Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

President Obama, as he is wont to do, misquoted the Scripture again for political gain:

“And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

But that hasn’t been the most annoying thing about this incident. This is par for the course. I’m firmly convinced that Obama is, in fact, an atheist. An atheist sees no problem misusing the Scripture; they fear no punishment from God.

My main problem is the conservative reactions to it. These conservatives are supposed to Christians, and most of them didn’t even think to go to the actual Scripture to see if Obama used it correctly, rather than falling back on weak ad hominem arguments relying on Obama’s clear lack of divinity or making non-sequitur argument about other unrelated sayings of Jesus.

Well, I guess I should be glad at least some people had the right reaction. To recap, the context of the passage (see: Luke 12) isn’t dealing with mere material possessions; it’s dealing with our obedience to God. And what “unto whom much is given” refers to knowledge of the Law (so that we know what to obey), not any material possessions.

But really, conservatives, if they hold themselves out as Christians, well, at a minimum, they should be familiar with the Bible as Christians ought to be. Then they might even have been able to retort to the (atheist) president: “Did not the same Jesus say, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away’?” (See Luke 19.)

A post at LewRockwell.com is worrying whether U.S. army will have a new enemy: American citizens:

Members of all branches of the United States Military will soon be facing a most critical decision. The European Union Times is reporting here that Obama is using the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan to cover for the movement of some 200,000 troops, presently on duty in countries other than Iraq and Afghanistan, to USNORTHCOM to prepare for the “expected outbreak of Civil War within the United States before the end of winter.”

The claim is just so out there, I don’t know how to take it. Is this one of those truther or birther type conspiracy theories (or, say, DHS report on right-wing domestic terrorism) that have no legs to stand on? Or does this have some basis on facts?

In the end, even if the worst fears (about the ruling elite’s intentions) of Mr. Gaddy come true, I wouldn’t worry about it. Men and women of American military have been one of the most fiercest defenders of individual freedom—including the individual right to own and carry firearm—I have ever known. If orders were to come down for these patriotic men and women to trample on the constitutionally protected individual rights of Americans, I have every confidence that they will mutiny before following those orders—after all, Nuremberg tribunals proved that “just following orders” wasn’t an excuse for ignoring one’s conscience, and if I had to put my trust in anyone else’s conscience, I would put it in the conscience of American volunteer army.

If I am betrayed by this trust, well, the world as I know has come to an end and my most deeply held beliefs might as well break.

And people like them cannot be stopped

C4L staffers have been working very closely with Senator Jim DeMint’s office in recent days to advance Audit the Fed (S. 604) in the Senate.

Just a little while ago, it was announced that Senator DeMint, who is the lead Senate cosponsor of Audit the Fed, has put a “hold” on Bernanke’s confirmation for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman until S. 604 receives an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Keep reading for more details on how your immediate action could help make this vote possible.

Sen. DeMint is one of the few people in Congress that I really do admire—even if some Republicans (was it Sen. Graham?) look down upon his accent, etc.

Incidentally, Sen. DeMint is also the one who had been holding Obama’s feet to fire regarding Honduras. I mean, without him, Obama would have backed communist dictators like Zelaya unopposed.

But thankfully, not everyone in the senate is a spineless, principle-less crook looking out for no one but himself. Sen. DeMint is the proof.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Rasmussen today:

Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters nationwide now expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just nine percent (9%) expect their own taxes to go down.

Given how many people pay no income tax (I’ve heard figures around half, which is why it’s so easy to get support for increasing income tax: the half that do not pay tax vote to increase the tax on the other half that do!), it’s … interesting that so many people expect their tax to go up.

Granted, Rasmussen polls likely voters, not all adults or even registered voters, which probably means higher percentage of people polled by Rasmussen is likely to be paying tax, compared to the general population. But, even so, even the people in the lowest income bracket must be expecting some sort of tax increase to get that sort of poll results.

Well, let’s just hope that they are wrong. Or that they were thinking of increased taxes like cigarette tax (raised earlier this year) or that they have in mind things like VAT that Pelosi and her minions are thinking of (um, not that VAT is any better than increased income tax).

Well, as anyone with some sense could have predicted, Mrs. Palin’s favorables are going up:

PPP put her at 36/51 last month and ABC had her at 43/52 just three days ago. Now Fox drops this. Good lord — Sullivan’s going to have to take another few days off to cope with the data.

Of course, we are comparing polls from different pollsters (probably with different biases) so the comparison may not mean anything. For anything definite, we need to wait for the lamestream media to re-do their polls over the next month or so and see if there is a clearly recognizable trend (as there have been with ObamaCare, where even the most hardcore liberal outlet couldn’t help but recognize slipping support). But, I have faith. This is a center-right country, and Mrs. Palin’s positions and messages ought to resonate with a majority of, if not most, Americans.

I may not agree with Mrs. Palin on everything (especially … when she talks about special need kids, I wince a little—I don’t think it’s the government’s place to treat people differently, regardless of skin color or ability) but I do like her a lot for this one reason: her core message has been rock solid and unchanging through thick and thin and through obscurity, popularity, notoriety, and back to popularity.

Unlike Barack Obama, she hasn’t flipped and flopped on this issue and that issue trying to appease this constituency and attract that special group. The few cases where her position shifted a little (I think her position on global warming changed at some point from “absolutely no global warming” to “anthropogenic effects are not the most important ones”), it reflects more of her change of heart and/or understanding, not political expediency.

We need people who say what they mean and mean what they say. Frankly, I can respect even liberals like Rep. Barney Frank, because they do really believe in what they say—so they try to make some sense when they say something. With people like Rep. Frank, we can actually identify points of contention (it all really comes down to the role of the government). We can either work towards resolving that contention, or at least agree to disagree on that one fundamental point.

But with people like Barack Obama, where his words mean nothing and his promises have rather short expiry dates, there is simply no dealing with them. There is no possible reasonable argument we can make that will convince those people, and there is nothing they can say that will make me trust them.

So at least that ally is not so willing to humiliate us on our president’s breach of protocols:

“Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs.

“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.

A senior White House official (read: Axelrod or Emanuel) assured Politico this morning that no Japanese observers “would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the U.S., relative to Japan.” Consider that spin exploded, thanks to ABC.

One can only hope that our sheer strength (military and economic) is enough to get us through the remaining 3 years—and that our allies will continue to have faith in us, even when we are “led” by amateurs, and that our allies will trust our political process to remove that amateur from the position where he can cause most damage … at the earliest opportunity.

After all, the respect that we get from our allies (Japan or otherwise) come from how that respect benefits our allies, not from all the niceties that appeal to liberal sensibilities.

Because otherwise I can’t understand their argument at all:

The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the lawsuit on ACORN’s behalf Thursday in Brooklyn federal court. It claims the law was unconstitutional because it punitively targeted an individual organization.

First off, I am not sure if any part of Constitution says that acts mentioning individual organizations are wrong. It does say something about taxes having to be uniform and all (and probably something about due process which may be relevant), but none of them apply. The Congress did not pass a law ordering ACORN officers jailed (which would be overstepping their Constitutional bounds, since that belongs to the judiciary). The Congress passed a law saying that they aren’t going to waste money on a corrupt organization—and since it is the Congress who has the power to spend (or not to), it seems entirely constitutional to me, whether they mention specific organizations or not.

But then, I am not a constitutional scholar, like Mr. Barack Obama, and unlike ACORN, I don’t have Obama representing me, so I’m probably saying something wrong. I should be re-reading the wonderful document that is our Constitution later today though, specifically looking for things that warrants such constitutional claims at all.

In any case, this is very comforting:

The group’s CEO, Bertha Lewis, says she underestimated the impact of the Congressional action. She says state, local and most private funds have been cut off as well.

There is a slight improvement to TSA’s search and seizure of electronic devices:

“The US Government has updated its policy on the search and seizure of laptops at border crossing. ‘The long-criticized practice of searching travelers’ electronic devices will continue, but a supervisor now would need to approve holding a device for more than five days. Any copies of information taken from travelers’ machines would be destroyed within days if there were no legal reason to hold the information.’”

If I take this at the face value (so many things promised by this administration didn’t come to be, so I don’t know if I can), then it means if they search and seize my laptop (after finding the encrypted data, if they do), they will have to return the laptop to me in less than one week. I don’t really care if they destroy their copy of my encrypted data (because, barring breakthroughs in attacks against encryption algorithms in use today, they won’t be able to do anything with it; and it’s at least 5 years or so that I can sleep soundly).

This is a small “improvement”, if that at all, but I will take what I can get. Ideally, I want TSA and its … ineffectual, draconian security theater gone, but some among us do like the pretension of security better than actual security, which I don’t think the government (or maybe even private enterprises) can achieve at all.