Mark Steyn and Hugh Hewitt on the debate

Some great lines from Mark Steyn's interview on the Hugh Hewitt show (my emphases):

HH: The latter, definitely. I’m going to come back to the substance of the debate in just a second, but I want to pause on MSNBC, and indeed, much more. Whether it was Michael Moore or Bill Maher or Andrew Sullivan or the MSM’ers like David Gregory and a host of CNN’ers, they all were apoplectic. It was like the Lord of the Flies adapted for debates, and they turned on him, and they said…why the anger, Mark Steyn, on the left?

MS: No, well, and I think they also turned on poor, old Jim Lehrer, who had been hailed…Politico did some preposterous thing on how he was the master of moderation and everything. And now, they treat him like that guy who did the video. He’ll be lucky if the L.A. County Sheriffs aren’t around his house to get him on parole violations. I mean, this guy…you know what it’s like? It was like, somebody said this last night, it’s like when a boxer who’s come up with so many fixed fights actually finds himself in the ring with somebody who is real. And by the way, that, just to go back to Jim Lehrer for a moment, I thought one of the very best moments about ten minutes in was when Romney fired, in effect, fired Big Bird and Jim Lehrer.

HH: Yes.

MS: I thought that is so cool to tell the moderator you’re going to cut off his funding.

HH: Yes, it was…

MS: And Jim Lehrer lost control of the format, and you know, I don’t know whether it was because of that, or whether he’s thinking oh, my God, this time next year, I’m going to be doing the night shift on WZZZ, but all that stuff that makes these debates normally unwatchable, you know, you’ll have a 90 second pre-rebuttal of the third question’s rebuttal, and all that kind of thing, and they just had at it. And so Romney, that was a terrific alpha-male moment, not just…I mean, Big Bird, I don’t care. I loathe Big Bird. But skewering Jim Lehrer, wow. Super cool, man.

My theory on debate prep

One of the reasons why Governor Romney's debate preparation was superior to that of President Obama's is that the left does not understand conservative arguments and defaults to the ad hominem attack or straw man arguments that caricature them.

However, conservatives understand leftist arguments very, very well, living in a see of progressive ideas that most of us start imbibing with our mother's milk in North America.

Many conservatives are former leftists and I count myself in that group.  We know what arguments began to convince us that the progressives have an underlying totalitarian and nihilist philosophy that sees the end justifying the means.   Utopian thinking that breaks some eggs to make the omelet really only produces power for the progressive elite.  The utopian, statist ideas have been tried and proven to be failures.

So here come Obama who has probably never really encountered a conservative who could pierce his leftist bafflegab and cogently argue for free markets and smaller government.  He probably does not have one person on his staff who understands conservative ideas and he certainly has not been held to account by the news media.  So Romney wiped the smug smirk off his face with gentleness and respect, while obliterating his ideas one by one.

One of the things that began to convince me of the merits of conservative idea were the calm, rational, and generous behavior of conservatives under fire by the left in contrast to mob-like behavior such as shouting down opponents, character-assassination Alinsky-style and outright lying in order to score political points.

Romney's graciousness the other night will go a long way towards having the same effect on others who have, like I used to, default progressive, statist programming because we were never taught there were alternative points of view.

Check out Foolishness to the World

There I have many posts of a more spiritual nature and concerning Anglican Use Catholics.

Insight into President Obama's campaign strategy

Great piece at American Thinker by Ed Lasky on how President Obama is Trolling for the Knucklehead vote.  An excerpt:

His repeated appearances on comedy shows, daytime talk shows (No Dick Cavett here; No Firing Line), and his joshing with local DJs such as The Pimp with the Limp are efforts to reach these potential voters.Obama certainly enjoys an advantage here: it is hard to fathom a man as serious and contemplative as Mitt Romney -- a man who is more focused on facing our problems rather than babbling pabulum (without the nutrition) -- riding the carnival circuit.Obama has no problem on the carnival circuit.  He is a star there, the world's biggest celebrity, as the McCain camp presciently recognized in one of their few smart tactics during the 2008 campaign.

This Obama campaign strategy has been clear for some time.

Has there ever been a politician whose campaign is so focused on the euphemistically termed "low-information voter"?  

-snip- [Lasky lists the signs.  Go read them!]

The internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of news; hence the Obama emphasis on reaching people via the internet, where micro-focused messages can be tailor-made to appeal to an individual potential voter.  The danger behind such narrowcasting is that the information delivered can be akin more to propaganda than to facts.  Obama supporters all too often would rather gaze, graze, or glance than read, think, and ponder.

How nice it is not to face reality.  Ignorance is bliss.  That should be the campaign slogan for the Obama campaign, for it has been his modus operandi as president.

Barack Obama's appearances on lowbrow outlets geared to "low-information voters" (or, as Michelle Obama would say, "knuckleheads") has capitalized on one edge that Barack Obama has always had over Mitt Romney: "likeability."  Of course, Obama's likeability is merely a result of the media shielding the public from the many derogatory remarks he has made about Americans.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/obama_trolling_for_the_knucklehead_vote.html#ixzz28F6vXKSq

Report on religious liberty from Australia

From a talk at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy:

On Tuesday, September 25th, Mr. Rocky Mimmo, Founder and Chairman of the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty, an Australian organization, visited OLSWA campus to describe the work of the Centre and to discuss the issue of religious liberty. He addressed a good-sized crowd of students and community members, focusing first and foremost on the manner in which one should exercise one’s religious liberty when engaging in discussion about matters pertaining to Christian truth and morals.

Beginning with some statistics regarding the percentage of Australians who profess to be Christian, he noted that “We are confronted with a declining interest in Christianity.” He went on to state that, if that is the case, we cannot hope to convince people of religious truths by invoking the Gospels or other religious authority. Rather, he declared, it is the opinion of members of the Ambrose Centre that the best course of action is “to go armed with reason and logic.”

An example Mimmo gave was the case of laws concerning same-sex marriage in Australia. When the Australian government recently considered whether or not to legalize same-sex marriage, members of the Ambrose Centre met one-on-one with government officials, not to try to convince them of the good of marriage – which many in government positions did not believe in – but simply to impress upon them the consequences that would logically flow from an alteration of the legal definition of marriage. Mimmo described some of those consequences in his talk: “If you change the law which says that marriage is between a man and a woman, then the law says that what is unnatural, is natural – that a man is the same thing as a woman, and that two men – or two women – is the same thing as a man and a woman. Do I want my kids taught that?” By means of these sorts of arguments, Mimmo says, the Ambrose Centre achieved its goal, and when the vote was held, the overwhelming majority of government officials voted against legalizing same-sex marriage in Australia. Mimmo reiterated the basis of the Ambrose Centre’s success: “Never once did we invoke the authority of the Gospel,” he says. “Never once did we invoke religious authority. Never once did we apply anything but reason, underpinned by faith.”

The eye-candy president

Obama's poker "tells" ---great article by Hugh Hewitt

Most interesting.  I better make sure I have a good supply of popcorn and chilled beverages for the Obama Romney debates/

Here's an excerpt of a great piece by Hugh Hewitt:

President Obama has a number of "poker tells" which he displays when answering questions. They betray an increasing distance between his reply and the truth.

Talk show hosts love when the president gives one of his very rare press conference or any other occasion when he is off prompter. That is when these "tells" surface, giving all veteran Obama observers the verbal heads-up that the president has entered the land of thinly disguised fantasy or obvious dissembling.

First, the president begins a pattern of "ahs" and "uhmms" which are as embarrassing as they are revealing. The awkward pausing punctuated by these semi-stutters increases in frequency as the president senses his own flailing about.

Next, the president begins filibustering. His average length of answer in every press conference is already epic, but he has been getting worse as the presidency has dragged on. Pressers are not battles between the "reporters" and the president. Very few not named Jake or Ed bother the president with fastballs. The struggle is simply between the president and the effort he has to land the plane anywhere near where it took off, so far does he wander as he rambles through the minutes he is obliged to spend appearing to take questions.

The president will allegedly be subject to time limits on Wednesday night, but his contempt for most such rules almost guarantees he will blow through every limit and dare the moderator or Mitt Romney to challenge him