Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Senator Robert Byrd died last night at age 92. He was the longest serving elected
The Supreme Court said that States and Cities don't have the power to limit gun ownership. I strongly disagree with this decision as an infringement on local rights. There was also a ruling involving patents that came down. Elena Kagen this week is having her senate hearing for Supreme Court justice, and I will be tuning into that in a while.
Some of you may wonder how my no cigarettes campaign is coming. Well I doubt highly that it will succeed. Still there are so many health indications I should quit including that cough I had for weeks, and the fact that an uncle of mine died of throat canter a year and a half ago. And then there is you know who’s remark of “You just don’t look healthy”. I’m continuing with all the medical quackery to see if it works. I don’t know why I shouldn’t be the picture of health with all the vitamin C I’ve taken taken. I think that nurse knocked ten pounds off my weight when she took it. I don’t lose weight like that in a matter of weeks since my last weighing.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
That unemployment bill has been under consideration for eight weeks, or eight times (or both) and every time it has failed, and it failed again last night. As you know the majority of the improvement in job figures comes from the hiring of US Census workers, and very little of that is from the private sector. Randy Rhodes says that not only can you be “over qualified” for a menial job and they are afraid you’ll leave, but with some executive jobs if you aren’t already employed they will refuse to hire you. Thus if you are unemployed you are pretty much “marked off” by the system. One must bear in mind for every dollar spent on unemployment outlays the economy gets back $1.35 into the structure of the economy, so that there is a definite human investment dividend. The banking bill finally got passed. The liberals say the bill is hopelessly watered down. The Republicans and the banking community say the bill is too constrictive and restrictive. I would hope now we would have a little economic equity in our society. The government is constantly giving big business breaks that it would never give the little man. This is an issue to be gone into with the next Supreme Court nominee.
There are countless blogs you can read on the subject of the British Petroleum leak, and there are numerous entries under George Washington's blog. Randy Rhodes has been talking about something called "fracking", which sounds like a cross between fragging and cracking. It involves injecting lots of water and other poisonous substances into the ground to force out the remaining natural gas. But the thing is they don't know what to do with the water afterwards and so they put it in an unlined pit where it contaminates the community water supply. As it turns out the Gulf area is geologically unstable and if that weren't even the case the piping of the well is weak and unstable, such as if they put a cap on the well that actually fit right, either the piping would give way, or else the whole geological structure of the sea bed would collapse. They say this is one of the biggest oil deposits in the Gulf. British Petroleum has an even bigger platform called the Atlantis that many believe prudent to shut down at least to inspect the thing before IT blows. But of course they won't. And now we're into hurricane season. Tropical storm Alex is now making its way tword the Yukatan pennisula. Some southern senator days ago said he thought the then "tropical depression" might be headed straight tword the Gulf. Well the thing is, I think we can say that it isn't a question of whether a storm hits, but when.
I wanted to review for a moment why I say that Calvinism "lets people off the hook" as far as Christian salvation is concerned. Under Calvinism you can neither will yourself to be saved if you are not meant to be, nor will yourself to be lost, if you are meant to be saved. We are all totally depraved, which means that any decision we make, including the decision to accept Jesus' salvation, is a decision devoid of any moral insight, but it's as if it were made by an utterly depraved person without two brain cells that work together properly. Under Jewish law, the whole world is saved because Jesus died with sufficient power to cover the sins of the whole world. And there are certain universal salvation scriptures in the Bible such as in Peter where it says "God is not willing that any should be lost". If you believe that if it's the will of God, that ends the issue right there. But there is one doctrine called "limited election". The best way to describe this one is to picture Palm's Sunday and the money changers at the temple. God said to come with the sacrifices you have. But the temple authorities want their special kosher tag or else they won't accept the sacrifice. In a similar vain, the Church works off a "Jesus- - Plus- - " formula where you take Jesus, PLUS all of their little rules and regulations to proved that you are really saved. The "I" stands for Irresistable Grace. This simply means that Everyone who is Meant to be Saved- - Will be Saved. This takes the human decision factor out of the equation. The P stands for perseverence meaning that if you are among the lucky chosen- - if you have the million dollar wedge and land on the $100,000 now million dollar slot in the circle, you have a chance at getting a million dollars if you persevere to the end. An epistle of John states that "They (the unsaved) went out from amongst us, that it may be made manifest that they were never really one of us". I hope I've cleared things up for you all.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
I wasn't sure whether General Mc Crystal would be forced to resign or not. I didn't know if this President had the balls. After all the simple minded right wingers reason "Mc Crystal is the general in charge of pursuing the War, therefore he is one of the good guys". There are problems we all had with General Mc Crystal to start with. He engeneered the Pat Tillman cover-up. He helped to cover up abuses at Abu-grave. And he signed off on the "Mission Accomplished" slogan. Mc Crystal wants to widen the war expanding the peramaters to an overall remaking of society in Afghanistan with massive counter-insurgency. Other Generals don't think his approach will work and Mc Crystal has run afoul of a couple of others along the way. Still as resignations go, we liberals can take little solice in it. Because just like all of the other "teachable moments" and turning points, the President passed a golden chance to modify policy but instead went out of his way to praise Mc Crystal for following his orders explicitly. Also he said he bore no personal animosity tword the General. I think if I were President I'd inspire more confidence than our current one. Take this unemployment bill for instance. Yesterday Republicans explained that they were not against extending unemployment compensation but wanted only to pay for it as we went. They offered various ways we could make up the 33 Billion shortfall. Personally I would take these Republican messages to heart and not dismiss them out of hand. But were I chairing the senate I would simply say "All of you who want to abolish the health care bill just passed to take down the national debt, raise your hands". I imagine a rather sizable portion would raise their hands. Then I'd say "All those who want to cancel the current hostilities in Afghanistan raise your hands". Perhaps a smaller number would raise their hands. Then I say, "Very well then, let's compromize. Let's abolish both things and that way we will accomplish twice the cuts in the national budget". This seems like a simple thing to do with me.
I would now like to broach what some liberals might call an unpleasent topic but it's something that's been on my mind. As you may know by now I am not an accross the board liberal. So when I hear people on the Stephanie Miller show talking how the Catholic Church ought to be reoriented to accept gays and to say that Jesus would have accepted gay marriage, I have to raise a note in protest. I did a posting on this topic a couple months back. Were you to take a poll of theologians in any 25 year interval going back through century after century, various theological ideas no doubt would come and go. But rest assured all of them would agree that the idea of gay marriage would be abhorant to Jesus, and untill the last few years it would have been unthinkable that anyone would raise such a topic. As you know I also take exception to the liberals' views on abortion and euthanasia. Whether I believe in God or not, I personally believe it's a sin to artificially termanate suffering of those struggling for life. I don't know what's in the afterlife but I don't want it on my record that the last thing I did in my previous life was to dodge suffering on a gamble that would be the end of it. I'm not a total extremist on the abortion issue because I don't believe that cells in a test tube have the same presumptive right to life as a living fetus in the womb. As you may also know I have always been against no fault divorce. i believe marriage ought to be taken seriously and that there be consequences for dissolving it. I also would not metaphorically dumb dirt and other debris on the marriage altar by some perverted notion of what marriage is- - that not even the most decadent civilization endources.
I would also like to talk about perverted views of God himself. Theologically the proper view is to view God as an entirely Good being and sufficient unto himself in the absence of any created matter. As such I do not subscribe to the perverse proposition that goodness somehow "needs" evil in order to properly manifest itself, or that goodness would somehow be detracted from were not evil present. God knows every man's heart whether he does a heroic deed like rescue victims from a burning building or not. In scripture it says "That you intended to do these things- - you do well". We have the notion I've also heard uttered "Don't try and FIX so and so". This means "If you think a person is a wierdo, just keep it to yourself. You can gossip about it in secret if you want but don't confront the individual in question with your notions". This view is diametricly opposed to my own where I say if you see a problem, confront and eliminate it. In this line of reasoning you have the Jesus of KFI alias Neil Savadra, who states "Don't try to fix what is broken, that God says is not broken". You can see without too much effort that such a stance could be applied to gay people. I regard gayness as a disease. I can love the person and hate the disease. To call me "homophobic" is to say that I'm afraid of this disease afflicting society or my children, and as a parent my instinct is to protect my children from danger. There was one anti gay web site I visited a while back that cataloged the disadvantages of being gay. Their lives are alltogether more unstable. According to Dennis Prager it's not at all uncomon for a gay man to have over a hundred sexual partners. Dennis explains "Without the moralizing influence of women- - the brakes of restraint are off". As such gay people suffer disproportionately from sexually transmitted diseases, and their life expectancy is shorter, so I imagine their Life Insurance expences are higher. I honistly don't believe given the choice any man would prefer to be gay. If you were to suddenly heal them- - in that instant they were healed there'd be no way in hell they'd ever go back. The fact that gay men try out hetrosexual marriage is proof that basically they regard marriage as the normal thing. Now personally I think trying to "reprogram" a gay person is of dubious merit. Personally I would not want to tell a woman with AIDS coming to me for counceling that I knew her husband was gay when he married her but did nothing to protest the wedding. Of course Neil Savedra is the guy who first made his appearence on the Bill Handel show apparently as part of a one time gag where he pretended to be Jesus. He calls his show "radio theater". As "theater" he seems to claim exemption from the normal standards of theological decency. There were some web sites defending Neil that take up the chant "Judge not least you be judged". Guess what? I'm already been judged and rejected by Christianity and I have little doubt were I to call in on Neil's show I'd be vilified by him as have so many other callers. One trait of Neil is to polarize his callers into "Good guys" and "Bad guys". And once you have the "bad" label you can't shed it. Neil Savedra is of Mexican extraction, and apparently he's an ex security guard who is good in street fights. He's definitely a fighter and not a lover. As for me I make moral judgements- - and the Bible encourages us all the time to make moral judgements and evaluations about a lot of things. Neil claims to be the embodyment of Truth and yet he's putting on an act and doesn't tell you it's an act. This whole "radio theater" slogan is not one you'll hear on the air. What I do in my blogs is not theater. It's the way I really feel about issues from incidents in my personal life. I don't think Neil Savedra knows what is real and what is not. His "parent show" Bill Handel features numerous blasphamies of God, particularly around Christmas time. And a highlight of the Bill Handel show is to have practicing wiccans on right around Christmas time. Some may come back at me wish "You just said God was good apart from Evil. Is this what you really think or do you believe God is A-Moral?" What I personally believe about God and what theologically we are "supposed" to believe are two different things. As a Bible apologist I would have to go with the notion that God is entirely good. Neil Savedra has as much as said "Satan has as much right to be here and influencing the world as you or I do, and to try and chafe at what Evil has planned for your life would be wrong". I believe that Neil's beliefs are an affront to virtually every page of the Bible from Genisis to Revelation. The Bible, for instance, from cover to cover describes God as a being who heals and makes people whole. Instead Neil prefers to quote one passage of Paul about a "messager from Satan" and we don't even know what that is. One pastor suggested it might be an ex wife out to play mind games on him. Neil Savedra is going to continue to do damage to the Faith in a manner that it's possible for few people to do as he seems to fly "under the radar, seemingly amune from any criticism of the faithful church goers. But once you turn on the light in a dark room you know it needs dusting and can't go back into believing all is well. But if every time you turn on a light those in spiritual slumber scream "turn out that light" and after a while you just get up and leave. (Selah)
Buddahism on the other hand doesn't even bring up the idea of God or any outside force that shapes the destiny of man. Buddah belives that man can save himself by looking within and meditating. As I look at Bhuddism I see similar goals to Scientology as far as removing all of the strange hang-ups of the soul. Buddah believes that man is born in this world to suffer and the cause of this suffering is craving things that he doesn't have. Then the Buddah has an eight fold path to escape this condition and they all begin with "Right", such as right speech, right actions, right motives, etcetra. The Buddahist believes in objectivism saving the day. That is that he believes if we see things as they really are, without emotional hangups, we will transcend either our desire for or avirsion to them. One riddle of Buddahism goes "Things you think ARE- - - really aren't. Nor are they any other way". Another one a bit less confusing goes "You should sense what can be sense and think what can be thought- - and you should not mix the two." People can't do this. It's like if they are losing an argument they can't just "let it lie" and say "OK that's the way things are now". But they have to kenive and struggle and manipulate untill they are back on top. This is what Neil Savedra does. A Christian "meme" goes "Win every argument in the here and now at all cost". An enlightened individual can look at things as they are and say, OK that's how things are, and not get in a panic over it. A Christian if he sees pornography gets all hysterical and goes on a rant about society going to hell. An enlightened one would say "OK there it is- - but it isn't my thing" and move on. The idea of "Ortho karma" for lack of a better word flies in the face of this notion that you have to embrace some polar opposite. If something isn't extreme left or right- -some doctrinaire people would say "If it's not one or the other it can't be valid". On the other hand doing something "Right" means doing it without error, which one would have thought would be something Christians would strive for. (Selah)
Sunday, June 20, 2010
You know I am reminded that as with today when you hear or read a letter from a loved one or a relative who is deceast, you get fresh insight into their lives that you didn’t have before. [Pete Richards] pointed this out himself. “I knew him better from this letter than I did when he was on the earth”. You know in “Oh God” George Burnes remarks “As to the present I’m very keen on that. Also I’m very much into what was. But as to what hasn’t happened yet, I haven’t a clue”. As for us and the origin of the Universe it’s safe to say that we are very keen on what is. And through the miracle of delayed light travel we can even grasp a present knowledge of what was. However some will place a higher value on what they think “was” than what presently “is”. Let me elaborate. Some teleological creationist of several centuries ago happened upon the image of some native savages coming upon a watch. We don’t know if it was a running watch or not, but this too would have added mystery. We are to conclude from this example that some force beyond ourselves created the Universe and that force is named “God”. Let’s just stop leaping to conclusions for one moment however. (I touched also upon this topic in a September of 2007 entry in Psychic Balance, so read that) Because first of all we can say “I couldn’t have made this and it has a curious fascination as though some force directed it”. But then we are left with the choice of “Is this force some unseen incoporial life form? Or is this perhaps some alien being from another planet who left this device here for us to find. Or (as if saving the most likely for last) Might this device have been made by a human being who was just recently here and mightn’t we encounter this human being and find that basically he is just like us?” I say this because in September of 2007 I did not know that in a couple years scientists will have discovered the formula to life and DNA with the help of computers (which they also created) and so at last we see that life is not beyond the grasp of mankind.” You know- - when a crime is committed police look for evidence of the crime, which can be seen, to deduce what cannot be seen, and that is the crime in progress and who committed it. We work on the assumption that a crime can actually be proved. If we doubt this basic axiom, we are in the wrong line of work. It would be an absurdity to come up with some obsessive belief based on one piece of evidence- - when others are waiting to be found. People said “They still haven’t found the missing link”. But meanwhile all sorts of “missing links” have been unearthed. There is the book out “Evidence that demands a verdict” and yet all of the evidence is not in. Neither the prosecution nor the defense has rested its case. Calling for a rendered verdict is altogether premature. I would rather call the book “Evidence that Suggests a Verdict”. Certain facts about the Bible are pointed out very aptly that many people including me didn’t know. But in some cases there are “suggestions” of evidence on both sides. That Italian guy might well say that the historic evidence “suggests” –rather loudly, I might add, that Jesus as we know Him never existed. But in 1993 there was one book I read that suggested that we were very close to “The Answer” concerning the life of Jesus. The author goes “It’s as though you walked into a room. The TV was still on, and you could smell the man’s cologne and there is a cigarette still smoldering in the ash tray. You might even feel the warmth on the couch where he sat. Yet in reality this whole line of reason is just artistry. It would suggest that if we run hard down the block we might just catch up with him. When in reality the evidence of his existence is so “absent” that people got all excited from a piece of furniture with a forged inscription perporting to be a man of the same name as his brother, James. If we can get that excited over something that amounts to nothing- - we are indeed desperate to find any evidence Jesus ever existed. Facts are known truths. Something doesn’t cease to be “true” simply because no human is aware of the fact of its existence. This line of reasoning would suggest that an all knowing Being would see things as “facts” that we human beings don’t. If things which have yet to actually happen are already known by such a being, such future events could be “facts” though they have yet to happen. (Selah)
I said something some of you may take issue with. I said that the Federation does not look for “pre-fab” human beings to fit together as cogs designed to run their machine, but that each human being is a free being. Certain detractors such as the Bajorans would indeed say that the Federation robs people of their culture and national pride. These detractors see the Federation as little better than the Borg who say, “resistance is futile, you will be assimilated”. Some like the Andromadans see the Federation is a little too much like the old
Some may also be puzzled when I said that Tibettan Buddhism was something I found appealing even though it deals with death and the soul. Because I also said, “I do not welcome a religion (such as Christianity) whose only promise we can bank on is one of the afterlife. The two aren’t really contradictory. Because I remind you I have read my Bible and I know that humans are promised “the grave” when they die and the meek will inhered the earth- - and not heaven. Further there seems to not be one thing that we actually do in heaven once we get there. The place is one big void devoid of substance. And I al also aware of the reason why Christians even say “the only thing we can really bank on is the afterlife” is because they themselves do not believe in anything that can actually be shown or proven, so have to take refuge in a sphere that we know absolutely nothing about. It’s like men of old saying “the moon is made of green cheese”. For a long time men assumed we would never know otherwise since no one had been there- so their statements would never be refuted. In January of 1976 I was having suicidal thoughts. And yet nothing in my daily life would suggest that I should suddenly be so depressed. I had my new ten band radio I’d gotten for Christmas. I was progressing in my sound engineering class, though a bit dissatisfied with the slow pace. I had received the book “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” from [Pete Richards] that Christmas. Obviously that book did not give me “hope”. If you read a letter of mine to Doug Clark it is very nihilistic with reference to Mao Tse Tung and Communist rhetoric. To me revolution was romantic because it involved death. You who don’t know me might assume several things from all of this. One logical possibility is that I myself don’t even know why I was so depressed at this time. Perhaps it’s something that would be revealed in psycho-therapy. In Star Trek they discuss certain metaphysical particles and those of a certain time point, or are aligned a certain direction- - such that one upon examination can deduce which “particles” don’t belong there with the others. It is my contention that with first and early second century Church history- - certain “particles” or pieces of evidence don’t belong there but a police detective could examine them and deduce that they were moved there by others so that they would be found where someone wanted them found. Certain pieces of evidence “don’t fit” and a key example is the utter absence of any reference to Nero or the burning of
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
As you will note we jumped from December to June just like that, as we are wont to do. Of course on the national front there is still that British Petroleum oil slick that casts a pall over the Gulf, as well as our national psyche. But on the local front my TV going on the fritz, apparently for good, last Thursday, casts a pall over my personal life. As you know the summer is riddled with one yest anniversary flash points, if you will. The first was the chaos that ensued going digital on TV stations last June 12th. The second date is June 16th. on a Tuesday when my internet went out for nearly a month and was not restored till July 13th. So Bastille Day was a good day for me. The next date is July 4th. when my Mom just wanted us to "visit this place she was thinking about" among so many places she had been thinking about. It was said by family members she just liked being invited out to lunch by other old ladies all the time. But before the day was out it was like they were having a fire sale and everything had to be moved out of their house. The next date is one week later, July 11th. This was a funeral of a relative, but also featured a lot more moving furniture. The next date was in late July when my computer was in the shop, this time to have the hard drive cleared of viruses, and to have two new anti virus programs instilled. Then we have Saturday August first- - - you don't want me to go on, do you, because the news never seems to get better. Weather wise, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday qualified as "June gloom". Yesterday the sun came out at two, and today the sun was out mid day and the temperatures are a little warmer. But I'm in a June gloom state of mind.
They have some new kind of wood product they refer to as "real wood" because you can do anything with it you can do with real wood, like saw it, plane it, varnish it, ect. But it doesn't burn because it has minute particles of glass embedded in it. Don't ask me how they do that but if it catches on we'll really have something. And there aren't any "dangerous chemicals" in the product as there are with these pressed wood products. Some people say the internet is dumbing us down. A few think it is making us smarter. From what I have observed of the younger generation they appear to be maturing early and seem years of where we were in the early school and pre school years. Of course that sixteen year old Abbey got pretty far with her attempt to sail around the world before she ran into a bad storm in the Indian Ocean that knocked her sailing mast down, and a fishing boat picked her up. I heard she'll have to spend the next two weeks with the work crew, fishing. Some say the internet feeds our attention deficet disorder. I think more than ever we need courses in independent thinking. And also programs that encourage getting outdoors and manual dexterity are excellent for the young.
There is a raft of people calling themselves the Messiah, the Son of God. There is one Russian candidate in Syberia, who fills the bill and has long hair. There is a joker in Britain who also claims the title of the Son of God. However nobody believes him. He has no followers so is kind of an easy to ignore nut case. Then there is that man in the Philipines. Just between you and me Christians from that part of the world bother me. You know, from South Korea or Tiwhan or the Philipines. They all seem to wound up and emphatic and self obsessed. This guy lives in this Garden of Eden compound - and it's the height of honor to be chosen as one of the people who gets to personally fan him with a big fan, because you get to enter the compound. And finally we have Jesus Christ of KFI. Today Jesus wanted to remind us of the dangers of moral relativism. You know something that will turn you into a moral relativist quickly- - - getting the crap kicked out of you in a dark alley. Till then we all like to think we alone have the perfect Truth. Jesus reminds us that he has followers world wide on the internet, and that his radio program is nationally syndicated. I didn't know that but now I feel better about bashing him so much, because at least now people know who I'm talking about. But how do you Google a man like that, who doesn't even use his own name? Chuck Smith says he won't even read a letter that isn't at least signed in long hand. Any number of ways occur to knock him off his pedistal. You could say "Being the son of God you can't lie. Now tell me- - - have you ever made love to a woman?" That one will nail him quickly as a fraud. But a more obvious means of discrediting him is right in the Bible where it ways "If any one says says behold he is out in the desert- - or he is in the secret chamber- - - don't believe him". Untill Jesus of KFI can fake a really great thunder storm, he's toast and he knows it. And since Jesus is an absolutist he'll appreciate that the Bible does not qualify the statement with things like "But this doesn't apply if you're only pretending".
Could Sarah Palin be running for President after all??? She appears to want to be the "mother grizzly" to all the baby grizzlies out there- - who won last Tuesday, many of them women. Some say she just looks to where a crowd is rushing and runs to get in front of it and claims to be their leader. Sarah wants to somehow take credit for all of last Tuesday's victories. She really is a piece of work, isn't she. She's trying to prove she's politically smart. Of course perhaps the perfect running mate for her is Minnisota's governor, Tim Pollente. They have a ready made slogan of "The Perfect Political Marriage consists of One Man and One Woman". Maybe Pollente can show Sarah his "big shtick". Sarah has already proven she lacks the discipline to actually hold political office but that doesn't bother anybody. Just like it doesn't bother anybody that the Republican Senate mominee- - has actually exported more jobs to China and India than the rest of us can imagine- - at her post with H P. And of course her colleague running for Governor of California spent money like a drunken sailor and is trying to convince the people she's really spartan, like Jerry Brown, who drives around in an old Plymouth and sleeps on a mat on the floor. I think tat Jerry Brown is going to make mince meat out of Meg Whitman, that is if she ever decides she's brave enough to face Jerry Brown in a debate.