Category Archives: Commentary

The Obama administration’s weak response to WikiLeaks

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The horror we feared would happen is here. Friday, the New York Times reports the Taliban is studying 75,000 classified U.S. documents posted on WikiLeaks for names of informants, potential defectors and others who cooperated with American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

“We are studying the report,” a gleeful Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Times. “If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them.”

That means death for any Afghan who ever cooperated with us because those reports are loaded with names, identifying villages, parentages and potential defectors. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatens to publish more documents and publicly sneers at the prospect of deaths, mockingly saying the U.S. should launch criminal inquiries on U.S. soldiers instead.

[…]Last year, President Obama committed to the counterinsurgency plan of General Stanley McChrystal… [which] …requires soldiers to enter villages, develop informants and prioritize protecting civilians instead of wall themselves off in fortresses without intelligence. The WikiLeaks leak pretty well blows years of that hazardous and delicate work out of the water.

But the immediate problem is the death sentences ahead for Afghans who have cooperated with us — and any U.S. soldier who may die now that Afghans can no longer trust us.

And the White House response to Assange:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen warns that Assange may “already have blood on his hands.” The White House response is to focus on begging Assange, who leaked the documents, to stop.

“Well, we can do nothing but implore the person that has those classified, top secret documents not to post anymore,” said spokesman Robert Gibbs on Friday.

The Democrats are imploring Assange to stop. Begging him to stop undermining the safety and security of our country. Begging him to stop exposing American forces to attacks. Is that strong leadership on national security?

Can you imagine that many people in the armed forces actually voted for Obama?

Generation Y is learning the perils of socialism

From the horribly left-wing MSNBC. (H/T Alisha from Far Above Rubies)

Excerpt:

They are perhaps the best-educated generation ever, but they can’t find jobs. Many face staggering college loans and have moved back in with their parents. Even worse, their difficulty in getting careers launched could set them back financially for years.

The Millennials, broadly defined as those born in the 1980s and ’90s, are the first generation of American workers since World War II who have cloudier prospects than the generations that preceded them.

Certainly the recession has hurt young workers badly. While the overall unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in June, it was 15.3 percent for those aged 20 to 24, compared with 7.8 percent for ages 35-44, 7.5 percent for ages 45-54 and 6.9 percent for those 55 and older.

Among 18-to 29-year-olds, unemployment is the highest it’s been in more than three decades, according to a recent report from Pew Research Center. The report also found that Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are less likely to be employed than Gen Xers or baby boomers were at the same age.

[…]The high unemployment rate among young Millennials can affect them financially and psychologically throughout their careers, according to a report by the Joint Economic Committee.

“The ‘scarring effects’ of prolonged unemployment can be devastating over a worker’s career,” according to the report. “Productivity, earnings and well-being can all suffer. In addition, unemployment can lead to a deterioration of skills and make securing future employment more difficult.”

Many Millennials have sought refuge back at school from the worst job market since at least the early 1980s. Yet that strategy, too, can backfire as students incur staggering amounts of debt to pay for advanced degrees that might not help them out much in the job market.

Eventually they are going to realize that everything they’ve been taught in the schools was opposed to their success. From socialism to feminism to moral relativism. They are destroying their own lives because they believed lies. They vote for higher taxes and more regulations and are shocked to see jobs dry up. They vote for anti-male laws and same-sex marriage and they are shocked to find themselves growing up in sub-optimal homes, missing one or both biological parents.

Greg Koukl’s plan for raising his kids to be effective Christians

Here’s a neat post from Stand to Reason.

First, the introduction:

Last weekend I was in Ottawa, Canada, speaking at the Metropolitan Bible Church. While I was there I met a number of fellows who were dads, and we spent an afternoon at a barbecue, talking about raising our children in the Lord. We have a responsibility to do this. We cannot just pawn it off on teachers, or Sunday school teachers, or our pastor, or a Christian school, if we have one. They can help, but it is our primary job to raise our children in the Lord.

And here’s an excerpt:

There’s another thing that I’m doing to teach my kids theological content that is more of a guideline than a program. I think a lot of times people like me, and maybe you, want to have a program. Sometimes we think if we don’t have a program we’re not being good parents. But even if you don’t have a program, it’s good to have a plan. One thing I’ve been using is a concept that I’ve been developing the last few years. I call it Credo, “I believe.” Credo consists of five words that capture the entire Christian worldview, and I think when I give you the words, you’ll see the relationship between them. Here they are: God, Man, Jesus, Cross, Resurrection. And here, by “resurrection” I mean the final resurrection to reward or judgment, the eschatological last things. I don’t mean any particular understanding of Jesus’ second coming; I mean that there will be a final day of reckoning. History is moving towards that point.

These five words capture the essence of the story of Christianity, starting with God, then man,then the fall. Then God invading the world–the physical world–by becoming a man Himself as part of a plan to die on a cross to rescue man, so that at the final resurrection they will be numbered among the sheep and not among the goats. This is the Christian story in five words.

Read the whole thing – he explains his program.