So anyway the first episode I listened to was Texas Snow. It got my blood up just a little so I called to leave a voice mail. Thanks to a restriction on time placed by Google Voice I was cut off in mid thought and had to leave two. Rather than bog down their podcast replying to me point by point Aetherswift replied in a blog post.

I figured I’d drive a little traffic their way, for the conservatively minded among you and for those that just like poking people on the opposite side of the aisle. As such I’ll be replying to her points here and shooting her the link. So go read the blog post and listen to any of the relevant audio and then come back and read my thoughts. Just to make sure we have all the proper context.

1. Maurice Clemmons – I am pretty much universally against the death penalty, though not necessarily for the reasons one might suspect. I haven’t blogged on it that I can find, but suffice to say at this point and probably forever the death penalty process (both assigning it as a penalty and the seemingly endless ability of the criminal to contest it) are so horribly broken that I don’t see any way of using it appropriately. Are there instances where it might be called for? I think so. Perhaps even in the case of Mr. Clemmons, though not on the rape charge as Aetherswift seems to think it should have been. An appeal to the Old Testament in support of the death penalty isn’t going to convince me since we’d have to start killing off a whole bunch of folks if we go down that road. What would convince me is a non-emotional argument on why the death penalty would have been more appropriate in the earlier case against him. And regarding the bail, as I understood it you were comparing posting bail to a punishment. My sole point was that it’s not a punishment. Should bail bondsman be able to help people post bail? I’ll be honest I haven’t given it much thought. It’s a long respected practice (so far as I know) and I’ve never seen an argument against it, other than the occasions where someone posts bail and does something horrible. This isn’t necessarily a reason to stop doing it.
2. God telling us/not telling us everything we need to know in the Bible – I posted about this recently. My point was that you said something akin to the notion that we would find all our answers in the Bible and this is simply not true. Perhaps I misunderstood something you said. I will say that regarding “There are no gray areas in heaven.” I suppose that depends on what you mean. The Bible does indicate that we will receive varying rewards in heaven. So that seems gray in a way. In regards to morality/righteousness though, I would say that yes, there is only one “correct” morality and that no one is righteous. I’ll be posting on that later today/tomorrow.
3. John Stewart – You really should give John a try. He’s consistently funny and picks on both sides pretty mercilessly.
4. Obama Osama – Conflating Obama with Osama is no more funny than calling Bush Hitler. Comparing any president to a terrorist overlord is a cheap shot. Let me take your points one at a time:
   Obama does have a Muslim name. – Hussein is an Arabic name, common both in religious and non-religious circles. That’s a bit like saying Joshua or Paul are Christian names. Barack is an African name and I’ve seen no indication that it’s common to Muslims.
   • He was raised Muslim and attended a Muslim school – My wife attended Catholic school. She’s not Catholic. There’s no proof that he was raised as a practicing Muslim or is currently one.
   • He is constantly defending Muslims and doing everything in his power to release and/or excuse Muslim terrorists. – You’re really going to need to back this one up.
   • He even bowed before the Muslim Saudi king – He bowed before the Japanese Emperor. He’s not Japanese. We can argue whether these were good ideas or not, but it’s not proof of anything.
5. The war in Afghanistan – You said you would give him more than he asked for, were you in Obama’s shoes. If he asked for 50K and you offered him more then where would they come from? I’m not saying that we don’t have the number of troops that the general asked for or that we wouldn’t have the number of hypothetical troops that you’d hypothetically offer, but just because we have them doesn’t mean that deploying them all to Afghanistan is a good idea. Just because the General (all due respect to him) asks for them doesn’t mean he should get everything he wants. I have to assume that Obama didn’t make the decision just to cheese the General off. We can certainly debate the wisdom of a date. I do agree with you actually that it was a move to try and compromise (unfortunately a dirty word). I’m not so sure that a “Damn the torpedoes” approach in today’s military climate works every time. There is a place for both a thoughtful approach to the number of troops we deploy and having a clear (though flexible) exit strategy. There is also a time for throwing everything and the kitchen sink at a problem and vowing to stay in as long as possible. Which approach we use depends on what we’re trying to accomplish.
6. Family Guy – I think what I said was that Family Guy picks on everyone. They may indeed have a liberal slant, but I don’t think it’s ever intended as a “political cartoon”. That was my main point. American Dad fills that niche.
7. Macs and iTunes – Re: Coders and Macs, I’ve been in IT for a long time (10+years) and I’ve known coders who love Macs and code for Macs. I guess you could say that we’re both pointing to circumstantial evidence. I’ll say you’re more likely to run into coders for PCs for the same reason you’re more likely to run into techs like myself who support PCs. There are simply more PCs. Most coders I know actually prefer *nix boxes (and it should be pointed out that the Mac OS is based on a Unix kernel).

So there we go. That covered a wide variety of topics. I hope you guys chip in your $.02 and don’t be afraid to level your guns at me (like you ever are) or at Aetherswift, just keep it kind. And give their podcast a shot.

Lady and the Tramp is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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