Tag: Lord Jesus

[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who will be chairing the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Thankfully we can all rest assured that the Adults are in charge of the GOP. There might be one or two show votes, but then they’re going to buckle down and get to the hard work of governing by consensus. Certainly that’s what the Commentariat is telling me. So it must be true. Cannot wait for my pony.

It had never occurred to me that Atlas Shrugged was actually about the dire need in this country for high speed rail.

John Hodgman tweets all things Ayn Rand.
Rest assured, John, based on the trailer, they’ve converted the Taggart Transcontinental into a massive freight train operation. Though I do seem to recall seeing a bullet train zip by, presumably it was built with government stimulus funds atop cheap and reliable Rearden metal.
Cognitive dissonance alert: It seems likely that observant Objectivists can only reach Galt’s Gulch by taking the Obama Express! What to do? What to do? Help us, Jeebus.
Rand’s prescription in this instance most likely involves quasi-consensual rough sex. So you know.

The Unfollow Button

correlationstonone:

kateoplis:

“I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

I think there’s more then a few dead kids lately that prove you wrong. Goddamn Pollyanna platitude-spouting optimists. You know what the best part of America’s collapse is? Watching hope founded on nothing fade into the sadness of reality.

Uh, did you even bother to take a look at the whole speech?

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

You are free to carp about Presidential use of scripture in this day and age, but there is very little Pollyanna in there. In fact, I’d say that’s the strength of the piece. But feel free to go on living in your sad little world in which everything is a magically irrefutable sign of decay, collapse, and entropy. Some would even call that “simple explanations in the aftermath.” Others would call it the worst brand of faux intellectualism in which all news must be greeted with a world-weary chin rub, an “I seen that one coming,” followed by a “and that’s why I never vote.”

In which case: well played.

You can’t jam a major arms control treaty right before Christmas. What’s going on here is just wrong. This is the most sacred holiday for Christians.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), explaining his highly principled opposition to NewSTART. Which I still think is most likely a dead letter. And, frankly, now that I know The Lord has come out categorically agin it, well, I fear for ‘Merica. Somebody get Pat Robertson on the horn.

Does EPA propose we stop breathing?

John Shimkus, (R, IL), showing the intellectual rigor on carbon emissions that he will bring to the Energy Committee, which he hopes to chair.
Similarly, Shimkus believes that God’s Biblical promise not to destroy the Earth again after that whole flood unpleasantness singularly disproves any possible dangers that might arise from that whole imaginary hoax that is climate change.
I look forward to numerous investigations into The Rainbow Connection.

Going Biblical

jonathan-cunningham:

“With Islam, you have a religion that says kill the Jews, kill the infidels. It bothers me when a religion says kill the infidels. It bothers me a lot more when I am the infidel.”

Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” If Islam “says kill the jews, kill the infidels” then Christianity says “Kill Christine O’Donnell”.

Yep. But let me just revise and extend the remarks of the distinguished gentleman with the following suggestions:

James 1:19-20

19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Ephesians 4:31-32

31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:25-26

25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath

And, while we’re on the subject, Might I suggest we open our Bibles to Mat. 23:23-28 (or: the Passion of Glenn Beck):

23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

In which Lord Jesus warns against slavish observance of the more ceremonial and other outward aspects of religion (and its practice) to the detriment of the spirit of the thing: social justice, mercy, and faith. What a concept. The clear difficulty lies in proving Beck ever actually swallowed a camel. And, rest assured, that will come up and serve as primary defense.

25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

in which Lord Jesus warns against self righteous (and self proclaimed) paragons and proclaimers of religious faith who are, themselves, hollowed out by the same crimes against which they are railing…a particularly trenchant concept which is also hit upon in the nexcerpt (oh yes I did):

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Here endeth The Tea Klan, King James edition. Any politician in the Democratic party currently unable or unwilling to fight back by quoting one or more of these (or other) verses needs to go ahead and get out of politics, right now. Feel free to come on back at a brighter moment in the history of the country. Sorry, it’s just the way it is.

Going Biblical

We’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it. Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under Constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.

Sharon Angle has the courage to speak about Sharia law and how it’s taking over various cities conveniently located in states she’s not running in.
Apart from this statement being utter gibberish (I mean, seriously, what is she even saying? That the northern reaches of the Dallas | Fort Worth metroplex are now anwering to the edicts of a mullah?), she’s also previously established her overriding concern that The Democrat is setting itself up as a god to be worshiped, in clear violation of The First Commandment. Christian God, after all, is the only Lord God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God that this country should be worshiping. And you sir, don’t seem to be worshiping quite hard enough. Don’t let it happen again.

People who talk about our “materialistic society” and about getting back to “spiritual values” strike me as having a right sense of indignation and a poor sense of analysis. The delusion of our society is not so much its materialism as its faux spiritualism, its desire to make a heaven on earth, not as a place free of needless suffering and full of what Barbara Ehrenreich calls “collective joy,” but as one in which the elect live everlastingly and communicate telepathically while flying in disembodied splendor above the heads of the Mexicans mowing the lawn.

Garret Keizer in Harper’s

Jackass knowledge

bobulate:

Metafilter with well over 500 responses on wrongness:

What in life did it take you a surprisingly long time to realize you’ve been doing wrong all along?

I once cooked expertly with my rangetop stove, when I moved to the city of Kobe, something I frankly knew nothing about. The device was waiting for me in my village apartment when I arrived, so I did to it with food what it seemed wont to do, interpreting its icons as called for. Toast in one area, fish in another, mochi, and so on. I had it all worked out. I spoke of this phenomenon with pride until, abruptly, a Japanese friend pointed out I had juryrigged it beyond recognition. I was doing it all wrong. And badly.

Since 1995 — when it was sort of coined by an episode of This American Life (00:00-04:01) — it’s been fun to call out “Jackass Knowledge.” There’s a point in conversation, a point at which information begins to thin, to stretch, to bend, and you take that shred of information you read online, in the Times, or heard from a friend, and you stretch it beyond where it truly belongs. It often comes in the form of talks we get into on subjects like partially hydrogenated oil, the frontal cortex, sustainable coffee bean suppliers, and the pythagorean theorem. The trouble is when you have a little information, you can go to far. And then, you’re well, you know.

Interesting. One of the quotes that jumped out at me:

That weird Arby’s logo is stylized drawing of a cowboy hat.

I thought it was a fish jumping out of a loaf of bread until I actually went to one and discovered that there was a real dearth of fish on the menu.

I guess if I look hard, squint, and pretend I’ve never seen a cowboy hat and consider various species of whales to be fish, then I get it.

Still don’t see the loaf of bread…maybe the whale done smushed it. The mind is a mysterious place.
Jesus, however, is definitely in the HEB sign.

Jackass knowledge