1. Ebola, Ebola, Ebola...
Our latest national scare-package is being unwrapped gradually, lovingly, such that with each new revelation a fresh batch of Americans get to worry about it. The most recent admission from the CDC -- i.e., that the transmission of Ebola does not require direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person -- should be enough to kill the airlines, the hospitality industry, and every activity that requires people to gather together with strangers. What minimum percentage of Americans will voluntarily go to work for the duration of the crisis remains to be seen.
We are being socially atomized, reduced to individuals and nuclear families...and not all families will withstand the terrors of this disease.
2. The Midterms.
It has been said, and truly, that if the Republican Party should profit from the upcoming elections, which it appears poised to do, it won't be because of heightened public approval of the GOP, but because of deep disgust with the Democrats. All the same, a Republican-majority Senate could thwart at least some of the Obamunist nonsense that would otherwise slip by. This is especially the case with nominations to the Cabinet and the federal judiciary.
Given the unreviewable nature of Supreme Court pronouncements, the prospect of an Obama appointee to SCOTUS should frighten anyone with three functioning brain cells. Granted that there are Republicans in the Senate already who haven't got the balls God gave a cockroach and would more greatly dread the venom of the press for defying The Won than the wrath of God (not to mention that of the electorate) for going along with another Sotomayor or Kagan, we can nevertheless hope that a strengthened GOP caucus would at least retard such an appointment long enough for popular awareness to morph into indignation and anger.
3. Hell.
The mailbag produces some fairly regular surprises. Among those are questions about theological subjects that I often feel unqualified to address. However, even the most orthodox Catholic is allowed to speculate about things beyond the veil of Time, especially since the Church itself has been more than a little wobbly about such subjects.
This morning's eye-opener was from a reader in the Midwest:
Do you have any opinions about Hell?
Well, yes. First and foremost, I don't want to go there. But second, I think the nature of Hell, the condition of eternal damnation, is closely tied to the nature of Heaven, the condition of eternal bliss. A few words will be required to elucidate this.
We have been told very little authoritatively about Heaven, but its nature surely includes release from bondage to Time. Nothing else would be consistent with a state of eternal bliss. Indeed, an immortal sentenced to temporal eternity would find it to be the most extreme imaginable torment. Time is the medium of desire, effort, fulfillment, failure, and mortality; to compel an immortal, unalterable creature to endure it would utterly destroy any delight he might be offered within its folds.
Mix in the inescapable knowledge that one has forever forfeited both nearness to God and the gift of all-encompassing comprehension, and it sounds to me like we have a very good recipe for Hell. Maybe throw in perpetual rainfall, unending calls from telemarketers, and an eternal Obama Administration for lagniappe.
4. The New Totalitarians.
Time was, the word tolerance connoted a virtue, the willingness to "live and let live." It was nowhere more important than in matters of freedom of speech and religious belief. That's no longer the case today. Today we suffer a totalitarian "tolerance" that includes the suppression of freedom of speech and religious belief, as the antics of the lesbian Mayor of Houston should make plain.
This is not an "outlier," but an act characteristic of the most implacably vicious activist community at work in these United States. Muslims have nothing on the homosexual activist community. Ask Brendan Eich what such activists cost him. Then ask yourself whether it's either right or possible to "tolerate" such persons in a supposedly free republic.
5. Gun Grabbers And The Therapeutic Community.
If you want to test a man's deepest ethics, offer him power and observe the consequences. In particular, watch his responses to others who hold their own varieties of power, including the power to defend oneself:
California legislators recently passed a bill allowing family members to ask a judge to confiscate firearms from relatives who they see as a danger to themselves or others. The seizure will be enforced only when the judge deems the family’s concerns to be “legitimate”.Liberal lawmakers, who never leave a tragedy unexploited, drafted the bill in response to Elliot Rodger’s deadly rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus earlier this year.
California Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, who introduced the bill, said: “Family members are often the first to spot the warning signs when someone is in crisis. AB 1014 provides an effective tool to get guns out of the hands of loved ones to avoid these tragedies.”
I like that "legitimate" qualifier, don't you? Given the California power elite's demonstrated hostility to the private ownership of firearms -- by anyone but politicians and movie stars, anyway -- just what degree of concern by a "family member," which I'm certain will be expanded to include neighbors, occupational colleagues, and medical personnel, is a judge likely to dismiss as "illegitimate?"
But I'll guarantee you that the therapeutocrats -- psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and their various hangers-on -- purely love this bill. Whether they were behind it to any degree I cannot say...but I wouldn't bet against that, either.
6. Blind Squirrel Finds Nut.
I have very little regard for Eric S. Raymond, but even he can be right now and then, and this time it's on a topic of particular importance:
"What the press is teaching Americans to assume, story after story, is that if ‘youths’ commit public violence and they are not specified to be white, or hispanic, or asian — then it’s yet another black street gang on a wilding. . . . I don’t like where I think the well-meant suppressio veri is taking us. I think it’s bound to empower people who are genuinely and viciously bigoted by giving them an exclusive on truthful reporting. I don’t think it’s good for anyone of any color for bigots to have that power."
Allow me to add a big indeed.
7. An Intelligent Approach To The Assessment Of Islam.
What relationship does the Islamic State, ISIS, have to Islam? Almost every Western politician answers: “Absolutely nothing.” President Obama adamantly stated in a televised address that the Islamic State “is not Islamic.”So how does one determine what is, and is not, Islamic? The traditional process — the Islamic answer — is as follows:
What do the core texts and scriptures of Islam say about the thing in question? Does the Koran, believed by Muslims to contain the literal commands of Allah, call for or justify it? Do the hadith and sira texts — which purport to record the sayings and deeds of Allah’s prophet, whom the Koran (e.g., 33:21) exhorts Muslims to emulate in all ways — call for or justify it?
If any ambiguity still remains, the next inquiry is: what is the consensus (ijma‘) of the Islamic world’s leading authorities concerning it? Here, one most often turns to the tafsirs, or exegeses of Islam’s most learned men — the ulema – and considers their conclusions.
Muhammad himself reportedly said that “my umma [Islamic nation] will never be in agreement over an error.”
Please read the whole thing. Then watch the video in the post below.
8. And Finally...
...just in case you were wondering, the quantum of wasted verbiage is the feh. Use it at your next cocktail soiree and enjoy the admiring looks!
1 comment:
Regarding #5, never you mind that the guy stabbed three people to death first.
And tried to crush a couple people with his car, after.
The whole bill is disingenuous pap. And in a logical world, will not pass Constitutional muster.
But then again, not much logical about California.
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