Joe Carter is doing a four parter on saving conservative political discourse and policies in today’s more-hostile-than-yesterday climate. First, stop the bleeding, he says. Next, let’s kill all the lawyers. No, we’ll do that later. Next, start the breathing.

I don’t know that Joe nails in on every point, but he’s close to the mark. It seems to me there are well-defined conservative ideas and there are well-established conservative people who may or may not hold the conservative position on a certain issue. Calling the person a liberal would be unfair, even if you could make a case for his position on the one issue being a liberal position. That is McCain’s problem, as I understand it. It doesn’t matter to may voters and commentators I suppose that the American Conservative Union gives him an 80+% lifetime conservative record. It matters that on the issues McCain has taken leadership, he has led in a liberal direction. You could easily believe he voted with conservatives on their issues out of party loyalty instead of principle, so as president he would be more likely to lead according to his less than conservative principles.

But I’ll vote for him anyway–at least at this point. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I want to be a good steward of my part of the earth. I think I always have. My parents taught me the evils of littering and some of the joys of gardening. I learned other joys on my own. All of my married life we have kept the house warm in the summer and cool in the winter to save energy (and perhaps our air conditioner). We’ve taught our girls not to waste water, especially during the last several months of the drought, and for watering our house plants we have collected rain water. I know I could do more, but it’s a challenge when it seems everything we’re told about saving the environment is hype and lies.

The latest is National Geographic’s upcoming special, “Six Degrees Could Change the World.” Will the ocean rise 80 feet? You can stop it by turning off your TV and recycling it. It’s an energy hog.

The magazine site states, “Obviously, the most straightforward way to stop the frighteningly rapid rate of climate change is to reduce humans’ output of carbon dioxide by 60 to 80 percent.” So do your part by breathing less, please.

I’ll try to heed Mr. McCain’s advice by calming down, but I hope if he is elected president, he won’t make me change my light bulbs. I don’t want the Department of Energy telling me I can’t use incandescent light bulbs when the alternatives, compact florescent bulbs, really aren’t much better. Their light spectrum is different than the one put off by incandescents, and what is this about special recycling? I can’t put them in the trash can? Is that on the packaging?

Sweden is supposed to be leading the way on this front, but apparently the great Swedish recycling success is as shaky as Ivar Kreuger’s wealth. I’m disenchanted. Who do you believe?

Back in November, NASA reported on its study of the Arctic Ocean. “Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming,” said the lead scientist from the University of Washington. And yet just last week NPR had a spot on a cruise of Antarctica which tried convince us that the cracking glacial ice was our fragile earth breaking up under our feet. I wonder if they question the cracking sounds in their freezers.

Environmentalists have no credibility with me, which is why I’m frustrated with our government’s refusal to drill for oil in the arctic wasteland and their capitulation on so many other points with people who appear to be striving for American failure, third world poverty, and in some cases the termination of undesirable people. What’s a descent steward of creation to do?

Things are looking better and brighter now. I’m not referring to the weather forecast, which calls for a cold snap over the weekend, but to my personal psychological climate. Yesterday’s storms have largely passed. You want to know more? Well, if you insist…



The first thing that got me down yesterday was Romney’s withdrawal speech at CPAC. I wasn’t enamored of him as a candidate, but he seemed to me the best of the field. I think my dislike for McCain, like that of many conservatives, is mostly feelings-based. He bugs me, and I’m pretty sure I’d bug him if he knew me. I suspect that whenever he finds an excuse to give the Christian Right a wedgie, he goes away from the finished task with a warm feeling of having made the country a better place.

That said, I’m really tired of the people who call into radio shows and bark that McCain’s a liberal and they’d rather see Clinton or Obama in the White House. You have to live in a very bizarre alternate reality, it seems to me, to say that. I’d rather hire a guy who does his job well and cares about the welfare of my business, but gives me a hard time now and then, than hire a guy who’s polite and empathetic and keeps giving the stock away.

I like hyperbole as a satiric technique. I’ve been a big fan of Ann Coulter’s until recently. But some people seem to be taking their own hyperbole seriously.

If I wanted to be a member of the Silly Party, I’d register as a Democrat. Continue reading Thursday post-mortem →