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A new Chinese militarism?

June 9, 2011 By Gene Veith

An Australian newspaper reports on the views of a Chinese general who is encouraging the rise of a new militaristic spirit in China and the recovery of the fighting spirit in revolutionary Communism: A rising star of the People’s Liberation Army has called for China to rediscover its ”military culture”, while challenging unnamed Communist Party leaders for betraying their revolutionary heritage. General Liu Yuan displays sympathy for Osama bin Laden, says war is a natural extension of economics and politics… Read more

How bad theology yields bad Christian art

June 8, 2011 By Gene Veith

107 Comments

Tony Woodlief at Image (an important journal on Christianity & the Arts) argues for a connection between bad Christian art and bad theology. His points are usefully specific and pointed: I’m convinced that bad art derives, like bad literary theory, from bad theology. To know God falsely is to write and paint and sculpt and cook and dance Him falsely. Perhaps it’s not poor artistic skill that yields bad Christian art, in other words, but poor Christianity. Consider, for example,… Read more

Tim Pawlenty’s economic plan

June 8, 2011 By Gene Veith

40 Comments

GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, laid out an ambitious and unusually specific plan to get the economy going again: “Growing at 5 percent a year rather than the current level of 1.8 percent would net us millions of new jobs, trillions of dollars in new wealth, put us on a path to saving our entitlement programs,” Pawlenty said in his first detailed speech on economic policy since he formally declared his White House ambitions a… Read more

30% of health plans to be dropped under Obamacare

June 8, 2011 By Gene Veith

12 Comments

Another reason the new national health care bill will have a hard time working: Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows. While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will “definitely or probably” stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey… Read more

10,000 Adams and Eves

June 7, 2011 By Gene Veith

572 Comments

Thus far the main controversy between Christianity and mainline scientists has been over evolution. Many Christians have tried to resolve that dilemma by embracing “theistic evolution,” the notion that God did create every living thing, but that He used evolution to do it. (Never mind that Darwin’s theory of evolution specifically insists on the randomness of mutations and of natural selection. Believing that evolution is directed is beyond the pale of actual Darwinism and is just another form of Intelligent… Read more

The Honorable Anthony Weiner

June 7, 2011 By Gene Veith

56 Comments

So Congressional Representative Anthony Weiner, D-NY, now admits that he twittered the lewd photo and has been lying about it. And now it turns out the congressman has been sexting and exposing himself to other women. See Anthony Weiner admits he sent photo, but won’t resign – The Fix – The Washington Post. I refuse to make any of the obvious jokes and bawdy wordplay. I find the whole episode repellant, but it seems telling for the degradation of our politicians… Read more

And now an atheist college

June 7, 2011 By Gene Veith

32 Comments

So how will this be different from regular colleges? Famed atheist Richard Dawkins will be among a group of British academic elites who will launch a new college that will rival top British universities like Oxford. The New College of the Humanities in central London will offer degrees in English, philosophy, history, economics and law starting from fall 2012. The private college is founded by 14 professors. Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion, will teach evolutionary biology… Read more

Would conservative Christians vote for a Mormon?

June 6, 2011 By Gene Veith

122 Comments

Two of the Repubican presidential candidates, the alleged front-runner Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, are Mormons. Both addressed the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an organization of conservative Christian political activists: “I came today not to give a political speech,” former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. told the crowd in a downtown Washington ballroom Friday, “but simply to introduce myself and my family.” There was, however, nothing simple about it. The audience he was addressing consisted of hundreds of politically oriented… Read more

Congress calls Obama on Libya war

June 6, 2011 By Gene Veith

20 Comments

We had been blogging about how President Obama has been ignoring the War Powers Act in waging war in Libya without Congressional consent. Now Congress has overwhelmingly struck back, with a bipartisan 3/4 of the House calling him on it: Crossing party lines to deliver a stunning rebuke to the commander in chief, the vast majority of the House voted Friday for resolutions telling President Obama he has broken the constitutional chain of authority by committing U.S. troops to the… Read more

China dumping U.S. treasuries

June 6, 2011 By Gene Veith

40 Comments

What if everyone stops lending the U.S. government money? China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury. Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt. Mainland Chinese… Read more