AnchorageDailyPlanet.com

The lonely lives of fruit inspectors

By WESLEY PRUDEN

alt You don't have to be a "mainline" Christian cleric who preaches to empty pews to think the angry skepticism of Barack Obama’s faith has gone a rant too far. But it helps.

A group of these clergypersons got together this week to sign a letter to their congregations and whoever else might read it to stop "misrepresenting" the president's faith. Brave as these worthies are, they can't quite say what it is, exactly, they object to, since to say it plain might offend the followers of Muhammad. But they're talking about the claim that the president is a secret or not-so-secret Muslim. (At this point the politically correct thing to say is, "not there's anything wrong with that.") One recent poll suggests that one in five Americans say Mecca is where the president's heart is.

"As Christian leaders whose primary responsibility is sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with our congregations, our communities and our world," the clergypersons wrote, "we are deeply troubled by the recent questioning of President Obama’s faith. We understand that these are contentious times, but the personal faith of our leaders should not be up for public debate."

Add comment (0)

Add comment (0)

Dismantling America: Part III

By THOMAS SOWELL

alt One of the few campaign promises that Barack Obama has kept was this: "We are going to change the United States of America!"

As in many other cases, those who were thrilled by the thought of "change" seldom seemed to consider whether it would be a change for the better or for the worse. True believers in the Obama cult assumed that it had to be a change for the better.

Now it is slowly dawning on more people that it is a change for the worse-- runaway government spending, under the banners of "stimulus" and "jobs" is not stimulating anything except political pay-offs to special interests. As for jobs, the percentage of the population with jobs keeping on declining, even as the administration points to all the jobs it is creating.

Add comment (0)

Add comment (0)

Who cares about our future?

By WALTER WILLIAMS

alt My column titled "What Handouts to Cut?" created a number of angry responses, and for the first time in my life, I had some, not much, sympathy for political cowardice. Most letters were from senior citizens angered by my suggestion that they were receiving handouts and those handouts be cut.

Federal tax receipts for 2009 totaled $2.1 trillion. The largest items in the federal budget were Social Security ($710 billion), national defense ($689 billion), Medicare ($456 billion) and Medicaid ($327 billion). The primary recipients of federal spending are seniors. Some of the letters argued that it's unfair to characterize what seniors are getting as handouts because they worked all their lives and paid into Social Security and Medicare.

Add comment (0)

Voting for Miller just dumb

By PAUL JENKINS

alt Watching the Joe Miller campaign as it labors mightily to unseat incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski from her U.S. Senate seat is a hoot. The effort is a long, painful half-truth wrapped in innuendo and seasoned by outright lies. It would be comical, a Three Stooges kind of funny, if it were not simply pathetic - and dangerous to Alaska.

The problem is that Sarah Palin’s fingerprints are all over Miller’s campaign. The shrill hysteria. The accusations. The frenzy. The hype. The blatant lies and wide-eyed misrepresentations. As in her campaign, it’s all there, only with a front guy sporting something that might someday be a beard.

The truth in today’s election is simple and in two parts: First, Miller is supported primarily by Palin, the worst half-governor in Alaska’s short history, a woman who managed to stick it to Alaska in too many ways to count. A vindictive woman with a long memory for slights and a vengeful nature, Palin, if not an outright narcissist, could be slightly nuts. She left for greener pastures, but she is baaaack.