OBAMA FORCES STANLEY MC CRYSTAL TO RESIGN
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)
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