Sunset: An Interlude from Romans

I just saw the most magnificent sunset of my life.

I had been shopping for opening night gifts at Target. Somewhere close to the card section, I happened to spy a Thomas Kinkade painting. They're nothing but commericialized sentiment, as individual as a Big Mac. This particular print was of a snow-bound cottage in the forest (surprise, surprise), and was accompanied by a quote from the Master himself. It went something like this:

BEAUTY is found in the sheer EXPERIENCE of LIVING, and is cause for REJOICING.

That's right. His phraseology is as cloying as his artwork. Bleah.

So I headed home with my purchases, happily mocking the self-styled Painter Of Light. It must be silly to contemplate a dinner theater actor slamming Kinkade. But when I'm running around acting silly while people are digesting their lasanga, I don't pretend to be the Thespian of Light. So safe in my fortress of dryness, I traveled west through one of the more beautiful areas of Nashville, Belle Meade. As I turned onto Highway 70, my wry humor saw the real thing and hushed.

It had been raining all day, but the storm was now to the west of us. Behind me, the sky was clear and deepening into dark blue, but the wind-swept clouds were flinging a warm amber onto every surface. The wet road had melted into an avenue of gold. The mist droplets on my windshield had snatched sparkles from the sky, while a vista of bright blue was gleaming through the riot.

Only the fast-food signs and traffic lights of Bellevue could resist transcendence. This impious stand was futile, though; the vain enclaves of capital were passed in a moment. I drove to my apartment, scratched my cat's head while the computer started, and wrote this down.

During my drive, I contemplated the actual nature of beauty. It seems to me that the familiar viewed under a single unifying element is the true essence of beauty. By looking at the sides of the road, you could see each individual tree try to assert its own color against the dazzling sunset. But looking west, there was only dark yellow and shadow. There the immanent could give a shape to transcendence, but only on transcendence's terms. That interplay of familiar and glory is what arrests the soul in observation, and is the artist's laboratory. The focus-grouped fantasies of Kinkade don't have a fraction of the emotion of a Rembrandt. His works are shaped by the assembly line they spring from; that is the unifying principle of them all, and this is why Kinkade's paintings stink.

The second factor in beauty is rarity, you see. Never again will I see that sunset. And yet that very singularity was at one with a sense of free abundance. Tomorrow I may see another sunset, gorgeous in its own way as this one, and the next day, another. Who could have thought that ten minutes on Highway 70 could be so enchanting? This must be the second tension of beauty that art seeks to capture, the intersection of rarity and abundance, of precious and free. We have been given so much for such a little while. Art tries to remind us of this, to capture our thoughts and focus them on the reality of what we're experiencing.

But people don't usually pay to be challenged. They want the familiar and comfortable. A filling meal, a few laughs, and it's home to a wall full of sentimental goo. That's why we artists must be passionate about excelling in our art. Only the most ignorant or inured could glance stupidly at the Sistine ceiling. And can anyone resist a glorious sunset?

P.S. If you did go to the Kinkade site, I'm awfully sorry about that. Here's an antidote.

Blogging Light Until 24 Nov - Working on Major AWOL Bush Post

I'm also in the middle of opening a dinner theater farce, putting Bobbie's Dairy Dip to rest for the season, and gearing up to be Santa in a kid's Christmas show. I'm also making some chili (mm, mm, good).

I'm looking at the AWOL Bush evidence all over again. I'm willing to accept that Bush accumlated enough retirement points to be discharged honorably, but the available records show that he blew off his last two years in the Guard as much as possible. In fact, I think 1st Lt. Bush had a major fire lit under his pants in April 73. And the documents we have confirm that Bush was nowhere to be found around a Guard base for six unexcused months in 1972.

I'm hoping this will be the definitive word on Bush's Guard service, but to do it right will take some time. See you as I can until then...

More on Predicting the Election

Smirking Chimp Thread

talhazelden concludes that the Democratic candidate must be leading by at least 2.7% in the polls to clinch the election. I'd like to see that number a little bit higher, just so problems like Florida 2000 can't throw the election to the loser again.

Frist's Office Denies Tampering With Online Poll

Yahoo! News - Senate Leader Learns Lesson in Online Activism

The story says they denies "high-tech ballot rigging". What else can you call flipping questions back and forth to suit your desired answers? Senator Frist, we have screenshots! You lie and you lie!

Ding Dong, Roy Moore is Out

Court Orders Alabama's Chief Justice Removed from Bench

War Liberal's got full coverage, plus a couple of predictions: talk radio's the best bet for Moore, or maybe a Fox News post. My personal bet is the Trinity Broadcasting Network. He wouldn't stand out as such a looney there.

Bill Frist's Office Changes Poll Question on Site After Closing Poll!

Trouble in Texas

Sean says it all right here, with screenshots. It's despicable.

As Bill Frist's judicial slumber party took off in Washington, his official website sponsored a poll about the situation. But in a stunning display of pettiness, they solicited votes for one question, and then displayed the results under a different question.

The first question was this: Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?

Those in favor of the judicial nominees being blocked would have voted No, although they would have been wrong to do so. I would say that the minority has a Constitutional duty to take their "advice and consent" on such matters seriously. On several of Bush's deficient nominees, the minority has done so.

This is their Constitutional privilege, and denying them the power of filibuster strikes at the heart of the Constitution. Bill Frist's shameful power play should sober all Tennesseans as to the character of our representative.

When the poll closed after 106,285 votes, the Yes category led over the No category 54% to 46%. It's sad that around 50,000 people would deny a seminal Constitutional right to the minority party in the Senate, but there it was. But Frist's office had a plan.

They changed the question when reporting the poll numbers!

Now the question reads: Should the Senate perform its Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?

The question is clearly different, and now misleads about the real nature of the poll.

The poll, of course, was not scientific; it was done to promote the slumber party around the Internet. Liberal and conservative surfers alike will inform their friends about such polls and try to overwhelm the other side. It's a cybernetic tug-of-war.

But for Frist's office to play these kind of memory-hole games with the facts is beneath contempt. What ickle toady-toads they are...

Republicans Continue Obstinate Holdup of Senate Business

Yahoo! News - Senate Begins Around-The-Clock Debate on Judges

After this marathon fails to work, Bill Frist and other Republican congressional leaders will hold their breath until they turn blue.

Republicans also had cots placed in a room named for the legendary Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who in 1957 held the floor himself for a still-record nonstop 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposing a civil rights bill.

Honoring such an act should be a mark of shame for these people, but they just don't get it.

Still, I hope the Democrats are taking notes. If the Repubs can be this stick-in-the-mud about the Three Stooges, then they have no room to criticize anyone who won't get over the theft of Election 2000.

McDonald's McAngst over McJob in the Dictionary

BBC NEWS | Americas | McDonald's anger over McJob entry

McAngst: a misplaced and shallow focus of concern over a regretable situation.

McDonald's is upset that their "low prestige, low dignity, low-benefit, no future jobs" have inspired a neologism spoken enough to be printed in a collegiate dictionary, but they're not so upset that they're going to McDo anything about the actual jobs. That might affect the McBottom Line. No, they're just hoping to make the citation McAmScray.

Don't we deserve a McFreaking Break, already?

McPS: McDonald's letter deploring the dictionary citation cites some statistics that they believe to support their McCase.

Over a thousand people have moved up from the McJobs to management, which goes to show that the McJobs aren't dead-end. But then the letter states that the establishment has 12 million current employees, which when combined with past employees, must dwarf that "over a thousand" figure by five or six orders of magnitude.

Evidently, when looking at a empty glass with a water stain, McDonald's believes the glass to be McFull.

New Feature: Get Notified When I Actually Update the Site!

Yahoo! Group: boloboffingroup

By joining this group at Yahoo!Groups, you can receive an email whenever I update this site. I believe there's even an option to get a daily digest, so that if I update a lot in a day, you'd only get one email for the day.

Of course, it would be easier to xml me, but if you don't have a news aggregator, then the Yahoo! group is the best way to get me.

The Struggle to Expose Bush's Failures of Intelligence Continues: Memogate Be Damned

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has been examining the use of intelligence by senior administration officials in the Bush White House. It was digging into the stovepiping of intelligence by "the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department". This was being pulled along by the Democratic members of the committee, but it had the cooperation of the majority chairman, Pat Roberts (R-KS).

No longer. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, has pulled the plug on the committee. The reason? A memo to the SSCI minority leader, John Rockefeller IV (D-WV) was stolen from his office. This memo outlined an plan for getting any evidence of "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials" into the public eye. It states its concern for operating within established guidelines for committee members, but the subject matter is clearly a weak spot for the Bush Administration. Since Frist knows just who to thank for his current leadership role in the Senate, the political battle lines have been drawn on the issue of Bolton's stovepipe.

The plan in the memo was to use Roberts' cooperation as far as it would go, then attach dissenting opinions that could be supported by the evidence to the final reports. This might have been enough to reopen the call for an independent investigation. Now Roberts will be completely uncooperative whenever the committee is allowed to reconvene.

It is therefore crucial that the Democratic members of the SSCI stick to their guns and work to dissent as strongly as possible from the final report. It appears that Rockefeller is doing just that:

After discussions with Roberts, the majority leader said that "the committee's review is nearly complete" and "we have jointly determined the committee can and will complete its review this year."

"They can't do that," Rockefeller said, noting that hundreds of pages of requested documents have recently been promised by the State Department and Pentagon and more interviews have been scheduled.

In addition, he noted that the final report from David Kay, who heads the CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has not been completed. "What can we say about prewar intelligence without Kay's report?" Rockefeller asked.

Clearly Frist has put the kibosh on any further examination of the White House's handling of intelligence, and Roberts has agreed to this. His previous cooperation must, therefore, be the first item of dissent for the minority members.

Before he was strongarmed by the administration and its allies, Roberts agreed that the stovepiping was a proper subject for the committee's inquiry, and signed off on further requests for documents from the State Department and the Pentagon. Here's Roberts' stated perception of his role from his own Congressional website:

"As Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, my job is to ensure that our Intelligence Community has the ability to protect the nation from threats at home and abroad. It is my goal to see that our intelligence agencies have cutting edge collection capabilities and perform accurate analysis of intelligence information so that we can win the war on terrorism."

Pat Roberts

Senator Roberts, this administration bypassed the efforts of the Intelligence Community to accurate analyze the intelligence information, interfering with their ability to protect the nation from threats at home and abroad. Their efforts to collect and accurately analyze intelligence information was tossed aside by an administration bent on war. Have you now joined them in this dereliction of duty?

What about the requested documents and interviews that will now not be considered or even reviewed or conducted by the SSCI? This should be the second item of dissent. There is more work to be done, and this committee is not being allowed to do it. When the stovepipe was put into place, the people behind it became a part of the Intelligence Community, and thus fell under the jurisdiction of the SSCI's inquiries:

Created pursuant to S.Res. 400, 94th Congress: to oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities and programs of the United States Government, and to submit to the Senate appropriate proposals for legislation and report to the Senate concerning such intelligence activities and programs. In carrying out this purpose, the Select Committee on Intelligence shall make every effort to assure that the appropriate departments and agencies of the United States provide informed and timely intelligence necessary for the executive and legislative branches to make sound decisions affecting the security and vital interests of the Nation. It is further the purpose of this resolution to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Jurisdiction of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

When this administration bypassed the appropriate departments for analysis of intelligence, it fell into the jurisdiction of the SSCI.

Finally, the independent investigation must be called for immediately following the release of the report that Frist will manhandle out of the committee by year's end. It should be a bipartisan goal to see that our government doesn't act recklessly with biased and false information when the lives of our young men and women are on the line. Frist's stifling of appropriate inquiry by the SSCI shows just how political this fight for the truth has become, and the only recourse, barring the SCCI continuing its investigations unimpeded, is to have an independent investigation free from political influences.

As Mark 4:22 says: "Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open." Today, it's the stolen memo. Tomorrow, it will be the failings of the Bush administration. That is, if the nation's wounds ever stand a chance at being healed.

Smirking Chimp Regular: Prediction of Election Via Statistics

The Smirking Chimp

The poster's name is talhazelden, and there's some mighty impressive work at the thread. This is the chart that's stunning:



tal says that it's not all bad news, though. Many states are in play, and the real question for the Democratic party is this: what candidate can swing 41 electoral votes away from Bush? If we can keep the blue states and swing the weakest four red states away (Michigan, Arkansas, New Jersey, and Missouri), the election belongs to the Democratic Party.

It's also heartening to see Tennessee (the home state of your humble hobbit correspondant) is the sixth weakest red state. Can the trend be reversed? We'll see...

Pew Research Center: The 2004 Election Is Going To Be Ugly

Political Aims > Overview: The 2004 Political Landscape

ELECTORATE STILL 50-50 BUT MORE CONTENTIOUS THAN IN 2000

Over the past four years, the American electorate has been dealt a series of body blows, each capable of altering the political landscape. The voting system broke down in a presidential election. A booming economy faltered, punctuated by revelations of one of the worst business scandals in U.S. history. And the country endured a devastating attack on its own soil, followed by two major wars.

National unity was the initial response to the calamitous events of Sept. 11, 2001, but that spirit has dissolved amid rising political polarization and anger. In fact, a year before the presidential election, American voters are once again seeing things largely through a partisan prism. The GOP has made significant gains in party affiliation over the past four years, but this remains a country that is almost evenly divided politically – yet further apart than ever in its political values.

I'm still looking at this report, but there's a heaping helping of good information in it. This information will make or break an election. You'd do well to download the PDF.

America's Deficits: Cleaning Up Bush's Mess

Bartcop > Economist.com

No Public Funding for Dean

NYTimes.com

Well, that was a good idea while it lasted. If Dean can't see his way to fulfilling this pledge of his, it really means that campaign finance reform is dead in the water. Money makes the world go round...

Dr. Dean, who has raised $25 million to become the best-financed Democrat in the race, will rely on private contributors to fuel his campaign in the primaries, turning away almost $19 million in taxpayer financing and avoiding the spending limit of about $45 million that comes with it.

The move is an effort to outspend Democratic rivals and to compete next year with President Bush, who declined matching money and aims to raise at least $170 million despite facing no Republican challenger. It increases the likelihood that other Democrats now considering a departure from the system, such as Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and General Wesley K. Clark, may take the same approach.

The added emphasis is the heart of the matter. Bush will unleash his primary money on the Democratic candidate as soon as it's clear who it is, as soon as the rivals stop spending money to attack the Dem candidate. Bush will then pick up a cool 75 million from the taxpayers after the Republican convention to run in the "real" election.

That's the real reason the Republicans agreed to push their convention to the first week in September. That gives Bush 75 million to spend in two months. God, politics is crass...

Meme of the Week: Jessica Lynch

West Virginia soldier missing in Iraq

PALESTINE, West Virginia (AP) --A West Virginia woman who joined the Army because there were few jobs in her hometown is among a dozen soldiers reported missing after a supply convoy was ambushed in southern Iraq, her father said Monday.

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 19, of Palestine, worked as a supply clerk with the Army's 507th Maintenance Co., said her father, Greg Lynch. "The only thing they can tell us is she's missing," Lynch said.

..."We have so many Jesses over there right now," [Jessica's cousin] said. "You turn on the TV and it just breaks your heart. There are a lot of families in West Virginia that have a Jesse, too, and they're going to be feeling for the Lynch family."

POW Jessica Lynch Rescued by U.S. Forces in Iraq

WASHINGTON --” American troops on Tuesday rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been held as a prisoner of war in Iraq since she and other members of her unit were ambushed March 23, the Defense Department announced.

Rescued POW put up fierce fight (archived from MS-NBC)

Details emerge of W.Va. soldier's capture and rescue
By Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb for the Washington Post

Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.

LYNCH, A 19-YEAR-OLD supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said.

Saving Private Jessica (TIME - must pay to see article)

The truth about Jessica

Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.

...Wren yesterday described the Lynch incident as "hugely overblown" and symptomatic of a bigger problem. "The Americans never got out there and explained what was going on in the war," he said. "All they needed to be was open and honest. They were too vague, too scared of engaging with the media." He said US journalists "did not put them under pressure".

Wren, who had been seconded to the Ministry of Defence, said he tried on several occasions to persuade Wilkinson and Brooks to change tack. In London, Campbell did the same with the White House, to no avail. "The American media didn't put them under pressure so they were allowed to get away with it," Wren said. "They didn't feel they needed to change."

Saving Private Lynch story flawed

The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves.

The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series "Profiles from the Front Line", that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.

As for Private Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction sites list Jessica Lynch items, from an oil painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica Lynch" fridge magnet.

Saving Private Jessica (Kristof, CNN, June 20, 2003)

The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants, blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.

"I asked him not to shoot Jessica," Mr. Khazal said, "and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her." Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)

By the morning of March 31, all of the Iraqi military at the hospital had fled. The hospital staff members said that they then told Ms. Lynch they would take her to the Americans the next day. That same night, the American special forces arrived.

MemeFirst: Saving Private Jessica

The tale of woe I read is not that the Pentagon tries to manipulate popular opinion through propaganda and selective truths. The problem is that American television media has lost the plot. Afraid of anything that costs ratings (and therefore advertising dollars) it no longer serves as an objective, skeptical source of information, but as infotainment. The impact this has on a democracy is increasingly obvious, as ignorance and my-country-right-or-wrong attitudes spread, allowing the Bush administration to tread without fearing a hard question or rebuke.

BBC correspondent defends Lynch documentary

HARRIS: What I'm very interested in is a couple of things that were in your report. You got a quote here from some of the doctors that were there at the hospital. I'm going to read the transcript of it. "It says like a film in Hollywood, they cried go, go, go. They shot with guns, and blanks with bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions, and break the door. We were very scared." Are you saying that you believe [the] Iraqi doctor's assessment that the U.S. troops there were using blanks?

KAMPFNER: Well, that is his contention. What we did, what I did when I went to the Pentagon and spoke to its No. 2 there, Brian Whitman, we said, OK, we have one story, two different versions. Let's cross-check the information that the Iraqi doctors have given against the official U.S. version.

For example, what kind of injuries did Lynch sustain in the hospital? Was it true that she received bullet and stab wounds as a result of the Iraqis? He said, well, the truth will come out at some point in the future. In other words, he didn't engage in that.

Second question was, did the Americans come under fire from the Iraqis during the rescue mission? Again, that's the kind of holding answer we got from him.

The main point we said to them was, OK, there are two versions. There are several different allegations, several different interpretations of this story.

Instead of all of us relying on your five-minute, very professional, very carefully edited film, which was immediately transmitted from Central Command to the world's broadcasters, why don't you give everybody what's known in the profession as "the rushes"? Give everybody all the unedited film, the real-time film, as shot by the U.S. military cameraman who was with the rescue mission, and that will put everybody out of all questions of doubt. They declined to do that.

A Broken Body, a Broken Story, Pieced Together

In the hours after the ambush, Arabic-speaking interpreters at the National Security Agency, reviewing intercepted Iraqi communications from either hand-held radios or cellular phones, heard references to "an American female soldier with blond hair who was very brave and fought against them," according to a senior military officer who read the top-secret intelligence report when it came in. An intelligence source cited reports from Iraqis at the scene, saying she had fired all her ammunition.

Over the next hours and days, commanders at Central Command, which was running the war from Doha, Qatar, and CIA officers with them at headquarters were bombarded with military "sit reps" and agency Field Information Reports about the ambush, according to intelligence and military sources. The Iraqi reports included information about a female soldier. One said she died in battle. Some said she was wounded by shrapnel. Some said she had been shot in the arm and leg, and stabbed.

These reports were distributed only to generals, intelligence officers and policymakers in Washington who are cleared to read the most sensitive information the U.S. government possesses.

These intelligence reports, and the one bit of eavesdropping, created the story of the war.

Jessica-Lynch.com - a web community of Jessica's wellwishers

Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal

In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable.

Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday.

...Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."

And asked about reports that the military exaggerated the danger of the rescue mission, Ms. Lynch said, "Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that," although she added that in that context anybody would have approached the hospital well-armed. She continued: "I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they, you know, all I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. I needed help."

New Website: RedefeatBush.com

RedefeatBush.com

Very nice looking site, with the stated goal of registering a million new Democratic voters for the 2004 election. That's worth doing...plus members get their own journal, and it looks like they can organize into groups.

Media Whores Online Gone Until 2004!

Out To Pasture

Ahem. This sucks. Yes, I know that 2004 is only two months away, but I doubt that we'll see a new post there January 2nd. All that whoring and no one focusing on it...

Congrats to Keith Knight for 10 Years of K Chronicles!

Keith Knight Rules!

Excellent Discussion on the Separation of Church and State

It's a Free Country, Not a Christian Nation

Romans 3:21-26

I've done a lot of blogging on what I see the text saying, and not a lot of reacting to the text. Here's the blog where that changes.

So far Paul has tapped into a phenomenon as common as death or taxes: the human confrontation with our own lousiness. We must all deal with the regrets and failures of the life we've led so far. And what are the big failures always about?

• Our knowledge of condemning others for things we do ourselves.
• Setting up a standard that we constantly fail to achieve.
• Continuing to do things that we recognize as harmful to ourselves and others.

All of these are the essence of the sinful state of being. It doesn't matter what your background is - we've all fallen short of the glory of the Creator God.

And the knowledge of our impending deaths is the inertia that keeps us bound into this harmful pattern. We lash out at times in judgment of others, we punish ourselves by trying for an impossible goal, or we lapse into indifference because there is no escape from death. Innocence is no shelter, and neither is experience. The knowledge of death disables us in the struggle against our weaknesses.

However, the sinful life doesn't lead any more inexorably to death than the righteous one. There is no causal link between sin and death. Mentally we may see one, and in times of extreme pain caused by another, we may demand one - we may even wish death on ourselves to end the pain of our percieved sinfulness. But the sinners die and live just as the saints do: time and chance holds sway over us all.

Shall we continue in our lousiness because it doesn't really matter in the end? Well, suit yourself. If being in the grip of lousiness is what makes you happy, how can we argue against it? But there's got to be a better way to face up to death. What good is beating up yourself and others all your short life? Wouldn't it be better to be free of that constant voice of criticism and judgment?

Paul gives us his solution: the faithfulness of Jesus provides a path for freedom from the debased mind. Now you can see what 1:16's through faith for faith means: God's revealed righteousness is provided through Jesus' faithfulness and is for those who are faithful (3:22). This is the engine of Paul's gospel: Jesus was faithful unto death for us, providing a place of safety marked by the blood of his sacrificed life. By taking up that faithfulness, we enter that place of safety from God's wrath. Trusting in this safety, death's inertial power is lifted and the Christian uses that burst of energy to transform this life into a life of peace and righteousness and joy.

Well, that's the idea, anyway. It's imperfectly applied at times. You could lighten up on yourself and make realistic goals while letting people be who they are. But that doesn't get Paul to Spain, does it?

We Have To Stay In Iraq

Washington Post: Staying the Course, Without Choice

I supported the war against Iraq, reluctantly. I considered Saddam Hussein a clear and future danger to American interests, based on books like Pollack's The Threatening Storm. Hussein was a dictator midwifed by abhorrent American foreign policy, but that didn't set aside the need to deal with him decisively. I had wished that an international, peaceful solution could have been found, but Bush was set on war and he followed that path doggedly.

Of course he was lying to us about the reasons - to not even acknowledge the American interests in the continuing flow of oil, the current lifeblood of the global economy, was the height of sophistry. We've now seen the full extent of the false information flowing out of Bush's White House, and it's shocking, and it damns them in history forever.

But the anarchy and destruction we would unleash on the world if we pull out of Iraq now will eclipse that judgment. Hussein could still be alive, and would certainly be a player in Iraqi politics if we left. There's already a rival Shi'ite government forming in Iraq that would ally itself instantly with Iran should we leave. We would deserve the bleak future that is ours if we desert Iraq now.

I don't agree with the assessment of this article, though. It presents these options: stay the course, more American troops, more international support, cut and run. The last is not an option for rational people. Staying the course, the current favorite of the Bush administration, is clearly not working. The military and Americans rightly oppose more American troops, and the international community has spoken clearly on the third and best option.

But have they said no to us, or to Bush and Co.? Is it the action America has taken, or the accompanying actions of the Bush business partners and former employers that stick in the global craw? I firmly believe the international community has rejected the Bush Administration and friends, and not America itself. We should find a way to convince the international community that we are serious about doing the right thing in Iraq. The best thing we could do is elect a compentent leader who wants an international solution that benefits the free world equally. Somebody besides George Bush.

PS: There is a true solution to the problem with Iraq. If we found an alternate source of energy that provides the same flexibility and benefits as oil (cleaner and easily renewable should also be benchmarks), the growing problem of oil supply would disappear. Until then, we must keep the remaining flow of accessible oil open for the free world (assuming there is such a thing), until this energy source can be developed. This is the Eisenhower project of the 21st century for America, and it's the only human solution available. In a perfect world, the new technology would be owned by the American government and shared freely with the nation's governments - an open source energy resource.

It would be the Christian thing to do.

Blogging Romans: 2:17 - 3:20

I apologize for the delay in continuing this blog. Life can be wild.

Okay, so last time Paul took a cheap shot at homosexuals and argued with Jews inappropriately. He wouldn't be Paul if he hadn't. The cheap shot is the twisted midrash on a particular sex act - who wouldn't feel that twinge of regret at having their sexual acts revealed? Paul continues to take the Jews down a notch in this next section of Romans, but his only redemption here is that he's placing all humanity on the same level - all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Paul's diatribe on Jewish hypocrisy in judgment could easily be applied to the second audience I mentioned at the beginning of this blogging: the Gentile judges who would try Paul, or expel Jews themselves. The names of the divinities must have been cursed by Gentiles a few times because of their actions.

But Paul quickly moves on to clearly Jewish matters: the value of circumcision. The Jew is the favored one of God, and Paul never abandons this notion. But playing off Deutronomy 10:16, he transfers the notion of God's favor to an internal state - setting up the role of faith in salvation.

Coming from the Churches of Christ as I do, I find it very instructive to insert the word "baptism" in place of "circumcision". Both are physical acts, both are seen as the moment when God's favor is bestowed. But Paul will soon be pointing out that Abraham received praise from God before his circumcision. Indeed, there's a definite theme of God weaning his people away from the idea of a holy place - such sacralization comes from the idolatrous impulse, the original confusion. God gave the Israelites plans for a tabernacle, a tent that travelled with them, shattering the concept of a holy place and instilling the idea of the holy heart, the sacredness of a community wherever they may travel.

Yet people must have their mysteries. The Catholics transform the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ, scholars ponder the conundrum of the Trinity, and the church of Christ sees the forgiveness of sins bound irretrivably in the waters of baptism. The Red Queen could believe six impossible things before breakfast, so devout was her faith. To be sure, I always understood that baptism saved because "God said it did." There's nothing present in the water or the baptizer that had anything to do with it. It was a faithful heart responding to how it perceived the commandments of God.

So much for the tangent. At the beginning of Chapter 3, Paul claims that there are some advantages to being a Jew, but in the matter of justification, no human being has an advantage. Both Jew and Greeks are under the power of sin. God gave them up to the power of sin - the debased mind, the confused thoughts. This is the mind of the flesh, the worship of the created, not the Creator.

Some look to their special relationship with God, thinking it gives them an advantage with God's wrath. It does not. Some think that they might as well do evil so that good can come to God's glory, and this also is no advantage. Neither path is better off - all are condemned. "Let us do evil so that good may come!" That's a terrible doctrine and a terrible lifestyle. Good isn't at the mercy of evil for its existance. "If we weren't sinning, you couldn't come down here and show us how good you are!" That's nonsense. Good can demonstrate itself in far more ways than in wrath over evil acts. (The translation Are we any better off? is the preferred one: it refers to the we that is saying, Let us do evil so good may come. Paul inserts another parenthetical Their condemnation is deserved! before getting back on track with What then? It's a confusing little passage, but it's being dictated, so we should expect some rough segueways).

Paul finally gets to his laundry list of Old Testament passages: Humans hold no advantage over each other when they stand before the wrath of God. The whole world may be held accountable to God. All of us participate in the entropy of the world - we have all acted badly. Paul's statement of a universal felt need is quite adroit, if culturally bound. What shall be his solution?

The Miserable Failure Project

MWO > Old Fashion Patriot

George W. Bush is a miserable failure.

Resistance Attacks Red Cross - Bush Idiocy and Staying the Course

NY Times

On the one hand, something had to be done about Hussein. On the other hand, it could have been done differently.


This latest series of attacks makes it clear the kind of people who were supporting him. I don't think Al Qaeda would attack the Red Cross - there's nothing in it for them. This is the work of people trying to drive the international community out of Iraq, so that they can regain power. It's imperative to remain in Iraq, if only to keep the monster we created there at bay.

On the one hand, being in Iraq sucks. On the other, there's not much else we can do at this point. God, Bush is an idiot.

Grover Norquist's Ties to Islamic Fundamentalists

Eschaton > Olbermann on MS-NBC

Now, Alamoudi’s headquarters were in the same place, he was raided the same day, on March 20. An hour after I filed my lawsuit, the U.S. government finally got off its butt and they raided these offices. And, the stuff that they’re taking out of there now is absolutely horrendous. Al-Arian has now, finally been indicted, an along with Alamoudi, today.
But, who was it that fixed the cases? How could these guys operate for more than a decade immune from prosecution? And, the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He’s the super lobbyist. Newt Gingrich’s guy, the one the NRA calls on, head of American taxpayers. He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic institute and he’s the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute.
Grover Norquist’s best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things. He got extreme right wing Muslim people to be the gatekeepers in the White House. That’s why moderate Americans couldn’t speak out after 9/11. Moderate Muslims couldn’t get into the White House because Norquist’s friends were blocking their access.

Let's see. Grover wants to get the American government down to the size where he can get it into the bathtub and strangle it. Now he has ties to Islamic extremists that are funneling information to Al Qaeda - he's actually been protecting and lobbying for them. The 9/11 attacks have certainly brought his policy initiatives to the crisis level he's been wanting, years ahead of schedule. Hmmmmm....

What does Grover Norquist have against America? If he doesn't like this country, why doesn't he just leave?