Month: June 2009

The reading room: Friday Church News Notes

The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.

HOW THE POP CULTURE HAS DUMBED DOWN SOCIETY (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The rock & roll pop culture has been dumbing down society since its inception in the 1950s. The pop culture image of cool is the individual who excels in foolishness, the Elvis Presleys, the James Deans, the John Lennons, the rock & roll playboys, the Hollywood starlets. Influential pop culture movies such as “Blackboard Jungle,” “Rebel without a Cause,” and “The Wild One” emphasized irresponsibility, insubordination, free sex, and scholastic laziness. “The Blackboard Jungle” used a Bill Haley soundtrack to encourage young people to forget their studies and “rock around the clock.” In “Rebel without a Cause” James Dean exuded the essence of pop cool: unisex sensuality, narcissism, and rebellion to authority. “The Wild One,” played by the very cool Marlon Brando, glorified self-centered living and neglect of education. Chuck Berry’s hit “School Days” encouraged young people to exchange their boring studies for the glories of rock & roll partying: “Hail, hail rock and roll/ Deliver me from the days of old/ Long live rock and roll/ The beat of the drums, loud and bold/ Rock, rock, rock and roll/ The feelin’ is there, body and soul.” By the 1960s, the modern teenage culture was well established, with its own me-first attitude, Dionysian philosophy, oft ridiculous fashions (anything to differentiate the teenager from his elders), and particularly its own music. The modern teenager has always been driven by pop music. Rock stars set the tone. A serious education is downplayed for the sake of having “fun, fun, fun.” I was dramatically influenced by the pop culture from the time I arrived in junior high school in 1962. Though I had some God-given intelligence and love for reading, I soon realized that being a diligent student was not cool. I became far too busy being a proper pop culture teenager to give serious attention to my studies and as a result I was a mediocre to poor student. Nothing has changed since then. The term “nerd” comes from the climate of teenage cool. It defines a young person who is serious about scholarship and probably doesn’t fit in too well with the foolish but oh-so-cool crowd. I was reminded of this by a recent Associated Press report entitled “I Love Nerds” about the 2009 National Spelling Bee contestants. It observed that the bright students “stand out as a bit dorkey back home.” Jose Cabal of Miami said, “It’s like back home I’m a nerd. Up there, everyone else is a nerd.” The serious spellers have memorized tens of thousands of words and have sharpened their intellect and perfected their use of the English language, but they aren’t cool. The entire concept of the “nerd” exposes the vanity and foolishness of the pop culture. It is the “nerd” that is using his or her life sensibly, whereas the cool crowd is dedicated to vanity. The pop culture teenage philosophy typically leaves young people ignorant and deeply scarred with sin. But the power of teenage cool is enormous and the average young person is not wise enough to withstand its appeal. Many reports have been written on the decline in education in America. In 1994 the editor of Harper magazine characterized the national test scores as “a coroner’s report …  [that] returned a finding of mortal ignorance.” But most studies on modern American education neglect one of the most powerful influences, which is the pop culture. When the Herman’s Hermits sang in the 1965, “Don’t know much about history/ Don’t know much biology/ Don’t know much about a science book,” they were expressing the philosophy of teenage cool.

BOMBING KILLS TWO AT CHURCH IN NEPAL (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – A Hindu organization took credit for a bombing on May 23 that killed two and wounded 15 others at a Catholic mass in Kathmandu, Nepal. An unidentified woman entered the church just before mass began and left the bomb behind in a bag. A second bomb was disarmed by police. The Nepal Defense Army took responsibility for the murders. This is a radical Hindu group with probable ties to extremist Hindus in India that have viciously persecuted Christians. It was formed in 2007 with the objective of reinstating a Hindu state in Nepal (hindujagruti.org, Sept. 13, 2007). The Nepal Defense Army has demanded that all Christians leave Nepal and has stated its intent to “fight against the foreign religious invaders” (telegraphnepal.com, May 30, 2009). The NDA murdered a priest in July 2008. They have also bombed a mosque and another church. Police have quietly visited the churches in Kathmandu and warned them to be on the outlook for suspicious packages.
Continue reading “The reading room: Friday Church News Notes” →

Ouch: So much for that simulus!

Finally, something to draw me out of my funk.  Yeah, I know, I’ve been slipping. I’m just bored of the whole damn thing.

Seems ol’ Barry’s Stimulus horseshit, is just that…. Horseshit.

Via Innocent Bystanders:

stimulus-vs-unemployment-may2
So much for that stimulus eh? (click to make bigger)

Of interest….: (H/T The Strata-Sphere)

of the 2009 deficit by $481 billion, to $1.7 trillion (see Table 1-3). Much of that change stems from lower esti mated revenues and the increased costs attributable to the TARP. Over the 2010–2019 period, CBO has increased its estimate of the cumulative deficit by $1.3 trillion—mostly because of recently enacted legislation. Nearly half of that projected increase occurs in 2010 and 2011, largely as a result of the 2009 stimulus legislation (ARRA)

Lovely. Of course, that’s what the people voted for. All I can say is; Welcome to my world folks. It was bad back when I became unemployed, it is now worse.I guess I will be blogging for a while. That is if I can get back into the swing of it. It would help if people would donate and I could get readers. It gets old blogging to myself. I guess because I do not suck up to the idiot Neo-Cons and do not placate the Military-Hating so-called “libertarians”; nobody wants to read my site. I say screw ’em. I don’t need their readership anyhow.

So, yeah, it is going to be an interesting new few years around these damned parts.

Others Covering: Stop The ACLU, BizzyBlog, QandO, Fausta’s Blog, Politics and Critical Thinking, Gateway Pundit, Fox News, Hot Air, The Strata-Sphere, Cold Fury, Conservatives4Palin.com and protein wisdom

Liberal Writer Tommy Christopher fired by AOL

I don’t always agree with Tommy Christopher. But this here is just pure B.S.:

AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that the do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo’s vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy’s screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.

The fact that banning reporters from, well, reporting is so contrary to the purpose of a news organization it really is puzzling. It seems to be in direct contrast to their commitment to “traditional journalistic values”.

The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL’s Politics Daily. Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy’s sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.

His surprise stemmed from the fact that in his two years of writing for the site not one other post had ever been deleted by an editor.

via Liberal Writer Fired By AOL News For Reporting Vile Playboy List | NewsBusters.org.

If and when I do happen to go over and listen to Ed Morrissey’s Show, I sometimes listen to Ed & Tommy Christopher. Christopher is one of the more rational liberals out there.  This is just further example of the liberal intolerance that I have blogged about before. It also goes further than this; there are corporate ties here that might explain Tommy’s firing.

Anyway, it was quite the shock to Tommy and he is looking for donations. Click here to go to his blog, and click here to check out his twitter feed.

I personally want to wish Tommy all the best and hopefully He will be able to pick up a new writing gig in short order.

Gents, I do believe it is time to drop the Playboy subscriptions and the AOL subscriptions. I mean surly there must be better masturbation material and faster Internet out there, right?

Others: Townhall.com, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, media lizzy & friends, Daily Dose, Don Surber, Flopping Aces, Riehl World View and five feet of fury.

The Obligatory Obama's Muslim Roots come out posting….

I hate to say it, but there are some seriously stupid people on the so called “Right”.  Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock; you most likely already know about the newest internet Meme that’s blazing around the political Blogosphere right now. It’s basically the accusation that Obama is now exposing himself as a Muslim President.

You can view a sampling of all the craziness of the Blogosphere, by clicking here.  It all started when Jack Tapper wrote a rather poorly written piece about Obama’s Muslim roots. Which took a quote and parsed it and twisted it slightly to reflect something that was not said.

The quote, which originated over at the NYT:

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”

Well, naterally, the Conservative Bloggers went to Defcon 1 status and you could almost hear the tortured screams of some of those who are of the “Obama is a Muslim” mindset.  Well the problem is, Obama did not say that; actually he said this:

“Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

Steve Brennon weighs in here:

Greg Sargent explained, “Hard-core rhetoricians will note that Obama was employing an obscure tense known as the ‘conditional,’ and an arcane rhetorical device known as a ‘hypothetical.’ He said that ifcould see America as ranking up there with other Muslim countries — in numerical, hypothetical terms.” you were to take the number of Muslims in America, then one

This really isn’t complicated. In fact, given the size of the U.S. population, and the rich diversity of our spiritual landscape, you can pick practically any faith tradition, plug it into the president’s sentence, and it’d be true, too. If you took the number of Christians in the U.S., we’d be one of the largest Christian countries in the world. If you took the number of Jews in the U.S., we’d be one of the largest Jewish countries in the world. If you took the number of Hindus in the U.S., we’d be one of the largest Hindu countries in the world. If you took the number of Buddhists in the U.S., we’d be one of the largest Buddhist countries in the world.

That doesn’t mean we’re a Hindu country, or a Jewish Country, or a Christian Country, or a Muslim country, or a Buddhist country.

Another thing as well, is that Obama assumption is basically wrong, because according to a 2008 Pew Research Center poll:

major_religious_traditions

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

The Landscape Survey confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51%. Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions – evangelical Protestant churches (26.3% of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%).

While those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration. The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign-born adult population, Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two-to-one margin (46% Catholic vs. 24% Protestant); among native-born Americans, on the other hand, the statistics show that Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger margin (55% Protestant vs. 21% Catholic). Immigrants are also disproportionately represented among several world religions in the U.S., including Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Although there are about half as many Catholics in the U.S. as Protestants, the number of Catholics nearly rivals the number of members of evangelical Protestant churches and far exceeds the number of members of both mainline Protestant churches and historically black Protestant churches. The U.S. also includes a significant number of members of the third major branch of global Christianity – Orthodoxy – whose adherents now account for 0.6% of the U.S. adult population. American Christianity also includes sizeable numbers of Mormons (1.7% of the adult population), Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.7%) and other Christian groups (0.3%).

Like the other major groups, people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (16.1%) also exhibit remarkable internal diversity. Although one-quarter of this group consists of those who describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic (1.6% and 2.4% of the adult population overall, respectively), the majority of the unaffiliated population (12.1% of the adult population overall) is made up of people who simply describe their religion as “nothing in particular.” This group, in turn, is fairly evenly divided between the “secular unaffiliated,” that is, those who say that religion is not important in their lives (6.3% of the adult population), and the “religious unaffiliated,” that is, those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives (5.8% of the overall adult population).

Even smaller religions in the U.S. reflect considerable internal diversity. For instance, most Jews (1.7% of the overall adult population) identify with one of three major groups: Reform, Conservative or Orthodox Judaism. Similarly, more than half of Buddhists (0.7% of the overall adult population) belong to one of three major groups within Buddhism: Zen, Theravada or Tibetan Buddhism. Muslims (0.6% of the overall adult population) divide primarily into two major groups: Sunni and Shia.

So, while I can understand the anger that some Conservatives are feeling about this statement; I believe it is much ado over nothing. Not only is the President wrong, he simply made another one of his many verbal gaffes. What really troubles me is the extremist rhetoric being uttered by people such as Ann Coulter-Wanna-be and noted Jewish Race Baiter and Jewish Identity Politics shill; Debbie Schlussel and long discredited Conservative blogger Pamela Geller. Together these two continue to bring a bad name to, and cause those in the main stream to disregard the Republican Party.  There are some who Believe Michelle Malkin is the worst. I disgree, read Debbie and Pamela’s Blog for a week, and then go read Michelle’s. Michelle has nothing on these two at all. In fact, Michelle, I can stand to read; Pamela and Debbie, not so much.

The point I am trying to make here is this; if The Republican Party is going to win this battle of ideas, against the Liberals. We need to do it with factual information and legitimate criticisms. Not with false information and rheortic that is borderline racist, and with retoric that makes the Republican Party look like a bunch of Alex Jones crazies.

Video: O’Reilly Versus Olbermann on the Tiller Murder

It is not everyday that I get to do something of this nature. As you all know there was a murder of an abortion doctor in Kansas yesterday. As I said last night, I do not support this sort of extremist nonsense.  As neither does any other sort of sane thinking American; Conservative or Liberal, or anything else in between.

These videos, I believe are a text book example of the dogmatic positions that have infested the Liberal and Conservative factions of the political debate in this  country.

First off, here’s Bill O. condemning the attacks, and all the while denying the fact, that the killer might have actually watched his show:

Notice that there is no “Hey, We’re sorry that the man is dead.” or anything of that sort, just an arrogant bristle at his critics that accuse him of having at least some sort of culpability; even if it is simply being a messenger boy for the traditionalists.  

Next up, we have the poster child for the far left, the man; whom I thought was a legit answer to Wilsonian, Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy of George W. Bush. Whom also magically transformed himself, after the election of President Barack Obama; into a political hack and a defender of the throne, of sorts, to the new Liberal President.  What follows is nothing more than a Left Wing smear of the Conservatives, of all stripes and flavors:

As a libertarian-minded, Paleo-Conservative; I find both of these men equally disturbing.  First off; any broadcaster and political opinion maker who favors “quarantining” anyone’s freedom of speech, is as far as I am concerned not better than the soviet communists of old. That goes well beyond just being a Liberal Democrat; that is basically being a far left wing Liberal Fascist. This sort of nonsense is NOT, I repeat, NOT what the founders of the Democratic Party of old would have wanted.

Further more; I find Bill O’Reilly’s arrogance to be absolutely sickening. A man was just gunned down in the lobby of his own god damned Church for Christ’s sake; and the best this idiot Irish piece of shit can do, is smirk and bristle when someone points out the obvious about the far right and their tendency towards a fascist position of individual rights and freedoms of women?  It is no damned wonder that ALL of the old media is tanking like a leaking boat! 🙄

While I am quite sympathetic to the right to life cause. I cannot and will not endorse a policy that I feel to be border-line Nazi Fascist in nature. This is one of the main sticking points between me and the G.O.P.; I believe that Abortion and ANY laws pertaining to it, should be on a STATE level and NOT on a Federal level. How these Republicans can talk limited Government out of one side of their mouth and then want to have Federal Government regulation on something is now and should always be the choice of the individual, is nothing short of an equal with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. There is no such thing as big Government Conservatism. You are either a big Government type or a small limited Government person, you cannot be both.

While I am on the soapbox here, let me say a few other things that are radar here. I notice that today that there was a shooting of couple of our American Soldiers, by some Negro Muslim convert. I notice the Liberal Blogs are not exactly running this one up a flag pole, now are they? No! You know why? Because the Radical Muslims and possibly all Muslims in general share the same trait as the Liberals in this Country, and that’s a hatred of this Country’s Christian values and our Military.

…and one more here, before I finish this rather cranky blog post, another thing that I saw that burned my damned balls with this little gem by noted Neo-Conservative Blogger Ed Morrissey, on the Tiller Murder:

The murder of George Tiller at his church is a heinous crime, without any sense or justice. Regardless of how one feels about George Tiller’s profession, his murderer is nothing more than a domestic terrorist — someone attempting to impose by force a policy that one cannot get in place through democratic means. Tiller’s killer is no better than William Ayers, Kathleen Soliah, and Eric Rudolph, people who attempted to use violence for their extremist ends. Those who value life know that murder is the antithesis of the pro-life movement.

That stupid idiotic nonsense up there that I bolded, italicized and underlined up there. Could have been written by John Podhartz or Bill Kristol, both noted Neo-Conservatives. The cold, hard, sober fact is that this Scott Roeder is nothing more than a cold blooded killer; who was a part of a far right wing, anti-Governmental underground group, he is NOT a jihadist. I, quite frankly, wish that Ed Morrissey would pull his rather pointed head out his ass long enough to realize that. This drivel comes from the same place that says that Israel has never, ever, committed any acts of “Terrorism” themselves and the CIVILIANS (not Hamas or Hezbollah) of Palestine and more specifically Gaza; got exactly what was coming to them. 

The begrudgingly obligatory GM goes bankrupt posting

Yes, I know about the bankruptcy of General Motors. No, I will not be commenting on it. As I have a policy, as a blogger not to comment on issues that I personally am involved in and biased towards or against.

Here’s the facts, Via Keith Hennessey:

Process

* GM’s bankruptcy filing was expected to be at 8 AM EDT in NY Southern District in Manhattan. (CNBC)
* Obama and GM CEO Fritz Henderson are scheduled to hold back-to-back press conferences beginning at noon today. (CNBC)
* They are using the same Section 363 process that Chrysler used. The new GM buys the good parts of the old GM. The old parts are liquidated. (White House fact sheet)
* “… would allow a much smaller GM to emerge from court protection in as little as 60 to 90 days.” (CNBC) (This is a guess/spin. How optimistic is it? GM is much harder than Chrysler. –kbh)
* “Al Koch, a managing director at advisory firm AlixPartners, will be appointed chief restructuring officer in charge of liquidating those GM assets” (CNBC)
* “Autos task force will stay in business – shifting to an investment manager role”(CNBC)

In “the new GM,” ownership is:

* 60% of equity goes to the U.S. Government. USG also gets $8.8B in debt and preferred stock.
* UAW’s retiree pension/health plan (the “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association”) gets 17.5% of equity, plus:
o warrants to buy another 2.5% of equity;
o a $2.5 B note (three installments, ending in 2017); and
o $6.5 B in perpetual preferred stock (9% coupon).
* Approximately 12% of equity goes to the Canadian (and Ontario?) governments. They also get about $1.7 B in debt and preferred stock.
* Bondholders of old GM get about 10% of the equity, for giving up $27.1 B in unsecured debt. This was approved by bondholders representing 54% of unsecured debt. The other 46% are the biggest risk for the bankruptcy filing. (CNBC, WSJ)
* “Bondholders could take up to 25 percent of GM if it recovers to be worth what it was in 2004, before it began round after round of cost-cutting in what proved to be a failed bid to make up for lost sales.” (I need to understand this better.)
* Secured bondholders expect to be paid face value. (WSJ)

Governance of the new GM

* UAW’s VEBA can select one independent director, but cannot vote its shares or other governance rights(!) (White House fact sheet)
* “Canadian government will have the right to select one initial director.” (White House fact sheet)
* “The U.S. Treasury will also have the right to appoint the initial directors other than those that will be selected by the VEBA and the Canadian government.” (White House fact sheet)

GM gets about $40 B of new cash to help pay its bills during bankruptcy. This is called debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing.

* U.S. Government: $30.1 B in new debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing. (WH fact sheet, CNBC)
* Governments of Canada & Ontario: $9.5 B

NewCo / OldCo

* “Today GM is announcing its intention to close 11 facilities and idle another 3 facilities.” (White House fact sheet)
* “[GM] has not provided an update target for job cuts but had been looking to cut 21,000 factory jobs from the 54,000 UAW workers it now employs in the United States.” (CNBC)
* “While the “new GM” is expected to emerge quickly from court protection, the automaker’s shuttered plants, stranded equipment and other spurned assets would be left to liquidation in bankruptcy.” (CNBC)
* Previously announced: “closing more than a dozen factories and shedding the Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer brands.” (WSJ)
* GM will “shutter 2,600 dealers.” (WSJ)
* “The new GM will also pursue a commitment to build a new small car in an idled UAW factory.” (WH fact sheet)
* GM will shed more than $79B in debt. (WSJ)
* “GM at the last minute also found buyers for some unwanted subsidiaries, including German-based Opel, which is being acquired by a consortium led by Canadian auto-parts supplier Magna International Inc., and the Hummer brand, whose buyer remained undisclosed.”

Future

* “The U.S. Treasury does not anticipate providing any additional assistance to GM beyond this [new $30.1 B] commitment.” (White House fact sheet)
* “As a result of this restructuring, GM will lower its breakeven point to a 10 million annual car sales environment. Before the restructuring, GM’s breakeven point was in excess of 16 million annual car sales.” (White House fact sheet)
* “The administration said the goal of the restructuring was to help GM be profitable in a year when the industry sells 10 million vehicles, versus the 16 million it sold in 2007.” (CNBC)
* “GM will continue to honor consumer warranties.” (WH fact sheet)
* GM is being removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average 30 (“the Dow”), along with Citigroup. They will be replaced by Cisco and Travelers. (CNBC)

As you all can well guess; there is a great deal of sadness and a great deal of anger in this household today. I will give you all a fair warning. ANY sort of stupid or abusive or troll-like comments left in the comment section will result in your comment being deleted and your IP address being blocked from even viewing this blog. You just don’t insult my family. Period.

Others covering this story, their color codes should clue you into their political stances:

The Atlantic Business Channel, The New Republic, Above the Law, Gawker, The Stimulist, protein wisdom, Daniel W. Drezner, Wake up America, Mainstream Texas Conservative, Colorado Independent ,Gateway Pundit, The Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, DownWithTyranny!, The Big Picture, Kausfiles, Runnin’ Scared, The Caucus, ProPublica, The Moderate Voice, Wall Street Journal, Say Anything, Wonk Room, Hot Air, USA Today, Reason, CFR.org, The BLT, RedState, Ben Smith’s Blog, The Politico, TPMCafe, Democracy in America, The New Republic, Crooks and Liars, DealBook, The Nation, Law Blog, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, Boston Globe, Libertarian Republican, The Foundry and Betsy’s Page