Need Some Punditing?

I'm pleased to introduce a new entry to my blog roll. Le Renard Subtil's Citizen of the State is an interesting “pundit blog” that's part of the Gone Ape Web Network (as is What in Tarnation!?!). This blog has been up for about a month, and I decided it was high time for me to add it to my blog roll rather than using my blog roll to get to Christopher's blog roll to get to COTS (if you aren't confused by now, you should get some kind of award!).

American Flag...

How sad. I just had CNN Headline News on, and some student (and star sports player at some college) who disagrees with current government policy felt a good way to express this way to face away from the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. How sad that someone would think that rejecting our flag, in essence, our country is the right way to disagree with certain policies. Apparently the student is at the college only has the opportunity to be the star there because the government is giving her a scholarship…

It's snowing again...

…yes, it is. Amazingly, it seems that everytime the snow melts this year, it snows again. It's at that point where everyone (around here in Missouri, at least) I think is ready for spring (hi Christopher!). I must admit though, barring unforeseen traffic issues tomorrow morning, it was quite beautiful in its icy whiteness, and I enjoyed it tonight. The motion sensor light came on earlier and the snow just glistened on the hill.

Radio Personalities.

I was just thinking about this as the radio personalities at KMOX have spent the day discussing the murder of long time personality Nan Wyatt, the host of the “Total Information AM” program. It's odd, I'd never met Wyatt, but it still was something that gave me pause when I first heard of the news on the radio this morning.

Certainly this isn't something that is just me either. I was amazed at all of the heartfelt responses from callers to KMOX today. Even major figures like Gov. Bob Holden and Sen. Jim Talent took time out of their day to express their sympathy and talk about Wyatt's impressive skills as a host and interviewer.

Radio is special like that, in both sad times like this and good times. I don't have any glitzy ending for this, but I just felt likesaying that right now.

At What Cost?

What do I mean? Many people around the world (not just Muslims) are looking at this as a “Christian Fundamentalist” war. While that isn't really the case, the fact that President Bush is a Christian does make it seem at least somewhat plausible. The problem, as I see it, is that people may be less prone to the Gospel if they think it is that thing that those “war mongers” talk about. The fact that many (most?) evangelical Christians (including myself) are conservative in politics means that we are indeed closely aligned with the “war mongers.”

Further more, the doctrine of the Preemptive Strike, no matter how right it is in nature, seems to go against everything that we stand for, if we take the Bible at its word. Again, it could be argued that the attack is in order because Iraq is violating UN resolutions, but in that case, the administration should stick to the UN framework, at least for now, and drop the preemptive strike concept.

I should mention that I was a big supporter of the war. I think in many ways it would be a good thing in the long run. But, I'm not sure I can justify support for it if it will end up creating more and more enemies of the church that are less prone to accept the good news of Jesus Christ.

In essence, I worry that we are trading spiritual things (bringing people to the Gospel) for wordly things (safety from a rogue regime). Is it worth it?

Sick

I've been meaning to post some stuff on here, but I've been under the weather, and just not had the “umpf” to follow through. I'm starting to feel better though (yay!) so expect something posted here soon.

Knowing You

Now my heart's desire is to know You more,
To be found in You and know as Yours,
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All surpassing gift of righteousness

—Graham Kendrick, Knowing You

Space Shuttle Tragedy

If you haven't already heard, the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded or otherwise broke apart at about 9:00 a.m. EST this morning while attempting to return to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

• NASA and CNN.com both have information on the tragedy.
• The mission included the first ever space flight by an Israeli. In a sad bit of irony, the majority of the shuttle pieces that have been found have been located near Palestine, Texas.
• Some have suggested the damage that lead to this may have occurred at launching when a piece of shielding from the rocket hit the shuttle.
• The White House believes, due to the space shuttle's height at the time of the event, that it was not caused by terrorism.

Is the State of the Union (Address) Good?

On Tuesday, Americans around the country gathered for that highly anticipated event on television and radio that happens just once a year. No, it wasn't the Super Bowl delayed by two days, it was the annual State of the Union address by the President of the United States, and this time around, everyone nervously anticipated whether President Bush would use the opportunity to declare war.

Surprisingly, he didn't. Rather than a unilateral declaration of war, over half of the address was spent talking about various domestic issues. It was certainly reassuring to see that the President was keeping up on other issues beyond what to do with Iraq, and many of his proposals sounded both bold and laudable.

Unfortunately, while he ran on a conservative platform of more responsible spending, and even during the speech, emphasized the need for the country not to grow its budget faster than the incomes of those it serves, it seemed that the President was suffering a bad case of “fuzzy math.” Although he managed to emphasize the tax cuts that his core supporters and party want, it was unfortunate that he also unveiled billions of dollars in new spending. Considering that the federal budget is already running up a large deficit, I found it puzzling that President Bush was proposing more spending and more tax cuts at the same time.

Still, on other issues that he covered, his positions seemed to be sizably less contradictory, thankfully. For example, it was good to see the President speak boldly against the threats of human cloning and urge the legislators to pass a ban on the same this year. It was at this point that he seemed on a roll as he also spoke out for preserving “human dignity” by pushing for a ban on partial birth abortion. These were the kind of things that had made President Bush's campaign the dynamic, successful one that it was, and it was nice to see that he hadn?t given up all of his values in his attempt to be a “unifier and not a divider.”

Then came Iraq. After attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to use the North Korean crisis as a launching board for why we should attack Iraq — odd logic indeed — the President dove into the issue everyone was really waiting to hear him speak on. Considering that the State of the Union address is hardly the proper place for declassifying information, the President did do a good job of providing a convincing “I really do know something I'm not saying yet” element to his discussion of Iraq.

I was pleased to see that the President's plan includes sending Secretary Powell to the United Nations on the fifth of February. While I have long been an opponent of the United Nations and its attempts at encroachment on national sovereignty, in this case it would seem that working with the UN security council, and hopefully convincing them to support us, will lend more credibility and strength to the United States' effort to depose the Iraqi regime.

All of this built up to the “big idea” of the evening as the President concluded that, based on the evidence, if Iraq is not an evil regime, then “evil has no meaning.” Indeed, the details, if they can be proven true, would show that Iraq has violated virtually every core point in the 1991 ceasefire agreements, as well as basic human rights laws that would most certainly put Saddam Hussein in line for a crimes against humanity trial.

The real question though, was left up the air. I think virtually no one doubted that the current administration is determined to get the regime change that it desires, however, the question of when was not addressed. Considering Powell's scheduled meeting with the UN Security Council next week, we know there is at least a week, but after that, things become significantly harder to figure out.

In summary, as usual, the State of the Union address was interesting; although not necessarily informative on the issues we all really wanted to know about. At least it did give the pundits something to talk about.

Tim Butler is the guy that writes this journal. He also writes on the computer industry at Open for Business.

Still here...

…and I have some thoughts I'd like to post here. But I'm too tired tonight. Oh, KDE 3.1 came out today — go download it using the time you would have spent here.