Advice to a New Leader

The new Prime Minister of Brittain is visiting the US this week. Peggy Noonan writes a brilliant article giving him some advice. Her conclusion:

Advice on your visit? Love America. It not only deserves it, at the moment it needs it. Our morale is low. Do you want to help preserve what has been called the Special Relationship? (Actually, I don't know: do you?) If you do, then when you speak here, speak of your love for this great nation. We don't, not in a deep way and not enough. Even our President doesn't. He tries, but he can't get it right because it's all so abstract to him. He associates patriotism with nationalism. But patriotism springs from legitimate love and gratitude, nationalism from shallow aggression and conceit. Obama confuses the two, can't get them straight in his head, and winds up saying little, badly. People don't like this, either.

Anyway, when you speak of America speak with love. People will hear you. It will break through the clutter, as your media obsessives say. It will be a new message, or one Americans haven't heard in a while done well, and truly. And don't focus-group it. Mean it.

Presidential Oil Spill

From the LA Times article on the Presidential address given last night:

Instead, Obama was like a Harvard-trained nurse talking vacation to a new patient bleeding all over the ER floor. Hello, could we please stop the blood flow here before we discuss the long-term recovery?

It's the Sun, Stupid

Here is an article in the National Post by Lawrence Solomon that finally puts the conclusion in print: The sun effects the earth's climate.

"...solar scientists are increasingly conveying a clear message on the chief cause of climate change: It’s the Sun, Stupid. Jeff Kuhn, a rising star at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, is one of the most recent scientists to go public, revealing in press releases this month that solar scientists worldwide are on a mission to show that the Sun drives Earth’s climate. “As a scientist who knows the data, I simply can’t accept [the claim that man plays a dominant role in Earth’s climate],” he states."
...

"By comparing temperatures in Europe since 1659 to highs and lows in solar activity in the same years, the scientists discovered that low solar activity generally corresponded to cold winters. Could this centuries-long link between the Sun and Earth’s climate have been a matter of chance? “There is less than a 1% probability that the result was obtained by chance,” asserts Mike Lockwood of the University of Reading in the U.K., the study’s lead author."

How Firm A Foundation

Dr. Powlison on God's Grace and Your Suffering.

Baby's Not Born as "Blank Slate" says Study

As Dennis Prager always says, studies either prove what we already know or they're wrong.  In this case, this study proves what Christians have always taught:  We are born sinners, or as the study says "the difference between good and bad may be hardwired into the brain at
birth."

Happy Mother's Day

The Message of the Gospel is Not "Behave!"

This is a great post from "The Gospel-Driven Church".  The author captures a great distinction that is WORTH meditating on and working out in our own lives/faiths/churches.  Here's one excerpt:

"I believe many Christians in America would be satisfied if "the culture"
just stopped using pornography and drugs and alcohol and stopped
aborting babies and started "acting right." As far as I can tell, that
would be a Win.  But it's not a win. A land where everybody acts
right and is on their best behavior, where peace reigns and social decay
is no more and the poor are helped and the hungry are fed, but Christ
is not worshiped as the sole supreme satisfaction in all the universe,
is a big fat FAIL."

Quoting from Michael Horton's Christless Christianity:

"What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over
half a century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered
his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast
nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over
Philadelphia (the city where Barnhouse pastored), all of the bars would
be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled
with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no
swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No ma’am,” and the
churches would be full every Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.

There
is a great difference between “being good” and the gospel. Some call it
moralism. Moralism, in fact, blinds us from the gospel by giving us
something of “the real thing” ensuring that we miss out on the true
gospel all together. We must remember that Christ came first not to make
bad people good but to make dead people live. If we forget that, our
Christianity will turn out to be Christless."

Noonan on the AZ Immigration "Scandal"

Peggy Noonan has a great piece at WSJ about why the situation has gotten to where it is.  This is the money quote, however:

"Why does the federal government do this? Because so many within it are stupid and unimaginative and don't trust the American people. Which of course the American people have noticed."