the internet; Jason Dean writes in the Guardian:
West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin today gave Sarah Palin both barrels over her US TV reality show, accusing the contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination of shooting an animal “for political gain”.Sorkin, writer of the recent Facebook movie The Social Network, also accused the Fox News contributor of making a “snuff film” after the latest episode of Sarah’s Palin’s Alaska featured the politician going hunting with her father and shooting a caribou.
He described Palin as “deranged”, a “witless bully” and a “phony pioneer girl”. He also said The Learning Channel, the US cable network, “should be ashamed of itself” for broadcasting her “truly awful reality show”.
Dr. Craig Carter says that Leftists like Aaron Sorkin who support abortion rights, i.e. the killing of human babies, but who find hunting repugnant have lost their moral compass:
So all hunting shows are now “snuff films?” All hunters are morally evil? Well, rural America and Canada, now you know how the Ruling Class regards you. It sure explains a lot – like gun control for example. And here I was laboring under the misunderstanding that they wanted the gun registry because they were afraid people would be killed by guns. Turns out they were afraid you might sneak off and shoot a rabbit or deer. The horror!
I just think it is sickening to assert that there is something morally evil about killing an animal for sport. It betrays a lack of clear thinking about what makes killing evil. The human versus non-human distinction is vital to clear reasoning and moral evaluation. Once it is blurred all sorts of weird and contradictory conclusions are drawn by those who have lost their moral compass.
I responded to Carter: Even many hunters find it morally repugnant to kill merely for sport. But Palin is exonerated since, as many have reported about the show that I didn’t see, she has duly packaged the meat and placed it in her freezer for later consumption. That hunting is thrilling is only a bonus. Many hunters have a deep respect for nature, for the animals and for the need to be stewards of these resources. What our poorly-educated liberal elites like Mr. Sorkin don’t understand is that the subsistence culture is still very strong in Alaska. Agriculture is very poor in Alaska, and so most food must be imported. The rich supply of game meat and fish that can be harvested thus is a traditional part of Alaskan culture, beginning with the natives (of which Palin’s husband is 1/4) and also the pioneers (Sourdoughs). I grew up eating far more venison than domestic meat. As a child I preferred the softer, milder beef to moose, but my parents gave us no choice in the matter.
The Palin shooting of the caribou can be seen here. In my mind, Sorkin has blown it completely out of proportion. I am particularly impressed by Palin’s emphasis on how she learns hunting from her father. This is a great example of how to pass on values and skills to the next generation, and she shows humility, that even though middle-aged, she still has a lot to learn even from her own dad. What I don’t understand is why the caribou didn’t run in the opposite direction when she missed. Perhaps this is Darwin’s survival of the fittest at work.
In an article at the Weekly Standard, “American Narcissus“, Jonathan V. Last has compiled a very comprehensive list of anecdotal evidence of Obama’s narcissism. He even mentions the story of a beloved classmate of Obama at Harvard Law school that they had a Obamameter:
“One of our classmates once famously noted that you could judge just how pretentious someone’s remarks in class were by how high they ranked on the ‘Obamanometer,’ a term that lasted far longer than our time at law school. Obama didn’t just share in class—he pontificated. He knew better than everyone else in the room, including the teachers. ”
Obama’s career before becoming a senator suggests that affirmative action played a large role. Last outlines how the University of Chicago wanted him as a faculty member because he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review and an African American. With the effects of affirmative action policy in full bloom, Obama is the first affirmative action president, and has become an utter failure of incompetence. This demonstrates why we must fully reject affirmative action and diversity hiring.
The Righteous Investor 