And why am I supposed to care if Obama is an anti-imperialist?

  Mike Huckabee, of whom it was said in this this blog recently, looks like a viable presidential contender, is trying his darnedest to prove otherwise.

  Not only am I becoming more and more privy to the scope of his pardoning blunders, and his unpopularity among many conservatives who know him best, but I've come to the conclusion that he has no idea of what he is talking about half of the time.

  The biggie recently is his saying that Obama grew up in Kenya and adopted the anti-imperialist/anti-colonial views of his grandfather. Everyone has honed in on the first part of this, but let's look at the second. Why on earth is it a bad thing if our President is an anti-colonialist?

  Is Great Britain a country whose history of imperialism we would want to imitate? There are moments in the 20th century, and even in this new one, that would indicate we have stepped in that direction occasionally. For the most part though, we have been a country that supports self-determination. The best of us are giving moral support to that right now as we see what those in Egypt are going through.

  Huckabee said at one point of Obama, "his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American." If anything we, as a country started by former British colonies, should have plenty in common with the anti-imperialist sentiment expressed by some former colonies. And as far as what the average American thinks of the Brits, I would cynically have to ask whether the average American thinks about the Brits at all (aside from The Beatles and James Bond films, I guess you could insert whatever other pop-culture export the island has blessed us with...I'm partial to the Stones, at least up until the "Some Girls" album).

  I know that some Brits were uncomfortable with Obama giving them back the Churchill bust (another thing Huckabee mentioned in the same interview) but as an American I'm totally fine with it being replaced with a bust of Abraham Lincoln. And I don't think David Cameron is losing any sleep over a statue, no matter how much it is worth.

Harding gay newspaper makes "the New Yorker" website

 It'll be interesting to see how far this story goes....

The New Yorker story can be found here.

Harding University now has an underground gay newspaper...

...and I'm sure chatter around campus has just gotten much more interesting. Here's to free speech.

The first issue can be found here.

Dissecting the Democrat-Gazette Opinion pages.

If I'm ever desperate for something to blog about the Dem-Gaz Opinion page comes through in a clutch. The contrived folksiness of the Editorial, the predictability of its political columnists, and the nuttiness of at least one letter means there's never a shortage of things to address.

In today's paper we get to enjoy:

1. An editorial about a topic I actually agree on, putting a stop to Senate Bill 568 and House Bill 1572 which would open the door to predatory lending. My beef though is with the reference to the grocery tax. They once again refer to it as "The Shame of Arkansas". Okay, I'd love to see the grocery tax gone, I think that's a worthy goal. But I'm tired of the paper referring to it in such dire terms. It just sounds, well, silly.

    Are we supposed to picture other states laughing at us behind our backs because we have this tax? Do our neighbors really care that much? I'm pretty sure that we have a lot of other things to be ashamed of in Arkansas. How about our low placing in U.S. rankings for percentage of citizens to finish high school or our high poverty rate? But no, our tax on groceries is "The" shame.

2. Letter writer Bobby R. Bemis says that students are being taken out of Wisconsin schools and made to protest by their teachers.  I have seen video of students interviewed at the protests saying their teachers brought them, and that they were just taking advantage of not having school. They never said they were forced. But there are many students who are freely joining the teachers, but from Mr. Bemis's letter you'd never know that.

   And his solution to this? A law restricting teachers from taking students out of class except for emergencies or extracurricular activities where permission is granted. Ha. I find it funny that conservatives decry the nanny state and the abundance of nitpicky laws and regulations and then suddenly want to pass a whole new law over one incident that they saw on a video. I'm pretty sure what he's asking for is already the way students getting out of school is handled. And unless he or anyone can produced something proving that a student was forced to protest against his/her will, I will continue to think that.

3. Mike Masterson has an article about the bill for the elimination of capital gains taxes on "new" business investments. The arguments of  bill sponsor Rep. Ed Garner make sense, but he doesn't give any examples of companies who have relocated businesses over the tax, even though he says to "ask" them. He also mentions that the DF&A didn't project increase from potential new income taxes generated from job creation. Okay, what formula should they use to project that?

I've never had a satisfactory explanation of how a government can estimate potential revenues from job creation resulting from corporate tax cuts. And if anyone reading this does, then please tell me. I'm not saying it can't be done. Unless they have ten businesses on the line just waiting for the tax cuts, how can they give a concrete figure on this? The idea makes sense, but I'd like to know how there's any way to estimate or predict businesses coming into this state. It'd be nice to know that before we pass a tax cut that has no spending cuts to accompany it.

Dear Christian abortion protesters: Is it worth it?

Dear Christian Abortion protesters,

     Greetings from a fellow believer. I see you marching, holding signs, and taking out billboards protesting the legality of an act that our country has deemed legal. I don't like it either. But I've had a question regarding abortion that has been in my head for years. I've only recently shared it and I will do so here as well.

     Doesn't an aborted fetus automatically go to heaven in your view? That's a pretty standard view among Christians that a fetus has a soul. Is protesting for the life of a soul that is assured entry into the pearly gates worth alienating a life that may or may not have decided to accept Christ? I look at some of your signs and billboards (the most recently newsworthy one can be seen here ), and I think "are these people trying to win hearts and minds and change policies or just trying to irritate a lot people?"

     I think it's safe to say that your signs aren't working. Oh sure there may be an isolated case here or there, but think about the people whose hearts you have probably hardened against your views. And also think about the way our country's abortion policy has remained pretty much consistent for decades, even with a so called "pro-life" party in power at different times.

     I know that we can never know what could have come of the lives lost to abortion, but is this world or the next your priority? I'm actually asking this because so much of the suffering in this world doesn't stir near the feeling out of my fellow Christians as this act.

     So once again:   "Is protesting for the life of a soul that is assured entry into the pearly gates worth alienating a life that may or may not have decided to accept Christ?"

Arkansas's Congressmen and the F-35

The US House recently voted to stop funding for GE's alternate F-35 engine. This has been touted as an example of making the military sacrifice during these hard economic times, even though the engine is being called a redundancy (therefore not a sacrifice) at the same time. While I support the vote to stop it, I saw an ad in the Dem-Gaz which raised my curiousity.

The ad congratulated all of Arkansas's Congressmen for "protecting the American taxpayer" by voting against the alternate engine, all the Congressmen that is, except for Mike Ross. Yet Mike Ross, the lone Democrat in the delegation, voted to kill the engine too. But he wasn't thanked in the ad. Curious.

The ad was taken out in the paper by Pratt&Whitney Engines and United Technologies. Why would these companies take out an ad for this? Oh yeah, that's right because they're the ones making the F-35 engine.

Pratt & Whitney is the subsidiary of United Technologies that makes the engine. A more honest wording of the ad would probably have been, "thank you for taking care of our competition".

I'm as much for cutting waste as anyone, but I don't like companies being disingenuous.

As far as why Mike Ross wasn't mentioned, the mystery goes on. It would be interesting to see info on recent and future campaign contributions from United Technologies, and on GE for that matter, to members of the U.S. House and see if any of them correlate to yea or nay votes.

Spike Lee at UCA

Spike Lee spoke at UCA last night and if you didn't catch it then it was your loss. Regardless of your opinion of his films and his politics (I think the former are brilliant and the latter hit or miss), his lecture was one of the least divisive things I've heard in a long time. He touched on the lack of and need for more black, male teachers ( and as someone pointed out during the Q&A male teachers in general). His other big topics were hard work, having a supporting family, and self reliance (I'm sure my GOP readers loved to hear that, although shouldn't we all?).There was also a great surprise during the Q&A time when Lee found out that Minnijean Brown-Trickey of the Little Rock Nine was in the balcony and he had her come down to the stage to a standing ovation. It was definitely a big moment for both of them and the pressure was on from the audience for him to make a Central High film.

Hearing Lee's story firsthand about how he became a filmmaker, and then having it followed by Miss Brown-Trickey was inspirational. He mentioned with sadness how back when he was growing up, intelligence wasn't something that was frowned upon among black youth. Those with brains were as respected as those with basketball skills, or those who could "rap and talk to the ladies" as he said.  I don't care what you think about his views, the black community could use a few more Spike Lees and a few less Jay Zs (although dude can flow, I'm not hatin'), and so could our nation. I'm pretty sure that those 9 men and women who made a stand for education would agree.