Dilettante film-maker and brutal dictator Kim Jong Il has ventured outside of North Korea on a rare trip to China, according to South Korean intelligence reports. It might not be readily apparent, but Kim actually assumes a fairly large risk when he leaves his country. Top level officials in the NorK government seem increasingly less interested in keeping Dear Leader around, which is a possible explanation of why Kim’s private armored train was nearly blown up by a group of elite Party Cadres the last time he left the country.

At least his trip gives me an excuse to propogate one of my internet favorites: The Unofficial Website of the Pyongyang Metro System. Unfortunately, it looks like the author of this site, Simon Bone, has taken down his main site. It’s a shame, he had some very entertaining travelogues there, all from terrible and miserable places, mostly in Eastern Europe. There was a lot more background on his Pyongyang trip on the main site. I’ve seen advertisements for short excursions to North Korea in various Chinese magazines aimed at foreigners, but I can’t really get myself interested.

That glorious year marked the death knell for modern liberalism. So long as conservatives held the House, it would be exceedingly difficult for politicians to push America to the left by demolishing traditional demarcations. However, this didn’t prevent American opinion from shifting leftward and thus driving policy. This is what happened in late 2003, with prescription drugs.

Here’s a couple polls worth noting

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Jan. 2-5, 2004. N=1,029 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
“Next, thinking about the recent changes to Medicare: Do you think the new prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients go too far, are about right, or do not go far enough?”
Too Far 9% About Right 27% Not Far Enough 53% No Opinion 11%

Associated Press Poll conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Feb. 16-18, 2004. N=1,000 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.
“How important will the issue of prescription drug benefits for senior citizens be to you in deciding how to vote in the presidential election? Will it be very important, somewhat important, not very important, or not important at all?”
Very 44% Somewhat 34% Not Very 12% Not At All 10%

Looking at those numbers, it appears that at that time the fight over prescription drugs was one that we had lost. American opinion had moved drastically beyond our own position, for the worse.

Given this, was it right or wrong to vote for the bill? It was wrong, but it was forgivable if you were motivated by the right reason… the right reason being a desire to advance the greater portion of the conservative agenda, not re-election or sustaining the party as the end itself. It’s entirely plausible that one could be concerned that failure to give into this desire of a highly motivated portion of the electorate would mean electoral losses that would set back the war in Iraq, a culture of life, smaller government where we can get it, good judges, etc. (Mind you, its not that we would be set back because its the GOP that would lose seats. The GOP does a good enough job hurting conservative principles on their own. It would be a fear of conservatives losing seats.)

So I guess the question to everyone is this: is there room for prudence? Is it acceptable to sacrifice one portion of the agenda, in order to save the others? If so, under what conditions?

Apparently there is a new documentary coming out which is more or less supposed to “prove” Jesus never existed as a historical person. The trailer is an interesting rip on the far out of the Christian Americans, the usual crazies who say things that Jesus obviously would’ve found ridiculous. But then they turn on the historical Jesus claiming he never existed.

The link is here.

Now even the most liberal religion profs I had in college admitted that a historical Jesus existed, though obviously they didn’t think he was God. In fact, the preponderence of evidence, the vast preponderence supports a historical (and I would argue divine) Jesus, but I just thought you all shoudl know what the new attack is.

Of course the liberal media has given it rave reviews, but just looking at two of the “scholars” they quote Richard Dawkins and someone from the Jesus Seminar. Both of who are far out from the mainstream, Dawkins in fact has nothign to do with history, as he is a biology proffesor.

The case for the historical Jesus is rock solid, the Josephus passage being the most famous of course. Anyway, food for thought.

As some of you probably did not know, SaveTheGOP.com was poised to launch PenceForLeader.com today. The same day that Mike Pence, unfortunately but ironically, issued a statement (found in its entirety below, click on more…) saying he wouldn’t run. The word on the street is that Pence had collected enough verbal commitments to be a mere 38 short of having a majority. This would mean he had 78 votes, which is nothing to sneeze at. Hopefully he can use that block to push a more conservative candidate.
I would advice reading Pence’s statement below:
Click to continue »

The Hotline has released a list of supporters for both Blunt and Boehner. Not all of them have ACU ratings, yet. But for those that do, I averaged their ACU lifetime ratings. The result: Boehner’s supporters have an average lifetime rating of 87.5 and Blunt’s have a rating of 84.7. Not a big difference. Noticably, there are only 48 votes between them, leaving plenty of space for a conservative alternative.