I’m experimenting again with Windows Live Writer in the hope that it will solve my problem.  I’m writing this post with it but so far I have not found a way to make the text bigger and I can just barely read it on this 47″ screen.

If anyone is aware of a blog writing/editing tool that helps the visually impaired, by all means, please let me know about it.

During Ronald Reagan’s 1966 campaign for governor of California, Republicans established the so-called Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

It was proposed by State Republican Chairman Gaylord Parkinson to help prevent a repeat of the liberal Republican assault on Barry Goldwater that laid the foundation for Goldwater’s trouncing in the 1964 presidential election. Just as Nelson Rockefeller and his East Coast cronies had branded Goldwater as an “extremist” who was unfit to hold office, so candidate George Christopher and California’s liberal Republicans were leveling similar personal attacks on Reagan. Party liberals eventually followed Parkinson’s advice, and the rest is history.

Source

All the Republican candidates have invoked the name of Ronald Reagan numerous times.  It seems they all want to be associated with the Reagan legacy.  But most have forgotten Reagan’s eleventh commandment.  It is one thing to contrast one’s record with that of another candidate.  it is quite another to resort to character assassination and that is precisely what some have done.

The pundits are even worse and they don’t seem to realize the risk they are taking.  The quote above illustrates why Reagan was unwilling to speak ill of his Republican opponents.  He stuck to issues because he understood that it was important that Republicans won in the end the constant assaults in the primary process made that less likely.

The lesson holds true today but you wouldn’t know it listening to the pundits.  I have to admit that I have been guilty as well.  I’ve made my views on John McCain, for example, very clear.  But as I said in my last post, I have to think about the possibility that McCain will be the eventual nominee.  What do I do then?  Can I reasonably blog in support of McCain at that point after all the negative posts I’ve written about him?  I’m not sure anyone would take such post seriously but I’m quite sure some would use my older posts to argue in favor of whoever the Democrat nominee is.

Therein lies the problem.  I need to tone down my rhetoric against McCain, Romney, et.al. in favor of arguing for my candidate.  I think others need to do the same thing.  otherwise we all contribute to making the Democrats’ job easier and our nominee’s job tougher once the nominees are chosen.

Andy wrote a blog at www.andrewolmsted.com. It was on my blogroll for a long time and I was a regular reader. In February of last year Andy announced that he had to stop blogging because he’d discovered he was in violation of a DoD rule. I was disappointed at the time because I really enjoyed his blog and I removed him from the blogroll since there would be no new posts.

Andy’s blog is still up and well worth reading. I’ll be adding it back to the blogroll as soon as I finish this post and it will stay there as long as it remains up. Andy also sent a final post to hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, to be posted in the even of his death. That post went live at andrewolmsted.com on January 4th. I encourage you to go read it. It’s long but it will give you a pretty good insight into who Andy was.

One thing Andy requested is that no one use his death for political purposes either on the right or the left. I will certainly honor that request. Suffice it to say Andy was a quality individual. He died doing what he chose to do. He is survived by his wife Amanda, his children and he parents. Please remember them in your prayers.

Just yesterday I received an email from TTLB stating that they were now responding to support requests.  I immediately put in a request and, sure enough, I received a response almost immediately.  So I’ve reinstalled the TTLB code in the sidebar.  With a little luck, NZ Bear will keep TTLB updated now.  Indeed, he says there is another big announcement coming in the next week or so.

So if you’ve been struggling with TTLB lately, you might want to give it one more try.

UPDATE:

It works!  bbPress integration has been successfully implemented at Ron’s Musings!

Give it a try.  Click on the Discuss in forum link below to go to the forum.  That link was created automatically along with the forum thread when I posted this article.

But today I found bbPress.  bbPress is a message board pretty much designed to integrate into Word Press.  I’ve installed it and so far the database integration seems to work.  If you are registered here, you are also registered on the message board.

Additionally, when I create a new post, a corresponding new thread should be created in the message board and a link to that thread should appear at the end of the post.  This post will test that.

If this doesn’t work, this post will disappear.  If it does, let me know what you think.

UPDATE:

Well, no joy so far.  The message board works and the users were brought over but the thread was not created when I posted this post.  I’m going to leave this here for now and do some more research.  I really hope I can make this work.

If you’ve already made this work on your blog, please let me know about it.

TTLB has been a defacto rating standard for blogs since well before I started blogging.  But if this keeps up TTLB will end up losing that position.  I hope that doesn’t happen.  The service provided there is invaluable to hundreds or thousands of bloggers.  It would be a shame to lose that.

If anyone has any information about what’s going on, I’d love to hear it.

It occurred to me that we should have a group expressly for the purpose of conservative “post pimping.” People who want to promote their posts on conservative blogs could join along with those who are interested in being notified of new posts on good conservative blogs. Thus has been born the Conservative Post Pimp group at Google Groups. The URL is http://groups.google.com/group/postpimp and anyone can join. So if you’re a conservative blogger wanting to promote your posts or if you just like reading conservative blogs, this group is for you.

I imagine some liberals will be tempted to join this group as well. If you are joining to see what the opposition is saying, fine. But don’t expect to promote liberal blogs in this group. That is decidedly not its purpose. If you decide to do it anyway, you’ll be removed from the group.

My solution comes in the form of another blog entitled Universitas Veritas. If I got my Latin right it means universal truth or total truth and it is a blog about the Christian worldview. I think you’ll find it interesting.

The modern worldview denies the existence of truth or confines the idea of truth to what can be demonstrated empirically. But there is much in each of our lives that we accept as truth with absolute faith even though there is no empirical evidence for it. That is as much true for the atheist as it is for the Christian. Even the die hard naturalist scientist finds that he can’t live his personal live by the “truths” he espouses in the lab.

This new blog will explore worldviews. It will compare and contrast the Christian worldview with other worldviews and attempt to give some substance to how the Christian worldview can and should be lived out.

I hope you’ll check it out. It will be a journey and I have by no means figured out in advance where it will lead. That’s why I need you to come along. I’m open to all kinds of discussion on this topic and I hope you’ll contribute. Atheist or Christian, all are welcome. I don’t want to fight with anyone but I do want to examine and discuss some of the hard questions of life. Lets do it together.

In the relatively near future I will turn off forwarding for rongoodwyne.com. For them moment you can get to this blog using that address but as I said, I have other plans for it. So, if you want to get back here reliably, please update your bookmarks or favorites to reflect the new address.

If you spot anything not working properly, please let me know. I’ve tested most everything I can think of but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss something. There is one problem I am aware of and I haven’t found a solution yet. My RSS feeds don’t seem to work properly with Internet Explorer 7. Firefox has no difficulty with them and it appears this is a known issue with the latest version of WordPress. I’m looking for a solution. If you happen to be a WordPress guru and already have a solution, please let me know about it.

Try the new host out and see if you find any problems. If you do, please let me know in a comment. The email is still down and will remain so until I forward the old domain here. I can’t access the MX record until I do that.

So, I’ve now opened a new hosting account with GoDaddy. I’ve been using them for years with other sites and all my clients are on GoDaddy. My domain is already there so I just have to transfer the blog. That will happen this weekend.

At the same time the domain name is changing. It will be www.ronsmusings.com after the change. The current domain, www.ronsmusings.com, will continue to work for the short term. It will, however, be forwarded, not the actual domain name. I have other plans for rongoodwyne.com down the road and it makes sense to me for my blog domain to be the same as my blog name.

It is possible that there will be some outages while I work on the move. I’ll try to minimize that as much as possible but I doubt I can eliminate it altogether.

Once the blog is moved and up, I’ll be able to make my own MX record changes and get my email back up. But that probably won’t be until sometime Sunday afternoon. So if you are sending email to ron@rongoodwyne.com, it won’t bounce but it won’t get to me either until sometime Sunday.

I plan to move the Lindsey Graham from free WordPress.com hosting soon as well. That will be easier since there isn’t much there yet. Once that is moved look for more posting.

Finally, I’ve registered a new domain, www.universitasveritas.com. I hope I have the Latin right for Total Truth or Universal Truth. Shortly that will be a blog about worldviews, specifically, a Christian worldview. While it may occasionally veer into the political realm as necessary to deal with worldview issues, it will NOT be a political blog.

So lots of changes are coming. I hope you’ll stick around for them. If you have comments or suggestions, as always, they are welcome.

So let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who read Ron’s Musings. Some of you are regular readers and some of you are stopping by for the first time. All of you mean a great deal to me. But those who return time and again to see what I have to say really mean the most. Thank you for your support and your occasional comments. Maybe we can reach 20,000 in half the time!

The project is called Ft. Hard Knox and you can find it at www.FortHardKnox.com. Of course you’ll find excellent conservative commentary and opinion there but that is not its primary purpose. It is designed to combine blogging, wikkis and message boards in one platform to involve people who are not necessarily web savvy.

My involvement has been in setting up the new blog. I’ve managed to build some decent experience in installing, setting up and moving WordPress blogs. I’m proud to be involved with this outstanding group of conservatives. If you are interested in joining up, surf on over to Ft. Hard Knox.

Publisher John Strubel had this to say about the site.

LinkCharleston.com aims to educate and inform local residents on issues including education, entertainment, faith, family, politics, sports and, our trademark feature, Charleston People – highlighting those who are the fabric in the community. LinkCharleston.com is committed to building a loyal, trusted online community for Charleston.

I really am honored to have been asked to be a part of this effort. As a new site, it will take time to build readership. I will only be a small part of that effort. I will be writing on issues of politics and faith. Some of what I write here will be reposted there. I will also write original content that can only be found there. So please visit LinkCharleston.com and see what’s going on. I think you’ll be pleased.

The blogroll is not necessarily for blogs that are Christian in their content, that is, they don’t have to be “about” Christianity. They do have to be written by professed Christians who hold to Christian principles and beliefs.

I like that idea and want to support and promote it. If you have a blog and feel the same way, or you want to learn more, click on the “click here to join” link for the Christian Blogosphere to the left or just click here.

It also appears that I am the only non-female member of this blogroll so far. I love reading what the ladies have to say and in truth, many of my favorite blogs are written by women. Still, it would be nice if I wasn’t the only man in this blogroll. So for you Christian men writing blogs, come on and join.

UPDATE:

Mine is now no longer the only male authored blog in the Christian Blogosphere Blogroll! Casey joined sometime today with his rain falls on everyone blog. And man oh man does he have a story to tell in his latest post. Check it out.

There is one possibility. A couple of days ago I added Snap Previews to my site. It took me until this evening to actually make it work but my blog was registered. All I can figure is that their spider or something caused all those hits. If so, that’s kind of disappointing. I was looking forward to blogging about my 5000th visitor and now I won’t even know. I guess I’ll just have to wait for 10,000! I hope my few regular readers will stick with me that long.

By the way, let me know what you think of the Snap Previews.  Do you like it?  Is it annoying?  What do you think?

In truth I’ve become somewhat disillusioned. I see our once great country heading inexorably down the tubes and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. I’ve always believed that superior ideas will, in the end, win out over inferior ideas. I’m not entirely certain I still believe that. It appears that most of America either doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around them or just doesn’t care.

Demagogues rule the political landscape on both the right and the left, albeit much more so on the left. Political expediency or raw greed trumps ideals and principles everywhere. While in times past politics stopped at the water’s edge, the future of America itself now seems to take a back seat to the desire to amass power. All the while an apathetic public with little in the way of critical thinking skills sits idly by while the world crashes around them in slow motion.

So I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do with this blog.

If you’ve read my profile you know that I majored in political science and religion in college. People tend to look at me like I sprouted an extra head when I tell them that. They seem to buy into the lie that politics and religion should have nothing to do with each other. My response has always been that my political views are a natural outgrowth of my religious conviction.

Politically active Christians face a challenge. We believe that ultimately, the only thing that can save this country and, indeed, the world is the savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Yet we also believe that there are sound political ideals that can do a great deal to improve our society and our safety. The question becomes, where do we put our energy? I’ve always tried to sort of split it. I do what I can within my own sphere of influence to leads others toward the savior. But I also argue passionately for what I believe is sound political policy.

I’m not now sure I’ve been approaching this correctly at all.

So I’m exploring what to do with the blog. One thing I can say for certain, it is not going away. It is, however, likely to have a significant change in direction.

There is no shortage of conservative political blogs. I started this one because I believed I had something to say, something to offer to the debate. I still believe that but I’m just not at all certain that my ideas or my particular way of expressing them really does much to improve the situation. That combined with my growing sense that this is a waste of time convinces me to reexamine what I’m doing here.

What you can expect, at the least, is to see a lot more of what I find in my study of the Bible and how that applies to us and a lot less of purely political reasoning. I just don’t think political reasoning has the value it once had because the world has become too polarized. So many people are beyond reason and all the reasoned debate in the world isn’t going to change their minds. For many, the facts will not be allowed to interfere with their assumptions. Fine.

It bears repeating that a political philosophy is never going to save us. Indeed, a bad political philosophy isn’t, in and of itself, responsible for our demise. The bottom line is, God never intended that we should be able to save ourselves or that we should place our faith in philosophies in the first place.

So the blogbursts are gone. You won’t see them anymore on this blog, at least not any time soon. And my frequency of posting is likely to be something like one a week rather than daily or nearly daily. I’ve got to find my focus and keep my priorities and those priorities have to include keeping God first, my family second and my business third. After that come things like this blog.

I may lose some readers for good. I am well aware that many conservatives have little patience for Christian conservatives. Certainly liberals tend to be openly hostile to us. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is wasting my time and short changing myself, my family and my readers in the process.

There will still be political commentary here. I can’t imagine that I could ever keep my mouth shut for long when it comes to politics. I just think the political commentary needs to be more than balanced by some Christian perspective and that has been sorely lacking here. I hope to correct that imbalance.

As for blogging, I am back. The new year is here, the dems have control of Congress and there is just too much to write about for me to hang back. Traffic has, understandably, fallen off with my lack of attention here but I am hopeful that I’ll be able to build it back up. One friend has already chided me for using cartoons and blogbursts to fill some gaps. I have to plead guilty to that. The blogbursts and cartoons will continue but they won’t be the only content from here on out.

For those who have checked back from time to time to see if I’m posting again, thanks for your patience. I hope it will be worth it for you.

Voting begins December 7 and runs through December 15. I encourage all of you to head on over there and vote for your favorite blogs. There are many categories and you will likely see some very good blogs that you have not seen before so this is an opportunity to expand your reading. And remember that their job of picking the finalists is a difficult one. Not everyone can be a finalist and as they have mentioned, many fine blogs did not make it. So be kind to them if your favorite blog is not a finalist.

In the Best Political Blog category the finalists are all excellent and most of them are blogs I was already reading on a regular basis. Picking a favorite to vote for will not be easy but I suspect I’ll end up voting for Michelle Malkin. But each of you has your own opinions and you should go exercise that opinion by voting!