Tag Archives: Daily Kos

A Surprise Victory For Republicans

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Guy Benson at Hot Air posted an article today on the special election held in Arkansas on Tuesday. The election took place in Craighead County, which has not been represented by a Republican in the state senate since reconstruction. John Cooper, the Republican candidate, won the election with 57.21 percent of the vote.

On Sunday, the Daily Kos reported:

The Democratic nominee is Steve Rockwell, a businessman and political science professor at Arkansas State University. The Republican nominee is John Cooper, a retired businessman and former candidate for the State House of Representatives.

…On the politics side of things, this election is huge. Craighead County is a key area of the state for both Mark Pryor and Mike Ross to win (they need to get at minimum 49% of the vote in this county to win the state) If Rockwell can’t put up a decent showing, Democrats are going to have some serious issues going into 2014.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

So here we had a contested race in a traditionally Democratic area, the outcome of which held significant implications for Mark Pryor’s re-election bid.  An Obamacare-related controversy drove the campaign. Oh, and according to an email blast from the NRSC, the Republican candidate was outgunned on the spending front by a three-to-one margin.

There is hope.

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For Your Consideration…

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On July 10, the Daily Kos (yes, you read that right) reported that the trial began in Manhattan this week for fourteen veterans who were arrested for reading the names of American soldiers killed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan at New York City’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The soldiers had not finished reading the list when the police asked them to leave, and when they continued reading, they were arrested. One of those arrested was an 85-year-old Word War II Army combat veteran.

I have very mixed emotions about this. Yes, it is within their First Amendment rights to assemble and read the names (this was part of a gathering to ask that all troops be immediately withdrawn from Afghanistan), but if there is a valid curfew, they are also required to respect that.

The article reports:

The defendants are being represented by attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild-NYC, who argue in a brief that “the memorial is in constant use by pedestrians, dog walkers and other people after 10 p.m.,” and that the veterans “were in fact singled out for arrest precisely because of their First Amendment-protected activities.”  

Defense attorney Martin R. Stolar characterized the police behavior as “morally outrageous” and has stated, “Legally, we believe [the defendants’ actions] will be protected by the First Amendment.” Another lawyer for the defendants, Jonathan Wallace, called the event at the veterans memorial “the core of what the First Amendment was designed to protect.”

I think it would have been nice if they had left when asked and continued reading the names when the park opened the next day. There may be more to this story than is immediately obvious.

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Are You In Favor Of Human Rights ?

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It seems an obvious question, but is it? I borrowed the title from Eric Allen Bell. It was the title of the last piece he wrote for the Daily Kos. Mr. Bell’s story is told at Front Page Magazine.

Eric Allen Bell is a writer and a filmmaker. He went to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 2010 to follow the story of the people of the town protesting the building of a mosque in their town. As indicated by the fact that he wrote for the Daily Kos (until he was silenced for writing articles expressing his views on Islam), Mr. Bell is not a conservative Christian. He makes clear in his article that his awakening to the truth of Islamic government had nothing to do with religion.

Mr. Bell details some of his search for the truth about Islam in his article:

Over the coming months I watched as the Muslim Brotherhood gained political power in Egypt.  I saw that cab driver’s worst fears come true as Coptic Christians were attacked by Islamic mobs.  I saw Tunisia institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic Law.  After Libya fell, the Transitional Council also instituted Islamic Law.  The nuclear armed Islamic government of Pakistan arrested and punished those who cooperated with the United States in killing Osama Bin Laden.  A woman under the Islamic government of Afghanistan faced execution for the crime of being raped.  Similar news stories emerged from Iran.  A man who typed “there is no god” as his Facebook status in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, was arrested for blasphemy.

Several Muslim men in England were arrested for handing out leaflets to Londoners demanding that homosexuals be executed by hanging for violating Islamic Law with their lifestyle.

Please read the entire article to hear to story of Mr. Bell’s change of heart toward Islamic governments. He asks the question, “Are you in favor of human rights?” to contrast the differences between freedom and life under Islam. That is the question all of us need to think about.

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An Early Entry In The Silly Season

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The silly season is that period of time when everything Congress, the President, or the media do is related to an upcoming election. It usually starts about seven or eight months before the election–in the 2012 election cycle it has already begun.

Newsbusters posted an article on Friday about an article posted in the Daily Kos by Ray Pensador. In his article, Mr. Pensador states:

There is a strong legacy of puritanism in the American culture.  There is a strong legacy of atrocities, of the enslavement and extermination of millions of people, of the appropriation of other people’s land and property, of cruelty, of unimaginable greed.

Yes, this could be said about many other countries, and it takes generations for a country to cleanse itself from those abominations, but again, as a country we are very young, and many of those atrocities happened only a few decades ago.

And therefore that cultural legacy has not gone away completely.

Today, in 2011, there are millions and millions of people in the United States that harbor a deep-seeded hate for what they consider to be minorities, immigrants, and for people who advocate for concepts of social justice and equality for all.

These people hold a twisted sense of piety that revolves around the concept that God will bless His followers with richness and good fortune, and will punish the sinner with poverty, disease, and despair.

They see the concept of equality and justice, and compassion, as advocated by Liberals and Progressives, as interference with God’s will.

In that sense, there is a certain proclivity towards sadism.  There is a certain satisfaction is seeing the suffering of those who they consider unworthy, lazy, sinful.  In their eyes, and again, richness and prosperity are the results of piety, and poverty and suffering, the result of debauchery.

What planet is this man living on? I am not a theologian, but I am not an idiot either. The Puritans were not perfect, but they believed in a work ethic, the family, morality, faith, and following God to the best of their ability. They made mistakes along the way, but generally speaking, I would say that their society was much healthier than our current society. Christianity supports equality of opportunity and equal application of justice–it does not support equal outcome. Christianity sees hard work as a virtue, and encourages charity.

Trashing Christianity is not attractive. Trashing a candidate because of his Christianity is even less attractive. Our country’s laws are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic–to attempt to undermine that ethic is to attempt to undermine the foundations of our government.