Freedom Haters

That's an apt title from the editorial section of the Washington Post about the far left in this country. There is no evil more vile than America in the eyes of the radical lunatic left and there is no leader more criminal than President Bush.



From the far left in our own country, we now we hear talk about how brutal dictators aren't really so bad, and genocide isn't as bad as we say it is. What? What has happened to our sense of history and proportion in this country? We have no concept of scope, no thought for the world beyond our narrow perception. And I'm not talking about cliche "American's don't know the world" talk either. I mean, we really have lost sight of the bigger picture. Unless we right ourselves, this kind of moronic shrill yelling will become the norm across our country.

What Are Evangelicals All About?

Since all of us on the Mod-Blog staff consider ourselves evangelicals, this is a relevant question that we face from our culture. There's a really good article from Portland that makes a worthwhile attempt at understanding us.



Considering that the author is not a Christian, it's a very fair piece that honestly seeks to get into our culture. She fails to make some distinctions that I would like to see (such as the difference between an evangelical and a fundamentalist) but she does a good job overall in trying to dig into what makes us tick. And to be honest, there are times when those of us within the Christian world can barely draw lines concerning what defines us from other subsets of Christianity. Given all that there is to learn, I give the writer credit for even trying to understand our odd little culture.

Light Blogging Day

Apologies for the light blogging today. Blogger was acting up a lot earlier in the day. We'll be back with our normally scheduled posting tomorrow.

The Left and the Troops

It's not the first time, but it's no less repulsive. This time it's Eric Alterman blaming the death of a soldier not on the terroists or insurgents that actually killed him but instead on our government. Eric, one of the foulest liberals I've have the displeasure to read, takes the tragic death of another US soldier and turns it into a chance to argue the tired garbage that we've all had to hear over and over and over.

Military Mistruth: Immorality or Strategery?

This article on Yahoo! news talks about an interesting and disturbing development in the War in Iraq. A few weeks before the invasion of Fallujah, a Marine spokesman gave an official notice to CNN that the invasion had begun. He was lying. The report given to CNN, widely reported, and then widely retracted, was an attempt to guage how the insurgents in Fallujah would react to an invasion. This is called "Psy-Ops" (Psychological Operations) and is standard in warfare - dropping leaflets on the enemy was done by both sides in WW2 - but this is one of the first times that an American military spokesman gave bad information to an American news network. In other words, it is the first time that it was official military policy to decieve our own people.



This is troubling to me, and yet I am not sure which way to go on it. On the one hand, "All's fair in love and war," and this move did yield us valuable information. On the other hand, with a liberal population already predisposed to disbelieve anything put out by the Bush administration or the military, isn't this just taking away another level of credibility from our government. If we can't trust the military to be honest with its own people, how do we know it still understands who is "us" and who is "them"?

XM MyFi Radio Reviewed

As avid listeners to XM Satellite Radio, my family has been eagerly awaiting the release of the new XM MyFi reciever, which provides XM Radio anywhere with Tivo-style time-shifting capabilities in an iPod-sized case. Well, USA Today has out the first review for the device. Their verdict: not exactly what they had hoped, but a great package overall.

All said, it's a nice debut for a Walkman-style satellite radio. And XM's competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., doesn't offer a comparable device. But unless $350 is pocket change for you, I'd wait to see if the next generation of the MyFi is cheaper or contains more features. In a perfect world, it would offer more of the features of an MP3 player — more storage space and the opportunity to swap songs with a computer. Of course, in a perfect world, Vanilla Fudge would be on MTV more often.

Not bad for the first one out of the gate. Of course, the MyFi 2 will give XM a chance to really show what it can do, once the users provide a little feedback. My guess is that this will be a hot seller this Christmas.

California: The Land Of Laws

I am often intrigued by California. We tend to be different from every other state and it normally comes down to something involving a law. Sometimes I look at the way our legal system works out and here and say, "Hey, why don't more states do that." For example, I love how the governor can put anything on the ballot and have the citizens vote to pass it and make it a law. It keeps our state congress accountable and let's us get the real important issues through. Other times, I wonder just how stupid the people who live here are. Yesterday morning I had one of those moments. I was running late for work and low on gas. I stopped by a gas station and picked up breakfast. This is the same gas station where I found out you need to be over 18 to buy a lighter because lighters are smoking related paraphanalia. Honestly, I could go either way on that issue since there are few, good reasons I can think of that someone under 18 would need a lighter, but it is the government interfering with what should be a parental education and personal responsability issue.



Well, not only do you have to be at least 18 to buy a lighter, you also have to be at least 18 to buy cold medicine. Every year, there is a propose a law contest where citizens can suggest laws and State Assemblyman Joe Simitian picks winners and propses them as laws. The winners get to testify before the legislature as to why they should be laws. Well, it seems that this law was suggested this year because parents can't teach their kids to be responsible with cold medicine. I understand that you want to protect kids, but this isn't a "Government raise my kids" issue. This is a "Parents wake up and raise your kids" issue. We've already had schools lock up glue because kids were sniffing it. What's next, pass a law that you have to be at least 18 to buy Elmer's glue?