Posts Tagged ‘obama’

McChristianity and Obama

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

For a variety of reasons, starting in the 1960s, Christian churches began to hemorrhage young people.    As Government-run schools scrubbed all references to religion from history, young people  lost interest in the religion of their parents.  TV and Big Bird became the teachers of how to live your life.

Some think that humans are genetically programmed to have to believe in something, and incorporating a belief in a Supreme Being is key to human survival.   The general notion was popularized by the term the [God Gene]

The Christian Church and its insistence that its religion was actually based on the life and teachings of Jesus – and following the rules and teachings of the church – led to a mass exodus to what some call the McChurch – where you go on Sunday to get a dose of McChristianity.  No need for rules or restrictions on your behavior or respect for authority – just do focus group research and find out what people want their religion to teach them and then feed it back to them on Sunday and they’ll flock to your brand.

Somewhere else on the web site, I wrote a really quick description of Contemporary Christian Music is “Jesus Loves me, and I love Jesus”, and nothing more substantive.  So I sat down and forced myself to listen to K-Love (EMF’s Contemporary Christian music channel) for half an hour and wrote down the theme or message of each song and seeing if I was overly harsh.

God is beautiful
God is love
Surrender your heart to God
There will be place with no more suffering, pain or fears
You won’t be alone with Jesus
God will rescue me from a life of misery
I’m alive because Jesus loves me
Jesus is the giver of every perfect thing
All that I am is due to the power and majesty of Jesus
My love of Jesus is forever
Jesus is my Savior
Trust in the Lord
God’s glory will reign forever and ever
I hold out my hands to the One who is worthy
God makes everything glorious, and since I love God, what does that make me?

In summary, every bit of the music is incredibly narcissistic – about my feelings, what I want, my love for God/Jesus, my pain.

It isn’t about an actual Jewish man who lived 2000 years ago in the Middle East, it isn’t about the 10 commandments, it isn’t about love for your wife or your children or your parents, the people who are with you in church, the other people around you who need your help, the people who died to keep the religion alive, the importance of leading a moral life and treating others with mutual respect.   It’s about Me.  It’s about what I want.  I want to Feel Good.  Jesus is my Drug.

Now, take the above themes and replace God/Jesus/Lord with Obama, and you will quickly see exactly why we are where we are today.  It’s only one small step to then replace Obama with Mohamed.

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The future of Health Care

Friday, April 24th, 2009

The Washington Times has a story today about problems with the EMS ambulances in Washington D.C.   It’s primarily a local story (Washington Times is a local newspaper in addition to trying to have a national audience), but it has clear national implications.

Washington DC is peculiar in the entire country in that it is a city run by the Federal Government.  D.C. is not part of Maryland or Virginia – the city gets its funding from Congress.   The normal city funding model of using Property Taxes can’t work in D.C. because so much of the real estate is owned by the Federal Government and cities and states are not allowed to tax the Federal Government.

The District sent its paramedics off to be evaluated to see how evaluate there ability to perform life saving tasks were.   Only three of 95 paramedics tested had passing scores for entry level paramedics. 

What has been the ciy’s reaction?  They threatened to take legal action against the Washington Times for disclosing the results of the testing.

Welcome to your new heath care system, America.

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The Five Pillars of Obama

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Fox News (and the Washington Post) are reporting that today’s speech by President Obama will discuss the “Five Pillars” of the recovery of the U.S. Economy.

If you’re thinking….  I’ve heard the phrase “Five Pillars Of…” before, you’re right.   Islam’s core belief system is called the Five Pillars of Islam.

For partial credit, you might have thought of the Seven Pillars of Kwanzaa.

Just wait until you read the Ten Commandments of Obama.

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Arab Emirates to buy Textron – any problem with that?

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Bloomberg

On a post over on the radio blog, I detailed how Textron got itself entangled in the Radio business.   Textron’s main products are Cessna airplanes and Bell Helicopters.  Textron is also involved in designing control systems for other military weapons.

Bell Helicopters are used by the US military and they were involved in building the new fleet of presidential helicopters that was just cancelled.  Textron was already obviously in finanical distress before that announcement.   The “war on private airplane travel” particularly hit Textron hard.

So today’s news is a group in the United Arab Emerites wants to buy Textron.  

Anyone have a problem with folks in the middle east owning the company that makes aircraft and weapon control systems for the US military, and  airplanes?

After all, we’re not at war with Islam – there is no risk here – we’re all part of the same community.

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Getting ready for the G-20

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

On the eve of the meeting of the World’s 20 most important economic powers in London, President Obama is signalling that he believes the best course of action for GM is bankruptcy, with a new Board of Directors appointed by him running the company (and probably owned by the UAW employees).

Globalism (as represented by the G-20) is a very divisive topic in Europe and large and possibly violent protests are expected.  A year ago, Candidate Obama was greeted in Europe as if he was the Second Coming of the Messiah – this week he appears in the role of the leader of the country that many point to as the cause of the economic collapse (never mind it was European banks who bought the Credit Default swaps from AIG with no gun pointed to their head).

This will be the first serious test of President Obama’s skills on the world stage.  Germany, England and others are already in finger pointing mode and looking for someone to blame.  Many believe that President Obama will “accept blame” for the entire mess “caused by George Bush” (ignoring that Tim Geithner was the head of the NY Federal Reserve Bank at the time)

The world’s leaders will not be impressed if Obama is just reading scripts from a teleprompter.   This is his chance to convince the world he has substance or prove that he is a clueless Chicago A.C.O.R.N. street thug  with no clue how the real world actually works. 

No matter how it turns out, this is a very important week for your future.

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Unintended or not?

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

First you demonize people who travel in private planes.  Then you suggest that the President doesn’t really need that new fleet of helicopters after all. 

Well, Textron makes Cessna airplanes, and Presidential helicopters (as a subcontractor to Lockheed/Martin Marietta).  Textron has already maxed out its $3 billion bank credit facility.

Friday, in the midst of all the other chaos, Textron announced it is selling off the portion of its company that makes control systems for military planes, tanks, helicopters, etc… in order to “maintain liqudity”.  They also laid off a significant portion of the Cessna work force that makes mostly private planes.

Do laid off airplane workers count as “jobs lost”, “jobs not yet saved” or “George Bush’s fault”?

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The final nail in the GM coffin

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

One of the reasons for GM’s prosperity in the “good old days” was GMAC.  The amount of money that GM made selling a car was secondary to the money it could make from the financing of the car through GM’s car financing subsidiary.

President Obama’s idea to get the US government involved in car loans tries to replace the market forces that drove GM to seek profit from lending money for cars rather than building cars with a central government controlled agency which will be motivated by policy objectives and government control.  Create a fund like this, you put everyone else in the financing business out of business.  Car finance companies don’t have a printing press that lets them print money to lend.

If the US Government starts becoming an auto loan lender, how can it avoid repeating the mistakes of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?  What if someone wants to borrow money to buy a car made by a non-UAW manufacturer?

The woman who was widely mocked for saying that now that Obama is President, she won’t have to make her house payment and will get a free car was telling you the truth – the problem is people didn’t believe her.

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The Obama Birth Certificate “thing”

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Most of the “polls” on this web site have outcomes that are not very surprising, but the one about what people believe about President Obama’s birth certificate surprised me.    While this site is mostly people of the Conservative persuasion (just look at the program popularity stats), my impression was this issue was pretty much over. 

A very large percentage of people voting in the poll believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya and something needs to be done about that. 

One thing I would like to point out – having spent a summer of my youth shuffling forms as a summer intern at a Social Security office.  Many people are misunderstanding what that green “birth certificate” presented by the Obama campaign is.  Most people now understand it is not his actual birth certificate, but rather a document issued by the State of Hawaii saying that his birth was registered there.

What is setting some people off in the wrong direction is they don’t realize this was a document printed recently.  It isn’t one he has been carrying around in his wallet for 40 years.  How do I know that?  Government forms always have a date down at the bottom that is the “revision” date of when the blank form was designed.   The office person who keeps track of forms looks at that date to decide which are obsolete forms that need to be destroyed.

In the lower left corner, it says OHSM 1.1 (Rev 11/01) LASER

This indicates this form was created by the Office of Health Status Monitoring version 1.1, that has been in use since November 2001.  So the ideas of “they didn’t have laser printers in 1961”, etc… are misguided.  This is very different than the Rathergate document which purported to be an actual document created in the 1960s on a typewriter.

One of the unpublished “suggsted answers” to the poll was “Yeah, but what about McCain?”

There are some important differences between Obama and McCain:

  • Both of McCain’s parents were US Citizens all of their lives
  • McCain was not “born in Panama”, he was born on a US Military base in the Panama Canal Zone, which was US territory at the time
  • John McCain’s did not go to live with a stepfather in another country and change his name

I’m personally more troubled that his elementary school education occured in Indonesia, and his view of the United States and knowledge of U.S. history was learned in a country that has historically not looked favorably on the United States.   His mistakes about US history and basic civics (that Presidents don’t make laws, and can’t delete items from appropriations bills) are things that could hurt the country over the next 4 years.

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