Saturday, May 21, 2016

Poor Bernie!

I can't help myself, I have to re-post this cartoon, it just cracks me up. Amazing how the party of PC and tolerance is starting to turn vicious on the honest old geezer who really believes all the socialism stuff.

Sorry, Bernie. As honest as you might be in your belief that it should work or could work, it never has and can't given the nature of mankind. Maybe your sincerity proves you to be an "intellectual"... according to Thomas Sowell,
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”

Cartoons: Michael Ramirez for May 21, 2016

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Vote Your Conscience in November. But VOTE!

Dr. Randall McElwain wrote the following insightful post on his FB page.  To everyone who decides that they cannot in good conscience vote for Trump (and I may be one of them) there is something that is CRITICALLY important to remember, especially if you are making this decision on grounds of Christian conscience: 
You must not sit at home. You must go and vote! 

Every one who makes the conscious choice to cede the Presidential election to the Democrat must still cast their vote for the best available Congressional candidate, to provide a check against the liberal president. And, like it or not, we must go vote for the best state judicial candidates, school board members, city council members, state officeholders, and the like. Your vote has much higher weight there.

This is our Christian duty. We cannot complain about bathroom bills, or homosexual rights, or lack of restriction on abortions, or the sorry state of the public schools, or any of the innumerable other policy conditions in our country if we fail to exercise our right to vote for the people who enact such policies.

No excuses.

Now read Randy's excellent commentary which follows.
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May 4 · Public

In this post, I am breaking two of my personal commandments:

1) Thou shalt not post on Facebook.

2) Thou shalt CERTAINLY not post about politics on Facebook.

However… now that it appears certain that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president, I am starting to hear the theme among many evangelicals: “Christians must not sit out the election. We have a duty to vote. Trump is better than the Democratic candidate. So, we must hold our nose and vote for the Republican candidate."

I beg to disagree. I have voted in every election since I reached voting age. But with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, I am convinced that it is my duty to sit out this presidential election.

Look at the arguments of those encouraging us to "hold your nose and vote."

We are told that “we are voting for a president, not for a pastor.” Donald Trump’s problem is not that he is unsuited to be my pastor; the problem is that he is unsuited to my president.

The first election that grabbed my interest in 1980. As the first American president to be divorced and remarried, and as a Hollywood actor with a rather checkered past, Ronald Reagan was not suited to be my pastor. However, he had a long record of support for conservative principles, and I was happy to have him as my president.

To my friends who point to Reagan as the model for a Trump presidency, let me break the bad news to you: Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan. He has no record of supporting conservative principles. To those who say, “Yes, Donald Trump was liberal in the past, but he may have changed,” he hasn’t changed. The “past” is as recent as Trump’s endorsement of Planned Parenthood during this campaign!

We are told that Hilary (or Bernie) will be worse than Trump. While this may be true, the longterm damage done by a Trump presidency may well be worse than either of the Democratic candidates. Consider:

1) For the past several elections, evangelicals have been taken for granted by the Republican party. “Moderate” candidates such as Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney have assumed that “Evangelicals have no other option; they can’t vote for the Democrat. So, we can ignore them and run to the center.”

I held my nose and voted for these. And the stench keeps getting worse. It is time for evangelicals to show that we are not puppets of the Republican Party. If we vote for Donald Trump, we can no longer claim to be guided by moral principles; we are just one more special interest group. In that case, we deserve to be ignored! When evangelical “leaders” such as Jerry Falwell, Jr endorse Donald Trump, they give our opponents good reason to scoff when we claim that evangelicals vote for moral principles, not a political party. This election is an opportunity for evangelicals to show that we vote conscience, not party.

2) It maybe better to have a liberal president who is identified as a Democrat than a liberal president who is identified as a Republican. If Hilary Clinton wins, she will support disastrous policies - but at least she will be opposed by Republicans. If Donald Trump wins, it is very unlikely that Republicans will stand up to him.

Based on his history, it is fair to assume that Donald Trump will appoint liberal Supreme court justices. Those appointments will be supported by Democrats and will not be vigorously opposed by establishment Republicans since he will be “one of ours.” (Republican senators have no decent record of standing up to Republican presidents who propose liberal justices - see David Souter, appointed by George H.W. Bush and Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan).

We are told that if we lose this election, evangelicals will lose our influence in American politics. Again, I beg to disagree. Sometimes you must lose a battle in order to win a war. Donald Trump will very probably lose this election. He consistently polls below both Clinton and Sanders. In the general election, his extreme rhetoric, vulgar language, questionable business deals, and self-indulgent lifestyle will become huge liabilities. If I were Hilary Clinton, I would be secretly begging for a Trump nomination; the attack ads write themselves.

So, why should evangelicals share the blame for his loss? Instead, we should lose strategically. If a big majority of evangelicals openly boycott the election, it will give a message to the Republican Party: “If you continue to ignore our concerns, you will never win another presidential election.” We will suffer a short term loss for a long term gain.

There is a fairly recent precedent (from the other side): the 1984 campaign of Jesse Jackson. Jackson ran a campaign to protest the Democratic party’s tendency to take black voters for granted. Many commentators blame Walter Mondale’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan on Jesse Jackson’s split of the party. However, this loss is credited with laying the groundwork for Obama’s win in 2008.

If we can use a 2016 loss to lay the foundation for a genuine conservative win in 2020, it will be a “good loss."

If Mr. Trump is nominated, I believe there is a very good argument for evangelicals sitting out the presidential vote en masse. This should be done not quietly, but publicly and vocally. Evangelical pastors should encourage their members not to vote in the presidential election, while encouraging 100% participation in state and congressional elections. This will do two things:

1) It may help preserve a Republican Senate to oppose Hilary’s agenda.

2) An unprecedented disparity between the lack of evangelical participation in the presidential vote and in congressional/state votes will highlight the impact of evangelicals on an election. Perhaps we can regain an evangelical voice in the Republican party.

A final thought. God is not a Republican; God is not a Democrat; God is not even an American. Regardless of who wins the election, God’s Kingdom will not be defeated. As Chuck Colson reminded us years ago, “The Kingdom of God does not fly Air Force One."

Is it possible that the church in America will face difficult times and even suffering? Yes.

Is it possible that evil will triumph in the short term? Yes.

Is it possible that God’s Kingdom will be defeated? Absolutely not!

As evangelicals, we may be short-range pessimists - 2017 may be difficult. However, we must be long-range optimists - God will triumph!