Let them eat... less

We've made the comparison before, but Barack Obama is now not merely making Jimmy Carter-esque policy proposals, he is now also sounding a lot like our Elder National Disgrace.

George Bush and McCain have suggested that me being willing to sit down with our adversaries is a sign of weakness and sign of appeasement.

Did he say "appeasement"? Like Carter's premature peace-in-our-time declaration after his meeting with the terrorist organization Hamas?

How about this from Obama?

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.

Compare that with selections from Carter's infamous 1977 energy speeches:

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

and

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline.

Of course, we all think conservation is a good idea. But there is something unbecoming, un-American, and unimaginative about a President or candidate for the presidency telling Americans how to spend their money.

Are we prepared for four years of economic malaise, a projection to our enemies of a weak will, and feckless leadership in the face of real crises? That's what we will get with an Obama presidency.

A one-of-a-kind sucker

Powerline has a great summary of the interview Wolf Blitzer conducted yesterday with our Elder National Disgrace, Jimmy Carter. Incredibly, Carter admitted that Hamas double-crossed him, promising to him in private one thing then declaiming the opposite in public. Yet somehow Carter still managed to blame it all on Israel.

The first line in the post is the best line in the post. "There's a sucker born every minute... but a sucker like Jimmy Carter comes along only once or twice in a century."

Jimmy Carter and the failure of evangelical courage

A prominent evangelical pastor in a large northeastern city recently gave a sermon in which he extolled the post-presidential activities of Jimmy Carter as a model for Christians to emulate. (I was in attendance and was astonished.) This same pastor recently hosted at his church Jim Wallis, Accommodator-in-Chief. That the two events occurred in the same pulpit is not coincidental. Wallis and his organization have intentionally associated themselves with our Elder National Disgrace on numerous occasions (see, e.g., here and here). Indeed, Carter wrote the forward to one of Wallis' recent books. Birds of a feather and all that jazz.

Carter's latest demonstration of fecklessness and irresponsibility -- lending the legitimacy of the high office he once occupied to a terrorist organization -- is perfectly consistent with his behavior over the last couple of decades. And it is consistent with the conceit, self-absoprtion, and delusion of his Accommodator accolytes. Here's an Accommodator today (incredibly) defending Carter's most recent folly on Wallis' blog:

Carter's visit also showed that while Hamas, like most Palestinians, are bitter about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, they are pragmatic enough to accept a two-state solution negotiated by the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, so long as the Palestinian public gets a chance to approve it in a popular referendum. ... Keeping 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza under permanent siege is illegal and immoral. Israel, and indirectly the U.S.'s, refusal to accept the offer by Hamas of a ceasefire is illogical.

The trouble with this assessment is not so much its factual inaccuracy. The real problem is the author's complete disregard for facts. Hamas most emphatically denies that it is willing to accept a two-state solution. That fact is not merely inconsistent with the author's claim, it is exactly the opposite of it.

Facts, those stubborn things, make rather infrequent appearances in Accommodators' reasoning. Misrepresentations and calumnies are frequent guests in "God's Politics."

The increasing influence of the Accommodators (or the appearance thereof, which the mainstream media is more than happy to perpetuate) is no longer merely an irritant. It has become dangerous. If terrorist thugs such as Hamas believe that they have successfully deceived some large portion of American evangelicals they are likely to become even more emboldened. Carter and Wallis abet that mistaken impression, and the bloodshed that results.

We will repeat again the refrain: The Accommodators do not speak for us!