Bill Gnade's blog
Posted at 2:24pm on Jul. 7, 2008 It's SO Bad, It's Really Quite Good! (Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded)
By Bill Gnade
The Concord (NH) Monitor editorializes today about the horrors of water-boarding as proven by the willful and self-promoted water-boarding of that notorious belletrist, Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens writes about his ordeal in the August 2008 edition of Vanity Fair.
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Posted at 5:43pm on Apr. 29, 2008 For fun: Torture By Graduation
By Bill Gnade
Check out this quote attributed to Richard Butler, a CBS journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq, and then rescued. From the AP story:
Butler said he felt it was better to be kidnapped in Iraq then [sic] taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan.
"I was pleased I wasn't being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance," he said. [emphasis mine]
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Posted at 2:48pm on Apr. 29, 2008 THE WORST OF TIMES REVISITED: Race wars among us
By Bill Gnade
(Live blogging.)
Barack Obama is speaking to the press right now in a formal news conference. He has again expressed his consternation with his former pastor. He just called Reverend Wright's "performance" (Barack Obama's words) at the National Press Club yesterday nothing but a series of "rants not grounded in truth;" he even calls Rev. Wright's words an "insult" (among many other things).
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Posted at 11:50am on Apr. 29, 2008 The Gospel Of Guilt: The Wright Way To Preach
By Bill Gnade
[Several things should be noted. First, over the weekend Barack Obama candidly admitted that the religious teachings of his former pastor are fair political game. Second, since those views are indeed fair game it is important to note both the political components of explicitly religious beliefs and the religious components of political beliefs. Third, since Rev. Wright himself has argued that theology influences policy, it is important to explore what he means. Lastly, I am, at least today, playing armchair theologian. My sole credential is that I once studied for the ministry.
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Posted at 11:08am on Apr. 28, 2008 SIMPLY SAD: Reverend Wright Today
By Bill Gnade
For weeks now I have been reticent regarding Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the allegedly "honest dialogue" on race apparently occurring in the United States. I have had many reasons for being quiet, for suspending judgment, but I will keep those reasons to myself.
I just watched, live on CSPAN2, Reverend Wright's speech and Q&A session at the National Press Club breakfast. Last night, I watched a significant portion of his speech to the NAACP. All I can say is that Reverend Wright's opinions, at least to me, are an unmitigated social, cultural, religious, theological, and political disaster. Rev. Wright is wrong in so many ways it is impossible to reply to him in one short blog post. I am simply stunned, to be honest. In fact, I am almost stunned right back to reticence.
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Posted at 2:28pm on Apr. 3, 2008 What's Been Bred Into YOU? (The Story That Shouldn't Have Died)
By Bill Gnade
ABC News' Jake Tapper, senior national correspondent and blogger at Political Punch, recently reported what Barack Obama apparently said in his radio interview when he mentioned a "typical white person," i.e., his grandmother. But there is something deeply disconcerting about Mr. Tapper's blog entry, partly because a correction I submitted vanished from Mr. Tapper's blog. Trust me when I say the correction was important.
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Posted at 5:59pm on Mar. 19, 2008 Sex, sex, sex: growing hard to the core
By Bill Gnade
The news cycles pass over so fast we often don't have time to process what we need to process. After former Governor Eliot Spitzer's indiscretions were publicized, we were inundated with other news, including the recent revelation that Mr. Spitzer's successor is also guilty of adultery, even serial adultery.
But I feel it's important to examine some of the moral issues that may be buried in the Eliot Spitzer story. Part if not all of Mr. Spitzer's story has indeed been buried by the media avalanche which is the Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright insanity, but that will not shake our resolve to look more closely at the underbelly of American sexual obsession and addiction.
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Posted at 11:37am on Feb. 23, 2008 Dear Mr. Obama: Please, I Beg You, Stop Inspiring Me
By Bill Gnade
Dear Mr. Obama,
You probably don't know that I am a relative new-comer to RedState, though my recent subscription, so to speak, does not mean that I am new to conservatism. If it means anything, it means that I am relatively new to expressing myself in an explicitly conservative forum. Hence, I ask for your patience as I, a conservative, struggle to make sense of the movement you've permitted to snowball around you. For surely it is a movement -- and not really a campaign -- and you have, indeed, fomented this fervor, this great adulation.
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Posted at 6:59pm on Feb. 22, 2008 Leader? Who Wants A Leader?
By Bill Gnade
"Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."-- Barack Obama
Driving through New Hampshire's relentless snows this afternoon, I understood what it is that disturbs me about this election cycle more than any others I can remember. What I understood is not what one might consider epiphanic or revelatory, though it hit me with something of a jolt. For to say what I am about to say is almost forbidden; one dare not speak in such terms in certain company.
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Posted at 12:04pm on Feb. 20, 2008 "I Love America, But Only When..."
By Bill Gnade
In the wake of the Michelle Obama kerfuffle, already ably discussed in various blogs here and elsewhere, it seems a prudent thing to make a very generalized distinction. I wonder if others will agree.
For the sake of analysis, I most quote again Ms. Obama's well-known statement:
"Let me tell you something. For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."
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Posted at 10:08am on Feb. 20, 2008 How Sad This Is Funny
By Bill Gnade
[Let me begin by begging forgiveness: I know this set-up is too long, but what the heck.]
Boston radio talk-show god Jay Severin often says that "liberals always lie to get elected, while conservatives can only tell the truth, which costs them elections." Well, he may not say exactly that, but my paraphrase is quite close to the pure Severin doctrine. Liberals conceal their true intent; to be transparent is to doom themselves to unelectability. Conservatives, on the other hand, do NOT conceal: they tell you what they will do, and what they believe, and this openness often proves politically fatal.
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Posted at 9:44am on Feb. 20, 2008 Obama's "Plagiarism": Shouldn't This Matter?
By Bill Gnade
Barack Obama's alleged plagiarism of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick's 2006 campaign speech has been rather easily dismissed by many pundits, which surprises me. On Monday night's "The Special Report with Brit Hume", for example, The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer snickered at the notion that Mr. Obama's failure to make due attribution was at all significant. Others I've listened to have also been rather dismissive.
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Posted at 1:24pm on Feb. 16, 2008 Misspellings, 'IS' IS, And Apparent Cultishness
By Bill Gnade
St. Peter -- long before he was ever a saint -- denied Jesus Christ three times the night his Lord was arrested.
Not that this has anything to do with the gospel, but a reporter for Reuters seems to have "slurred" a new saint -- Barack Obama -- three times in one story. It is all rather innocent to me; I have made the same typing and editing mistake. And I've probably done it at least three times.
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Posted at 10:50am on Feb. 8, 2008 McCain: Not His Conservative Brother's Keeper (or Ann Coulter's)?
By Bill Gnade
John McCain. It’s an almost biblical name. Apparently even the very sight of it has raised the ire of not a few conservatives. Ann Coulter, one of many (think Limbaugh, Hannity, Graham), falls in fits at the thought of a McCain nomination. She’s even hinting she'll vote for Hillary Clinton should McCain’s name appear on the November ballot (and it will). To such conservatives, McCain's name seems synonymous with betrayal, or a sort of ideological subterfuge. One might even think his name means chaos: he’s a constitution-hating, Bush-tax-cut hacking, pro-abortion oppressor of free speech bent on giving America to Mexico. He’s the apparent slayer of ‘true’ conservatism’s better son: McCain has killed McAbel.
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Posted at 4:43pm on Feb. 1, 2008 In Loco Parentis: AMERICA'S TWO CRAZY PARENTS (DNC & GOP)
By Bill Gnade
I have heard somewhere the argument that there are two archetypes represented by the two major political parties in the United States, the maternal and paternal. The maternal, the national matriarch, represented by the Democratic Party, is motivated solely to nurture her nestlings: she is committed to perpetual maternal care of her children, affording everyone a life of ease or, at least, one of continuous domestic comfort. The Democratic Party’s promise of a social “safety net” is reminiscent of bumpers in a baby’s crib. Such maternalism is fiercely committed to ensuring that even the lowest achievers have play-dates and toys. Food and drink and socialization are paramount, as are healthcare and educational opportunity. A tranquil and egalitarian home is a healthy home, where nurture prevails.
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