Are We Fighting A Holy War?

The anti-religious want to see some sort of historical connection between the Crusades and the War on Terror. This is something they have in common with the Islamofascists.

Charlie Gibson's misquotation and misinterpretation of Sarah Palin is an example of that.

I think that most religious conservatives--including Gov. Palin, as evidenced by her citation of Abraham Lincoln--believe that we must fight where we believe the fight is just and for just causes and pray that we are on God's side rather than praying that He is on our side.

This, I think, is an important distinction.

From Instapundit

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538, Sonk, Evergreen, &c.

UPDATE 14 Sept. 12:30am MDT:

Dear Mark, Diana, Amanda, Kaitlyn, Trinh, & other miscellany UCLA-related friends:

59-0, I rest my case.

Love

Jake

It's Saturday and it's game day for BYU. This week the Cougars are playing another Pac-10 team--this time, UCLA, for the 3rd time in just over a year. As I'll be attending the game and entertaining a visiting fan, blogging will be light this weekend. That said, take a look at a couple of things:

- While at the RNC, I reconnected with an old BYU friend who wrote about her experience shepherding Republican big-wigs in their interactions with the press. Check it out here.

- One point on the Palin's interview w/ Charlie Gibson: If you think she revealed her ignorance of foreign policy w/ re: to her question about the specific application of the Bush Doctrine, then you know less about foreign policy than, well, Sarah Palin. See, specifically, Charles Krauthammer's column about the origin and development of this idea of the Bush Doctrine.

- Great, redemptive news out of 538 for the Evergreen State: McCain is within 2 points (2 points!) of Obama in Washington. All the other numbers look pretty good for McCain, too.

- For those of you who care about such things, the Palgrave Econoblog has a mostly unscientific listing of the Top 50 Economics Blogs. Notably missing is Greg Mankiw. FWIW, I read Mankiw more than all the rest combined.

- Part of me feels bad for Democrats (but not that bad). They reached their popular-appeal-peak months and months ahead of the actual election.

- Revisiting Fannie/Freddie: The Candidate of Change is going to have to answer why he would allow no change or reform of the GSEs. See Decker's post on this at Pendulum Politics.

- Obama & Dems generally have announced time and time again that things will be different this election--that they won't allow themselves to be Swift-boated--you know, sunk by the truth. This is how they hit back (ad link).

When they decided to make fun of McCain's alleged distaste for using computers, did they think that maybe the reason he doesn't use them was because his injuries, suffered while serving his country, made it painful/impossible?

The Obama campaign's get-tough strategy can be summed up thusly: Make Fun of Veterans' Disabilities.

Let's play my fav. game, compare 'n contrast:

Drawbacks on selecting one candidate vs. the other:

McCain doesn't like to write emails/use computers because of the pain and disability resulting from being tortured by the North Vietnamese. He's, like, sooo out of touch with Obama's twentysomethings. How can he be our President?

Senators Obama, Dodd, & Clinton (among others) resisted reform and regulation of Fannie & Freddy, which is partially to blame for the current housing crisis. "Why did they do this," you ask?

Campaign donations. Not just any donations, but donations you can believe in (joke explanation for the stupid and humorless: you know, because the check didn't bounce).


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Dem Debate

We've scanned the web to get a general sense (salute) of last night's Democratic debate and have been surprised to find that we disagree with most people--at least, according to the Drudge Report poll.

We thought Hillary was sharp, composed, articulate, funny at times, and generally, good. Obama was less impressive than usual. And we don't mean, less impressive according to the standard he set for himself. He seemed less articulate and more convoluted in his logic than we have seen him in the past. We were especially bothered by his default tack: lecturing.

George Stephanopoulos was good. Charlie Gibson was also good. We were shocked, shocked that these two guys actually put hard questions to the two candidates. This was a sharp departure from the love-fest nature of past Dem debates.

On Monday was we drove somewhere, we listened to the Sean Hannity show on the radio. We don't listen to Hannity very often, but when he has an interesting guest, we like to tune in. And on Monday, he talked to Karl Rove and George Stephanopoulos. Sean wanted to know why the press hadn't asked Obama about William Ayers. We won't get into the nitty gritty of the relationship, suffice it to say that Obama's relationship with this admitted terrorist is troubling.

Stephanopoulos has taken a lot of flak today for posing that, and other questions, to Obama. What do these people think? That McCain or anyone else is going to let Obama slide on these things in the general election? The only reason Obama has been as successful as he has been so far is because the press has treated him differently to how they have treated Hillary Clinton.

And this may be the wonderful irony of this election. Because of the press' love for Obama, they may in fact be doing him a disservice by not giving his record the vetting and scrutiny it might normally get during this stage of the campaign. As a result, things are going to come out in the general election--Chicago machine--that will seem like they are being sprung on or swift-boated on the Obama campaign. The truth? The press won't have done it's job so it will take that long to be found out by bloggers or some other source.

This is the double edge of the fawning press sword. Sure, he gets good, free, propaganda from the MSM, but because they don't ask the tough questions he doesn't have to sort through any of the tough things in his past. And we suspect this stuff will come back to bite him.

We first read Stephanopoulos' book, All Too Human, back in 2002. It was fascinating for a number of reasons: it was a window into Clinton's presidency and showed the man to be a flawed genius; it talked extensively about the policy development and rivalries among the Clinton staff; it illuminated interesting points in American history. Now, Stephanopoulos' book suffers from all the same problems common to memoirs: it is hugely tainted by the bias of the author.

It has but one source.

Still, Stephanopoulos seemed pretty fair in the book. He didn't point a finger at everyone else and exculpate himself. He certainly showed himself to be a smart, fair, and idealistic young Democrat. We obviously don't agree with his politics, but his book presented him as fairly reasonable.

And after last night's debate, he gained a whole lot more credibility in our eyes. He asked tough questions of both Hillary and Barack--questions no one else seems to be asking. Partisan supporters of both camps certainly didn't like Stephanopoulos' questions, but we sure did.


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