Month: February 2004

John Kerry is on the stump trying to tell people how he will protect jobs. Here is his solution:

“…he would order a 120-day review of all trade pacts. He laid out specific guidelines for companies wanting to send jobs overseas, including at least three months’ advance notice for affected employees as well as notification of the Labor Department, state agencies and local government officials.”

That certainly would make it more difficult for jobs to be shipped overseas. Which brings up the law of unintended consequences. Pretend you are an employer with offices in Colorado and offices in Mexico. Demand goes up for your product and you need more people to make your widgets. You want to create jobs in Colorado. Now wouldn’t you stop and think twice knowing that you would have to go through all these hoops if you need to relocate jobs later? Or worse, you may want to eliminate jobs when demand slumps, but worry about employees (union?) filing suite saying you are moving the jobs and accuse you of violating Kerry’s regulations. It doesn’t matter that you aren’t moving them. You now have to pay legal expenses to show it was job elimination not relocation.

It’s just too much legal liability. Nope, instead you will create those jobs in Mexico as insurance that you won’t have to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare later. He blames President Bush for jobs relocating. He will do even better by making sure they aren’t created here in the first place.

I just got back from seeing The Passion of The Christ. My opinion:

Stunning.

First, how anyone can claim the movie is anti-Semitic or portrays all Jews poorly was not watching this movie. In the movie, there are members of the Sanhedrin who courageously try to defend Jesus, obviously unsuccessfully. Many others walk out of a trial that clearly becomes a farce.

I have heard other criticism that Pontius Pilate is treated too sympathetically. I saw his actions as cowardly. The movie portrays his motivations exactly as I’ve believed. That is, he notes Jesus was innocent, yet he is more concerned with politics of releasing Jesus than making a principled stand to free an innocent man.

Watching the torture of Jesus was horrible. Mel Gibson showed excruciating detail of what the Romans did to people. Even more moving was seeing those scenes through the eyes of Mary as a woman watching her son dying.

Through it all, Jesus message of love and forgiveness is not lost. It is emphasized even more by showing flashbacks in between scenes of the crucifixion. The short resurrection scene shows us that his sacrifice was not in vain.

Mel Gibson took “the greatest story every told” and produced the greatest movie ever made.

This one is funny.

Earlier this week, I mentioned that Mel Gibson refused to publicly disavow his father’s discounting the holocaust in WWII. On Thursday, Little Green Footballs, posted a quote from a radio interview Hutton Gibson (Mel’s father) had with a radio station and made remarks like, ““It’s all – maybe not all fiction – but most of it is.”

I certainly disagree with those statements. What I find as sad are calls from LGF readers in the comments section demanding Mel Gibson publicly denounce his father.

Mel’s refusal to denounce his father is a sign of his integrity. Mel Gibson made it perfectly clear in the Sawyer interview that he believes anti-semitism is unChristian. At the same time, those Christian beliefs tell him to honor (not necessarily agree with) his father and mother. It is not his place to publicly condemn his father’s views.

People say its a good thing to know another language. I’ve never really had the aptitude for it though. I figure, if God wanted me to speak a foreign language, He wouldn’t have invented English.

About a half hour ago my sister-in-law gave birth to an 8lb 15oz baby boy. Welcome to the world Cody Charles. Congratulations Julie and Shawn.

Dennis Prager wrote on interesting article on the continuing trend of women exposing their bodies. He believes it is the promotion of the ideal that mean and women are the same.

He concludes that women are saying: “I am a woman. And I will declare it in one of the only ways left to me — I will show you my female body.”

My thought is what happens when even that is taken away. After Janet Jackson revealed her breast on national TV, some people tried to defend it by saying “What’s the big deal. It’s only a boob.” In essence, they are saying that breasts are no longer sexual, and by extension, not definitively feminine.

Thankfully, most men don’t agree. If it was “just a boob” it would not have been the most “Tivo’ed” moment to date.

John Kerry is a deeply confused man when it comes to military service. In the current campaign, he can’t say more than two sentences without referencing his Vietnam service.

Many pundits are calling his service “honorable”. He did, after all, receive three Purple Hearts and other medals for his actions in combat. I don’t know if his service was honorable. For me to call it honorable, I have to believe was doing what he thought was honorable. Yet in 1971 he made a speech before Congress that the LA Times credits with convincing many Americans that the war was immoral. During the testimony he accused all levels of the military of committing the most horrible atrocities.

He now tries to claim is proud of both his service and his anti-war protests. Kerry believes the war was immoral. So how can he be proud of participating in a military action responsible for so many atrocities? He can’t have his cake and eat it too. He cannot have served honorably in a war he believed to be immoral.

Let’s call his service “brave” but not honorable. John Kerry is responsible for casting a poor light on his service by his protests following his combat experience.

Kerry emphasized his moral bankruptcy by equating service in the National Guard (and by extension all military reserves) to draft dodging. “I’ve said since the day I came back from Vietnam that it was not an issue to me if somebody chose to go to Canada or to go to jail or to be a conscientious objector or to serve in the National Guard or elsewhere.”

Thanks, Mr. Kerry. My time in the USMC reserves (after active duty) was just as honorable as deserting the military.

I just finished watching Mel Gibson’s interview by Diane Sawyer. ABC posted more about the interview on their web site. I’ve read about Mel Gibson’s convictions in making this movie. In tonight’s interview I finally saw that conviction for myself.

Throughout the interview he stood his ground. He claimed that “we all” are responsible for Jesus death. When asked about Jews involvement in the cruxifiction he said: Jesus “was a child of Israel, among other children of Israel. There were Jews and Romans in Israel. There were no Norwegians there.” He said Jews and Romans “were the material agents of His demise.”

On the other hand, Diane Sawyer seemed to display an astounding ingnorance of Christianity. Her commentary had the tone that Christianity needed to be explained to Americans (presumably because the majority of viewers would not understand its tenets) even while she is showing statistics that say 82% of Americans claim to be Christians. She also came across as incredulous that Mel Gibson actually believed that the Bible was literally true. His answer was exactly what I believe: if part of it is not true, then none of it is true.

Near the end, he showed complete inner resolve and integrity by refusing to allow comments made by his father to be used against him. His response to Diane Sawyer was, “He is my father and I love him…Leave it alone Diane.”

I will be seeing this movie.

And yes, I believe the story is true.

Democrat presidential hopeful John Kerry proved again that he is not running on issues by criticizing President Bush for appearing at the Daytona 500. After appearing at a photo opportunity at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, WI – Kerry said, “This is not a time for photo opportunities, it is a time to create real opportunities in America,” regarding the President’s opening of the Daytona 500.