Teleprompter Jesus to speak at Notre Dame, Bishop upset (link here)

I couldn’t agree with the bishop more.
If a religious sect represents itself as being the one true organ for the dissemination of God’s truth, then adherents to that faith should reasonably be expected to adhere to those tenets of God’s Word. The public proclamation of following that faith, and the public attendance of services would be an affirmation, if any was needed, of that expectation.
If one is to align oneself with a particular religious sect, that in this case has been around since, so to speak, day 1, then one should be somewhat pliant and seek to conform oneself to the tenets of that sect, one would suppose.
If it is agreed that abortion is the taking of life from a human, no matter the stage or progression of that life in or out of the womb, it can also be agreed that that is a violation of the Commandments.
If the hierarchy has spoken of its disdain of government support or sanction of a policy such as abortion, and that message has been faithfully broadcast from the pulpit to the congregations in an election year, then a thinking person should be cognizant of the ramifications of publicly speaking at cross purposes to the message.
If one were to regardless speak or write in a public forum of one’s support, whether in a passive or direct manner, of those who are in favor of abortion, then that person is rejecting not just God’s word, but would seem to be putting themselves at odds with the law as well. The basic rights and guarantees put forth by the founders of our country as being God given- that of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness- would certainly be in jeopardy for the life being terminated. All rights, responsibilities, opportunities, etc. flow from that one.
When we are urged to retain “perspective” in the matter of the President of the United States addressing Notre Dame, does Ms. Kerian think the “singular lens” of abortion is not a sufficiently weighty criteria to judge the appropriateness of the offer by? If the President does not judge human life still in the womb to be worth protecting, what assurance are the rest of us to take that our lives may not also someday be judged not worth consideration?
Speaking to the origin of this controversy, the invitation by the head of Notre Dame to the president to speak, it also would seem to send very conflicting messages to those in and outside of the Catholic faith as far as what real order exists and what degree of thought is given to these kinds of actions. If down through the years the Catholic church’s concern for the downtrodden and afflicted in society has caused the formation of allegiances with certain political philosophies, then perhaps it is time to re-examine those ties.
In this current climate of moral decay, entire generations now have been raised without many of the built-in restraints of only a few years ago. Not many years back even those raised completely away from any church were instilled with some concepts of right and wrong (natural law as the Bible calls it) just by virtue of being exposed to society at large, most of who were God-fearing and law-abiding. The corrosive effects of the sexual revolution, and the general relaxation of society’s taboos have in many parts of our country removed even this little restraint. Attempts by well-meaning politicians on both sides of the aisle since then have seemed to only make things worse, laws and the application of money never being able to take the place of what was once common sense. If church congregants and by extension, churches, have bought into many of these social engineering schemes- and many have- they must now work to extricate themselves.

HOPE AND CHANGE OMMMMM HOPE AND CHANGE OMMMM

In a recent speech to a group of left-coast liberals, Obama said the following:

"But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing"

Didn't that last sentence sound positively... Clintonesque? Or maybe all liberals just sound the same to me?
Anyway, why Obama felt the need to try to characterize US to THEM thusly is beyond me. He seems to have been trying to tell them that while he certainly isn't one of us, he understands what motivates rural and small town people's voting patterns. And he of course doesn't.
To paint us all as disgruntled hayseeds with feelings of abandonment by the government is to flatter himself and all the big government types he identifies with. We don't get up in the morning and with our first cup of coffee set about grumbling to ourselves about how we missed life's lottery, and how the government has abandoned us. Me personally? I could give a rat 's patoot if government knows I exist. While I have grave concerns about the bloated government we have, I hardly make that the focus of my day. Good people didn’t sit and bemoan the fact that the economy where I grew up went in the toilet (thank you, farm programs, Byron Dorgan, et al). People moved, went to school to learn a new trade, did whatever it took to keep moving in life. To paint us with the same broad brush strokes as those unfortunate losers standing in front of the burned-down post office in Compton, waiting for their welfare checks, is to categorize us as something we are not.
While he is certainly entitled to his opinion, I must say I don’t know what in his background would qualify him to give an accurate portrayal of rural people’s lives and feelings to a group of Left coast liberals. Looking at his life history on Wikipedia, I don’t see where he ever lived anywhere that had good deer hunting. Indonesia, Hawaii, Chicago, New York City- none of these are terribly rural.
The fact that a lot of us ARE cynical towards government gives him heartburn- we don’t seem to want to TRUST him when he says he can fix it all, if we just believe in him. Hope and Change Hope and Change Hope and Change is the mantra that will get it done. In a pig’s eye, I say.

Origins of genius?

Thoughts while staring into a campfire-
What did it take to be a genius in caveman days? What represented an IQ of 100 or 100plus twenty thousand years ago?
If there was little common knowledge beyond killing bison and building fire, what made an exceptionally bright Cro-Magnon stand out? Or Homo Sapiens for that matter? A straighter spear shaft with better balance? What if like genius stereotypes of today they had knowledge but no practical skills? Oogmar Einstein would have to communicate his theories of spear flight to Boog Villa who would then whittle out something. Oh yeah, can you see that happening with no spoken language- just grunts and gestures? And just how did metal smelting ever get off the ground? The first crucibles made of wood probably caught fire. ''O darn. Now me have start over. Wonder why me no get pass this point every time me try? Me get discouraged, go drink juice from smelly grapes in pile over there. That work pretty good last time I try it. Ho Ho!"
Its a wonder "survival of the fittest" as a concept ever got any traction. Given mans tendency to say screw it, let's get drunk, its hard to believe we got past discovering fermentation.
Anyway where was I? Oh yeah. Genius. Has the mind's ability to reason and learn grown over the years? Its so easy to be smart today. There is so much accumulated knowledge today that we have access to and actually absorb in a kind of intellectual osmosis as we age and grow. We aren't aware of much of it. Granted there's a lot that is a part of the modern mans life that would have no relevance outside of our modern life.
But if half our kids are writing computer code in high school, what if we took those same kids and transplanted them back just 300 years ago? Could we have skipped steam locomotive and gone straight to electric ones? Would they have done any better than Ben Franklin for example?
Artistic genius would have had an easier time of it. I know that's maybe not what my daughter would guess, but its most likely true. So an aspiring Van Gogh could pick up a carboned end of a charred stick and get right to representational depictions of the last hunt. Sure it took a few tries, and maybe a while to figure out that Ochre is good for more than face painting before a raid on the neighboring tribe. You know, the more I think of it, maybe art was in some respect the awakening of genius? Easier than the dynamics of what makes a good spear head material, thats for sure.

Dorreen, We Are Not All Killers

Dorreen Dorreen Dorreen.
Dear heart, why do you belabor yourself so with thoughts of gun laws? In your latest screed in the Herald (May 3rd) we are scolded for our gun laws having a low rating by the Open Society Institute, that being funded by the far left Soros Foundation. Why on earth should we care what George Soros or his foundation think of us? Keep this up and soon we won’t care what you think of us. As it stands now, I care deeply what you think, and so I take the time to scold you back. Pay attention.
Would it not be more useful to ask how do we stack up in murders, assaults with a gun, school shootings, whatever, per one hundred thousand, some way to measure the actual -what-? quality of life or something, rather than how we are behind the curve on impinging upon our citizen’s rights?
I’ll grant you, there may be things that need to be done in other, lawless, environments, but why should we Nord Akotans bother ourselves with that? We as a group of people seem to be able to keep our poop in a group sufficiently that we don’t have a lot of drive-by shootings or cold blooded murders. Why go looking for solutions to problems we don’t have? When I go into the Open Society website, I see that the states that rank highest in their eyes are those bastions of safety containing cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Blue states, all. In light of this, I am quite happy to live in a state that ranks a minus 5.
It has been an observation of mine down through the years that, when those in a society exhibit a lot of common sense, fewer laws are required to define acceptable behaviour. As our modern society has descended into liberal- driven chaos, however, we seem to have had to pass laws to make up for that deficiency. That our plethora of laws have fallen woefully short of accomplishing that task should be testimony to the usefulness of passing more.
You state in your article that your own siblings have guns. They seem to be stable enough that they don’t pose a problem- why project onto them or the rest of us qualities you fear some others may exhibit? Perhaps the bluer states have degenerated to the point where people have insufficient inhibitions to bad behaviour to exist side by side with one another. Voting blue would be my first indication of this, but I digress. In any case, you are asking us to burden ourselves with unconstitutional laws of questionable efficacy and I have to ask why? As is pointed out repeatedly to liberals- it is already against the law to kill someone or to shoot at them in other than self- defense. Since a criminal is by definition someone who already scoffs at the law, what effect other than burdening the law abiding do additional laws have?

Increase your wealth- buy a house in GF

To my faithful reader- sorry I haven't been posting for a while. I've been up to my ears in supporting the capitalist agenda at work (and loving every minute of it), and thus have been preoccupied. Get over it. Anyway, what I wanted to comment on today:

I was pleasantly surprised to see I grew richer in assets over the last year- I got a notice from the taxing authority that my humble abode here on shady Boyd Drive grew in value AGAIN this year- to the tune of $7000. This on top of some $12000 last year. I did not realize real estate was such a lucrative enterprise here in Lesser Grand Forks. Here I am living in this shanty, doing nary a thing save bare maintenance, and the value is skyrocketing! Only in America, huh? Well, the city did fill that little pothole there where the road bends- I suppose that had something to do with a higher valuation. And maybe my house is more valuable because there is an as-yet-unrevealed plan to make Simplot quit stinking up the place. Hope truly springs eternal, doesn't it?

I'm open to suggestions as to why I was granted such a phenomenal return on my investment in this little house of mine. Until someone shows me different, I'll just be content to think someone really likes me at the Courthouse. How's that?

Okay, one more time..

Okay, we'll try it again. I took the word verification off my comments section. I knew it was a pain in the butt, but I got spammed something terrible one time, and I was looking to avoid that if I could.
Anyways, it should make commenting a little easier for the people that care to make comments. Both of you.

Sticks and Stones...

Well, I've listened and I've read and I've pondered. This whole deal about Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot has EVERYBODY'S undies in a bundie- Left, Right, everybody is tripping over one another to denounce her, distance themselves from her, and call her down. For what? Calling some lawyer a bad name? Get over it, everybody.
First thing, why is it the gays can call each other "faggot" and straight people can't? That's a BS double standard, just like blacks calling each other the "N" word. I'd spell it, but I don't have time to argue with all the PC crowd about it again. Why do we have a show called "Queer eye"? Isn't that derogatory, too? Oh wait, some queers are making money doing it, so we'll let that one go by this time. R-r-r-right... You're victims when it suits you, but the rest of the world isn't supposed to be in on the joke. This is hypocrisy at its worst.
Second thing, why does a big tough guy who thinks he can be President of this country need defending from the words of some skinny little girl? If he's such a momma's boy that he needs our help, why on earth should we let him lead the country?
I'll grant you that Ann Coulter is over the top at times, but that is her schtick, and people pay her money to do it, buy her books, hear her speeches all the time. You're telling me the collective frontal lobotomies at Air America haven't said things about our President and others on the right? And people don't even want to pay to hear them, judging by how that enterprise is going.
I suggest you all take a deep breath, left and right, and repeat after me-"It's just entertainment, Eddie Murphy has said worse. It's just entertainment, Al Franken IS worse. It's just entertainment, Rosie O'Donnell WAS worse"
Sometimes I think some of my fellow travelers on the Right fail to see what they are doing in cases like this. They complain of how the media gives kooks and radicals a free forum to broadcast their nonsense to the world, then turn around and in a case like this, churn up more chatter about someone they purport to now deplore.
Well, enough of that. I gotta find some ice for a drink....

UPDATE: I corrected Ms. O'Donnell's last name spelling, as per my daughter's gracious indication in the comments. Thank you Lucy. I shall try to be more observant in the future.