Monthly Archives: February 2016

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Robot Rubio parrots identical talking point 4 times at ABC News debate

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Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Churck Schumer and RINO John McCain
Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Chuck Schumer and RINO John McCain

The big exchange of the ABC News debate in New Hampshire last night was Chris Christie taking on Marco Rubio for his habit of using canned 25-second responses like some sort of conservative talking points robot. Basically, Chris Christie pointed out to the audience that Marco Rubio never speaks in specifics, but instead just repeats the same 25-second conservative talking point over and over. And, amazingly, Rubio immediately repeated the same talking point again, and again, and again. Christie kept interrupting to point it out to the audience.

Watch:

Even establishment RINO Hugh Hewitt could not defend Rubio:

Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews debate about Marco Rubio’s debate performance on Sunday morning’s Meet The Press. Hewitt, a Rubio supporter, says that after his talked-about over-repetition of a line about President Obama’s nefarious intent in last night’s New Hampshire debate, Rubio will be preparing for a “South Carolina brouhaha.”

Matthews challenges Hewitt on Rubio’s performance: “Is there a logic to doing it four times in a row?” Matthews asked. “Why did he do it four times in a row?”

Hewitt admits what Chris Christie said during the debate is true, Rubio’s “staff had trained him” to say it that way.

FOUR TIMES IN A ROW:

Someone programmed Rubio bot to speak that line!

Rubio campaigned for the Senate in Florida saying that he was opposed to amnesty, then, when elected, he literally led the effort to give 20 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship – so they could vote for bigger government. When running, he was trained by his staff to speak anti-amnesty talking points, when elected he led the fight for amnesty.

Here’s the full list of Rubio errors:

Cruz fought against amnesty, opposes all bailouts, opposes all subsidies, e.g. – ethanol, and he got an A- rating on his response to the gay marriage Supreme Court decision.

This talking point parroting mistake has really given me pause about Rubio. I know that when he was running for Senate in Florida, he parroted a lot of talking points against amnesty. Then he co-sponsored the bill to give citizenship and voting rights to 20 million illegal immigrants. It makes me question whether to believe him about anything else, e.g. – pro life. I know that he is being trained on pro-life rhetoric, but he’s short on pro-life accomplishments. Fool me one, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Reactions to the Robot Rubio meltdown

I found several lists of “winners and losers” for Saturday’s debate, as well. This one is from the Washington Post, no friend of Ted Cruz:

LOSERS

Marco Rubio: Where to start here? Rubio has been such a strong debater so far — and a steady hand on the campaign trail in general. And then he ran into Christie. The New Jersey governor hit Rubio for never having been a chief executive and for not having much to show for his time in the Senate. He seemed to knock Rubio off his game so much that Rubio wound up repeating a stock answer about President Obama — that Obama knows exactly what he’s doing in driving the country to the left — three times. It was conspicuous and very not-smooth.

They also thought that Ted Cruz won the debate, and that his very unscripted, authentic answer about his half-sister, which I talked about in a previous post, was “memorable”.

I don’t want Rubio being the nominee and debating Hillary Clinton. He’s not ready to debate her, but Ted Cruz will wipe the floor with her. He excels at debate – he was national debate team champion, among other things.

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Ted Cruz explains how heroine addiction killed his half-sister Miriam

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Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Texas Senator Ted Cruz

Something that Ted Cruz said in the ABC News debate last night started me thinking about Bible study and being a prophetic voice to this generation on moral issues. I guess everybody knows that I have not been influenced by the spirit of the age – moral relativism. Everybody seems to be in favor of live and let live, not judging, compassion, diversity, etc. these days. There seems to be a lot of hedonism around, too – pursuing good feelings, fun and thrills in this life. Anyway, let’s see Ted Cruz talk about a family member who made some very bad decisions on a moral issue.

Cruz said this in the debate:

Here’s the transcript of what he said from the Red State:

My older sister, Miriam, who was my half-sister, struggled her whole life with drug and alcohol addiction. My father and her mom divorced when she was a little girl and she was angry her whole life, and she ended up marrying a man who had been in and out of jail. She then became a single mom and she herself went to jail several times and she ended up spending some time in a crack house.

I still remember my father and me driving up to get Myriam out of that crack house to try to convince her she needed to be a mom to — to my nephew Joey.

She wasn’t willing to listen. She was not willing to change the path she was on. She was angry. I was — had just gotten my first job coming out of law school. I took a $20,000 loan on a credit card to put my nephew, Joey, in Valley Forge Military Academy — he was in sixth grade at the time, to pay his way through that.

And about five, six years ago, Miriam died of an overdose. It was — the coroner ruled it accidental. We don’t know. She went to one night, had taken too many pills, and Joey walked in and found her dead.

This is an absolute epidemic. We need leadership to solve it. Solving it has to occur at the state and local level with programs like A.A., and counseling, and churches and charities. But it also has to be securing the borders, because you have got Mexican cartels that are smuggling vast amounts of heroin into this country.

We know how to secure the borders. What is missing is the political will to do it.

And as president, I will secure the border, we will end this deluge of drugs that is flowing over our southern border and that is killing Americans across this country.

I know many of you might think that Cruz had an ideal upbringing, but those who have read his book know that his father abandoned the family, and only returned after becoming a Christian. His parents later divorced because they were both heavy drinkers. He hasn’t had a happy life, but sometimes, unhappy lives make the best Christians – because they have the experience of tragedy that allows them to plead all the more earnestly with those about to make mistakes. I wrote before about how Christians who come from a rough upbringing and make bad decisions can turn into the most effective Christians, speaking from their experiences. The point is that we should not be annoyed with Christians who have a moral compass – the moral compass is there to save us from harm, not to make us feel bad for no reason.

OK, let’s see what the Bible says about warnings and judging.

I have two wise Christian friends, both named Neil S., who both live in North Carolina.

My first friend Neil S. sent me this:

1 Samuel  8:10-20:

10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.

11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.

12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.

14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.

15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.

16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.

17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.

18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us.

20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

And my other wise friend Neil S. sent me this listing of some the things that went wrong after Israel got King Solomon. Saul and David got Israel into a lot of trouble too. I think this story is one of the reasons why the Founders of the United States put in place a Constitution that is supposed to limit the power of the President, the federal government and the Supreme Court. Checks and balances. Today many Americans are clamoring for a King to rip up the Constitution.

Anyway, the point is that Christians need to understand that when the Bible tells us that something is morally wrong, that it is not “our belief” that has no applicability to others. We should always speak up from our experiences and from the publicly available evidence to warn people who are about to make mistakes or who are making mistakes. It’s a loving thing to do, it’s a Judeo-Christian thing to do. This is our heritage as Bible believers.

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How pro-life apologetics helps strengthen your evangelism

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I'm Scheming Unborn Baby, and I approve this study
I’m Scheming Unborn Baby, and I approve this message

From Scott Klusendorf’s Life Training Institute.

Excerpt:

Beyond the obvious obligation we have as thinking human beings to clarify the status, and defend the value, of innocent, unborn human life, engaging in the pro-life project is also a way to make the case for the truth of Christianity in general. It stands to reason that if the scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments we offer in defense of the humanity of the unborn also happen to align exactly with the biblical notion of what it means to be a human being made “in the image of God,” then the Bible might also have something to say about other things of importance.

This is a point Scott makes repeatedly but it was recently driven home in a very concrete way by, of all people, a hard core atheist in the most recent issue of Salvo magazine. A secular skeptic, law school professor, renowned blogger, and mocker of deluded “Godiots,” the “Raving Atheist” attended a blogger party where he serendipitously sat next to a Catholic blogger named Benjamin. As the “Raving Atheist” explains:

At one point the conversation turned to abortion, and I asked Benjamin’s opinion of the practice. I was stunned. Here was a kind, affable, and cogently reasonable human being who nonetheless believed that abortion was murder. To the limited extent I had previously considered the issue, I believed abortion to be completely acceptable, the mere disposal of a lump of cells, perhaps akin to clipping fingernails.

This unsettling exchange spurred me to further investigate the issue on Benjamin’s blog. I noticed that pro-choice Christians did not employ scientific or rational arguments but relied on a confused set of “spiritual” platitudes. More significantly, the pro-choice atheistic blogosphere also fell short in its analysis of abortion. The supposedly “reality-based” community either dismissed abortion as a “religious issue” or paradoxically claimed that pro-life principles were contrary to religious doctrine. Having formerly equated atheism with reason, I was slowly growing uncertain of the value of godlessness in the search for truth.

Though the “Raving Atheist” continued to rave, there was now a stone in his God-rejecting shoe, placed there by a reasoned defense of the pro-life view. He couldn’t disconnect himself from it and later admitted that the “selfless dedication [of pro-life advocates] to their cause moved [him] deeply.” Later, he met a woman named Ashli whose work in pregnancy care drew him to further consider the pro-life position. Soon thereafter, the “Raving Atheist” became, in part, a pro-life blogsite …

Click here to read the astonishing conclusion. Then come back here.

Back? Ok, so what did we learn from this? Well, the moral of this story is that it is very important for Christians to have a good understanding of moral issues like abortion and same-sex marriage so that they can talk about these issues based on what they know. When someone can stake out a moral position on these kinds of issues, using science and history and other hard evidence – not just the Bible – then it helps non-Christians to take us seriously as thinkers.

Unless we demonstrate the ability to reason out there in the real world – outside the church – then we are not going to be viewed as authoritative on any subject – especially on spiritual subjects. We really need to study up on other issues, and show that we care about the unborn (abortion issue) and children (same-sex marriage issue). We have to show that there is more to us than just doing what feels good. We have to show that we are smart and that we are willing to be unpopular in order to do the right thing. That we didn’t just inherit these views from our parents, or from our culture. That we have actually thought things through more than just reading the Bible, and that it makes a difference in how we view the world, and in how we live. We don’t want people to continue in their perception that Christians are just people who play follow-the-leader – we want to show them how we have worked through these issues on our own.

Ignorance is never a good idea when you are trying to do good – and you can’t know what is really good just by your feelings and intuitions. If you want to do good, you need to be 1) convincing and 2) effective. And that takes study. Don’t choose policies based on what makes you feel good and what sounds good to others. Push for effective policies – what actually does good – and then have your arguments and evidence ready to convince people, using evidence from authorities that they accept as non-Christians. If you have the will to study a little, you can be passionate and convincing. Non-Christians respect passion and knowledge. They don’t respect fideism and mysticism.

Scott Klusendorf is the author of the best introductory book on pro-life apologetics, entitled “The Case for Life“.