Refreshing

Here are two sides of the same interesting coin.

First, Christians are facing growing persecution in the Muslim world. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews just wrote an op-ed about it in The New York Daily News.

Highlights:

* “Just this month, a Pakistani court upheld the kidnapping, conversion and ‘marriage’ to older Muslim men of two Christian sisters, aged 10 and 13.”

* “Although they comprise less than 4% of Iraq’s population, Iraqi Christians now account for 40% of its refugees.”

* “Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian; today it is barely 25%. And the growing political power of Iran-backed Hezbollah is encouraging further departures.”

Evangelist Brother Andrew encourages ex-Muslim converts to stay in Muslim lands and work to strengthen the church and proselytize. That is hard advice to follow, in times when persecution is increasing. Would I stay in a country where I knew there was a good chance that I or my loved ones would be killed? Would I do that, to help the church? Not a chance. Sorry to say it. No way. Barring a supernatural experience proving to my satisfaction that God wanted me there, I would be looking for the fastest way out. I’ve read horror story after horror story. Maybe some day I’ll be committed enough to risk imprisonment, torture, maiming, and execution. At the moment, I am not feeling it. I could never advise another human being to stay. How could I ask someone else to face a risk I won’t face? I have nothing but admiration for people who put their lives on the line in this manner.

Here’s the other side of the coin. A Coptic priest named Zakaria Botros has become a celebrity in Muslim countries. He has a 90-minute television show aimed at Muslims, and he is converting them at a very high rate. So high, there is a bounty on his head. It is rumored to be as high as sixty million dollars.

You would think the figure would be certain; for a bounty to work, it has to be publicized clearly. But I have no reason to doubt that it’s real.

Father Botros is Egyptian, but he lives in the US. That makes sense. If he were in Egypt, he’d be dead. Egypt is not a safe place for Christians, and I’m sure that applies very heavily to Christians who proselytize via television.

He believes a thousand Muslims convert via his phone banks each month, and because the lines are jammed, he believes the actual conversion figure is much higher. And he has websites.

It looks like television and the Internet are highly effective. And considerably safer than face-to-face evangelism.

What’s the conclusion? Hard to say. I feel sure God never intended evangelism to be completely safe, or that it be performed purely by automated means. We’re expected to risk suffering, to some degree. And a TV set is no substitute for a church and a flesh-and-blood pastor. But should Christians risk their lives unnecessarily? Is that required, and is it even effective, compared with TV and the web? And if you decide both types of outreach are needed, how do you balance them? How many people should stay behind in Muslim countries and face violence and oppression?

You won’t get an answer from me. I don’t have a clue.

Here’s something very strange about this blog post. There are two links in the above text. One goes to a story about Muslim oppression of Christians, and the story was penned by an active Orthodox Rabbi who chairs an organization which steers Christian donations to Jewish needs. The other goes to a blog entry about a Christian priest who proselytizes Muslims, and whose life has been credibly threatened by them, and the story was written by a Messianic Jew, Joel Rosenberg. My head is spinning.

Assuming Father Botros checks out, I can’t imagine a better place to send donations. Think about it. You can directly sponsor a Christian outreach to Muslims. What could be better than that? When you drop a bomb on a jihadist, you reduce the enemy’s numbers by one, and our numbers remain steady, and a person dies in ignorance. When you convert a Muslim, the number of our potential enemies is reduced by one, the number of our allies is increased by one, and a person is rescued from darkness.

Please tell me Father Zakarias doesn’t have a yacht and an air-conditioned dog house with a jacuzzi.

Sky Falls – Gore Would be Pleased

AUGGGGHHH.

They said there was a 70% chance of rain today. Apparently the other 30% is behind us, because we are getting HAMMERED.

And not in the good way.

Why do they call them “feeder bands”? We’re not getting fed. We’re getting watered.

Whoops, it’s over.

Call me Lord of the Scope Rings

I am so tired of Hurricane Ike. Apart from the pain it has caused in the Caribbean, it managed to take a path that has kept it nearly the same distance from me for several days. Today the sky is sort of a light grey, and we’re getting lots of annoying wind gusts. By tomorrow morning, we should finally be free from the hurricane influence. And not a moment too soon.

I’m glad it’s getting weak. I hope it finds its way to a nice piece of empty jungle. Let Gaia take it in the face; it’s her storm, anyway.

I got splendid news RE the .17 HMR rifle. My scope rings should be here on Thursday. If that happens, Friday is RANGE DAY. I can’t wait to shoot again. I haven’t been to the range in maybe a month. It’s killing me. And this will be a special day, because for the first time, I’ll be shooting a rifle in which I have total confidence. Will I shoot badly? Maybe. But at least I’ll know what’s causing all the problems.

I decided to get Weaver extra-high rings with levers on them. The levers tighten the rings onto the bases. I chose these over the ones will little knobs that come off. Why? A commenter at Midway said the knobs have a tendency to get away from you. So if you take one off while you’re outdoors, you risk losing it in grass or whatever. The levers don’t look all that great, but at least they won’t fall off.

I have a feeling Weaver won’t sell you a new knob. That’s another consideration.

I also ordered Pachmayrs for the Smith & Wesson 27-2. Jim recommended them. He has been a tremendous help. The wooden grips that come with the gun are very comfortable, for about three shots. After that, you notice that your middle finger is completely filling the space between the grip and the trigger guard. After a while, you get tired of having the steel hammered backward into your flesh. Bad design. Jim recommended the smaller version of the Gripper grip, but I decided to try the big version first, because it has a closed backstrap. It’s supposed to cushion the recoil better, and I don’t like really small grips. My 686 Plus has a tiny grip, and it feels weird.

My dad still hasn’t collected on his Father’s Day gift, which was a concealed carry course. I’ll have to drag him to the class. He wants to go, but he keeps forgetting. He keeps talking about M1 rifles. It would be funny if we started shooting together.

I ordered some Eezox, on recommendations from readers. I might as well mention something which is sure to start a fight. I looked at some rust preventative tests online. Eezox wasn’t the top performer. One product that fared very well is Outers Metal Seal. It’s not easy to find. Break-Free CLP also did very well.

I’m hoping Eezox or something like it will put a halt to the rust on the exposed areas of my ammunition press.

Geez, I still have to take about a hundred .357 rounds apart and try to figure out what’s wrong with them. I tried to shoot some at the range, and they sort of fell out of the barrel, instead of flying true.

I still can’t get the ManCamp boys to go to the range.

While I was at ManCamp on Sunday, Val produced an interesting item. He thought it was some kind of deer rifle. It came from an abandoned house. It was a bolt-action gun with a huge bore. I looked at the bore and wondered what kind of rifle looked like that. Something was wrong. Sure enough, near the breech, I found some very rusty stamping: “.410 Bore.” It’s a single-shot, bolt-action shotgun. Crazy. Someone carved a date into the butt. Something-something-38. I managed to read the word “Stevens” through the crud.

Strange gun. But it was free, so who cares?

I can’t even guess what a gun like that is for.

Let me know when UPS gets here. I am itching to shoot.

It’s Below His Pay Grade

I think I should explain why I’m so irritated with the “Jesus was a community organizer” lie.

It’s not that I object to mixing religion with politics. If anything, I think we should do more of that. We should consider how political platforms comport with our religions when we vote, and when we see problems, we should point them out to others. The IRS ban on mentioning politics from tax-exempt pulpits seems ridiculous to me. To conjure an example at random, if a priest wants to tell his flock to vote against a candidate who supports convenience abortion, he should be able to do it without fear of a big tax penalty. Convenience abortion is a legitimate religious issue; the fact that it has political aspects doesn’t change that.

The ban is obviously an anti-conservative policy. Conservatives are more religious than liberals. There are more conservatives than liberals in churches every week. Even if the intent of the ban is politically neutral, the effect isn’t.

We have to be careful about inappropriate and unrealistic reliance on government to advance religious aims. But our votes have to jibe with our beliefs, as nearly as possible.

The reason I don’t like the community organizer lie, apart from the fact that I generally dislike lies, is that it’s a disgusting and hypocritical effort to portray Jesus as sympathetic to Democrat policies, which He would obviously find repugnant. This is the party that supports nearly every known type of sexual immorality. They support convenience abortion, largely because it’s a necessary adjunct to their support for sexual immorality. They support recreational drug use. They support socialism, which is the single biggest enemy Jesus ever faced; socialist governments overtly oppose Christianity. Liberal Democrats even attempt to supplant God by claiming Man can bring about his own age of peace and prosperity. They’re forcing Christianity out of public buildings, including schools. And they don’t even imitate Jesus’s attitude toward others. They give less to charity than conservatives do. Finally, they support those who oppose Jesus’s people, the Jews, and His nation, Israel.

The GOP may not be a Christian party, but we’re not nearly as hostile to Christianity as the Democrats.

When the Democrats claim Jesus, it’s as if the Republicans were claiming Matthew Shepard. It’s absurd and offensive. This is reflected in a recent news story. A Catholic bishop has asked Nancy Pelosi to come to a meeting and explain why she should be allowed to receive communion, given her support for unrestricted abortion.

“Community organization” is not a Christian tool. It’s a tool of radical politicians. Under other names, it’s a tool of corrupt but non-radical political machines. There is nothing spiritual about it. You may disagree. If you think Ho Chi Minh and Boss Tweed were clergymen.

Claiming Jesus as a liberal agitator appears to be an egregious example of taking the Lord’s name in vain. It would be bad to claim Him while engaged in a spiritually neutral enterprise. But claiming His support while endorsing abortion, sex outside of marriage, and humanism…that’s just crazy. And like sliming Sarah Palin with disproven lies, it is an offensive tactic likely to backfire.

Fire up the Machinery

This is too good not to share.

More than once, I have made it clear that Jesus was anything but a community organizer, i.e. political machine stooge. Here’s a great comment from reader Ed:

I mentioned yesterday in Sunday School, when a reference was made to Jesus as a teacher, that he was not a community organizer. My pastor was in the back and said, “No. He was a maverick”.

I suggested a shirt design to Aaron. Don’t know if he will be interested in marketing this one, as an Orthodox Jew:

“Hitler was a community organizer. Jesus was a maverick.”

It’s funny; if you use Castro, Che, Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, or Pol Pot instead of Hitler, it doesn’t work. Liberals think those guys are heroes.

It’s nearly true, if you use Osama bin Laden.

The Almighty Costcolio Wants it ALL

I need a Costco intervention. I made a run today, and I could probably list ten types of too-big-items-I-never-needed-in-the-first-place I almost bought.

The platter of prosciutto and mozzarella in little bite-size rolls…I still want to go back and get it.

I made a decent score, with some reluctance. The prices on beef were good today, so I went against policy and bought a loaf of New York strips. Usually I buy rib eyes, but I find that Costco rib eyes usually have a big island of solid fat in the middle, which adversely affects the bargain. The beef is good, but that wad of fat is somewhat annoying. So we’ll see how strips taste, after a week of aging. At $5.29 per pound, they would have to be awful for this to be a bad deal.

I need to start buying pork loins. They’re huge and cheap, and what is a pork loin? A loaf of tasty boneless chops.

I found a wonderful item. Kirkland Champagne. From France. REAL Champagne, supposedly. It’s $25 per bottle. I didn’t buy it, but I felt the pull. Wine Spectator gave it a 90. How bad could it be? My favorite Champagne, at prices ordinary humans can afford, is Bollinger Brut. I wonder how it rates on the Wine Spectator scale. I’m still waiting for Kirkland beer. They say it’s on the way.

I bought Costco gas for the first time. Not a fantastic deal, at $3.94 for premium. But at least it was convenient.

My biggest problem with Costco is my South Florida location. Florida Power and Light is the worst power company on earth, and only a fool would rely on a deep freeze here. You can count on losing your power for several hours once or twice a year, with or without hurricanes. If you can’t freeze a lot of food, Costco doesn’t work optimally. Sad. I freeze a few things, but I can’t do what I would really like to do.

I got a crazy idea today. I decided I was going to satisfy a lifelong curiosity. I was going to buy one or more S.W. “Red” Smith products and try them. You’ve seen this stuff, sitting on the counter at convenience stores. Big jars of red mystery fluid, containing eggs or sausages or pigs’ feet. My mom used to love those pigs’ feet.

I have never been brave enough to try that stuff, but curiosity is killing me, and think what a conversation piece one of those jars would be. But it turns out Costco doesn’t sell them. I had Costco confused with Gordon Food Service.

Some day.

The Smith factory is about 20 miles from me, believe it or not. So if I gave them a bad review, they might drive down here and pound me.

I bought red potatoes. They were so cheap that even if I have to throw out two-thirds of them, they’re still a good deal.

It’s too bad the local Costco doesn’t sell ground chuck, which is my favorite type of ground beef. I’d get ten pounds, mix garlic and salt in, and freeze some third-of-a-pound patties. Burgers just aren’t as good, when the salt and seasonings are only on the outside. Before making patties, I could also let the meat sit in the fridge until it got a little brown. Let’s face it. Slightly funky burgers are better than fresh ones.

Here is an informative quote from a story about the Smith company, which belongs to people named Foster:

Complying with USDA regulations for all meat businesses, the Fosters recently hired a lab to test the shelf stability of their sausage by having a piece injected with listeria, a bacteria that sometimes grows in meat and dairy products and can be fatal to humans.

”After a particular amount of time soaking in our solution, it actually killed the listeria,” Jonathan Foster said. “It’s the perfect hurricane food . . . depending on your taste.”

Maybe I don’t need a freezer. Maybe I need a big barrel of vinegar.

The company is now run by two brothers. Here’s a ringing endorsement:

”If you didn’t grow up eating them, say as a child, you probably won’t become a customer,” Jonathan Foster said, adding emphatically that pigs feet are not an ethnic food, but a regional delicacy favored in the southeastern United States.

In fact, the brothers themselves haven’t sampled the product.

”We keep telling each other that late one Saturday night we might dare each other to do it,” Foster said.

Good God, boys. You have to do better than that. Maybe I should run up there and talk to these guys.

Talk me out of going to Gordon Food Service.

Kids Become Scratch and Dent Items

Could this happen in America?

According to AP, there are 88 earthquake victims in China who need to be adopted. They were orphaned by a quake that struck four months ago. So far, only one has found new parents. The reason? Prospective parents don’t want to adopt children over six, or children with handicaps. Naturally, earthquake victims are likely to have injuries and handicaps.

It’s hard to believe. There are over a billion people in China. Can’t they absorb 88 kids?

It says a lot about the attitude taken by people who want to adopt. The point of adoption should be to help a child who is lost in the world. That aim is doubly served, where the child has disabilities or other problems. To people with the right spirit, these kids should be more desirable.

It must feel awful to be one of these kids. They must feel like factory seconds.

When you decide to have kids, you should ask yourself what the goal is. If the goal is to satisfy your need for something to cuddle and show off, you’re doing it for selfish reasons, and you would be better off with a dog. When you have a kid, you’re obligating yourself to perform a series of altruistic acts, for a minimum of eighteen years. If you’re thinking mainly of yourself, you’re setting yourself up for a great disappointment.

Find Out What’s Going on in Latin America

Fausta linked me today at the hurricane edition of the Carnival of Latin America.

She is also doing podcasts every day at 10 a.m. Eastern.

First One This Week

Help me out, here.

I know someone who is in the process of making a devastating mistake. The kind of mistake that has severe negative effects that last longer than a lifetime. I can’t give any details.

Do me a favor and pray that this person will have a change of heart and stop while there is time.

Thanks.

TEN

My life is all about anger management these days. I don’t want to hit 60 and find I’ve turned into a combination of Michael Moore and Chris Matthews. I am Mr. Patience. That’s my new name. BUT I got a little annoyed, watching a weatherman on Saturday. In the morning, I had confirmed that Miami was outside the Cone of Death for Hurricane Ike. Not far outside, but definitely outside. You can still be hit when you’re outside the Cone of Death, but the whole point of the Cone is to show who is most likely to get the storm, and if you’re out, they don’t expect you to have problems.

This guy said we were “WELL WITHIN” the Cone.

How is “just outside” equivalent to “well within”?

Admit it, dude. Nobody expects Ike to hit Miami. I know it’s hard for a journalist to let go of the hope for a major catastrophe. But the lives and property of several million people are somewhat important, too.

I have enough aggravation. I don’t need it compounded by a missing roof and looters. If I’m in danger, please let me know. But don’t yank my chain just because it makes me pay attention to you.

TV journalists got really spoiled by Andrew and the 2004-2005 mess. They got to sit in canoes in knee-deep water and pretend it was major flooding. They got to film Sean Penn’s rescue dinghy, as it sank because he didn’t realize you have to put the plug in the drain hole. They got to use infrared police video of ignorant looters who didn’t realize the cops could see them in the dark. And they got to film a destroyed American city. Now they have to be content with rare storms involving cataclysmic misfortunes such as trees falling across driveways. They don’t seem too happy about it.

For journalists with the wrong attitude, the only bad news is good news. Maybe our journalism schools need to start offering seminars on how to endure and present bad news without developing clinical depression.

Speaking of bad news for journalists, McCain is up…what? What? TEN percentage points in the latest poll? TEN? I would have been thrilled with three. At this rate, by November, Sarah Palin runs the risk of becoming a false deity. Enjoy her, folks. Just remember, she’s mortal. No faux Greek temples, please.

My best wild guess is that the PUMAs helped generate this result, and that they are quite serious when they put up Internet posts and comments overwhelmingly supporting this woman. And why should we be surprised? Nervous liberal talking heads say women “won’t be fooled” into thinking Sarah is an acceptable candidate, just because she’s a woman. My response? Why not? It worked for Hillary.

Here’s a bitter pill for partisans on both sides of the aisle: most Americans do not understand the difference between socialism and capitalism. They are not committed, one way or the other. This is why life is so frustrating for the politically aware. We’re constantly yammering at unobservant people who refuse to absorb obvious knowledge. We’re like Yossarian in Catch-22, pounding on Aarfy’s chest, trying to make him understand that he needs to get out of the nose of the plane.

When Barack Obama tells them they can have piles of socialist trinkets and mirrors, it never occurs to them that these things will erode the capitalist system and destroy wealth. When John McCain tells them he wants to cut pork and keep the tax rates low, it never occurs to them that he is endangering their Great-Society-style handouts. TV pundits say it’s insulting to suggest that the PUMAs would vote for Sarah just because she’s a woman; they say her conservative politics will turn them off. But not all of the PUMAs are true liberals. A lot of them are politically flexible ladies who just want to see a woman on the ticket, even if it’s Phyllis Schlafly. And they’re absolutely correct to believe that a Republican woman will have the same glass-ceiling-shattering effect as a Democrat. If a woman is what they want, Sarah Palin will do. The acronym “Party Unity, My Ass” ought to tip the pundits off.

So maybe the convention bounce comes largely from the PUMAs. If it does, Obama’s free-range goose is cooked. They always say there are 18 million PUMAs. If half of them vote for McCain or stay home, Obama will have a real problem. Last time around, each candidate got around 50 million votes. When 18 million voters desert you, it’s a serious void in your constituency. You can’t just patch it with a composite of nebulous “change” and Bond-O.

Then there’s the other problem: the Bradley Effect. No one likes to talk about it. Non-black voters usually exaggerate their willingness to vote for black candidates. Dinkins was supposed to beat Giuliani, remember? Hypocrisy is most rampant when there is no price to pay. When you’re on the phone with a pollster, you can say anything you want. If it makes you look good to the stranger on the other end of the line, you won’t hesitate to say it. In the voting booth, it’s another story. If you have a problem with black leaders, you’re going to express it with your private vote. Sad, but true. History proves it. From observing the behavior and speech of non-blacks all my life, I’ve come up with an estimate that about fifteen percent of Americans have significant racism issues, and they generally manifest them only in private. If that’s even close to correct, the Bradley Effect is inevitable.

A lot of people in Appalachia will never vote for a black man. The same is true in Boston. Nationwide, Hispanics generally resist voting for blacks. I’ve even heard anti-black sentiment from a surprising number of upper-middle-class suburban Jews. These are shameful facts, but that doesn’t mean they can be wished away. And don’t forget; the last time Obama won an election, his opponent was black.

It would be wonderful to see Americans base their votes on sound reasoning, but things like prejudice and intuition and the candidates’ personalities play huge roles. There is no point in fighting it. If John McCain wins, I’ll be happy, even if I will have questions about the motivation of a lot of the people who helped put him in the White House.

Hey, at least he can count on overwhelming support from blacks and Muslims. I’m sure they’re basing their votes purely on his policies. Whatever those may turn out to be, when he chooses to nail them down and inform us.

Did you notice how he’s saying he might keep the Bush tax cuts? Oh, yeah, that’s a sign of confidence. You can tell he’s not scared or anything. Geez, B. Hussein, if we wanted four more years of Bush, shouldn’t we just vote for George W. McCain? That’s what one of your community organizers told me.

The weird thing about this election is that regardless of who wins, a woman or a black man will be at the inauguration. If you wanted change, get ready. You’re going to get it.

I hope the poll trend continues. I hate having to consider the possibility that a former ward heeler with a history of refusing to rock the boat could ever be elected as a reform candidate, especially without being required to tell us what his policies are.

Your Sloppy Thinking Makes Comrade Lenin Spin in His Glass Box

Even though Hurricane Ike is still a Category 4 storm, I have to say that things are going better than expected. It whacked Grand Turk, damaging 80% of the homes. That’s terrible, BUT the population of Grand Turk is under 4,000. We’re not talking about Nassau here. Things could have been a lot worse.

Right now, Ike is going over Great Inagua, in the Bahamas. I haven’t been there; the Bahamas are full of remote islands and industrial islands no one visits, and this is one of them. It’s the site of a huge Morton Salt plant, and the island’s population is under a thousand.

Cuba comes next. Ike is going to miss Haiti, thank God. Maybe the mountains of eastern Cuba will help break it up.

I’m hoping the storm heads for relatively empty forest in the Yucatan Peninsula. Louisiana doesn’t need another hit.

I got a lot of comments on yesterday’s post, in which I pointed out the absurdity of the claim that Jesus was a community organizer. As I noted, one of the main reasons the Jews rejected Him was that He was not a political leader. Based on their understanding of prophecy, they expected a king who would deliver them from Roman rule. Instead, they got a man who was eager to associate with, and preach to, hated Jews who collected taxes for the Romans. No sincere radical agitator (if such a bird exists) would do a thing like that. And while He cared for the poor, He associated with prosperous business owners who had servants. James, John, Andrew, and Peter, for example. They didn’t fish while standing barefoot in ponds. They owned fishing businesses, with hired help. He also healed the servant of a Roman centurion, who probably was not Jewish, as he was a member of the Roman’s household. Jews were not supposed to live with Gentiles. He allowed Martha’s sister Mary to rub expensive perfume on his feet, instead of selling it to help the poor.

I noted that Jesus opposed civil disobedience, and like any Christian who knows anything about the Bible, Virgil understood instantly:

“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s…” Not much political activism in those words.

The opponents of Jesus tried to trick Him into endorsing civil disobedience, with a question about paying taxes. And He told them to pay up.

It’s distressing that leftists now claim Jesus as a community organizer, because that’s exactly what His enemies told the Romans. They said He was setting Himself up as king. And that was untrue; even Pilate saw through it. It made no sense at all, in view of dissatisfaction over His unwillingness to be a political figure.

After 2000 years, you would think the enemies of the church could come up with a better, or at least more original, slander.

And leftists, including America’s relatively watery variety, are enemies of the church; a century and a half of history makes that clear.

I read a horrendous story about East Germany. The East German government, like all leftist governments of the time, tried to eradicate religion. The story is in Brother Andrew’s book, God’s Smuggler. The East Germans obtained machinery to harvest wheat, and they were proud of this advance (usually leftists oppose automation, but we’ll let that pass). Harvest time came, and rain came with it. The machines could not be used on wet fields. They required a couple of days of dry weather.

The government put up posters, and in German, they said, “Without God and without sun, we will get the harvest done.”

And it kept raining, and the harvest was lost, and it became impossible to find bread in East Germany.

The government put out reports criticizing the “lies” about the harvest, saying bread was everywhere. At least the Germans got to read about bread while their bellies rumbled.

Imagine the anti-Christian hostility you would have to have, to put up a poster like that.

And let’s not discuss the Cuban government, which forced clergymen to cut sugar cane–slave labor–because they were considered unproductive members of society.

Anyway, Jesus organized communities about as vigorously as Obama tried to reform the corrupt Chicago machine. Which is where HIS bread came from.

Mr. Obama’s Shabby Profession

Someone suggested I explain the term “ward heeler,” which I used to describe Barack Obama, who used to perform this function in Chicago.

A ward heeler is a flunky for a political boss. They are close kin to bagmen; some do both jobs. In the past, bosses hired scary goons to do this stuff; I suppose they still do. Ward heelers roam around town, convincing people to “vote the right way.” They keep people in line. They find out the concerns of the citizens, and they try to turn them to advantage. They may exchange money and alcohol for votes. They sometimes stand as near to polling places as they can, staring down voters who disagree with them, and making it clear that they will be remembered. They “help” us make the right political and social decisions. Bosses are too busy counting their money to attend to these matters.

Ward heelers are now called “community organizers,” for a very important reason: it sounds better. They’re more sophisticated and less violent than they used to be, but it’s still a fairly slimy gig. They have community organizers in Cuba. They exhort others to support the regime, and they spy on the people in their neighborhoods, and they have them sent to prison for things like buying meat. The Nazis had community organizers. Some were called Hitler Youth; others were called capos. The concept is associated with contrived political philosophies imposed from the top down; the very opposite of grass-roots movements, which arise spontaneously from below. Obviously, Barack Obama is not a Nazi collaborator or a corrupt communist stooge, but he belongs to a broad class which includes such people. He was a professional busybody, paid to keep the citizenry under control. This doesn’t have to be done by coercion or intimidation; you can do it by building “food banks” and organizing marches, but the aim is fundamentally the same. Reward the faithful. Punish those who disagree.

According to Wikipedia, Saul Alinsky is a seminal thinker in the area of “community organizing.” You may not remember Mr. Alinsky. He was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley. He wrote a book on the concept. It was called Rules for Radicals, and he dedicated it to Lucifer, “the first radical.” If you want to learn about Mr. Alinksy, buy Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism. I don’t recall all the facts, but the general impression I got was that this man had a Khmer-Rouge-style philosophy, in which morality was defined solely by the leftist results one’s actions produced.

Oddly, a lot of people who know nothing about the Bible call Jesus a community organizer. The truth is that Jesus was a great disappointment to the Jews, precisely because he was not a community organizer or any other type of political operative. First-century Jews were sick of Roman rule, and they hoped for a Messiah who would be a political ruler, more like Saul or David than Moses. The rejection of Jesus was partly based on this distinction. He came and went, and the Romans were still there. Jesus was not a community organizer. He organizes individuals, one at a time. From within.

Jesus was an evangelist. He did not organize protests. He did not tell people how to vote. He spoke up against civil disobedience. He never made any effort to expel the Romans. In fact, he left them pretty much alone, reserving most of his criticism and exhortation for his fellow religious Jews. He preached a form of religion based on each individual’s personal relationship with God, not a community-centered movement fueled by the power of organized groups.

It’s pointless to explain this to people who are unfamiliar with the Bible, i.e. leftists. They think Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi were basically fungible, and that they agreed on all the essentials. In reality, the similarities are few, and the differences are obvious and irreconcilable.

It’s odd that a man with a Harvard law degree would become a professional lackey for a notorious political machine, but that’s what Barack Obama did. Yet somehow he is considered exceptionally pure, and Sarah Palin is considered a hack, because she thinks we should drill for bad old oil, which may make money for old white guys. The world is a funny place, and that goes double for Cook County.

Now you know what a ward heeler is. Wouldn’t it be great to have one in the Oval Office?

More

The point is illustrated nicely, over at Sondra’s place.

Correction

A commenter points out that Obama got his law degree after his stint as a Chicago machine flunky, not before.

Nobody Likes Ike

It is Saturday, September 6, and I am still inside THE CONE OF DEATH.

I don’t know why they call it “the cone of uncertainty” on TV. It’s THE CONE OF DEATH. We all know that. We know that because everyone inside the cone is certain to die. If not during the storm, eventually. You can’t dismiss the connection just because it takes ninety years to come to fruition. A lot of people were in Miami during the 1926 hurricane, and they lived through it. But now most of them are dead, so their gloating was ill-advised.

I hate to say there has been “good” news at a moment like this, but I feel safe in saying there has been news that suggests my life is going to be easier than previously thought. Ike’s cone keeps sliding down the monitor screen, and today, the center of the cone is several hundred miles from me. Two days ago it was right over my house, and now it’s over Cuba. I am afraid the Lord will smack me if I call that good news, because Cuba is in trouble. But I would not be human if I did not feel some relief. Some people can sleep in Miami without air conditioning. It is a trick I have never mastered. I guess I’m spoiled, but I cannot drift off while stuck to warm, wet, mildewy sheets and pillows, especially when my windows are open and I can hear every generator in the neighborhood, sputtering.

When you close your windows and turn on the air conditioning, which hums, you get a certain amount of relief from noise. In Miami, this is helpful partly because it shuts out barking dogs and neighbors who play salsa at three a.m., but also because it makes it harder to hear the sound of giant roaches skittering around on the hardwood floor near your bed. Try to sleep with that going on. Every time it makes a sound, you wonder if it’s about to climb up the side of the bed and under your sheets. Which actually happens. Much better to sleep soundly and discover the mashed roach in bed with you the next day.

Loyal reader Pam, who lives in South Carolina, sent a couple of pictures documenting extensive damage from Tropical Storm Hanna. The photos feature four patio chairs which are no longer upright, as well as a couple of twigs that fell off an oak tree. Later on, I’ll post a Paypal link so you can send Pam money. She sent another interesting email. I only skimmed it. Something about illegal aliens trying on her underwear. I don’t have to tell you how disconcerting that can be.

Bad news for Al Gore (and good news for the human race–funny how often it works out that way): the tropics are settling down. We are not expecting the parade of hurricanes to continue unabated. Let’s hope this is the end of the season, so I can relax and grow my bananas in peace.

The roaches aren’t doing too good. Those Combat baits really work. And I’m making great headway against the ghost ants. God bless the nuts in New Zealand who published the sugar-and-boric-acid syrup recipe. You have to wonder why a person would bother putting a thing like that on the Internet, but it seems to have worked. I’m getting so cocky, sometimes I leave food on the kitchen counter just so I can have the pleasure of coming back later and seeing it not buried in a mass of squirming ants.

This is a lot better than my previous solution, which was to learn to eat ants without complaining. If you have eaten anything I’ve cooked here over the last three or four years, you probably ate a good number of ants. I used to discard anty food, but now as long as the food part outweighs the ant part, I just eat it. Over the years, I’ve probably eaten a thousand ants, which, if they were combined in one gob, would be about the size of a BB. They are said to be highly nutritious. All I know is, they have no perceptible flavor, and their droppings are not big enough to be visible against the white surface inside a sugar canister.

This is where ants and Miami roaches differ.

Incidentally, I’ve heard that putting boric acid in your underwear will discourage illegal aliens from trying it on. Your mileage may vary. Another option: cayenne. Here’s something you can put in your underwear that will definitely discourage Mexicans from trying it on: a Rottweiler.

Things are generally looking up, although McDonald’s managed to ruin my breakfast again. I felt like living dangerously, so I ordered a Sausage McMuffin instead of an Egg McMuffin today, and they took me very literally, giving me a McMuffin with sausage and cheese, but no egg. What’s that all about? My arteries cry out for their daily dose of cholesterol, and they’re not getting it. When you don’t eat enough cholesterol, your arteries open up, resistance to blood flow drops, and your heart gets lazy and weak. I dont want that happening to me. That’s why I challenge my heart every day. Some days, I get up and inject cream cheese directly into my neck.

I suppose Cuba would have been threatened by Hurricane Ike, even if it had hit Miami. When Miami gets hit, it cuts off the gigantic flow of refrigerators, ovens, TVs, and other items Cubans in Miami ship to Cuba every day. Viva el embargo. People say Miami Cubans are not in favor of sending American wealth to Cuba. That’s not exactly right. Every Cuban in Miami is highly, highly in favor of sending wealth to Cuban Cubans…IN HIS OR HER FAMILY. What they’re firmly against is anything getting to any Cuban in Cuba who doesn’t have relatives in Hialeah. The embargo: it’s for OTHER Cubans. It’s a highly nuanced position. Study it well. If you get to the point where you understand it, maybe you can explain it to me. Start with the premise that there is no blatant inconsistency here; that will keep you from drawing any conclusions that get you mentioned on Spanish-language AM radio.

The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s okay to ship a cargo container full of DVD players to Cuba in the morning, and then lecture me later in the day for smoking a Cohiba. Sending ten thousand dollars’ worth of appliances doesn’t prop up the revolution in the slightest, but one double corona may well save Castro from humiliation, in addition to increasing my already-impressive carbon footprint.

Cuba was going to take a beating, regardless of which way Ike turned. So maybe it IS okay to be happy it’s not headed for Florida. Why should it harm Cuba AND me?

Man, I like the way I think. I like the cut of my jib.

I wonder, if I went back to McDonald’s and showed them my receipt, whether they would hand over the egg they shorted me.

Blasphemy Buttons

Want to express your opinion of the paltry qualifications of former ward heeler Barack Obama?

Here’s one way.

Suspense is Pain

In ten minutes, the Hurricane Ike Cone of Death updates. I always hate these intervals before the forecasters decide who lives or dies. I have suffered through hundreds or thousands of them. And even though Ike is a major threat, while Hanna is a fairly puny storm, Hanna updates every three hours, and Ike takes twice as long.

Right now, they’re talking about Category 4, with me in the north eyewall. Not unlike Andrew. I would really appreciate some good news right now.

Last night, they seemed to be suggesting this thing was headed for Palm Beach. I have nothing against the fine folks in Palm Beach. I never pray a hurricane will hit someone else. But I have to admit, I felt better before the Cone of Death slid south.

A Category 4 in Miami would be a hideous spectacle. Not as bad as Andrew, because we’ve improved our preparations, and because a lot of the stuff that can be blown over by hurricanes has already been blown over and carted to the dump. But it would probably mean weeks without power. Days without water. A total cessation of productivity. And a return to those sweaty sheets I remember with such fondness. I am not eager to repeat these experiences.

I am tempted to get a generator, finally. For little storms, a generator is pointless, because the power only goes out for two or three days. A week is unusual. For big storms, it makes more sense. I think Andrew knocked power out in this neighborhood for about six weeks. I’m actually looking at the Lowes site.

Whoops, here comes the update.

YES! YES! THE PATH SHIFTED A HUNDRED MILES SOUTH!

Oops. I mean, “Darn, it looks like the Keys and the Gulf states are in trouble.”

Ward Brewer must be in Havana.

This could actually be a good thing. It might squeeze between Cuba and the Keys and hit a sparsely populated area in the Yucatan Peninsula. And the winds have dropped to 120, which suddenly seems like a nice number. If the eye is a hundred miles south of me, as currently projected, the damage to Florida will be limited to areas where there aren’t many people. We’ll get blown around, and I’m sure Florida Power and Light will find an excuse to leave us in the dark for half a day, but it won’t be Son of Andrew.

Generators seem to be much better than they used to be. For under a grand, I can get a 4250-watt generator that runs 21 hours on one tank, and it has 240 for hot water. Are hot water heaters 240-volt? Whatever. I can run my welder and compressor, at least. I can take sheets of scrap steel and build a turret from which I can shoot looters.

Sorry to say it, but the generators with Japanese engines are much more tempting. I don’t know where Briggs & Stratton makes its engines, but if it’s not Japan, they can keep them. I support the USA and all that, but my support ends when it comes to products I truly have to trust.

I know the storm is too far away for me to make predictions. The odds that it will hit me are slim. There is no reason to go out and spaz on the front lawn. I might do it anyway, just for the comforting sensation.

I hope everyone in Hanna’s path is taking precautions. Trust me, a big cooler and fifty pounds of ice will cover a multitude of sins. If you don’t have LED flashlights, get some. They burn forever on one set of batteries. And don’t underestimate the value of storm candles. You don’t always need bright light. A candle in your living room can keep you from running your toe into furniture, and a big one will burn for days.

Val Prieto has a preparation list up. Funny, I don’t see Beanee Weenee™ on there.

Let’s all pray this thing breaks up and heads for uninhabited land.

Incidentally, a reader has a charity recommendation. The charity is called Mercy and Sharing, and their site says 100% of donations reach Haitian children, because the charity’s founders cover the administrative costs. I can’t vouch for them, because I can’t find them at Charity Watch or Charity Navigator, but you may be able to find better information.

Here’s a link.