Saturday, November 10, 2012

Winston-Salem Journal LTE SA 11/10/12


Evangelical response
The writer of the Nov. 4 letter “The altar of politics” makes many criticisms concerning evangelicals and the election, compelling me to respond.
He questions our support of Mitt Romney, a Mormon, over President Obama, who claims salvation through Jesus Christ. Evangelicals perceive, however, that the president’s actions do not lend credibility to his words. Sitting in a church no more makes one a Christian than sitting in a garage makes one a car.
And despite the differences in our faiths, Romney represents what we most value — love of God and country, reverence for all life, the sanctity of the traditional family and the freedom to practice our religion as the Founding Fathers intended.
This writer’s accusations — that we don’t care about women, or the poor and suffering, or about teaching salvation — are all based upon ignorance of the facts, so must be overlooked. Abortion hurts women; most regret their abortions and many suffer life-long trauma because of them. Pregnancy-care centers, staffed by evangelicals, minister to women, many post-abortion. This very week, church friends of mine are traveling to New Jersey with the Baptist Men of N.C. They’ll be working to alleviate the suffering there and to share the gospel — at their own expense — compelled by the love of Christ.
Samaritan’s Purse and Operation Blessing are also on the scene — evangelicals all. Because we care.
CHARLOTTE GARRISON
Boone
So many follow
President Obama: Instrument of God's will. Abortion on demand, marriage devalued, our people sent class-against-class into battle against each other as our nation stumbles into Hell. This is where our commander in chief leads us, and so many follow.
Obama is leading and his soldiers are Democratic liberals and the media are his flag bearers.
I am thankful for believers who know that God can handle this, as it appears most of our citizens choose to be victims. Conservative America found a man who really loves America, but the majority chose one who doesn't. We'll understand it better by and by.
TONY GOINS
Lewisville
Keep in touch
I agree with the Nov. 7 editorial “Don’t ‘fight’ for us, please.” However, we cannot vote and relax, either. We need to keep in touch with those elected in Raleigh and Washington. We need to let them know what we need to keep us safe and sound. Sometimes we can even let them know what we want. We need to be careful to not let our “wanters” exceed our “needers.”
Change begins from the bottom up.
It is easier than ever to keep in touch and up to date on issues, so let's try harder this time around to be part of the process in this amazing country.
MARY ALICE BAKER
Lewisville
More Scorecard responses
Don Witte: “9 ...very good news. A lot of work to be done, and Republicans must find out exactly what they are the party of.”
Clint Johnson: “5. The country is in deep trouble and the re-elected president doesn't seem to realize it. I just hope he has an epiphany that he is president of all the people and not just his voters. If he and Michelle announce they are going on more taxpayer-paid vacations, we will know that light-bulb moment has not happened.”
Dan Barrett: “1, because I fear we are headed down the wrong path. Yet, my prayers are with President Obama, and all our elected officials. Perhaps now, with the election over, our leaders will find a way to work together to resolve the difficult issues that face our nation.”
Ashley O. Johnson: “1. I’m grateful that we serve a God whose power transcends all authority given to man.”
Deb Phillips: “0. Endemic lies and corruption have factored in to Barack Obama’s political ascendancy, including his first term and re-election as president. We now have four more years of lies and corruption to look ‘forward’ to. But I mostly fault the media lapdogs who helped create and maintain the image of the ‘Savior’ Obama. Through their own lies and corruption, many journalists have done a great disservice to the American people; and they have become a disgrace to their profession.”
JoAnn Dunn also ranked it 0. She wrote, in part, “ … I’m not sure a Republican can ever be elected to the highest office again with half the electorate so dependent on the government for survival and an opposing political party with so many ways to alter the outcome. As Josef Stalin said, ‘It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.’ ”
Scott Rhodes: “I give this entire election a 0. We entered the election a very divided country fed up with partisan bickering and lack of progress in solving some really scary problems. After a couple of billion dollars worth of campaign spending and an exhausting year of petty, rancorous campaigning, we reelected incumbents at every level of government.”

27 comments:

  1. Bucky, now living in several states isn't a qualifier. Living in the state of confusion, psychotic state, and catatonic state, does not make one an expert on geography. North Carolina is one of the most livable places for many reasons. It's diverse geography, it's central location, the climate, higher education (thanks to progressives live Bill Friday and Terry Sanford), it's people too but not because of conservatism. I saw an interested graph. The top 10 educated states, rankings based on people over the age of 25 with college degrees or more, all voted for Obama, the worst 10 educated states except for Nevada (#7) all voted Romney.

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    1. The research for the data come from the U.S. Census bureau and was provided by http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/10/15/americas-best-and-worst-educated-states/

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    2. I saw that Bob. You're making the same mistake that a lot liberals do. Note: Given your intellectual savvy, that's a surprise. Anyway, most of people that voted for Obama live in urban areas if you'll notice. It's easier for that population to go to school because of the proximity of schools to their homes. Many 'rural' students get on the bus before sunrise and get home at sunset.

      Furthermore, there are more economic opportunities in urban areas. Thus making it easier to pursue higher education.

      Plus, many urban voters are members of unions. Unions, essentially, force their participants to vote Democratic.

      Map

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/election-map-2012/president/

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    3. I know most democrats live in Urban areas. Areas of dense population where early voting is crucial to allowing fair and unencumbered elections. That's why the curtailing of early voting was so sinister and calculated. Luckily curtailing early voting had an opposite effect. It energized the democratic base. About 11.8 percent of the workforce is unionized and of course it would be in urban areas where where the early industrial age began. I posted the Red/Blue county map the other day which clearly shows the breakdown between urban and rural voters. Even states like California and New York are mostly red by county acreage.

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  2. California voters also voted to increase their sales taxes and increase upper level income taxes on Tuesday to pay for their schools. If the US wants to remain competitive in the global marketplace, we will have to educate our children, all of them.

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    1. More people are moving OUT of California than in. I'm sure that trend will continue with the passage of Proposition 30.

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    2. Between April of 2010 and July 2011, California population grew at 1.2% while the nation's population grew at 0.9% according to US Census Bureau. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html, do you have more current information or is it just a gut feeling?

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    3. California demographic shift: More people leaving than moving in

      LA Times

      http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/27/local/la-me-california-move-20111127

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    4. Bob, you're something else. Hee Hee....

      Also, while you're playing with your uh, computer. Check out the number of businesses that are leaving CA.

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    5. Perhaps fewer people will help preserve the natural beauty of the state.

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  3. LTE #1...Evangelical Response.
    A Study in the August, 2000 issue of Archives of General Physchology found that 80% of women were not depressed after having an abortion. In fact, the rate of depression in the postabortion group was equal to the rate of depression in the general population. As for post-traumatic stress symptoms, the rate was 1% in the postabortion group compared with an estimated 11% in women of the same age in the general population.

    The study's authors say the results agree with previous studies -- including one by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD -- showing that severe mental distress following an abortion is rare.

    "Most women were satisfied with their decision, believed they had benefited more than had been harmed by their abortion, and would have the abortion again," writes study author Brenda Major, PhD. "These findings refute claims that women typically regret an abortion." Major is a professor of psychology at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

    I believe evangelicals care, but as you said, it comes with a price: "They’ll be working to alleviate the suffering there and to share the gospel ".
    OWS, also is helping with disaster relief, as stated on their home page, "Occupy Wall Street & 350.org have teamed up with Recovers.org – a people-powered disaster relief platform – to help coordinate response to Hurricane Sandy in NYC."
    The OWS volunteers started in the Lower East side and have been moving through New York's five boroughs with members of international environmental organization 350.org and recovers.org, a disaster aid group. But they are only sharing their time and energy.
    This nation is great because people from the far left and the far right can come together for a common communal cause.

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  4. Every election cycle since I started following politics in 1964 has been called "the most important election in our lifetime." I do know that this election has been the most satisfying election of my lifetime.

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    1. Getting rid of rules and regulations within government is almost impossible. The growing trend and effort by the Obama Administration is add more. Thus making our country less 'free' in terms of individual and corporate liberties. That's why this election was particularly important.

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  5. So many follow. Since more and more Americans are now imagining that any hope for success runs through their government, the fiscal hole we are digging will only get deeper. It will be quite a democracy we live in where those who vote for a living outnumber those who work for a living. The longer this continues, the farther down the age scale the pay it back misery goes. The Left thinks the future belongs to them. Briefly. If the Left is the answer then follow the Blue dots from Athens to Rome to Madrid to Paris to Providence to Harrisburg to Springfield to Sacramento. Blue Model governing is dying.

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  6. I'd say the 'Racial Justice Act' is history in a few months.

    Yeppers. The liberal Democrats had their little experiment with interjecting race as a form of protection for murder. You would think that people with good sense would never try to pass, much less implement such a law that uses race as a form of protection to accountability for crimes committed.
    That's the rub, Democrats don't have good sense.

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  7. Keep in touch. Don't worry, government knows what we want AND need. If you doubt it, just use the acronym BOAT....break out another trillion. They just print it up in DC and boom--problems solved. No worries.

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  8. Scott Rhodes...election O. Status quo. At least our phones are not ringing every hour. We have the government our institutions have sold us. Entertainment and education primarily. To quote Lincoln: "The philosophy of the classroom today
    will be the philosophy of government tomorrow."

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  9. Peggy Noonan, speech writer for the Great Reagan, was one of the few "conservative" writers that I respected. On election eve, she had a Rove-like meltdown of her own and began blathering about yard signs and "vibrations" and made a complete fool of herself.

    Frank Rich, on the other hand, probably the best political writer of our time, is still on track. His piece in New York magazine is the best analysis so far of what happened on Tuesday, which means, of course, what happened over the last ten months.

    Here's what he has to say about the demonization of Nate Silver, who called all 50 states correctly while the GOP favorite Rasmussen was blowing all but three of the swing states:

    "The most histrionic indicator of the GOP Establishment’s enlistment in the post-fact alternative universe was the pillorying of Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight statistical model (and accompanying blog) in the Times analyzing all major national and state surveys on a daily basis consistently found Obama a fairly prohibitive favorite in the race…

    …Dean Chambers, a conservative blogger who gained popularity on the right by setting up a junk-science Romney-boosting site called UnSkewed Polls, implied that FiveThirtyEight was skewed by Silver’s sexual orientation. Chambers wrote that Silver is “of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.” (To which Silver responded with a classic Tweet: “Unskewed polls: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!”) Scarborough’s and Chambers’s efforts to discredit FiveThirtyEight mirrored their party’s attempts to demonize the nonpartisan organizations that questioned Romney and Ryan’s voodoo economics as well as Jack Welch’s assault on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You challenge the imaginary numbers of the post-fact GOP at your peril."
    ___Frank Rich

    That last sounds like someone we know, doesn't it?

    I particularly liked the yard sign/bumper sticker counters. We downtown folks don't have yards to put yard signs in, but we see plenty of bumper stickers. This year I saw exactly one Romney/Ryan sticker, and maybe a dozen Obama/Bidens. Guess it was an off year for stickers. I certainly did not draw any conclusions from those numbers.

    Some fool drove around Chapel Hill a few weeks ago counting yard signs and concluded that not only had the Chapel Hill "liberals" abandoned Obama but that Romney might even carry Orange County. Some people see only what they want to see.

    The turnout in Chapel Hill and Orange County was about the same as in 2008. 70.18% voted for the President. That was down a whopping 1.65% from the 71.83% figure in 2008. So much for the yard sign poll.

    Rich's article is HERE. It's a bit long, but worth every word.

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    1. If you'd gotta out of the ghetto Rush, you'd have seen a few more Romney signs.

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    2. Excellent article OT. Thanks for posting.

      Actually, one of my favorite things about living in Chapel Hill/Carrboro was that I saw a McCain/Palin bumper sticker exactly ONE time. Also Carrboro has a lot of freaks, which I like. It gives a town personality.

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  10. For 10 agonizing minutes, an 18-year-old mentally disabled woman was raped in the back of a Los Angeles County bus at rush hour as it rolled past a state park, shopping mall and cemetery while no one on board did anything to stop it.
    ________

    I'll bet the rapist voted for Obama though.

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/disabled-woman-raped-los-angeles-city-bus-17680405

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  11. (CNN) -- A prominent Texas attorney and former university trustee faces charges of laundering more than $600 million for a Mexican drug cartel.

    The attorney, who once was a trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University, was arrested on November 2 at a restaurant in El Paso.

    http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/justice/texas-lawyer-arrested/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
    _________

    Just goes to show you that some of these so called 'smart' attorneys turn into sleazy criminals.

    Of course, I've know that for a long time. Haven't you Rush?

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  12. "All in"

    Don't you think it's a bit much for FoxNew to have a photo of Gen. David Petraeus's mistress holding a book with that title?

    http://www.foxnews.com/

    Reminds me of that little 'Speedo' photo Bob put up.

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  13. Remember when Obama said the ACA would make health insurance rates go down, and dopes like Rush bought into it?

    I guess somebody forgot to tell Blue Cross Blue Shield about it.

    http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=253831

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    1. 30-39% rate hikes in California by BC/BS. If this keeps up, they are going to have rename the Golden State to the Brown State because so many people will taking it up the whazoo!

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  14. dotnet asked yesterday if we thought the big spenders had learned anything from this election.

    No doubt they have, and will seek better ways to spend their money.

    But their biggest problem is that their party is still defined by the sort of mindlessness displayed in the four posts just above at 10:01, 10:30, 1:00 and 1:09, not to mention others just like them day in and day out.

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  15. "If someone thinks they are going to walk around campus smoking a joint, it's not going to happen," says University of Washington spokesman Norman Arkans.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/10/marijuana-university-colorado-washington/1692827/
    _________

    Oh, come on! Let the kiddies get stoned. You have to be out your mind to enjoy the new 'normal'.

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