The Rod Martin Report: October 3, 2014, 45th Birthday Edition
You can read about the world anywhere. You read The Rod Martin Report to understand it.
by Rod D. Martin
October 3, 2014
Dear Friend,
Yes, that gray beard is ceasing to be merely an accident of genetics: I'm 45 today. Thank you to all of you who've already wished me a Happy Birthday through a plethora of electronic and other means. It really does mean a lot.
Thank you also for being part of The Rod Martin Report family. This is not a normal newsletter: these missives are meant to be letters to friends, and I am grateful that you count yourself among them.
As pro-democracy protestors fill the streets of Hong Kong, perhaps the first and principal casualty has been Beijing's pitch for Taiwan to reunify under the same "One Country, Two Systems" paradigm. This is good news for freedom, and will feed back into Hong Kong's unrest.
My dear friend and ex-boss Peter Thiel is ubiquitous right now in the media, all in conjunction with the release of his outstanding Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Fortune magazine actually gave him the cover, with an appropriately titled story: "Peter Thiel disagrees with you." I am personally quite fond, and you likely will be too, of Business Insider's "Why Peter Thiel Doesn't Hire MBAs, Hates Suits, and Thinks Silicon Valley Can Be Bad For You."
If there were ever a "philosopher capitalist," it's Peter.
Will Ebola kill us all? Maybe, and if so, we can thank Barack Obama. While five former UK defense secretaries tell us that the virus is quickly “outstripping the ability of health care systems and workers to respond” and should be treated "the same way" as the threat posed by nuclear weapons, President Obola has 1. Actively brought infected patients into the country, 2. Sent more U.S. troops into infected regions of Africa than he has to fight ISIS, and 3. Allowed the biggest invasion of "undocumented" aliens into this country since the Vandals invaded Rome. Oh, and 4. He's now actively placed these illegal, unscreened folks in every one of 50 states.
Normal people might ask why illegal aliens need to be spread around the country like that. Obama will probably just ask when they'll be in all 57 states.
While some might try to connect sinister dots -- and there are plenty to connect -- I'm going to point out what might be the even scarier aspect of it all: liberal incompetence. Just spend a moment contemplating how these leftists came to the simultaneous conclusions that (a) ISIS isn't religious, (b) destabilizing Egypt, Libya and Syria was a good idea, (c) soldiers couldn't keep the peace we'd won in Iraq, leaving al Qaeda in Iraq (now ISIS) to mushroom, but (d) soldiers can stop a virus in African jungles.
Like Jimmy Carter and the hippies before him, Obama holds very tightly to a set of beliefs about the world that only make sense if you happen to be leader of the Choom Gang. Carter cost the free world give-or-take 26 countries fallen to Communism. What will Obama cost us?
Speaking of the cost of liberal folly, did you know that capitalism is cleaner (environmentally) than socialism? You probably didn't, and no, it's not just the absence of that lovely hippie smell.
Finally, some of you know that I was recently elected to the Committee on Order of Business of the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination (and the only one to successfully throw the left out of power once they'd taken it). Our President and my good friend Ronnie Floyd recently wrote an article called "What Every Church Needs to Know About the Cooperative Program". It doesn't matter whether you're a Southern Baptist: if you care about global missions, you need to read this.
Okay, that's plenty for this week. Thank you again for all the birthday wishes. Until next time.
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You can read about the world anywhere. You read The Rod Martin Report to understand it. Do your friends a favor and pass it along; and remember, there’s a lot more we publish each week that doesn’t make the newsletter.
For Freedom,
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